You either do not live in the Bay Area or you are wildly misinformed. The Bay Area's housing crisis is caused by a mix of bad zoning laws and rampant NIMBYism that has blocked enough housing construction to keep up with population growth. It has nothing to do with overpopulation.
> The Bay Area's housing crisis is caused by a mix of bad zoning laws and rampant NIMBYism that has blocked enough housing construction to keep up with population growth.
There shouldn't be any population growth to keep up with. The problem is too many people on too little space. Not sure why people seem to want to live in cities that resemble ant-hills if it's shown that it makes them miserable and depressed.
The number of people I know in suburban settings and inner city settings are fairly equally miserable and depressed though. I kinda don't buy that suburbia makes a happy-life theme...
Seattle has smaller scale of the same problems combined with the same resistance to upzoning and "changing the character of the neighborhood".
They bought a house on a sleepy street of Capitol Hill in 1996 and somehow expect to be insulated from any change when twenty years later Amazon dumps a few billion into office space a thirty minute walk away.
By 1996, price inflation for housing in Seattle was in full force, as was NIMBYism. It was unaffordable enough by '92 that I got out then. I have friends who bought around that time and were paying what I considered to be ridiculous prices. I don't blame them for wanting to preserve it. They didn't ask Amazon to start there.
If you have an average tech job and you are single/partnered (w/ dual income) with no kids, you are probably relatively fine as far as affordability goes.
If you have kids or living on a single income for 2 people, then it gets harder because presumably you'll want to find a more permanent living situation than renting a bedroom in a larger home with roommates or a small studio/1 bedroom.
My guess is that the existential crisis/breaking point happens for those in transition periods in their lives, the most notable those in their 20s/30s who have recently gotten married and thinking of having their first kid. At that point, if you haven't been fortunate enough to make enough to afford at least a small 2 bedroom in a good school area for $1.5m-$2m + school + daycare it isn't going to very sustainable to keep living here. Plus, many people want help from their parents to help raise their kids while they continue working, and unless you're in a situation where your parents are already living here that would be difficult to accommodate as well.
>> If you have kids or living on a single income for 2 people
Does anyone still live with that kind of family-model? '2 people + kids / 2 incomes' is pretty much standard where I live, no one can afford otherwise -- not even the higher-earning income bracket.
It might vary by region. It's fairly standard among my circle of friends. For most of us, doing the math revealed that, with both parents working, child care expenses and the like would eat up all or most of what the lesser-earning parent was bringing home after taxes.
Some of that is about how the tax system works in the US, too - the way that "married filing jointly" works was designed under the assumption that married women are homemakers, and so treating two-income families fairly wasn't a priority.
Some, but right almost certainly a lot less than in previously generations...
If one partner made enough to support the whole family and you had kids, then I imagine there are some families who would want a full-time parent caring for their kids vs relying on daycare/parents/nanny.
If you aren't making at least $40k a year (with a low-stress job), you will mostly just be treading water covering the cost of daycare, and might as well stay home with the child. Unless you have other reasons to keep working besides cash flow.
>> If you aren't making at least $40k a year (with a low-stress job), you will mostly just be treading water covering the cost of daycare
Ahh, I see... That's actually a rational argument in favour of it. I sometimes tend to take conditions on this side of the Atlantic for granted -- like 90 € / month [+reduction for lower-income parents] for daycare / Kindergarten.
Absolutely, but not usually in a place like the Bay Area. It is easy and normal all over the USA.
When a 3-bedroom house can be had for $150,000 or less, you can get by on a single unimpressive income. It looks like that income could be just $40,000.
If you are higher earning, then you can go well beyond that. You can get acres of land, a dozen kids (my choice), a McMansion, and so on. This is how it is for my coworkers and I, living along the Florida coast.
How's that going to work? Am I going to see avatars of my colleagues in 3D, or alternatively am I going to see actual images of my colleagues all wearing Oculus Rifts? Either way it's going to be weird.
Avatars. The main benefit over videoconferencing today would be meetings for remote collaboration e.g. hard to do remote "brainstorm together on a white board" type meetings remotely.
I don't think their value is in having a "moat", per se. It's just that despite the plethora of options most still suck for whatever reason and based on experience they seem to provide a better experience than google, cisco, blue jeans, etc.
I think you’re right - it’s just surprising that 50 years after humankind put someone on the moon (allegedly lol) we still can’t get video conferencing right.
I know it’s a hard problem but is it really that hard?
If you live in the US, we are living just past the golden age of credit cards rewards...I've not paid for a personal trip (flight or hotel) for maybe 6 years and travel a lot.
We live in a time where international air travel has become ridiculously cheap relative to domestic travel. I regularly see roundtrip flights between SFO and Singapore/HK for ~$600 and RT flights between US and Europe for ~$400 or so, but expect to pay at least $650 to go between SF<>NY and even $350 just to go between SF and LA sometimes.
Point is, it's never been cheaper to travel internationally. Enjoy it while it's still true.
It's not just that: everything in the US is ridiculously expensive now, so it doesn't make sense to travel domestically at all for me any more. I can stay in very decent hotels in western Europe and Japan for $50/night, but paying that much in America would put me in a rat-trap. Eating out (hard to avoid when traveling) is much cheaper in Europe in my experience. And ground transport is far cheaper in other countries.
America is just plain overpriced. The only thing that's harder about international travel is that so many people don't speak English in other countries, but that's also part of the fun of it.
Yup; I stayed in a rented room (AirBnB) in Vienna with a few software developers in their 20s, 25 euro a night. Their penthouse apartment directly overlooked the Danube. I couldn't believe what a deal I stumbled upon, but then I found some of the clean budget hotels (Ibis or similar) were like 45 euro a night. In a major European city!
Being in an environment or situation where that can be a problem is still not preferred. It may not be an overdose, but the outcome of drug use by their friend doesn’t seem positive.
Agreed. You can have good trips and bad trips. It is highly dependent on environment and state of mind.
The only guarantee is that your ability to change increases due to increased neuroplasticity. Whether the change is good or bad is ultimately up to you, which is why I think if these drugs were to be legalized that the intake should happen in conjunction with in-person therapy in a controlled environment and not at all something you'd just pickup at a pharmacy and take on your own like anti-depressants are today.
It's the racket of big pharma. Ketamine isn't approved for the treatment of depression but Johnson & Johnson's patented Esketamine is. If you want to go the legal route that is your only option.
Depending on how much your insurance plan covers you, as a patient, might only pay a fixed copay with your insurance covering the rest, so you might not actually "feel" the $7k price tag at all.
The real scam that has played out over the last few decades though is that as employer insurance costs rise wage growth has slowed. We've all been paying for rising insurance costs even if we don't necessarily feel it.
It's really a form of regulatory capture and goes way beyond drugs into medical devices, IT systems, etc. The "approved" thing is often a more expensive, less complete/reliable/modern version of something people who aren't subject to regulation can get off the shelf. You can think of it sort of like if car dealerships managed to get a law passed that said you can only service your car at the dealership, and then 10x'd their prices.
Because the penalties for unauthorized possession in the US range from (up to) 6 months to 8 years with fines up to $25,000 varying by state and the only way to acquire it in an authorized manor restricts it's prescribed usage to a narrow scope of conditions, the treatment of depression not included.
