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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30473 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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You’re completely correct. There are exactly two places in the US where as a wealthy upper-middle class person you can live in a largely safe, urban, dense, walkable neighborhood in a major city with tons of culture, great food, art and civilization around you, excellent transport and not have to drive and they are a thin band of lower Manhattan and those gorgeous big old houses in Back Bay.

Yeah, I'm getting to the point where I just can't stand the crushing boredom and isolation anymore even though my tech salary would take a big hit to emigrate. The stuff you listed is table stakes for living in any number of European capitals so it makes my current approach (tough it out in US HCOL to make more money but spend a lot of it on rent and cars and be miserable) feel like I'm getting scammed. Maybe I'll try it for a year and see how it goes.

Where in the US do you live?

Also ask yourself, how many American tech workers are scrambling to move to Europe, and how many European tech workers are scrambling to move to the US.

In all honesty youd have to be a fucking idiot to leave the US as a tech worker when all the programmers of the world froth at their mouths thinking of the salaries you can make.

I don't think he's a tech worker. Tech workers (well, the type who might consider moving to London) don't sweat the cost of cars; if they don't care much for cars and don't live in NYC they buy a grocery-getter or two and don't worry about cost. If they like cars they likely buy a Tesla and still don't worry about cost.

I’m a SWE making big tech rates. But I am early in my career, have a huge amount of student debt from bad decisions I made in the past, am paying a lot of rent, and kind of hate working and want to retire fast. So it’s not actually over my budget or anything but it doesn’t feel good because I’d rather invest that money to get out of the system faster than spend it on something that feels like a waste. That said the high rent is definitely more of a burden than the car expense.

Yeah, your worry about car cost is ideological, not logical. Were you to move somewhere where you could easily get by without a car, you'd find the difference in living expenses (and/or loss of salary) were greater than the cost of the car.

That seems plausible - too much demand for housing in safe, clean, walkable areas and not enough supply so the rent is through the roof.

That's a side effect of walking being slow and cramming more people in smaller areas making safety and cleanliness far more difficult.

In America, anyway. Tokyo and Vienna are doing just fine.

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