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I would be cautious how much of your frustration is because of the US changing or not meeting your expectations vs you happening to make major life decision right when there happened to be major world changing events. (Covid, Russia/Ukraine primarily.)

Since you aren’t in your old life anymore, you don’t know exactly how good or bad it would have been had you stayed.

Moving on beyond that, some places are definitely worse off than others within the US. Housing where I live is getting more expensive, but incomes are also going up substantially. And they are building thousands of new housing.

You mention being a top 5% earner. Unless that is top 5% locally, you are probably using up a lot of that top 5% income to live in a top 1% location.

According to the stats, we make top 5% income of our area. It sure doesn't feel like it. Makes me wonder how people in much lower income who hasn't inherited their home can make ends meet here (the answer is probably not very well).

Regarding your first point, you are right, you can't A/B test your life. In any event I'm reporting my current experience, which is both not better than my previous and expected one.

>> Buying a home? Give me a break

> According to the stats, we make top 5% income of our area

Well one of those two things isnt true. It's not possible to be 95%ile income and not afford a house.

Do you have the corresponding statistics (income percentiles vs. average house cost) for all areas in the US handy, allowing you to quickly determine this is not possible? Or do you not like the idea and therefore reject it?

Do you have a single example where it is possible?

Why did you not ask GP for an example, and instead declared it impossible, if you do not have the required statistics?

because thats not the way debate works. you dont get to make a(n absurd) claim and then demand the other person disprove it with data across 100% of the spectrum.

I didn't say that this is how debates work. How they should work however:

> A: [some statement]

> B: I don't think that is the case. Could you share an example?

> A: [example]

See where nobody had to disprove anything with data across 100% of the spectrum? That's because nobody made the claim that A is wrong. You however made an absolute claim, so you have to provide the data for it.

There are multiple ways this can happen:

* people in the area are not owning their houses, but (the companies owned by) people who live somewhere in Florida do (or the richer part of the same town)

* people bought their houses 40 years ago when it was still possible to do so, but would now be totally priced were they required to buy it now

* same but the rental equivalent for rent controlled apartments (or kind landlords)

* due to the interest rate increases, mortgages for new homes have increased rapidly, like even if the house price is the same as 1.5 years ago, the mortgage is now three times as much for the same down payment and duration.

I’m going to assume you live near the coast, probably in the Bay Area or NYC or Seattle?

I think as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized the American Dream has changed. The coastal cities are no longer available even for relatively middle class families, you’ll have to move inland if you want land and property consistently and for relatively cheap.

Yep - was barely scraping by it felt like, while in a coastal city. After we had kids, it was way worse. We moved inland, bought a house, and can afford an in-home nanny. It feels closer to what the cumulative household income we have is supposed to feel like.

I think it was always supposed to be "work hard, adapt, and you'll have a good life." This is out of reach for many, certainly, but it's not so far out of reach that a BLS.gov average tech salary can't live comfortably.

I'm always reminded of my sister in law who, with her husband, has a 5 bedroom house, two kids, brand new cars, hunting land, and a family lake cabin ... off a teacher and electrician salary. Her father has even more and sold cattle feed. The secret sauce was location. They live in southern Minnesota and never bothered to chase the coastal dream.

People tend to underestimate the cost of living in a high demand place.

You could make top 10% incomes globally, but if you are living in a top 1% location then you are being priced out by the 9% of the population making more than you.

If you want to live with a certain lifestyle of cars/vacations/personal services etc then you can’t be spending up on the other parts of your budget like housing location.

While not unique, the Bay Area is also something of an outlier in that it's hard to drive out of extremely high housing prices from not only SF but the South Bay generally.

I live 60-90 minutes outside of the Boston metro and, while were I am isn't many areas of the Midwest cheap, it's pretty affordable. Except for one short stint, I've never had to commute into the city, so living in the city would be a lifestyle choice which has historically not been one that a lot of middle class families made--even when a lot of urban CoL was lower.

Yeah, there's a telling degree of overlap between the "The American Dream is dead crowd" and the "I refuse to live anywhere but an expensive coastal city" crowd. Not to say that the latter can't be caused by the former, but it indicates a frustration with a particular experience that isn't really fully representative of what the "American Dream" is supposed to offer. Notably, for all of their complaining the actual emigration rate of this population seems to be very low.

The coast is only a correlation. There is a direct tradeoff between economic opportunity and cost of living. I live in an East Coast city with a crap local job market and a 2 hour rush hour commute to the high-wage regional economic center. Living here is pretty cheap. Living in Chicago isn't. If you are professionally and financially established enough to pick and choose remote work or have a pied-à-terre, then sure, moving to a less expensive area is a great move. If you're working in a structured trade that will yield work most anywhere, that works too. Beyond that, it just doesn't work. Cost of living is so much higher now than it was 20 years ago that is just not feasible for most young people to build up enough money to break away from professional hubs. Most people's wages are not double what they were 10 years ago, but getting a room in a shared apartment is way more than double, as is health care, and other major expenses— not to mention student loans. The difficulty that imposes when accumulating capital for down-payment is not linear. Hovering around the break-even line is stressful, but falling below it pulls you under fast, like an undertow. A few overdrafts leading to a missed credit card payment plus a broken car or illness can fuck you over for a few years if you're treading water.

Yes, okay, I am on board with leaving the big city for lower cost of living. Where are the tech sector jobs outside of coastal cities? You might find some in Austin or Arizona, but those places are already two feet in the door for a cost of living crisis.

They are all over the country.

No, they don't pay as much as the Bay Area. You wouldn't expect them to.

That's fine but two factors stand out: how secure is my employment opportunity and what is the wage compared to the cost of living? In both cases the rural option is worse than in cities and it also comes with the drawback of being far away from humanity.

That’s fine but understand the choice.

A lot of the housing complaints read like people saying, “my grandmother bought shares in MSFT for $0.12 and now I have to pay $330!”

Of course desirable, developed areas with high paying jobs are expensive. It’s not a fairness thing it’s a false comparison.

These are all major US metros where you will easily make > $100k as a software engineer ($125k median), while you'll find many Single Family Home options for $300k - $400k. That kind of home price / income ratio with low tax rate for that housing space is practically unheard of in the world (in the good way).

Chicago: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...

Atlanta: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/atlanta...

Pittsburgh: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/pittsbu...

Raleigh-Durham: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/raleigh...

Boise: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/boise-a...

Nashville: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/nashvil...

Dallas: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...

Minneapolis: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/minneap...

>you’ll have to move inland if you want land and property consistently and for relatively cheap.

Except that I live inland and apart from people coming from the coasts, it's gotten too expensive for "local" people. That $500K house is cheap if you've made your money elsewhere (or work remotely), but for anyone working in the limited local industry, it's out of reach.

Also hard to attract doctors / lawyers / professors / other white collar professionals who aren't on the brink of retirement age because they realize that while the cost of living is better here, they are giving up career opportunities and money not being in coastal cities.

I'm reasonably wealthy and live in a single family home on the coast. (Well 1 mile from the coast.) So this is not about me. But the truth is, I probably couldn't live anywhere else (beyond living a couple hours away and having a horrendous commute) because:

1) My job is here and they won't let me work remotely. While I don't need this specific job, I've lived in cheaper areas and the jobs available were few and far between. You can find them, it's just a huge pain in the ass and they don't treat their employees nearly as well. I've even worked for myself, but it's a lot more work and not everyone is cut out for it. I threw in the towel after 5 years because it was burning me out so much.

2) My spouse has medical issues that even the best doctors in the big cities are having trouble treating. There's no way they'd be able to treat her in the sticks. You just can't get the types of services needed for some things in lower-cost-of-living areas.

"We’ve strayed so far from the original intentions of our economic model..."?

I think this demonstrates that "young people", or at least this author, aren't really participating in "reality" at all.

The economic system is doing exactly what it was intended to do: scrape the financial assetts of the masses of the unwashed herd into the bank accounts of the predetary rich. It's a win-win-win for the rich, the richer, and the richest. Exactly as it was "intended".

As long as "young people" of all ages continue to throw themselves gushingly at every corporate exploit that crawls out from under a rock, expect the expoitation to continue.

Perhaps consider how much your "lifestyle" depends directly on corporate platforms?

... and that's still a better deal than the UK, where the norm is no equity and an capped salaries for "IT personnel" (their words, not mine).

Anecdotally, seems there's a lot of British and European expats here in the Valley and they don't seem too keen on returning. We've been getting a lot of international applicants (but work from home was supposed to mean Europeans could avoid moving to the "dangerous" US but work for American companies?).

Post 2016 the messaging from most commonwealth countries (UK, Canada, Australia) seemed to be that they were going to be the ones benefiting from a brain drain of Americans leaving the country. Canada was supposed to become an "AI Superpower" and Universities in the UK were supposed to be where innovation was going to happen next due to the perceived hostility of the United States to foreign talent. I recall someone pitching the "Silicon Roundabout" and that Cambridge and Oxford were going to be the new Stanford and MIT.

It's interesting, in retrospective, to see how wrong these predictions were. Top destination for UK nationals in Academia was, and still is... the US [0].

[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...

They trot out that shite anytime they can, it doesn't change the economics of "we have a small market mindset and can't value tech from a global perspective". Also eco-classism means tech is surpressed by finance anywhere it can be.

> Canada was supposed to become an "AI Superpower" and Universities in the UK were supposed to be where innovation was going to happen next due to the perceived hostility of the United States to foreign talent.

Am I the only one who finds it hilarious that the UK/Rishi Sunak keeps trying to push the UK as the potential world leader in AI regulation despite the UK having no world leading AI company?

> Buying a home? Give me a break. I love to share the Zillow home price index graph to visually show people how Covid has screwed the housing market [1]. And at least before we had the option to move far from the city to a cheaper location and work remotely, but now employers are forcing us to go back to the office, so the choice is between unaffordable rent or multi-hour daily commutes (I’m in the second camp).

Remote work also screwed a lot of low cost cities as tech workers moved there, outbid everyone, and priced out local residents from housing market.

However, remote work is here to stay. Live where you want and look for remote jobs while working your current job. Recently, two of my friends switched their jobs to fully-remote positions.

(I know in the news it is layoffs all the time but there are still many companies hiring fully remote workers.)

Sure, but why would I move to the boonies in the US to get a remote job? I might as well move back to my home country, with my family, friends, and no worries about immigration status.

If the solution is to move to a rural area, I double down on my point of the American dream being dead.

> I know I'm playing the world's smallest violin and I will gather little sympathy since I am one of those tech workers with a big fat paycheck, but the fact that someone like me isn't thriving might be another symptom of how fucked up things are.

You don't have to preface your struggles and frustrations like this. Everybody's problems are real to them and diminishing them doesn't do anybody any good.

> Buying a home? Give me a break. I love to share the Zillow home price index graph to visually show people how Covid has screwed the housing market [1]. And at least before we had the option to move far from the city to a cheaper location and work remotely, but now employers are forcing us to go back to the office, so the choice is between unaffordable rent or multi-hour daily commutes (I’m in the second camp).

For reference, I purchased a home and I believe it to have been a huge mistake. I'll be looking to sell it basically at-cost in about a year or so. The homebuying gold rush made a lot of people, including me, buy houses because they thought it was their chance, only to then realize that many houses were deceptively priced/kinda shitty. I think your feelings around commuting are valid, and I don't mean to diminish the desire to own a home, I'm just trying to be a voice of "it's not always better". I didn't really have anybody in my life when I bought, saying that type of thing, so I'm trying to advocate for homebuying-realism when I can.

> I know this comment sounds whiny but I can’t help to feel that we are just getting dealt a shit sandwich after another. We might be in a world of extravagant productivity but I’m sure as hell not reaping the benefits. I’m supposed to be a top 5% earner and yet I don’t feel my standard of living is much better than my working class upbringing - at least back then we owned our apartment and weren’t told how privileged we were.

I feel this big time too. I make pretty far above my city's "upper tier" of income for tech workers and still generally feel strapped. I have gotten a handful of bad beats in a row.

Thanks for your comment, I think the HN crowd might be more understanding. In the general population, someone making 6 figures complaining about cost of living (particularly tech workers, since we are usually blamed for the problem) is frowned upon.

> In the general population, someone making 6 figures complaining about cost of living (particularly tech workers, since we are usually blamed for the problem) is frowned upon.

This is one of the reasons why people generally associate with people in similar circumstances. As in, it's normal for people making 6 figures to feel comfortable griping to other people making 6 figures because we get it.

Why sell the house? Don’t you still need a place to live?

Is this house the only place to live?

Are there better deals readily available?

Depends entirely on your definition of "better deal". To me, yes, many many many apartments and condos are a "better deal".

> I purchased a home and I believe it to have been a huge mistake. I'll be looking to sell it basically at-cost

If the worst part of the experience was breaking even, you're ahead. You bought at a peak. Refinance every few years and ride it out.

Rent never gets cheaper over time, you get no privacy and own nothing. If shit hits the fan, you're homeless in 60-90 days. By comparison, foreclosure buys you a year.

> If the worst part of the experience was breaking even, you're ahead

I don't agree.

> You bought at a peak.

I guess it depends on how you look at it. I doubt I'll ever get an interest rate this low ever again.

> Refinance every few years and ride it out.

No interest in "riding it out".

> Rent never gets cheaper over time,

Old homes don't get cheaper over time.

> you get no privacy

Don't know what this means.

> and own nothing.

The bank owns this house. I own nothing.

> If shit hits the fan, you're homeless in 60-90 days.

If I'm optimizing against mythical "shit hitting the fan", this house buys me basically nothing.

edit Very interested in these downvotes I'm receiving for giving my own opinions on my own house...

As a UK person who always dreamed of moving to the US, how have you found it from a social perspective? I always imagined it would be a much friendlier place than the UK and that there were more things to do regardless of whether you had geek or jock interests, does it match that expectation?

I moved from the UK but I'm not british, so not sure how useful my experience will be to you.

Since I am married and an introvert I haven't really socialized that much since we moved. People seem pretty open although it seems to me you need to get into some kind of shared hobby to meet people (isn't that just true about making friends as an adult?). However I never had a bad experience socializing in the UK, in fact I made several good friends there.

>isn't that just true about making friends as an adult?

For people without kids, I think that's generally true. Pretty much everyone I socialize with locally is associated with a local outdoor club. There are still people from school and professional acquaintances I keep in touch with, but that's usually not local.

Something that is specifically different than Europe - from what I’ve heard - is that while going out and doing social hobbies is still an excellent way to make friends… it’s not the only way to make friends in Europe. Whereas in the US, I’d say it’s about the only thing available.

Third spaces are almost nonexistent in the US and spaces overall where you can just easily socialize with strangers are incredibly uncommon in the US. Go out to most any bar in places like NYC or SF and you’ll have a hard time making any new friends. The same cannot be said in Europe. While in Europe, folks would just chat me up at random whereas in the US - this has never happened.

It’s a different culture and the atmosphere of most bars here is to make money off expensive drinks - not to make you happy. It’s one of the things where I find it funny how folks recommend chatting up the bartender as a way to get introduced to the regulars. Any bar I’ve gone to - the bartenders are too busy to even know anyone. I’ve got to some bars for 6+ months and ordered regularly from the exact same bartender - they didn’t know my name or even recognize me.

It’s a different culture in the US. It’s capitalistic.

I'm curious whereabouts in Europe you went where people would chat to you at random?

I went to a dozen countries last year in Europe. It was relatively easy to talk to strangers in a lot of contexts - not just bars. Even in places like Poland I was being chatted up.

To be clear, I don't think I'm even a very approachable person nor am I good looking or appear rich or anything of the sort. There's just way less stranger danger outside of the US - AFAICT.

Surely this isn't true in small to medium sized towns? Perhaps in cities but you could probably say the same thing of anywhere in the world? The coffee shop/local bar where everyone knows each others name is a staple in American shows, there must be at least a grain of truth in it.

Those shows are from 30+ years ago. TV isn’t always a semblance of real life. Do you think that everyone could relate to having a very nice home with a live in caretaker for your father, a very nice upscale and large apartment in an expensive metro, and constantly having people come to your home practically unannounced… No? Doesn’t sound like much of a real life situation for most Americans. Yet, Frasier was a huge show…

Yes, but I would still be surprised if small towns in America don't have coffee shops, diners and bars where there are regular customers who are on first name basis with the staff. What the establishment sells might differ from location to location but the social aspect just seems to be a universal across the entire planet.

>While in Europe, folks would just chat me up at random whereas

I'm European and been to several other European countries (well mostly the German speaking ones) and never been chatted up by strangers. Maybe you're only in the largest capital cities/big metro areas and are from a country that's seen as exotic over here as not many from there move here (Mexico, US, Canada, New Zeeland, etc) so the locals were curious why you're there and wanted to practice their English with you, because that never happened to me when I was a solo traveler or an immigrant here probably because I'm from a neighboring country that's known so nobody is curious. I had the exact opposite experience in the US, people would randomly chat me up or be very open when I was chatting them up, even had a fling on vacation there.

So your European vacation experience doesn't really match mine at all of living here long term. People here also seem very reserved of being approached by foreigners they don't know. I mean, if you're an interesting character they might do some small talk with you to be polite and get to know you, but that's as far as the interaction goes, then they go back to their drinks/friends, they won't be your friends. These bar interactions aren't a reliable way to socialize and make friends, it's just single use superficial interactions that last the night, as explained in Fight Club. And judging by the posts on local subreddits, I'm not the only expat struggling with loneliness in the German speaking parts of Europe.

Timing is a big deal; the economic system favored those of earlier generations (also when fewer people lived), and now I think we basically have to wait for Boomer generation to cede influence -- they were dealt a nice economic hand and capitalism thrived to where we are now, maybe a variant of "peak capitalism", which younger generations are rebelling against because they can't participate as much and the negative externalities of such a system are apparent (e.g. oligarchic control, regulatory capture, weakening of federal governments, and just plain classic corruption allowed within legal bounds...).

This isnt about generation vs generation. It's elite vs. the proletariat and the pain is just distributed unevenly across generations.

Obviously theyre more than happy with millenials blaming their parents as it exculpates them for turning the crank on the dynastic, parasitic wealth extraction engine.

It is generational. The boomers could afford a house in the suburbs (owned, not rented), a car, and steak for dinner for themselves, a wife, and a couple kids on a factory workers salary.

Sorry, but this mentality is counter-productive and plays right into the hands of oligarchs. Instead of recognizing that wealth and power is increasingly accruing to a smaller and smaller set of uber-wealthy (who pass that wealth on and otherwise rig the game for their offspring), we allow ourselves to be distracted by culture wars and generation wars rather than recognizing it as a smokescreen from the concentration of wealth and power that is driving the bad outcomes.

Yeah...grandpa could afford a middle-class lifestyle working in the finger-cutting factory. Maybe even making Management one day--with training paid for by the parent company--if he worked hard enough!

Jeff Bezos would have you working under the same conditions, pissing in bottles and living in his parking lot.

Grandpa's earned wealth isn't why you can't afford a house.

What generational label are the oligarchs? Wealth compounds, does it not take timing and opportunity to achieve elite/oligarchic power?

No. Russia managed to create lots of oligarchs in between the years between 1989-1994 by following western advice on capitalist shock therapy. Many of the lucky winners passed the privatized and extracted wealth of the Soviet Union down to their children.

Something similar is happening today in the west at a less accelerated rate.

Asking which generational label applies is pretty strange. All of them do.

Hm, sure, yes "labels" is better. But labels are just a way to group birthdates which then can be mapped backed to generational labels. So, oligarchs made in 1989-1994, when were they born? They seem to be older than the generations discussed in the article: how can one not use timing as a variable for this? Yes, indeed elite vs. non-elite, but still, who are the elite and when did they become the elite -- probably before the generations singled out in the article. And what environment allowed for their growth? One you've provided is economic period that allowed for oligarchs in Russia, therefore elite, to be forged. Elites will persist as a group because of the inertia of their wealth, which, agreed, means they transcend generational labels, but they have to start somewhere/sometime.

I have encountered this video and it is worth to take a look. The conditions for living are never going to be the same as they were, but not due to "boomers" or whatever the favorite scapegoat is but... well watch it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXP8gH0wddE

No, I'm not going to watch some random youtube video, of unknown length, to try to find out what your point is. If you want to say something, say it.

13 minutes, 20 seconds. I've felt like you but I was glad I clicked.

TL;DW: wealthy people own most things and their incomes are from what they own/control. They earn more than they spend and buy more control with the excess leading to ever more consolidation of wealth.

Sorry, no. The guy has a multi-million background behind him and I am just a nick here. If you dont want to watch, dont.

> Sorry, no. The guy has a multi-million background behind him and I am just a nick here. If you dont want to watch, dont.

I have encountered this video and it is worth to take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQvV4SNeH-U. If you dont want to watch, dont.

----

You may be "just a nick," but with links in general and video links especially, it's considerate of others' time to give more information to help them understand what you're linking and decide if it's worth viewing. Just dropping a link to a video is almost always just noise.

Sure, and then they start to argue with you instead with the author. Not interested into that.

> Sure, and then they start to argue with you instead with the author. Not interested into that.

If that's your attitude, it would probably make more sense for you to not post at all. Otherwise you're going to get "argued" with, one way or another.

> No, I'm not going to watch some random youtube video, of unknown length, to try to find out what your point is. If you want to say something, say it.

Exactly! It's also by an unknown individual.

I'm not going to waste my time on a Youtube video without a tl;dr summary (and on many topics, an explanation of why the maker has credibility and where he's coming from ideologically).

Then don't watch... I will since I'm curious

Surprisingly sober and non-bombastic commentary. Does a good job of discussing dynamics but it's hard to see how this doesn't suppress market activity and reduce the tacit value and productivity of the population. Said differently: how we avoid a smaller pie.