What you’d need to make in every county in the US to afford a decent one-bedroom

Two bedrooms are always surprisingly close in price to one bedrooms.

First, as long as money has any meaning, people with more of it are going to live better than people with less of it. Maybe it would be more fair if all young people lived below average and all older people lived above average, but it's a huge reconstruction of society.

Second, NYC is the fifth most expensive city in the world[1]. I presume your friend is there because he's getting something besides money for his work -- adulation of customers, or a chance to make it really big.

Or, it's a deliberate consumption choice. He wants to live in walking distance of Broadway and great restaurants. Well, that's a choice in how he spends his money. I could live in a mansion in my city and complain about how expensive it is, but I shouldn't expect any sympathy because I choose to live someplace expensive. I could deliberately have 8 kids and then complain about how much times my kids require, or I could be a Olympic gymnast and complain about how much training I have to do, or I could keep a cluster of 40 PCs in my living room to play 40 simultaneous WoW games and then complain about how much it all costs.

There's nothing magical about consumption choices because they go into "housing" versus "free time" or "computers" or "nights at the opera." If someone was renting the most expensive cars in the US and complaining about how he can't afford something, the answer would be very similar to another person who was renting the most expensive real estate in the US.

Living on top of Mount Everest is expensive, even if you were born there.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/internationalproperty/10... NYC is the most expensive in the US. Of course rankings change over time.

The first situation is more scary than the second, of course. Being young and single and in good health with no kids it was fine living below average.