
Stay Put, Young Man - pg
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/november_december_2013/features/stay_put_young_man047332.php?page=all
======
ggreer
A nitpick on San Jose:

 _The city’s tallest building, Yglesias notes, is a mere twenty-two stories
high._

Anyone who lives in San Jose can tell you why this is the case. From
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose,_California#Arts_and_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose,_California#Arts_and_architecture)

 _Because the downtown area is in the flight path to nearby Mineta San Jose
International Airport, there is a height limit for buildings in the downtown
area, which is under the final approach corridor to the airport. The height
limit is dictated by local ordinances, driven by the distance from the runway
and a slope defined by Federal Aviation Administration regulations. Core
downtown buildings are limited to approximately 300 feet (91 m) but can get
taller farther from the airport.[80]_

The rest of the article did a good job of arguing that housing prices harm
migration and contribute to income inequality. But twisting a fact like that
makes me suspicious. Hopefully fault lies with Matt Yglesias, not the author.

~~~
NoPiece
Lazy research - they probably googled "tallest building in San Jose", went to
the first result, then forgot to sort by floors.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Sa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_San_Jose,_California)

~~~
twelvechairs
Yglesias' style is generally this kind of slapdash big-claim making
sensationalism. He's basically an opinion writer who cherry picks a few facts
to try to support his hypotheses. For example, see the reviews of the book
mentioned in the article on amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Rent-Too-Damn-
High-ebook/dp/B0078X...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Rent-Too-Damn-High-
ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO)

To be fair to him though, its a hard line to walk when you are discussing the
kind of complex open-ended issues which he does. I think his writing has done
good to stir up thinking and provoke responses on some of the issues he
discusses.

~~~
davidw
> For example, see the reviews of the book mentioned in the article on amazon

He got lots of bad reviews because he pissed off some right-wing folks who
showed up in droves to write bad reviews about the book out of spite, not
because they'd actually read it or thought about it:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/06/andrew-breitbart-
fa...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/06/andrew-breitbart-fans-matthew-
yglesias-amazon_n_1324362.html)

Discussions of the propriety of his comments are probably best left to other
web sites, and kept off of this one.

~~~
twelvechairs
The subject of his competence came up (not by me) and as someone familiar with
his writings I attempt to contribute both my own view (based on a good
understanding of his work and not one sided) and a link to others views. I'm
not sure what in this is wrong.... I can see you like the guy - perhaps you'd
like to explain why?

~~~
davidw
I just pointed out that the bad reviews were not there because a lot of people
disliked his book after reading it and considering what he had to say, but
because a lot of people were angry at him and found that writing nasty reviews
was a good way of venting their rage.

------
willvarfar
So when do we embrace remote working?

I've worked remotely for big American companies like Motorola (I live in
Sweden) and continue to work from home for local Swedish companies. Almost all
the people I interface with are in various offices in various timezones around
the world anyway.

I also do game programming jams e.g. Ludum Dare over a weekend occasionally,
and these are also distributed remote efforts. Yet we manage to work at a
furious pace with the same immediacy and accessibility as if we were sitting
in the same room.

It works well. It works well for me, and I believe it can be made to work well
in general.

This is not just about IT type jobs; most office-work can be done remotely.
Only people actually manipulating machinery directly need to be in physical
contact with their machine.

But there is a definite distrust and dislike of it, especially among
management types.

~~~
ggreer
The biggest problem is that there's no gradual migration process. The first
remote worker on a team forces everyone to change how they work and
communicate. Even with the whole team accommodating the remote person, they'll
still miss out on a lot. It can be frustrating for both sides.

Also, the software for real-time collaboration sucks. Even if you constantly
screen-share and video chat, it's not as good as working in the same room.
Simple things like pointing at a section of code are difficult to do, and
synchronizing files can be a pain.

I'm working on solving this (Floobits YC S13 yadda yadda), but there's still
much to be done.

~~~
bambax
The answer is not screen-sharing, it's making everything an API. The remote
worker is responsible for her API, and no one needs to know or care how it
works as long as it does.

~~~
yummyfajitas
While I generally do favor service oriented architectures (and remote work),
this is woefully short sighted.

Say the remote worker builds you a shaky RoR+MongoDB app, no scalability, no
error handling, no tests, no comments. At least in the short run, it works -
there are occasional outages, but the worker (remote or otherwise) does a
great job keeping it going. Then the remote worker quits. What do you do?

Just because something is behind an API doesn't mean you don't have to worry
about knowledge transfer, code quality, etc.

~~~
bambax
Okay, good points ;-) I may have overstated my case for emphasis; but I
maintain that in general, an API is better than a library (there was an
article saying just that some time ago on HN; can't seem to find it right
now).

~~~
yummyfajitas
I wouldn't even go that far. "API" and "Library" are not distinct concepts. A
library has an API - it's the set of public functions (ideally rarely
changing) that you are supposed to call from external programs. It is
beneficial if one developer can hide their work behind a simple interface with
only a few access points (the API), but there is no compelling reason this
should be json over http.

The real distinction between a _network API_ and a library is that the network
API allows users to avoid thinking about the hardware. The API provider is
responsible for allocating hardware, the user need only send messages over the
network to use it. I.e., buying hard drives is Amazon's problem, I just
GET/PUT my files onto S3.

If the API isn't hardware intensive, this is pointless - you are adding
network overhead (i.e., latency, network errors) for nothing.

~~~
bambax
> _If the API isn 't hardware intensive, this is pointless_

A network API lets you mix and match languages, share the functionality among
different/distant teams, etc.

~~~
gutnor
That just opens another can of worms. Now every single application you either
provide or use come with an integration issue attached.

I have read somewhere that was the Amazon way of doing thing but it was a
costly investment. A costly technological investment. And even Amazon did it
only at team level, not individual level.

I cannot imagine a 500 developers company being able to afford that without
some serious competitive advantages down the line. If what I can see around
here is any indication (medium size IT company in London), if you can afford
not having people on site, there are better opportunities to take in Poland or
even India than a small discount on a UK worker.

------
dalore
If your healthcare is tied to your job in the USA, wouldn't that impede social
mobility? If you can't change jobs because you would lose cover, how are you
meant to move around?

~~~
Aqua_Geek
Your new job usually offers healthcare to replace your old. True, the coverage
can be different - sometimes greatly so. It’s one of the factors you take into
account when deciding to change jobs.

~~~
billmalarky
But you still can't move without having a new job lined up in the new place
then. As someone who has recently moved to a new place by getting a remote job
offer first, I'll tell you that it's a heck of a lot harder than getting a job
in person.

Not saying it's not possible to move somewhere sight unseen and without health
insurance (since that's presumably what older generations did) but it's still
much higher risk than staying put.

~~~
Aqua_Geek
I’ve done the same and completely agree that it’s a lot harder than already
being there.

There are things like COBRA ([http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq-consumer-
cobra.html](http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq-consumer-cobra.html)) that help
to bridge the gap in coverage.

~~~
billmalarky
That's true, but isn't COBRA extremely expensive though? Of course there are
ways to lower relocation risks, but many involve having a fair amount of money
saved up. The people the article is talking about don't have money whatsoever
(which is the point of moving to places with higher paying jobs and
opportunities).

------
bluedino
I've really struggled to understand why people will stay living in a certain
area, unemployed, for years and years. Whether it's in a rustbelt city where
the factories have shut down 20 years ago or a rural city where the only jobs
are at Walmart or McDonalds, if you give people unemployment pay, they won't
move.

I hear all the excuses for them not moving. It's too expensive, they'll uproot
their families, etc. Do you think our grandparents didn't have those problems
when they moved from the south to the rust belt to take those long-gone
factory jobs?

It used to be people moved to where the jobs were. Now they are content to
stay where the checks come.

~~~
innino
Maybe now that the early phases of globalisation have settled down and all the
frontiers have dried up, the global culture of movement has died down. It's a
lot harder to think of moving as a possibility, let alone a good possibility,
when it isn't part of the zeitgeist. People used to do it a lot in the 1800s
especially, and it was something you could get swept along in - and there was
an excitement of going to a fresh place where most people were new as well,
economic opportunities and social relations were still up in the air.

Now you can trade a grind in one settled area for a slightly more profitable
grind in another. With the tradeoff of losing contact with your whole social
milieu and having to start a lot of things from scratch in the new place,
while you're surrounded by people who have a lot more than you because they've
been grinding in that place for years.

Not appealing, so it's no surprise that it's mainly the highly-educated who
can a) seek high value economic opportunities and b) are guaranteed a
welcoming social reception from university or work colleagues :)

People like us should be more generous about the incentives governing the
lives of the new post-mobility local cultures.

~~~
saraid216
If you're right, that makes the prospects of space colonization a little less
optimistic.

------
hkarthik
My parents and I came to the US in 1981 and landed in Philadelphia. Over the
next 32 years, my parents moved roughly every 9 years across state lines.

The mobility which my parents enjoyed was really tied to a reasonable cost of
housing across the places they lived and a stable job market. My Dad generally
could stay in one company for 9 years without moving. And he's never
experienced a layoff. The one time he came close was due to an acquisition
where the acquiring company offered every engineer a full relocation package
to move to the midwest OR a 1 year severance to find a new job.

I look at the situation today, and I find the picture to be very different.
Many housing markets are largely out of reach, many hiring companies are
extremely volatile, and the salary differences across state lines are modest
when compared to cost of living differences.

When things are like that, it's hard to justify moving and losing a social
circle, uprooting kids, and being farther away from family members.

~~~
consultant23522
lol, a one year severance package. That sounds like fantasy land to me.

~~~
hkarthik
I know, right? BTW this was in 1999.

------
rushabh
_A construction worker can generally make more money in San Francisco than in
suburban Fresno. But it won’t likely be enough more to make up the difference
in the relative cost of living. Indeed, few working-class people earn enough
money to live anywhere near San Francisco anymore, to the point that there is
now a severe shortage of construction workers in the Bay Area._

The wages for construction workers will go up and the situation should correct
itself automatically. Unfortunately, it will take some time for people to
adjust their cultures so that construction workers are valued more socially -
like people who write term sheets.

~~~
willvarfar
Isn't a lot of construction work done by poor migrant workers who live in
dirty dorms provided by their contracting company? I've seen this in much of
the rest of the world, even in places like Sweden where the workers are often
from the other side of the Baltic. I'd be surprised if the US was very
different in this regard.

~~~
aestra
No... Not around here at least... (Eastern US)

Construction workers don't make a lot of money, but they aren't the poor
migrant workers living in dirty dorms. They are the working class.

My uncle was doing construction, then just decided to start his own
construction business rather than work for someone else, and makes very very
good money doing that.

Every year the US Dept of Labor produces the Occupational Outlook Handbook
which contains information about occupations in the US. Salaries, number
employees, job outlook, etc. These are median salaries.

Construction Laborers and Helpers $28,410 per year
[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-
extraction/construct...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-
extraction/construction-laborers-and-helpers.htm)

Now, if you get more specialized, you earn more:

Roofers: $34,220 per year [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-
extraction/roofers.h...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-
extraction/roofers.htm)

Drywall and Ceiling Tile Installers, and Taper: $38,290 per year
[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-
extraction/drywall-a...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-
extraction/drywall-and-ceiling-tile-installers-and-tapers.htm)

Construction Equipment Operators: $39,460 per year
[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-
extraction/construct...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-
extraction/construction-equipment-operators.htm)

------
priyadarshy
I always wonder how its feasible for people in service industry roles to work
in the bay area. (Something I think about a lot when I go to work at a cafe).

That being said, it would be interesting to see a graphic of commute time and
wage/salary to see the tradeoffs people make.

~~~
netcan
Good question. The answer I think comes from the fact that "cost of living" is
a blunt measure, however it's measured. Price differences vary between by
good. Rent might be more expensive, but ipods and levis cost the same.

If you don't pay rent (eg you live with parents), its probably a net win. If
you don't consume much housing (eg, 4 person house share), it might still be a
net win. Also, some people are more flexible than other in their consumption
which is influenced by relative price. So, they might consume less housing by
house sharing but more iphones and clothes.

Try figure out if a 22 year old barista living in a trendy city centre with 3
housemates, but a nice nice budget for gadgets and clothes is better off then
one in a small town with a completely different lifestyle. Its extremely
subjective.

~~~
humanrebar
> If you don't pay rent (eg you live with parents), its probably a net win. If
> you don't consume much housing (eg, 4 person house share), it might still be
> a net win.

The typical person in the job market has a spouse or children. Having to have
multiple roommates on top of that is generally considered a nonstarter.

When you say, "If you don't consume much housing...," you're saying, "If
you're single and unattached..." And it's only a net win as long as you stay
that way, which isn't usually the case.

To connect the dots the rest of the way, when housing prices shoot through the
roof, people with families and special needs get pushed out. What is left are
people with fixed housing costs and single people who don't see having many
roommates as being a quality of life issue.

~~~
netcan
I don't think we disagree on much. A family of four that can't comfortably cut
back on housing. _Their_ cost of living is even higher in an expensive housing
town than the measure suggests because the average also takes into account the
single house share people.

------
100k
Paul Krugman has commented about this phenomenon as well. Based on the
literature he says it is due to lack of regional specialization. Interstate
goods shipping has also declined. This is mentioned in the article but
dismissed.

Personally, having recently conducted an interstate move, I think it is a
combination of the lack of specialization (My career as a programmer was going
fine elsewhere) and cost of living as mentioned in the article. Moving is
expensive, especially when you have an underwater house, and it's hard to
leave your social network behind. If you're moving for a raise from $18/hour
in Ohio to $25/hour in San Francisco, that's not worth it.

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/america-is-
flat/](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/america-is-flat/)

"[W]ithin the United States, at least, people are moving less — a lot less.
Greg Kaplan and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl (pdf) say that interstate mobility has
been cut in half over the past 20 years. And interestingly, they suggest that
this is in part because regions have become more similar: increasingly,
different parts of the country are producing the same kinds of things and
employing the same kind of people, so that there’s less reason to move.

This story actually matches up with what the new economic geography literature
says, which is that regional specialization peaked around a century ago and
has been declining since."

------
crazygringo
> _We might similarly observe, “Nobody moves to that state anymore. It offers
> too much economic opportunity.”_

This article rests on the premise that all you need for a higher salary is to
live somewhere where salaries are higher. But that is highly questionable --
just because they're higher in general, doesn't mean they'll be higher for
you. At no point does the author convincingly explain that American
unemployment is a problem of geographical mismatch, instead of the far more
likely case of skills mismatch.

> _If labor markets were operating efficiently, construction workers, along
> with electricians, plumbers... would receive enough compensation to live
> near the places where their work is most needed. But our labor markets are
> not efficient; rather, they are rigged and skewed, offering too much
> compensation to people with some skill sets (merging companies and writing
> derivatives, for example) and not enough to others whose skills are often
> just as hard to learn (e.g., brick laying and teaching children to read) and
> often more vital to society._

What? How exactly does the author magically come to the conclusion? As far as
I can tell, construction work and plumbing and electrical wiring is all
getting done. (Never listen to businessmen complaining about a lack of
workers, it's just a masked complaint that they're having to pay higher
wages.) What evidence is there that our labor markets are "rigged and skewed"?
By whom? It's like the author doesn't understand the basic concepts of supply
and demand in a labor market.

It's extremely interesting that Americans are moving less. I'd love to know
more of why. But tying it into arguments about career mobility seems highly
dubious, at best. It's ridiculous, and almost patronizing, to suppose that
people's careers nationwide are being held back by not being able to live in
downtown metro areas. It's a big country out there.

~~~
jellicle
> At no point does the author convincingly explain that American unemployment
> is a problem of geographical mismatch, instead of the far more likely case
> of skills mismatch.

If it were a case of either of those, it would be visible in the data. Which
it isn't. American unemployment - and European unemployment, for that matter -
is a result of the class warfare practiced by the rich against the poor in
recent years. Paul Krugman suggests Republican policies are responsible for 2%
extra unemployment, nationwide:

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/the-gop-
tax/](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/the-gop-tax/)

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/what-a-
drag-2/](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/what-a-drag-2/)

High unemployment is a result of policies that have artificially suppressed
demand for goods and services by taking money out of the hands of people who
will actually spend it, resulting in an overall excess supply of labor and low
demand for labor and therefore, low wages.

------
muzz
> "Average earnings in the valley grew by nearly 40 percent between 1997 and
> 2000"

Taking wage data from the massive tech bubble is some serious cherry picking.

Earlier in the same paragraph:

> "in 2005 the [San Jose] metro area approved permits for only 5,700 new
> units"

Again, this also cherry picking, as the area was just coming out of one of its
biggest busts-- the aftermath of the tech bubble (the number of tech jobs is
still not as high as it was in 2000). Although one would never know it from
reading the piece.

~~~
cafard
Ah, yes. Back around 1980, a piece in WM gave an number of hours flown for the
USAF during the previous year or so, compared it with hours for some period
about 10 years previous, and suggested that the decline was due to the Air
Force's appetite for ever more complex and high maintenance airplanes. That
the earlier period had been in the middle of the Vietnam War they did not
mention.

------
qwerta
I think major reason is housing price. If you want to leave local safety net
of relatives and friends, you must be able to survive on your own. You must
also have savings for first couple of months. Not possible if housing is too
expensive compared to salary.

------
gexla
This article seemed strange to me. It started out talking about how mobile
people in the U.S. were for moving to where jobs are and then moved to making
a case that people don't move to places with high housing costs.

The U.S. is a big place and locations with crazy housing costs are not the
norm. I would think that most people moving for a job would already have a job
available. I suppose there are plenty of cases where people might move without
a job offer in advance because anything would be an improvement.

Maybe today people don't move as often simply because EVERYTHING is getting
more expensive while the jobs people could land are staying the same or
getting worse. Moving is quite expensive, especially when you don't have a job
and especially when you don't have a job lined up at the place you are moving
to. Gas is expensive for moving long distances. Getting into a house or an
apartment is expensive. How many jobless people have the savings to withstand
all this?

It would also be interesting to see more statistics. For example, where were
people moving to and from when the rates were the highest? What industries
were supporting the places these people moved to? Maybe the decline of jobs
that could take just about anyone, in large numbers and paid well
(manufacturing) contributed to the decline in mobility. There really isn't
anything which could take the place of engineering.

Though people may be less mobile today, the options for that mobility will
always be great. The U.S. is a huge nation with a lot of diversity. You can't
really compare mobility in a nation like the U.S. with 50 states to a small
country like that of Denmark or Sweden.

~~~
andyking
But in a small country like Denmark or Sweden, citizens there are also
citizens of the EU and so can freely live and work in 27 countries with
minimal bureaucratic hassle. Language barriers notwithstanding, it makes the
EU a lot more like the wide-open market of the USA.

~~~
mattlutze
Many, many people are moving from Greece, Italy and Spain to Germany for this
very reason.

------
joyeuse6701
I had an opportunity recently to move to the Bay for a contract position from
a fulltime one in LA. Risk/benefit considerations aside, the cost of living,
much of it rent, in the Bay stayed my hand from signing off and changing jobs,
and I am someone who could afford to live there, I can easily see why anyone
who made as much or less would never move from here to there either.

------
dxbydt
The article asserts - "So where have people been moving to...Generally to
southern Sun Belt states"

If you compute absolute population growth from 1969 to 2011 on a per-county
basis, using publicly available demographic stats, the top-20 winners are

    
    
         ----
         Arizona        Mohave        7.38100563286945
         Georgia        Paulding        7.4570788900017675
         Virginia        Loudoun        7.954704312171496
         Georgia        Henry        8.023498694516972
         Texas        Hood        8.128975265017667
         Florida        Collier        8.313786154239164
         Texas        Denton        8.504770344932634
         Georgia        Fayette        8.909350004596856
         Texas        Montgomery        9.526487258446021
         Utah        Washington        10.029741513547181
         Florida        Hernando        10.384018414995067
         Georgia        Forsyth        10.637015231025215
         Florida        Osceola        10.880533448053345
         Texas        Rockwall        10.907133440749963
         Georgia        Gwinnett        11.063892016788289
         Texas        Fort Bend        11.168507788849015
         Texas        Williamson        11.323119312014695
         Colorado        Summit        11.39344262295082
         Texas        Collin        11.507137247655564
         Florida        Flagler        21.135939986360537
         Colorado        Douglas        36.49576488706366
         ------
    

So Douglas county in Colorado grew the fastest, 3600% growth! Indeed, it had a
population of about 8000 folks in 1969 & now averages about 300000 => thats
your 3600%

Generally speaking, the South is a big winner - GA, TX, FL, AZ...

3139 counties ranked by population growth in my github repo here -
[http://bit.ly/16RsjWa](http://bit.ly/16RsjWa)

Here's some Scala code for crunching this data yourself :
[http://bit.ly/1hZDQny](http://bit.ly/1hZDQny)

~~~
ido
So what's the reason? Air-conditioning having become widespread since the 60s
+ low taxes & vast amounts empty(therefor cheap) land in those areas?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Cheap cost of living? I live in Chicago, but the rest of my extended family
lives in Tampa, FL. I make $120K/year in Chicago, but due to lower costs of
living, only need to make $90K/year in Tampa for the same lifestyle.

~~~
ido
Yeah, that's what I meant by low taxes + cheap land.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I was simply confirming your hypothesis.

------
jchrisa
I moved from the Bay Area back to Portland to work remotely, so I fit in these
statistics. I did it because Portland has a more laid-back focus on quality of
life and I'm able to live without a car here.

------
Glyptodon
I know a decent number of people (often with college degrees) who've moved to
Arizona because they could afford to get by working at Best Buy or Target or
similar, but couldn't at their previous locations in New York, California, and
similar.

I think for the average person (who, let's remind, is probably part of a
household making $50k or less per year) cost of living (and particularly
housing) is what matters more than taxes or wages.

~~~
muzz
Perhaps you may have some anecdotes; however, there has been study of this.

Income in areas of high housing costs more than offsets those costs, so that
the net result is ($income - $housing) is higher

[http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2011/12/us-
cities-w...](http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2011/12/us-cities-with-
most-spend-after-paying-housing/778/)

~~~
Glyptodon
I'm sure that's true for people who for whom that's true, however, that
'study' is very anecdotal itself, and quite ridiculous. It doesn't address
where people with low wages live, income distribution, and other complexities.
The group I'm referring to is a group who will not have $35k+ left over for
house no matter where they live, and is pretty much invisible in that study.
If anything the article you linked is showing that higher incomes live in
places with higher housing costs and make more after paying for housing also,
which is a different conclusion than is claimed by the article.

------
the_watcher
This was really interesting as an economic look at migration. I moved from LA
to Austin because I couldn't stand the city and have loved it here, but one of
the things I've loved most is starting from scratch and being forced into
meeting new people and doing new things. I've loved it so much that I can't
see myself staying in one place for too long until I am ready to have a
family.

------
lifeisstillgood
I love a simple Gladwell-style opinion piece that actually makes me think with
a few carefully revealed key facts.

My big takeaway here is that America is not and never has been one country. In
Europe we are wringing our hands that the Southern states are too poor and
being carried by the richer North, that migration must be controlled lest we
depopulate a country and why can't we be more like America who just seems to
go from strength to strength

yet, it's not true - all we fear in Europe apparently happens in the US anyway
- different areas have different economic cycles, mass migration, vastly
different state laws and yet it seems to balance out ...

Oddly I guess Anerica is a small working example of Keynes' International
Monetary Fund - perhaps call the Fed a Continental Monetary Reserve.

It also suggests that acting more like a proper country might not be very good
for you.

edit: The IMF was originally conceive as a way to balance out economic cycles
- countries would pay in in good times, draw down in bad times. It seems
however that politicans like the spend in bad times, but happily forget the
pay in in good times part.

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ninetax
Hopefully some of this can be solved by better/faster public transportation.

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akamaka
This article had potential, but its facts are questionable. For example, it
claims that "California has been losing native-born residents for two
decades."

See here: [http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-shows-
increase...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-shows-increase-in-
native-population-3163810.php)

~~~
jdhzzz
I read that statement as almost guaranteed for every location on earth. The
only way it is not true if no one born there leaves. For a location of any
size that would be unexpected.

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anoncowherd
That's right. You shouldn't leave California just because there's no way to
make a living anymore! Verily, if you just stay put, a way to pay taxes again
shall be revealed!

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simonv3
"The percentage of married households with two earners has hardly changed over
the last thirty years"

I wonder if the split across gender lines is still the same.

~~~
let1tra1n
Across the HC a couple days or maybe even a week ago. I saw a map posted here
that predicted the odds over a colorful map across north america of exactly
what you are looking for. just so you know.

~~~
let1tra1n
I mean HN _

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jokoon
living in france, 28 years old, I so want to go to the US

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eriksank
I work remotely from Cambodia for companies mostly based in the UK (but also
in the US and elsewhere). Lots of startups do not want to hire remotely. I
have heard "no" more than once from companies in the Bay Area. However, it has
become less of a problem over the last few years, because with every year that
goes by, it gets easier to just do your own startup without ever setting foot
in the Bay Area. For example, there are amazing opportunities in the Chinese
market at the moment, while it does not give any advantage whatsoever to be
located in the Bay Area for those.

