
$400K income in Silicon Valley is still middle-class - aritraghosh007
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/silicon-valley-expensive-people-400-191800814.html?utm_content=buffer651e3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=yahoofinance
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notadoc
That will sound crazy to people not from the west coast or Manhattan, but it's
not as crazy as it sounds.

A house price-to-income of 1.5x - 3x was long considered normal, and is still
obtainable in middle America, the south, upstate NY and much of the NE, etc.
But certainly not out west.

Meanwhile on the west coast, price-to-income is routinely in the realm of 10x
- 20x, with the upper end being the norm in Silicon Valley.

Consider Palo Alto, where median household income is $137,000 a year and
median housing currently is $3,000,000, making price-to-income 21x.

[https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/paloaltocitycal...](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/paloaltocitycalifornia/PST045216)

[https://www.zillow.com/palo-alto-ca/home-
values/](https://www.zillow.com/palo-alto-ca/home-values/)

Now if you really want to ponder how far things have gone awry, consider what
the typical middle class lifestyle of 1960s America was then, and what that
same lifestyle would cost today, as this article does:

[http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/are-you-
real...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/are-you-really-
middle-class/)

Put simply, you need to earn more than you think, and if you want a typical
"middle class" lifestyle on a regular income, you should probably not live on
the west coast.

~~~
keithnz
it does sound crazy...for a different reason, what I don't really understand
is why the big difference compared to other places isn't significant enough to
do dev elsewhere? Maintain a smaller presence in SV? Or a lot more remote
workers?

Or is the investment money so good that no one really cares?

