Americans are rethinking where they want to live • Hacker News Board

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#261

Post by csomar » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

davewritescode wrote: post #107

I think a lot of people are seeing what they want to see in this. Once a company figures out how to leverage a developer in the Midwest as effectively as one in the Bay Area what stops them from hiring in the Dominican, or Mexico or South America? I've worked with fantastic developers from those areas who can effectively work on the same timezones, communicate well and write high quality code. I know personally, I've…

"They" could always make it harder to transfer money from inside the US system to the "outside" world. This is what an exit-tax is, basically making it harder for established people to move away from the system. Or AML for international wires. Or Minimum Corporate Tax.

Unluckily for First-World countries, the politicians seems to be focused on the symptoms rather than the disease itself. This will not change course of what will happen, of course.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#262

Post by criddell » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

arrosenberg wrote: post #134

unexpected wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you automatically assume that kids are miserable in the suburbs? My kids rather like running around in our backyard, use our pool everyday in the summer, and having tons of friends on the block. At the same time, I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment, having no yard to play in, etc. This disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch. It's okay to think differently. I'm glad…

It wildly varies by suburb. The one I grew up in had few-to-no kids on the block, and even if there had been, there were only a couple of small, underwhelming parks within walking/biking distance. Comparing notes with other people, this seems like the more common experience of the suburbs. The disdain (at least for me) comes when you do the math and realized how absurdly subsidized the suburban lifestyle is.

Who is doing the subsidizing? You hear about cities annexing suburbs to access the tax base. If suburbs were a drain, wouldn't they be doing whatever the opposite of annexing is?

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#263

Post by jedberg » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

ben-schaaf wrote: post #66

dublinben wrote: post #11

It bodes poorly for the environment if people are increasingly moving from denser cities to sprawling suburbs. This is in many ways a self-inflicted problem of high-cost cities, but it should be a national priority to reverse this trend.

It's always crazy to hear that suburbs are cheaper. Dense living inherently requires less infrastructure and less transportation, so it should be considerably cheaper. It's only through the subsidisation of suburbia and the low supply/high demand of high density urban areas that this is the case. Car centric suburbs aren't just terrible for the environment, terrible for safety and terrible for transportation; they're…

> Dense living inherently requires less infrastructure and less transportation

Not really. Firstly, it costs a lot more per square foot to build a high rise than a single family home. Secondly, it costs a lot more to maintain it (elevators need constant maintenance, you can't just run to Home Depot to get replacement drain parts, etc.).

And the infrastructure costs more to maintain -- running power to a high rise requires a lot of specialized commercial electric equipment that can handle the high loads and variability. Same with water -- you need special pumps and extra big boilers. Sure you can gain some efficiency by sharing those resources, but at the end of the day the costs per person are roughly the same.

The main impact comes from needing less transport of goods and people, which is an environmental plus, but not something priced into the cost of living.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#264

Post by xboxnolifes » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

legerdemain wrote: post #167

larrymyers wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love visiting Milwaukee, and Wisconsin in general for the sheer amount of outdoor activities. Unfortunately it would send us the wrong direction with respect to visiting family. I want to spend less time in a car in general.

Have you considered remote/teleconference family visits? The last two years have shown that it's perfectly possible to lead a normal social life on Zoom, etc. There isn't really any need to get into a car and drive several hours just to see someone.

You can't hug someone through zoom, so that's basically a non-starter for a very large portion of people.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#265

Post by robertakarobin » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

bovermyer wrote: post #162

donatj wrote: post #77

I live just west of Minneapolis with my wife in a house that's been in my family for generations. I don't want to leave but the continuous stream of car jackings, home invasions, petty theft and seemingly random acts of violence have me rethinking this. Calls to defund the police sound pretty tone deaf when your elderly neighbor is assaulted in their own home and robbed.

Counterpoint: we live in Edina, a nicer suburb just south of Minneapolis proper. No real crime except for a single hit-and-run by an out-of-towner in the last two years. Walking distance to two grocery stores, several restaurants, and two malls. Affordable utilities and rent.

Hi, neighbor!

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#266

Post by eweise » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #67

criddell wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Different people value different things. You prioritize your kids school and proximity to important destinations and so that neighborhood makes a lot of sense. When your kids move away after college, does that change the calculation much for you? Both of my kids are away at college and so I'm looking at where I live and what kind of life I want and am leaning more and more to…

Suburbs are very unfriendly for the elderly compared to cities. The ideal suburbanite is an upper-middle-class person in their 30s–50s in good health who really likes driving their large car and has hobbies they can do individually from inside their own home (e.g. woodworking, gardening), and doesn’t mind that life is miserable* there for their kids. Everyone else is more or less a second-class citizen. * Edit: subur…

My kids love the suburbs. There's almost no crime. They can bike into the hills, forests, lakes, downtown, friends houses, the mall. Schools are great. One of my friends raised his kid in SF before finally moving out to suburbia when she was a teenager, stayed in the house most of the time. Now she's got a great circle of friends and is never in the house. Cities are for single adults trying to find a mate.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#267

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

malermeister wrote: post #186

lotsofpulp wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

coryrc should have stipulated one more condition - the weather is temperate enough to survive living outside.

There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.

That is a fun saying, but I have been to Montreal in February and I would give myself much better odds of surviving outdoors in Seattle than Montreal.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#268

Post by brnt » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

larrymyers wrote: post #10

My family and I decided to stay on the north side of Chicago, a very high cost of living location, despite no longer needing to head downtown every day for work. Why not move outside of Chicago where our cost living would be substantially lower? * We wanted to keep our kids in the same school, which is walking distance. * We like being walking distance to the grocery store, doctor's offices, etc. * Our kids can walk…

Can you fill me in on sth? Where Ive lived in Europe, the onlt car-only areas are burbs. Small towns tend to be walkable too, on account of being small. Now, not every small town has a wide variety of shops of course, but most things are bikeable. The only things that are not where I now live are places I'd need a car anyway (furniture, construction, etc). I thought it'd be the same for small town America, but I guess you're saying it's not?

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#269

Post by dionidium » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

erehweb wrote: post #214

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and live off a VERY modest retirement (WELL under a million saved/invested) for the next 40 years Do you mind sharing how much? I'm curious why most people seem to think $1M is somehow not enough money to retire modestly on. If previous trends continue, you could easily live on >$4K after taxes per month indefinitely. That's almost 50% higher than median wage (after taxes). Median wage = ~$41,000. Even with $0 stat…

Are you factoring medical insurance into consideration? Can be c. $3K / month for a family.

Retired people typically have Medicare.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#270

Post by vineyardmike » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

hagbard_c wrote: post #230

ethbr0 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just learn the accent before you move there, and don't tell your neighbors where you're from.

Also don't vote for the policies which made you pick up your bags and leave the place you came from or your new place of residence will eventually start to look like the one you left.

A lot of the "California problem" policies work at smaller city sizes and just fail when scaled to major city/metro, so would be great at a lot of those smaller towns. Especially because they can be more humane and well thought out than whatever that town had to start.