New York is great in many ways, but it's also a city that tells you, once a month, that you're not a part of it and probably never will be. You can buy your way

New York is great in many ways, but it's also a city that tells you, once a month, that you're not a part of it and probably never will be. You can buy your way in, sure, but you're just a "guest worker", and you won't actually belong until you make a hundred million or so. The people who "belong" here are the ones whose parents bought real estate in the '70s when it was cheap, those who can actually afford a desirable, family-capable, apartment, and the token not-so-rich (upper-middle-class and extremely well-connected) who have rent control (an arrangement that is often better than ownership, because rent-controlled rents are often lower than the maintenance fees for owners). This is what NYC tells you: you don't belong here unless (or x1 x2 ... xn). The easiest of those xi to change is your income. Aside from that, it's not that materialist of a city.