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Comment by gsibble | Hacker News Reader

Having moved here from Nashville, TN due to the opportunities, the comparable salary buying power chart really hit home. Fuck. Kind of upset now. At least this explains why I feel less well off even though I make so much more.

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It's worth noting that buying power != standard of living.

For example, it is quite possible to have a high standard of living with little money in Manhattan.

This is because:

* the subway runs 24 hours

* there are numerous inexpensive restaurants

* there are many free cultural and social activities

* if you seek it out, there are many opportunities to have liquor brands pour free alcohol into your glass. (NYC is considered a city of taste-makers.)

This, of course, assumes that you enjoy the tradeoffs you make. Some people enjoy a large-city no-car lifestyle, whereas some think that's less valuable.

So you might find that you enjoy SF on your salary more than Nashville on your salary. Chacun a son gout

Many of those restaurants serve exceedingly unhealthy food.

Not quite sure what to say about the assertion that a little free booze == good life.

But I'm biased, because New York City is not for me ... there are so many ads you feel like there was some NASCAR pileup they never got to. They even put ads on the stairs in the subway stations (!)

> Many of those restaurants serve exceedingly unhealthy food.

I haven't found this to be the case at all. Most of the cheap good food in the city is ethnic food. I don't think there is anything particularly unhealthy about the grilled chicken skewers I get at the local halal cart.

I must've been unlucky in my visits then. I definitely found some tasty Afghan places and such around town, but the low prices seemed to be linked to poor ingredients -- cheap canned vegetables, fatty meat and such, overly seasoned to mask this. And apart from those, when it comes to inexpensive eats it seemed to be pizza/calzone/spanakopita /salad places everywhere.

That being said, for a little more, you can find some really good eats, but that goes for most cities. http://mandoobarnyc.com/ is terrific. It's gotten worse over the years but their kimchi mandoo is still great.

If you were going to be spending money on booze to make your life, in your estimation, better then free booze == cheaper route to good life than paying for that same booze. If you aren't interested in drinking booze, then that's obviously of no benefit to you.

It is true that I am not a liquor drinker, but if you replace this with free beer or wine, it still is just a perk, and not something that I'd cite as improving my quality of living.

I would say that a "perk" - if it's one I actually appreciate - does improve my quality of living (albeit not dramatically, or it's more than a "perk").

Having said that, if you are spending money on beer or wine (or anything else, really), and it is not improving your quality of living, maybe you should stop spending money on beer and wine and instead spend it on something that will improve your quality of living. If you, for some reason, can't (then maybe you have a problem that needs to be addressed, but otherwise...) then a "perk" of getting these things for free does mean you have more money available for things that will increase your quality of living (perhaps by freeing up other resources like time that can be more directly invested in quality of living, however you experience that).

A coup would be making spending a while in SV & then taking your SV salary back to Nashville.

Indeed it would.

It really depends on what you spend most of your money. If it's rent and food, then yeah, you're screwed. Other things though are pretty much constant across the whole country - electronics, cars, flights, etc. So even if your standard of living is the same, you can buy 3 more times more fancy tablets, phones, TVs and BMWs with your new salary.

It's funny to see your comment in reply to gsibble, because that line of thinking is probably what brought him there and why he's now disappointed. If you're making $92k in San Francisco or $43k in Dallas then rent and food is exactly where most of your money is going. It depends on what you compare it to, but if the cost of housing is almost triple the national average and the average income only double the average then you'll have a better chance of driving three BMWs in Nashville then you would in Silicon Valley (although I wouldn't get my hopes up for either).

I'd rather make 50K in Dallas vs. 100K in NYC. I've seen it happen with my own eyes, I have friends living on the Left Coasts (NYC, SF and Boston), after 5 years of college with no or next-to-nothing savings with average salary of 100K. Why? Yuppie lifestyle, wining & dining at expensive restaurants, lunch & dinner, parking, driving a nice car, living in an apartment in a nice neighborhood.

While people living at home or in the midwest are raking it in with six-fig's savings. Man, I wish I was smarter and moved back in with my parents; would do wonders for my dating life. You know what's sexy? Big savings and high credit score.

In contrast, I'd rather be unemployed in California than earn $100k in Cleveland. Why? At the end of the day, I'd be living in Cleveland, and no amount of money could make up for that.

A large part of the reason that California and NYC are so desirable despite the high cost of living is the intangibles that you can't get in other locations like Dallas or Cleveland.

- Right out of the mouth of my 22 yr. old self whom I wish I could go back in time and slap that stupid person silly - when I thought indie urban music and art was authentic and not actually consumerism dressed up in yuppie pretension; when I thought people in the left coasts believed in open-mindedness and progressiveness and not as a "holier-than-thou" social badge.

People are the same as in California as in Cleveland as in China as in Uganda, insecure and selfish. Marketers use that fear of missing out (FOMO) to market the "urban" lifestyle.

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