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Comment by lesuorac | Hacker News Reader

Eh, perhaps a curious administrator can share the data but I really suspect just through sheer numbers most people on this forum do not live in the bay area.

The NYC metro area is 23 million [1] which is about 7% of the country (23/300). There's a good chance somebody who works in NYC grew up nearby.

That said, if you chase fortune and fame for a decade and then retire to Minnesota you still come out ahead... Even if rent is twice as expensive in SF, if your salary is twice that then your savings are also twice as much which will go a longer way anywhere but SF.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area

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A lot of people in this forum don't even live in the US (if not most).

People aren’t simply moving into the city locally the numbers just don’t work.

The demographics of NYC require and support the idea of a huge and constant flux of people from distant areas moving into and out of the city which matches people’s observations. Even the gender divide is abnormal, the largest age group is 25-29 for women and 30-34 for men despite more men being born vs women living longer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City

The metro area, not the city. That extends into New Jersey and Connecticut.

I’m saying the “local metro area” just doesn’t have the population to support that kind of migration pattern on its own.

Sure plenty of locals move into the city just as with any city, what sets NYC apart is it draws in people from much longer distances before most of them leave. The elderly population in NYC being relatively tiny.

>> if you chase fortune and fame for a decade and then retire to Minnesota you still come out ahead

And the locals start to hate you for buying up land and generally raising prices enough that working folk are squeezed out of the market. Some areas are starting to enact laws to prevent productive farmland becoming condos and hobby farms for retiring city people.

For a while we were looking to move out to a more rural State and work remotely. More than one realtor let us know that the seller’s price was ~10-20% more for us than the advertised list price because we are from California. I guess we have a reputation or something. Or it’s just plain old price discrimination. Ok. I won’t make an offer and buy your house that you are trying to sell, then. Is that what you want, smart guy?

Not in MN. Nobody is moving here to retire. And there’s plenty of rural land to go around.

The land is part of the equation, but more so the impact on government services. More retirees is more burden on local healthcare and emergency response. They may contribute to the local tax base, but the turnaround between increased population and new hospitals/firehalls is often measured in decades. Have a look at how long it takes to get a new firetruck these days, let alone the people to run it.

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