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Comment by graemep | Hacker News Reader

Not living in a major city puts you at the bottom of the social ladder? Wow.

A lot of people living outside major cities seem to have a better quality of live than those in them.

Not sure social ladder per GP is quite the right phrase but in UK London vs not-London definitely has a pretty sharp divide that is noticeable. Especially in terms of type of jobs

It is where most of the economic activity is. Many parts of the UK are poor.

One of the most interesting government charts (to me at least) is the "Net fiscal balance by geographic region" one from the ONS[1] (Figure 8). Spoiler: London and to a much lesser extent, the SE, are the only regions with positive net fiscal balance at all. A sorry state of affairs.

[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxe... Figure 8.

That is not really measuring things like quality of life etc. It just shows tax payments are higher (because incomes are higher, property is worth more, and lots of companies that operate nationally, or even internationally, are registered with London addresses) by more than government expenditure is higher.

Someone living outside London might have a lower income but also have much lower expenses (especially rent or mortgage payments, but lots of other things).

Certainly. Indeed the trick is to wrangle London wages while based somewhere with less crime, more trees, a pollution-free waterway, and less traffic!

Edited for typo.

The dream.

Many people move to London when they want to make money, and move out when they want to do anything else. Pretending that London is independent of the rest of the country's children and retirees is misleading.

https://trustforlondon.org.uk/data/population-age-groups/

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