Sure, but then you have to live in St. Louis, Missouri.
I'm sure I could move to a third world country and have an even lower cost of living. As though it were otherwise equivalent to living in a top US city.
I'm sure I could move to a third world country and have an even lower cost of living. As though it were otherwise equivalent to living in a top US city.
I'm not sure the density of craft cocktails bars and farm-to-table restaurants, or the fact that it never gets too hot makes up for the drawbacks.
Complaints about the rent and transit are obviously legitimate, though you may be overestimating the quality of transit in most other cities.
Other cities either have similarly insane rent and much better transit (NYC), or similarly bad transit and much cheaper rent (basically everywhere else).
Personally, I like the people here - both counter cultural, and also scientific. Very friendly to us aspy-leaning folks. A place where someone can say "I quit my job and am doing {teaching yoga, making the aforementioned craft cocktails, etc}" without judgement. A place where, quite literally, the core of our technological world is being invented. The weather is a bonus, and the accessibility to the great American west.
So yea, quit knocking my town!
That said, I definitely get your comments. Aspects of the Silicon Valley mindset can get to be a bit much after a while. Much of the actual valley is suburban sprawl with awful traffic and I find SF itself something of a mixed bag even if it has a lot of positives.
Maybe in the future my attitude will change, but as of right now you literally could not pay me enough to move to the SF / MTV area.
Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Austin, Minneapolis, and Boston are more affordable than the Bay Area, and generally considered to be good places to live. (I won't say anything either way about St. Louis, because I don't know anything about it. I was there about 12 years ago and will probably be there this year for Strange Loop, but that's it.) There isn't a lack of affordable, good places to live in the U.S. There isn't even a lack of affordable, good places to live in cities: Chicago is still the Second City, culturally. L.A. is just a company town for the entertainment industry and way too spread out.
New York is expensive but actually worth it in terms of urban amenity (unlike SF). There really isn't anywhere in the U.S. that has that urban density, so if that's what you want, NYC provides it. San Francisco, on the other hand, wouldn't be on the map except for the VC industry. It has more of a one-dimensional economy than Los Angeles.