this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
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A lot of dumb people here make a lot of money and spend more than they make.
the COL also varies wildly. I could move 1.5 hours away from where I live now and pay like 1/3 of what I do now for rent/mortgage. But I'd have to drive 3+ hours a day to get to my job. and the salaries 1.5 hours outside my city are literally half what they are in the city. i'd have to take 50% paycut to work in a rural area.
things cost a lot in places where salaries are high. it's that simple. high income areas have huge demand for jobs housing, and other necessiteis, so costs are high.
but nobody wants to live where it's cheap to live because there are limited job opportunities. I could afford a mansion in louisiana... but my job doesn't exist there and if it did, it would pay like 40K a year vs the 150K i make currently.
hence lots of people are moving more and more to the major cities trying to get the bigger salaries.
Part of that high city housing cost is zoning and other planning constraints on building upwards. Have to increase supply if you want to bring the cost down.
I post this occasionally:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/03/how-skyscrapers-can-save-the-city/308387/
https://archive.ph/jRQIm
If it were possible to reduce the cost-of-living bar to letting more people move to cities, it'd be possible to increase productivity for a lot of people.
I remember the "The Rent is Too Damn High" guy running for mayor of New York City a few years back. The guy had a point.
Like, policymakers have not done a great job on that.