3 ms·

You are downvoted by those who realize they are in a rat race. I got the hell off the coast for grad school 25 years ago, and now live in Kansas City suburbs.

You are downvoted by those who realize they are in a rat race. I got the hell off the coast for grad school 25 years ago, and now live in Kansas City suburbs. Good schools, good paying tech job, almost paid for house, and healthy retirement funds. You people are crazy clamoring over those coastal tech jobs. Maybe 1% of you will strike it rich. The rest are in the rat race.

dionidium 8y ago
Nah, it's simpler than that. People have some bizarre views about the Midwest, as evidenced by the FUD-laden reply to my post above: - "What about crime!?" (Most of the region is quite safe. The MSA is about middle of the pack on crime. Yes, there are some bad neighborhoods. And there's a ~0% chance anybody reading this on HN would ever live in one of those neighborhoods.) - "How long will it take to sell a house in St. Louis?!" (The housing market is doing fine there.) - "Do they even have jobs in St. Louis?!" (Median household income in the metro is a pretty healthy $52,340.) I think I have a pretty good idea what that guy imagines St. Louis -- and Cincinnati and Indianapolis and Milwaukee and Kansas City -- to be like, and I strongly suspect it's got a pretty loose relationship with reality. Unfortunately for cities like St. Louis, marketing is important, and there's probably nothing I could say that would change that guy's mind. There's almost nothing in his comment that makes any real sense, but it is what it is. From experience, people do not want you to respond to complaints about the high cost of housing on the coasts with evidence that the problem isn't universal. If you accept that the South and the Midwest are legitimate places to live, then you're forced to really consider it, which is difficult -- moving long distances is hard! It's much easier to conclude that those places aren't real options.

dionidium 8y ago

Nah, it's simpler than that. People have some bizarre views about the Midwest, as evidenced by the FUD-laden reply to my post above: - "What about crime!?" (Most of the region is quite safe. The MSA is about middle of the pack on crime. Yes, there are some bad neighborhoods. And there's a ~0% chance anybody reading this on HN would ever live in one of those neighborhoods.) - "How long will it take to sell a house in St. Louis?!" (The housing market is doing fine there.) - "Do they even have jobs in St. Louis?!" (Median household income in the metro is a pretty healthy $52,340.) I think I have a pretty good idea what that guy imagines St. Louis -- and Cincinnati and Indianapolis and Milwaukee and Kansas City -- to be like, and I strongly suspect it's got a pretty loose relationship with reality. Unfortunately for cities like St. Louis, marketing is important, and there's probably nothing I could say that would change that guy's mind. There's almost nothing in his comment that makes any real sense, but it is what it is. From experience, people do not want you to respond to complaints about the high cost of housing on the coasts with evidence that the problem isn't universal. If you accept that the South and the Midwest are legitimate places to live, then you're forced to really consider it, which is difficult -- moving long distances is hard! It's much easier to conclude that those places aren't real options.