
This Is Your Life in the Midwest - maxehnert
https://medium.com/@ehnertm/this-is-your-life-in-the-midwest-935b97b6c50#.hj8h57jze
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atombath
> ...you dream about what your life would have been like if you left the
> Midwest after college and moved to Silicon Valley or Seattle. You think
> about how much money they make out there. Then you remember that money
> doesn’t buy happiness and you’re content with settling down and having a
> family...

You try out cost of living calculations and they say you'd need to make 250%
your current salary on the west coast. Annoyed at the seemingly impossible
move, you tell yourself they'll be rioting over water shortages soon anyways.
After all, do you even want to be near the coast when the oceans rise?

~~~
jrjarrett
Having read the inspiration article, I chuckled at the seemingly satiristic
tone.

Then I read this one and cried. There's a lot of truth here (I live in WI).

>You try out cost of living calculations and they say you'd need to make 250%
your current salary on the west coast. Annoyed at the seemingly impossible
move, you tell yourself they'll be rioting over water shortages soon anyways.
After all, do you even want to be near the coast when the oceans rise?

And this. This is so true.

~~~
atombath
I didn't feel that the author was really from the Midwest. The inspiration
article felt like a self-mockery which is what made it special... but the
Burger King stuff was where this really started to sound like the outside
looking in. I felt the need to apply some actual midwestern(Detroit, MI)
thoughts/barbs. =)

~~~
maxehnert
Author here. I'm actually from Milwaukee WI and currently living in KC.

This was taking parts of people's lives I know and have met and throwing on a
huge pile of satire.

------
oldbuzzard
Wow! My life in the Minneapolis strongly resembles my former life in Seattle.
I have walkable/bikeable neighborhods, good local restaraunts and food
coops/farmers markets, etc etc

The problem isn't the Midwest, it is suburbia. I've know contractrs at MS like
in the article. Plenty of folks in Boston or Northern Virginia or RTP are
living in the far suburbs and working in unsatisfying jobs they aren't good
at... nothing to do with the Midwest.

~~~
tbihl
To take this a step further, you don't even have to be in a substantial city
to get the walkable atmosphere. Granted you'll suffer a smaller variety of
restaurants, but there are towns of just 10k or 20k that manage to get things
right, and some of them are really cool places.

It's really all about suburbia. It's isolating, expensive, and unproductive.
The places that come to grips with this fact soon (or already) will face a
much less painful contraction in the future. And they won't find themselves
with a bunch of impoverished people stuck out in suburbs that no one else will
live in.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Suburbia is all about cost per square foot. It's not going anywhere. It'll
just be apartments rather than single family detatched.

At least in the US, we're not exactly constrained by land availability. And as
you may notice, the sustainability of NYC and SF style property prices isn't
guaranteed.

~~~
tbihl
The constraint isn't the amount of raw land, but rather the necessity of
productive density if we are to afford the level of public services that most
of us are accustomed to.

I have nothing against people living in sparsely populated areas, but the
people living there now are mostly not seeing true costs of their lifestyles.
If they weren't so heavily subsidized, they would probably have a lot more
wells, septic tanks, and gravel roads; the school buses would not run to their
houses; and they would have slower emergency response times and less police
presence.

Faced with those painful realities, I expect more people would choose dense
living. That's not to say they'd have to. Me personally, I just hate driving
and love eating, in both cases too much to commute by car.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
So eat while you drive, man :) ( I too hate driving, but live suburban and
have been extremely lucky in being able to keep commute times to a minimum -
like on the order of five minutes ).

Productive density is constrained by things like how accounting works, how we
can't get out of our own way, by other things that are like public choice
economics. At each job I've had, I've seen people walk away from millions of
dollars, either in increased sales or reduced cost because somebody just
didn't understand it ( or rather, did understand it all too well ).

I couldn't agree more - people who live farther out should expect less
services unless they're prepared to pay what they actually cost. In cases like
California, the Pubic Choice Theory stories about water are ... interesting
enough that it's a central plot element from a movie from the 1970s -
"Chinatown".

I've lived on well water and septic.

This being said, I don't think real estate development public debt is even on
the radar as a threat to anything. They can always raise rates...

~~~
tbihl
Lol, I meant that I need the energy consumption of walking to support my carb-
eating habit. I can handle the time commitment of eating mostly.

As to the policy questions, I admit that I don't know how to solve that one. I
know a start would be to clean up the mess made by FHA standards. And I think
a lot of places have moved, or are starting to move, away from Euclidean
zoning, which is a step in the right direction, if not a very large one.

------
ArkyBeagle
So get rid of the camper and ATVs, take 1500 sq feet off the house, _REALLY_
evaluate if your wife's job covers the costs of it, drive an old car, at least
buy frozen food at Sam's/Costco rather than Burger King and it's quite
different, isn't it?

Kids' college? They'll have to do it themselves. Hopefully, there's one near
enough to work out, or they can qualify for scholarships.

But, of course, drinking beer at work outweighs all that...

------
Delmania
Having felt the way the author expresses in this article, I can honestly say
the sentiment expressed here has nothing to do with the suburbs, the Midwest,
or having a corporate job. It has everything to do with settling and accepting
the status quo. I could list a number of things the person here could do, but
seriously, this reads like someone who is not happy with his current situation
but does not want to put the effort into changing it.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
It's easy to get in a rut. It's especially easy when you have a lot of
distractions.

Kids are a big distraction. One of the magical things about my wife is that
she handles a lot of distractions for me. Most women just won't. It's slightly
unfair to her, but she's a Professional Mom and extremely good at it. As has
been noted in literature, it's all but impossible to price this.

The downside is - one stream of income. And it's been pretty scary when I've
gotten laid off.

~~~
Delmania
> Kids are a big distraction.

I understand the sentiment, but this lines has always bothered me. I try to
find ways to incorporate my children into the things I enjoy and want to do...

~~~
Grishnakh
There's only so much you can do with this. When children are really young, you
just can't bring them a lot of places, such as nice restaurants, because
they're too disruptive, so that means that for the first 5-7 years, you have
to hire a babysitter if you want to do anything "adult".

I like to go hiking and road biking on weekends. You can't do this with kids;
they just can't keep up. A 6-year-old isn't going to be able to do a 10-mile
hike or a rock scramble with you, nor will she be able to ride 40 miles. You
can do really easy hikes or bike rides, but those are pretty boring and do
little for physical fitness (which is the other reason I do them, so I don't
have to spend hours a week at the gym to avoid health problems). When the kids
get to be teenagers they can probably handle that stuff, but that means
there's 12+ years where you either don't do that stuff at all and get fat, or
you hire a babysitter.

If you have other interests like listening to classical music concerts, or
rock concerts, you can't bring kids to that stuff either; at one they'll be a
disruption and at the other they'll be miserable. Again, when they become
teenagers, they _may_ be interested in those things ( _maybe_ , doubtful
though because you're interested in them), but again that's a long time to
wait, and now they're almost in college!

Honestly, having kids would be fun if it weren't _such_ a huge time-sink, and
you actually had help doing it instead of having to do it all by yourself (as
with most parents I see these days), or if you're really lucky, with one
partner who's also really busy with work.

It's no wonder the birthrate is so low these days in developed nations. I
really think society needs to rethink its social norms and customs if it wants
to reverse this, unless they can figure out how to greatly increase lifespans
so it becomes normal and feasible to have kids at ~50-75 years old after
you've established yourself financially and can afford to take off 5 years or
more and only work part-time or not at all without ruining your future career.
Also, polyamory would be a lot more sensible for raising kids; having adult
time is easier when there's, say, 4 adult people in a household so one of them
could volunteer to be babysitter for the group's kids, and there's more hands
to share chores, and more incomes to share among the family.

------
Taylor_OD
I'm confused because the article is written by Max Ehnert who from looking at
his linkedin has only been working as a software dev for roughly two years.
He's painting the picture of a life he hasnt lived?

~~~
maxehnert
It's a satire article not completely reflective of my own life but more of a
mix of people I know. (I'm the author)

~~~
Taylor_OD
Ah. Thanks for clarification. Sorry I was just confused. I assumed that but it
seemed many took it as your story.

~~~
maxehnert
No problem. I added a footer in the article stating it's satire.

------
rayiner
I was in Kansas City the other day. Seems like a place where a software
developer could actually afford to live in a hip urban neighborhood a short
Uber ride away from work, even with a family. Good luck doing that in San
Francisco.

(Also, having kids doesn't mean you can't be hip and urban. Urban centers are
full of kids! We went trick-or-treating in Capitol Hill last year, and it was
hard to fit in the sidewalk with all the parents and kids.)

------
typedef_struct
Damn, this is even more depressing than the other one.

Apparently the secret to happiness is not having kids. And not spending more
than you make. Actually that last one is true.

~~~
Grishnakh
Both are true. Having kids basically dooms you for 20 years; raising kids as a
single parent is a miserable task. And before you say anything about married
couples raising kids, remember that 50% of first marriages end in divorce, so
the odds are not good. And that number doesn't include people who just stick
together in unhappy marriages. If you can find someone really great for you
and you can find a situation where you can have kids without it ruining your
life, then you're really lucky. Most parents I've seen have a miserable time
of it.

Not spending more than you make is a big, big factor too, that many Americans
seem to have a big problem with. From what I can tell, they simply do not
understand the concept, at all. They basically seem to think they "deserve" a
certain lifestyle and level of spending, and just do that, regardless of how
much actual money is coming in, and simply refuse to look at ways to economize
or maximize the value they get for their spending (such as by not eating out
all the time because they're too lazy to cook).

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tbihl
I think I must miss the point of articles like this. Is this author trying to
warn us of downward spirals he's seen? Impart his priorities upon us?

There are a lot of articles here that try to isolate and analyze pivotal
traits or habits. This is the opposite, throwing everything you can imagine
into one big, confused soup of "what caused what?".

It could also be that this is a common mindset, but I just haven't met these
people.

I just wish the suburban experiment would die already: it's quite a hellish
existence to have to endure, just because you didn't take the time to learn
about all the odd artificial incentives that push people toward that
unproductive and isolating pattern of life.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
I really read the article like a "Trouble Brewing" "Far Side" cartoon. Guy
thinks "going into management" will mean the skies will open up; guy is
overleveraged and one layoff away from bankruptcy, maybe divorce, who knows?
Guy is clearly not "management material" in the eyes of his employer, which is
a dwindling enterprise with probably an end date.

The main thing he: he depends on credit vendors for establishing limits on
spending.

I've lived in 'burbs all my life, and most people are pretty happy with it. I
mean it's _nice_ to have a forced exercise program with "walkability" but it's
hardly critical and hard to substitute for.

~~~
Grishnakh
>I've lived in 'burbs all my life, and most people are pretty happy with it. I
mean it's nice to have a forced exercise program with "walkability" but it's
hardly critical

Given the obesity epidemic in America this days, I think you're wrong here
about the criticality of walkability. Go to Manhattan sometime and see if you
can find any fat people. Now go to suburban Atlanta and see how many people
are so fat they need motorized carts just to shop at Walmart.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Bluntly, I don't think we understand the obesity problem.

~~~
Grishnakh
I think a lot of it is fairly obvious: diet and exercise. My evidence is
pretty simple: look at cultures (including local cultures) where everyone
drives everywhere, versus cultures where everyone walks everywhere. You just
don't see morbidly obese people in cultures where they're forced to walk a
lot; it's mainly an American and Western phenomenon (it's worst in America and
Mexico). Diet is probably another big factor: in obese cultures, calories are
cheap, but the food quality is generally very poor.

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blast20
People are taking these articles too seriously. Obviously, this is very tongue
in cheek.

------
iopuy
What a horribly cynical article. I would hate to be a member of this person's
family and read it. Perhaps I'm missing the irony of him being bound to his
position in life by the choices he made, but I don't really feel bad for him.

