Why do people still live in big, liberal cities? They're clearly trying to drive people out. Just sell up before your property values tank and move somewhere nice. Learn to entertain yourself, cook, etc. and pretty soon you won't need the amenities.
It's win win if you avoid the bad areas and the bad areas don't grow too large. SF failed because its underclass grew too large and they stopped arresting the criminals among them. Now the people with the nice jobs in the nice houses don't want to live there because they increasingly need to live among the poor.
There's a decent chunk of people living in SF that think it's the best place to live in the world BY FAR.
The idea that SF property values are going to tank is, well, completely disconnected from reality.
If property values did tank, there would be a far better chance of solving SF's problems, but the root problem is that about 1.5x-5x people want to live in SF than they allow for homes to be built, creating massive inequality and misery.
The revulsion you feel at living in SF is quite similar to the feeling many have about not living in SF.
It's not "if" but "when."
And big liberal cities are the places where you can get money.
WFH showed us that if you give people options, they will take them.
>spend all your money on housing and property taxes and etc.
If you can’t get that kind of job in SF, but still live in SF, things are really tough, leaving is a good option.
Let's say my salary is $100k/year, and my expenses are $90k/year. I have $10k/year to save (or blow). If I move to somewhere with 3x salary and 3x costs, then my salary goes to $300k/year and my expenses go to $270k/year, and so I now have $30k/year left over.
But it's not that simple, because of progressive tax rates. The federal income tax on $300k/year is more than 3x the tax on $100k/year. Or, to put it a different way, you get 3x the salary, but not 3x the take home pay. Out of that less-than-3x take home pay, you now get to pay the 3x expenses.
Now, it could be that when people say "3x the expenses", they're taking that into account. But I suspect they're not. I suspect they're looking at COL numbers, and I suspect that the published COL numbers are just housing, food, medical, and the like.
Lots of costs aren’t indexed to the area you live in. Computer, phones, trips to Mexico, and to some extent cars cost similar in SF as they do in Mississippi. Food prices don’t vary as much either, their might be a 20% difference, but not 3X, same with medical (really, housing is the main thing that is very much more expensive, everything else is slightly more expensive to the same price).
Your retirement savings include your house, so you have a career in SF and then retire to New Mexico, the locals will hate you and your crazy home equity you bring with you.
However our disposable income was dramatically different. So anything in "US dollars" like airplane tickets, smartphones, etc were out of reach to them.
Gee, I wonder...
Liberal literally means freedom.