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So somewhere like Tyler, Paris, TX, Mt. Pleasant, Sulpher Springs, Longview, etc... I know that area. Would rather not deal with the heat.
As we've discussed before, I'm from a different part of the state (Rio Grande Valley) but it's more or less the same situation. Podunk towns, podunk money. I live a couple hours from Portland right now. I can go to the city if I want. It's the job situation for both myself and my wife that doesn't work out. If we both want decent jobs, we will have to be in a metro area with enough critical mass for the jobs to exist.
I didn't say you have to live in Texas - ALL states have mid size towns and cities within an hour or two of larger metro areas - not just Texas. You don't like the heat? Don't move to east Texas. But don't act like there are only two extreme options available - huge, high COL metro or podunk town. There's lots of variety in between those two extremes (neither of which happen to appeal to me, just for the record).
Also, when you choose a career, it should coincide with what's available in the area you wish to live in. I know things change unexpectedly but that's a good general rule. If you chose careers that only fit huge metro areas, surely you knew that a huge COL price tag came along with it, right?
You make adjustments where you can. If you can't afford to live somewhere, you have to live somewhere else. You're both able bodied, educated adults, right? Seems like you should be able to make a good life for yourself somewhere - now that may not be your dream locale right now, but that's the breaks.
Heck, I like where I'm living but it's because I decided to like it. I'm not a native Texan and actually my very favorite state is Virginia and if I had my dreams fulfilled I'd be living in an 18th century cottage in Yorktown. But till then - I'm in east Texas.
I packaged thousands of pounds of ground chuck for customers logically desiring one pound pkg. , but
wanting 10 lbs total . Hundreds of folks coming on Tuesdays for $2.99 lbs of perhaps the best ground
chuck on Gods green earth!! The problem is we process upwards to 2000 lbs in that one day. Being retired I thought working part-time at Fresh Market would be cool in the seafood/ meat section until I developed carpal tunnel and wrapped much of the 1000 lbs of antibiotic free chicken breasts again single wrapped.( again 5-10 lbs) As we wallowed in blood drenched floors as tons of other meats were cut in the butchers room it became exhausting and the pace frantic with three to five of us going through literally tons of chuck and 80-90 chicken breasts ( doubles) 1.5 lbs each . So at $8.25 hr I gave noticed that I was a bye bye boy. Fresh Market is an event and a neat place just don't work there. It redefines slavery especially if you close. It has taken two weeks to physically recover.
I'm writing this post sitting in San Francisco Airport, waiting for my flight back to the Midwest, having driven around quite a bit up and down the Bay Area. And you know what's the most amazing sensation? Everywhere that I go, I see middle-class life. I see modest houses and somewhat less modest houses. But I see no Blenheim Palace. I see no fortresses surrounded by razor-wire and armed guards (the closest thing to that would be NASA Ames' research installation). I see no favelas, or tent-cities. I see no liveried footmen escorting aristocrats' carriages, and I see no bedraggled beggar-children standing on their knees outside of the city-gates.
The great surprise, the great astonishment, is the comparative uniformity of life. Where are the truly wealthy? Where are the miserable hordes of the destitute? Even in Palo Alto, that supposedly tony display of concentrated wealth, I saw nondescript single-story houses and compact apartments.
Who says that de Tocqueville's America is gone?
That is a hilarious joke. Middle class looking houses in the Bay Area are basically a million dollars! You have to be truly wealthy to afford a 1500 square foot home in a good school district within a 45 minute commute of your job!
Middle class life in the Bay Area requires an upper middle class budget!
Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57
Go ahead and do a zillow search in the neighborhoods you drove through and see how affordable it is.
I've had several job opportunities in the Bay Area in the 90-105K range but even that will not buy me an $850K house. Not a mansion, mind you, a normal, 3/2 middle class house.
Yup! And that $850k house will have you sacrificing something: school quality or commute time!
If the town in only full of caviar and there ISN'T a McDonald's, then it's a problem. And telling people to move is like telling starving Africans to suck it up and "go where the food is."
If all the low-income workers move out of the Bay Area, who will be left to hand the rich people their $13 beers ... or clean their million-dollar homes, or take care of their beautiful lawns and service their pools, or drive their limos, or repair their roads and bridges, or caddy their golf courses, or even wipe the bums of elderly wealthy people? Who's going to do those jobs? The people who do already have ridiculously long commutes to their jobs sites. Pretty soon they will be pushed out of neighboring counties.
Exactly. Here are some examples of some of the issues:
Tech Bus drivers want to unionize. For example, when all the tech companies are on holiday, they don't get the same holidays so they are SOL with no work to do.
Most professional drivers are stuck with the BS split shift. And it is not like that time off between the 2 commute times is paid, or even your free time. In many cases you still need to be "available" and nearby. And if you live 45 miles away, you can't go home either. A Strike May Park San Francisco's Tech Buses
Then let's talk about the mega commuters. Generally service workers supporting all those "rich" tech workers with cafeterias, clean offices and whatever other service jobs you can think of.
And this story is true for every place in the Bay Area. It is not like the need for service jobs goes away because there are lots of high paid workers.
No one is expecting to live in a mansion at $15 / hour, but you shouldn't have to live 45-60 miles away from your job either.
Exactly. Here are some examples of some of the issues:
Tech Bus drivers want to unionize. For example, when all the tech companies are on holiday, they don't get the same holidays so they are SOL with no work to do.
Most professional drivers are stuck with the BS split shift. And it is not like that time off between the 2 commute times is paid, or even your free time. In many cases you still need to be "available" and nearby. And if you live 45 miles away, you can't go home either. A Strike May Park San Francisco's Tech Buses
Then let's talk about the mega commuters. Generally service workers supporting all those "rich" tech workers with cafeterias, clean offices and whatever other service jobs you can think of.
And this story is true for every place in the Bay Area. It is not like the need for service jobs goes away because there are lots of high paid workers.
No one is expecting to live in a mansion at $15 / hour, but you shouldn't have to live 45-60 miles away from your job either.
Then DON'T live 45-60 miles away from your job. Get another job somewhere else. Unless you are working in an oversaturated field, or in a dying industry, please don't tell me that you simply cannot find a decent job anywhere else in the United States.
Then DON'T live 45-60 miles away from your job. Get another job somewhere else. Unless you are working in an oversaturated field, or in a dying industry, please don't tell me that you simply cannot find a decent job anywhere else in the United States.
I think that's where much of the country is trending. As Portland gentrifies and low-wage workers are pushed further out, commutes - especially by transit - are getting longer and more time-consuming.
I regard this as a working class death spiral with no favorable resolution.
I live in Los Angeles, but we're seeing many of the same COL issues as San Francisco, albeit on a lesser scale. The result of rental increases is that lower wage people are cramming into apartments with each other. Six people in a one-bedroom - that's how minimum wage earners make the rent.
I'm in full support of supply and demand when it's a discretionary item, like Disneyland tickets. Housing, though, is entirely different. People shouldn't be smashed together like sardines, and the very poor people don't have the money to move far away when the rent is increased. Think about this. You don't have a car, because you can't afford the upkeep. You have no savings, so where is the first and last month's rent going to come from? This is why there are so many homeless people, because even a rent increase of $75 a month can send you into the street.
Then DON'T live 45-60 miles away from your job. Get another job somewhere else. Unless you are working in an oversaturated field, or in a dying industry, please don't tell me that you simply cannot find a decent job anywhere else in the United States.
In the Bay Area that is a compromise you'd have to make. Particularly if you have a family. A friend of mine lives 40 miles from her job in SF. She has a kid. That's where she could afford the space / school quality she wanted. Jobs in that town pay about 1/3 to 1/2 of what she makes. Moving 20 miles away would cost 3x or more. Living with in 10 miles would be 4x.
She is a well paid worker.
She has had a few jobs a little closer, but the best career opportunities are in SF. California is not like Texas where there are good close in towns that are affordable. All of those have upper middle classes prices now. And jobs on the cheaper places don't exist or pay half as much. Or worse.
I am not exaggerating when I say families with household incomes of $200k can't afford to live close to work. This means people with median incomes and families are pushed far our. And as noted in the post above, low wage workers live like sardines.
Then DON'T live 45-60 miles away from your job. Get another job somewhere else. Unless you are working in an oversaturated field, or in a dying industry, please don't tell me that you simply cannot find a decent job anywhere else in the United States.
As someone who's done multiple nationwide searches, you overestimate how much better things are elsewhere.
San Francisco may be an extreme case and there are certainly more affordable places. However, if there was someplace in the United States that offered plentiful good jobs + plentiful affordable housing within reasonable commute time to those jobs, please point me to it.
My current state, Oregon, was like that. When I moved here, the CoL was relatively reasonable by west coast standards. Enter some tech companies, a TV show that makes the place "hip and trendy," a few California people moving in and you'd be surprised how fast it changes. Ie: my own home value has increased by 75% in two years, and that's subdued because it's not a great house. Nice houses have gone up more than 100% seemingly overnight. It's a good deal for me, but sucks for people trying to move here. It didn't take that many people descending on the place to quickly cause the upward spiral.
Before this I was living in Austin, TX and it went through something similar. Furthermore, it seems once that situation occurs, it doesn't go back. Yesteryear's hip and trendy places, often called that because there are innovative jobs + reasonable costs of living at first - never go back to being affordable. Ie: San Diego, Seattle, Boston - they haven't gotten any cheaper even though their job booms were in the 1980s & 90s. Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas - I don't expect them to go back to affordable any time soon.
If they do go back it takes more than a lifetime - ie: places in Ohio or Michigan where industrial decline is finally taking hold.
If the situation was so good elsewhere - you would not see the entire country complaining and making protest votes for Sanders or Trump.
So am I supposed to pity someone who whines like a prostitute who didn't get what she wanted out of the transaction?
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