Germany does not have the egregious housing costs of Berkeley. It’s entirely possible to feed one’s self on that amount but not really get adequate housing, and certainly not what you’d imagine as middle class stability.
That being said, I quickly googled the average rent in Berkley and it's around 4k$.
The salary difference (ignoring 9 vs 12 month) seems to be around 50k which is over 4k/month...which should be enough to cover average housing all else being equal. And that assumes no rent for the German counterpart :P
Also depends a bit where you are in Germany. I think in Munich (most expensive) the buying price is around 10k€/square meter and Berkley city from quick googling seems to be around 12,5k$. Not sure around rent prices but I'm assuming they scale to buying prices.
I found the part about health insurance interesting as well. I would probably never willingly under-insure if I had that option (I do not).
She should have married her partner to be on their insurance, that’s what I did.
You can't just change words like that. It's dishonest. Poverty != "low income".
Lower down it discusses the nationally averaged poverty line. At no point does it make any claims to a number for a SF specific localized poverty line. As you say, local values are going to be different, but the national number is far below the "low income" threshold set earlier in the article.
You know something has gone haywire when "low income" and "median" incomes are basically the same amount.
Except that everything else is more expensive here because of these costs. Any service you can imagine, jack the prices up 50%+.
[1] https://www.zillow.com/berkeley-ca/home-values/ [2] https://www.immowelt.de/liste/muenchen/haeuser/kaufen?sort=r...
Actually building the apartments in question took three weeks.
There aren't very many other places in the world where this problem is so acute.
Maybe it’s more appropriate to compare Munich, London, Paris, Amsterdam with Berkeley and see how lecturer salaries there compare with each other. hint: Berkeley adjunct has higher salary even compared to some tenured professors in comparable cities in Europe.
In the UK an experienced postdoc, or one with a competing offer, can make around 40k before having to push for lectureships. Professorial salaries start at 60k and maybe hit six figures for senior staff. Munich is fairly high, I think between 50-70k depending on who you ask (TV-L E13). Scandinavia is not great compared to the high cost of living, last time I checked.
A better comparison is somewhere like Oxford/Cambridge which both have extremely high rent/income ratios - some of the worst in the country - many postdocs, and almost all PhDs, can't afford to live alone. A room is close to 1k a month which is absurd in the UK.
And yes by all means compare Berkeley to Munich or Berlin or any of those cities other than London, where despite being expensive for Europe they don’t come close to Berkeley in terms of cost