We can't move anywhere because we can't afford to. When 500,000 H1-B visas are brought into the USA to do entry level accounting and programming jobs, we have far less negotiating leverage to work remotely or make higher pay. Supply and demand. Your employer wants to increase the labor supply to reduce your price (your salary) and options like working where you wish.
Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
301–310 of 517 posts
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#302Coming from a Latin American the idea of re-starting your life across the country for college and then again for work (multiple times sometimes) while away from family and friends is very foreign. A lot of the conversation around modern American youth feeling isolated, lacking socialization and not building strong relationships seems that stem from this drive. Another thing that’s really weird and related is another…
The socio-economic landscape in the US means where it is cheaper/easier to setup families and have kids is rarely correlated with economic opportunity. And in the US, people can move easily. So kids usually have a a choice - either stay where they grew up, and live with reduced economic opportunities (actually very common, but those folks aren’t usually posting all over the Internet about it). Or move to where the ec…
> cheaper/easier to setup families and have kids is rarely correlated with economic opportunity
That's the problem. Due to car culture and zoning policies etc.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm going in a tangent too here :-) . One can say that atheism (with lower case) is a lack of religion. And then there is the meaning you suggest: Atheism as a belief in refuting god. That one is not a proper religion, but more like an ideology. Or maybe it is a religion in the sense that it can be used as a moral cornerstone. More than playing with words, not believing in god may be one of three things: irrelevant,…
The first isn't atheism, it is agnostic - no religion and not looking for one, but open to it if you can convince them your religion is right (which you can't because they are not interested in the topic)
In practice though, unless you're in the Richard Dawkins camp, it's a distinction without really a difference.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
From an American's perspective, given how much Latin American migrant inflow we have, it'd be easy for us to say the same about Latin American cultures and not imagining how we could leave everything behind. Perhaps people's choices don't always reflect their desires and instead reflect the economic realities around them. "Getting out" is viewed as success where I was from because "staying behind" meant a worse life…
100% of Latin Americans you see are migrants because, well, you are in the US. You are only seeing exceptions. The immense majority of Latin American don’t live in the US neither migrate there.
Presumably at least _some_ are descendants from when a big chunk of the US was part of Mexico, so I would imagine the number is less than 100% (but probably close to it, the region wasn't very populated)
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, people moving away is not new and not surprising, and happens all over the world, it's basically the main driver of urbanization. What's new was (rich) people moving "back" (to suburbs for the American Dream, and nowadays to have kids). Though it's better than what used to happen - which was lots of kids, and high infant mortality, plus poverty driving kids to find jobs in cities, where bad living conditions and…
>The good news is that we have the social technology of ... affordable safe high density cities, with parks and high-rises (plus the obligatory blackjack and hookers too!) ... where people can be next to their new and old friends at the same time ... oh my! No such cities exist in the USA
And yet somehow tens of millions of us manage to live in them.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#306Coming from a Latin American the idea of re-starting your life across the country for college and then again for work (multiple times sometimes) while away from family and friends is very foreign. A lot of the conversation around modern American youth feeling isolated, lacking socialization and not building strong relationships seems that stem from this drive. Another thing that’s really weird and related is another…
Remote work could have solved this. The higher-ups had other thoughts.
There’s a parallel to sending your kids off to war. Get them away from their sense of stability, to a place where it’s too expensive to live, for years at a time, to fight for the United States’ GDP.
It’s not just the young adults who are affected. In some cases their family members grieve the separation. And yet it seems like the only way to get ahead for many.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Anglo cultures kids aren't usually moving away from home until they are at least ~18 years old. This is not a factor in teenagers feeling isolated. Suburbia and the decline of third places probably play a far greater role in this demographic. It's a common trope on here to lament on how the Anglo cultures don't value family ties strongly enough. I'd argue not overly valuing family ties has been a big competitive a…
> What really needs to happen is we need to figure out ways of facilitating friend formation/maintenance in this brave new world of the internet and atheism. We are going to need some new social technologies to really combat this. I wonder how in your opinion atheism enters in the picture? My first guess (of your reference) is that certain religions frighten people into remaining in a marriage they would otherwise no…
No one said that the religious belief itself is the important factor, and your first guess of it enforcing terrible marriage is insultingly reductive. Your second guess only comes close. It's literally the church, the meeting place where you see the same people every week. Kids meet other kids, adults meet adults. If you think that every person in the building actually believes what the pastor says then i think you have not been to most American churches. The shared belief is a part of it but can be easily faked if necessary. The entirety of social life from the church is the proximity. The vast majority of friends made from that proximity do not spend even half their time together speaking about the church or the belief, especially the children.
Sure, the church has problems, as does religion. All that's being said is that church is the last great, high trust, free, "third space" in America. The fact that it houses a religion is related but not central to that fact.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
80% of Americans live near where they were born. This isn’t the root cause of estrangement.
I question whether that's relevant to the topic. Being next door to your friends and family (the article) and being a 10 mile drive from friends and family are not the same thing. In one you see each and interact with each other daily. In the other, probably at most once a month. I lived 7 miles from a close friend. I liked getting to go to his place once a month or so. He lives in a large apartment complex. One frie…
10 miles allows visiting every weekend, it becomes common for the whole extended family to meet for Sunday lunch as I see of my siblings. It also means if you need help moving, replacing a roof, or something else you can make a phone call and get plenty of help on a Saturday. My parents choose to live 30 miles from their parents - close enough to visit every weekend, but not so close they would poke their nose into the kids business every day.
I live 300 miles from where I grew up. Going to "back home" to visit is a big deal and so we don't do it often. Not only is two days lost in travel (technically it is 5-6 hours to drive, but it still wastes most of the day); we can't go home to our beds and so that means we need to get a hotel or sleep on floors - both have downsides. Thus we only consider this trip over long weekends. Visiting us is a similar effort for my siblings and so I rarely see them anymore. (don't get me started on visiting my in-laws who are over 1000 miles away - suffice to say we need a full week off to consider that)
In short, if you can do so I strongly recommend you live close to your friends and family and not move away. However there are many reasons why someone cannot do this.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#309Coming from a Latin American the idea of re-starting your life across the country for college and then again for work (multiple times sometimes) while away from family and friends is very foreign. A lot of the conversation around modern American youth feeling isolated, lacking socialization and not building strong relationships seems that stem from this drive. Another thing that’s really weird and related is another…
The ironic thing is that Latin Americans are largely descended from people who left one continent and set up a new life literally a continent away. Like, your ancestors were the kind of people to sail thousands of miles to create a new life.
Right, and then we put down roots. People move. some of the people who stetted their have moved on again, but a core remains with roots. Maybe those people will all move away, but I doubt it - humans still live in Africa.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
So instead of all this complaining of me being a pedant you could have replied to this question with just a "yes" and far fewer ink would have been spilled. Who was really being pointless and silly in this exchange? > Yeah but on the census is your area rural or urban? > And, again, as noted, I think it's silly to insist on a term of art in colloquial usage I disagree. If you ever call the furry creature in my home a…
> So instead of all this complaining of me being a pedant you could have replied to this question with just a "yes" and far fewer ink would have been spilled. While we're being pedantic, no ink was spilled on this conversation. Let's not invent a definition of ink that includes pixels on a screen. The pedantry is the problem. That you were wrong even in your pedantry is entirely unsurprising because people who are be…
> no ink was spilled
Maybe I print all of these with an inkjet.
> That you were wrong
I'm sorry, where was I wrong? Where did I ever actually accuse any particular person of living in one place or the other? And in the end you do live in an urban area by your acknowledgement. I've only been asking for people to ensure they're really using the right terms.
> Agreed. So let's not invent a definition of rural that says that small towns and villages "easily get classified as urban or suburban"
Yes, let's not invent one. We'll just encourage the improper usage.
> The environment you describe would not be called a small town or a village by anyone
A surprising percentage of people living in areas like that do. I personally know some.