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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   28925 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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In many places, starter single family homes run about $2M. You're not going to be able to afford that with a single half decent job.

You might say that's a choice to live in such an area, and sure, it is. But the idea that you can just get up and move from it to rural Iowa exacerbates other problems: the disintegration of the extended family, the decline of friends, etc.

It's also worth digging into what we mean by "most of the country." If you're weighting by acreage, I agree, most of the country can be lived in on a single half decent job. If you're weighting by population distribution (more appropriate IMO), that shifts the needed income much higher. There are still realistic places to move (e.g. in the Sunbelt), but for those you need a single decent job, not a single half-decent job. Weighting regions by GDP contribution (which has some arguments for it) shifts us solidly into the two income requirement.

In many places

In very few places in which a miniscule portion of the US population lives. I have the misfortune of being one of the rare unlucky few to live in such a place. And even then that's by cutting your $2 million starter home figure to a more realistic ~$1 million. Even in San José a starter home is much closer to 1 than to 2 million. Almost every American has much cheaper housing than in San José.

You could live in a trailer- much cheaper than a single family house. Or you could live in not California or the NYC metro area. Kansas City isn't the end of the world. The majority of the country doesn't have $2 million dollar starter homes by any metric.

You can live in the NYC metro area, just not Short Hills or Essex Fells or Alpine or whatever other hyper-expensive example you can find.

Anywhere the starter single family home minimum is two million dollars is a fashion statement, not a reasonable place for normal people with normal jobs.

Your only contention is that I haven't adequately considered the effect on people who want to be less consumeristic, but have to live in Central Park West?

In many places, starter single family homes run about $2M. You're not going to be able to afford that with a single half decent job.

Many? I live in an expensive area of the country, northern New Jersey. It looks like that's true for Millburn, NJ -- one of the most expensive places in the area. It's not true for a lot of adjacent similar places. You don't have to go to to rural Iowa to get cheaper housing than that.

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