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Comment by PlunderBunny | Hacker News Reader

As a NZ developer that a lives in his own apartment with a salary less than $150k, I disagree. Yes, it's expensive and yes, our salaries are lower than our colleagues in some other countries, but it's too much to say that you can't afford to put down a deposit on an apartment after a few years of saving.

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I agree. It is not easy to hear a person whose income is triple his country's national median refer to independent living as untenable. Even if only purely from a perspective of "if even they are struggling, then... how is the average person in that country even still alive??".

And if a country has plenty of land, and food, to go around - then for scarcity to become a norm, something(s) must have their hands pretty deep in the cookie jar.

> if even they are struggling, then... how is the average person in that country even still [independently] alive??"

Either they accrued capital already, or borrowing from relatives who did, or they're not living independently. They're sharing accommodation that would be cramped for two among six.

Lifestyles once only necessary for students are now de rigueur for established graduates, with the possible exception of better food.

What about non-graduates - and why do we need that distinction? The few extra years of guided schooling it entails does not deserve to be a lifetime defining difference between the haves and the have-nots.

"You achieved a university degree, so you deserve to be elevated for life" is little different in its entitlement bias than "you achieved house ownership, so you deserve to be elevated for life".

Equality goes beyond such things.

Non-graduates are also suffering, yes. Did I imply they deserved to suffer? If I did that's not the intention.

However, a degree usually requires hard work (being born wealthy does not), and has been widely recognised as the best legal route out of poverty for decades. We are not a communist society and do expect hard work to lead to greater standards of life, on average, even if there are exceptional non-graduates and lazy graduates. If even the best legal route is failing en masse, then we are screwed.

That's true, it's definitely not impossible. It's just relative to other countries we seem to be a bit worse off on the housing front

Which countries? It seems like a lot of the English speaking countries have a housing crisis in major urban centers. Toronto, Dublin, Melbourne, London, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Austin, NYC, etc... All super expensive by the sounds of it. Is Auckland that much different?

Not just English speaking countries: housing affordability is low in most European and developed-Asian countries.

Auckland is pretty bad, but Sydney or Melbourne are worse for affordability (income versus mortgage):

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/least-affordable-cities-to-...

Here's the 2023 version (original reference uses 2019 data): http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf, pages 7-9

New Zealand is an honourable 2nd place and Auckland clocks at 7th with ~11 (median household annual income for median house). The other cities worse off are around 11 as well, with Vancouver at 12 and Sydney at 13. Hong Kong is the usual autist at 18 in its own league

To answer another comment here, Melbourne and Toronto are comparable, London is 20% better off, Austin and Dublin are half that bad, can't even compare

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