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Comment by willcipriano | Hacker News Reader

I'm in the US.

I don't really see how my standard of living would go up going from owning my own home to living in a tiny apartment. Different strokes for different folks of course but for me it would be a big drop in standard of living.

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You have the benefit of suburbia, where you can let your kids bike around like in Stranger Things and maybe even have joint backyards. In other places houses are conspicuous and unsafe, whereas sets of apartment buildings can afford joint facilities like swimming pools, treadmills and lifting equipment, not to mention safe space for kids to run around. This isn't necessarily better than your situation; it's just that suburbia has been heavily subsidized in the US and not so much elsewhere.

> benefit of suburbia

I'll be moving soon, it's starting to get a little hairy around here. There have been a few incidents in the past few years involving drug addicts. One crashed into a utility pole on my property, another crashed into mine and several cars parked on the street and was arrested screaming on my neighbors lawn. The convenience store across the street has overdoses happening on a regular basis that EMS responds to. We often get accosted by people for money when we walk over there. Point being it's nothing like Stranger Things my kid can't ride a bike around town here.

That said I can move about an hour or two into the middle of Pennsylvania close to the area I grew up in and it's like what you picture. It's also about half the price in terms of home values and that's not factoring in the larger minimum lot sizes. This is a great starter home for a young family, but once my daughter is older I want her to live in a place were she won't have to deal with this crap.

You don't have to live in a tiny apartment, you can live anywhere you want but you'll have to commute.

Public transport being half decent means you don't have to actively drive everywhere freeing up time for yourself, even if you have a long commute.

I don't think there's many owning their own houses in NYC or DTLA, it's weird to compare like this.

> You don't have to live in a tiny apartment, you can live anywhere you want but you'll have to commute.

Running the numbers I couldn't afford it. Property is very expensive in the UK. We have a few of her relatives come visit and they kept telling me how big my house is, they kept bringing it up and I thought it was British sarcasm and they were being assholes because my house is less than 1200 sq feet on a third of acre. They were being genuine. My house is one of the smallest in my town, I don't think you can even legally build them this small anymore.

> I don't think there's many owning their own houses in NYC or DTLA, it's weird to compare like this.

I don't live there for the same reason, I can make more money but it will all go to paying rent for a tiny apartment.

If they were saying how big your house is at only 1200sqft it's not because that's such a huge building we in the UK can't imagine such big houses, it was almost certainly a specific comment about your personal situation feeling that you didn't need that much space (or they were indeed assholes and being sarcastic, if it is one of the smallest in the town then maybe they did want to tease about that).

Not to say that UK properties aren't smaller on average as not only are we obviously a much smaller country but we also have a greater proportion living in higher population density areas, as less people here are happy to live outside towns/cities than in the US.

Coming from Germany, I was shocked at the property prices in the UK. Living here for a short while, it seems to me that cost of living at a certain standard is higher than or at least similar to many parts of the US, while salaries are closer to European levels, maybe 1.2x-1.5x in London. Commuting from a smaller city close by, e.g. Reading<-> London comes out to >£5k/year for public transport, and getting there by car takes ages because the city is not designed to handle large amounts of traffic(IMO)

>public transport being half decent

I think you're living in a different England to me.

Visit the US, especially outside of the main cities and you will gain a new appreciation for British public transport.

"half"-decent is an appropriate term.

*Public transport existing Better? You leave a metropolitan area in the states and you are SOL without your own means. Or you could sell all the "extra" organs you have and buy a train ticket.

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