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Trouble is that while cities may be rich, the people living there are not. It is true that cities are the likely home to those with incredible fortunes, but th

Trouble is that while cities may be rich, the people living there are not. It is true that cities are the likely home to those with incredible fortunes, but they are also home to many in abject poverty. In fact, while average incomes tend to be higher in big cities, median incomes in big cities tend to be lower. This suggests that you have some people doing really well, and a whole lot of people doing not so great. Which is all well and good if you are, say, a software developer and can move to the Bay Area to make $150,000+ per year, but that only describes a very small segment of the population who are able to do that. The typical person is going to find themselves in the "not so great" category. McDonalds pays more or less the same whether you are in the big city or in a small town. The average rural (or urban, for that matter) resident is not going to become a software developer on a whim. Moving from a poor area, where cost of living is generally lower (although not always), to a rich area, where cost of living is generally higher, does not mean that you, yourself, will become rich. For the average person, that only results in skyrocketing costs, leading to a reduction in quality of life.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
The city has a concentration of talent and capital, this doesn’t mean it doesn’t have other things also. In fact, cities are seen as stepping stones for many that lack much talent or capital, which is why they have a lot of poor people: the cities are not creating these people themselves, quite the opposite actually. The kid working st Mcdonads in the big city is probably making $15/hour vs. $8 back in their rural home. Still not enough to live in the big city, but then again that isn’t the only thing they are doing there (they didn’t move to the big city to work in fast food, they have their side gig going on, be it acting or education or whatever). Back home, they would simply be stuck with not much hope for improvement. Ya, their chances of striking it rich aren’t great, but in Seattle it is non zero while in Marysville it is pretty much zero.
- randomdata 8y ago
  > cities are seen as stepping stones Absolutely. Humans have a very long history of trying to emulate the rich, and not only with respect to choice of residence, in hopes that doing what they the rich do is the missing link in why they are not rich. We have even seen in the past times where people were leaving the city because that is what the rich had done (favouring large rural estates at the time), leaving the conclusion to be that living in the city is why one is not rich. Which, admittedly, is a fairly rational decision given the incomplete information we have about what makes one rich, no doubt, but a faulty decision due to that lack of information. But choice or residence, choice of fashion, or the many other things that people have tried to emulate over the years is not why they are not rich. The missing link is not nearly that simple. If it was, we would all be rich.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    It isn’t that they are copying the rich, they are going from places where there are few opportunities to where their are many opportunities. The Great Migrations, for example, involved African Americans moving from poor southern areas to rich northern cities because they had nothing going on back home, just pointless sharecropping. And you know what: their descendants are probably much richer than of those who stayed back south. The same with the “okies” during the Great Depression going Friday Oklahoma to big cities in California. They were not emulating the rich, this never had anything to do with “fashion”, they were (and still are) surviving and have hope that they or their children will have a better future. Rural areas can’t provide much of this unless their is a natural resource rush (eg fracking in the dakotas).
    - randomdata 8y ago
      > It isn’t that they are copying the rich, they are going from places where there are few opportunities to where their are many opportunities. The appearance of opportunities. Sometimes the opportunities are real, usually not. Plenty of people move to California in hopes of becoming a star, where opportunities are abound, but only end up in dead-end jobs. It is quite likely that those people would have been far better off in a mundane job where competition isn't fierce and where living costs won't destroy you. > this never had anything to do with “fashion” Fashion is very much driven by the rich, through hopes that dressing like the rich will result in riches. It has been for as long as we have historical records about fashion. Nobody goes out of their way to dress like a hobo, unless the rich are dressing like hobos for some reason.
      - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        Moving to california because you want to be a star is not "fashion", its a dream. > It is quite likely that those people would have been far better off in a mundane job where competition isn't fierce and where living costs won't destroy you. Or they would have regretted the rest of their lives not taking chances when they were young instead doing poop work on the farm or working a dead end job in a small town.
zozbot123 8y ago
> McDonalds pays more or less the same whether you are in the big city or in a small town. ...partially adjusted for local cost of living, of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balassa-Samuelson_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balassa-Samuelson_effect Which means that, yes, staying in the city is generally a bad deal for a low-productivity worker in the non-tradable sector. But not as much of a bad deal as it would be if those wage variations did not exist. And they might be able to make up for it and even come out ahead by being super frugal and saving most of their income (this is the archetypical "unskilled immigrant to a rich area" story).
lsc 8y ago
>Moving from a poor area, where cost of living is generally lower (although not always), to a rich area, where cost of living is generally higher, does not mean that you, yourself, will become rich. For the average person, that only results in skyrocketing costs, leading to a reduction in quality of life. Maybe? but there are claims that for those of us without education, how much we make depends largely on how many educated people we are near. The location-based pay differential is much larger for people who don't have a college degree than for those who do. That's a big part of why I am so stuck on the bay area; I don't have a degree, and I do really well here. All the offers I get from other parts of the country are terrible.
- randomdata 8y ago
  > but there are claims that for those of us without education, how much we make depends largely on how many educated people we are near. There are a lot of dubious claims about education though. I would take the whole thing with a grain of salt. Some even claim that gaining an education will result in earning more money, all while incomes have remained stagnant for decades upon decades and educational attainment has ballooned. How does one earn more money while also earning the same amount of money...? What they are probably referring to is the fact that the education system filters out people who are less capable. Someone with, say, down syndrome is unfortunately unlikely to withstand the academic rigour required to graduate from college, and is unlikely to possess the traits that employers want to see in order to pay the big bucks, leaving the data to show that this person who did not graduate from college is also paid poorly. But it is faulty logic to think that if you don't graduate from college that you will contract down syndrome. > That's a big part of why I am so stuck on the bay area; I don't have a degree, and I do really well here. All the offers I get from other parts of the country are terrible. Your strong ties to the Bay Area suggest that you are probably involved in tech. Which is no doubt centred around the Bay Area, and pays less outside of the Bay Area no matter who you are. But what if all you knew was farming? Do you think you'd see a huge pay bump by moving your farm to the Bay Area (or any other major metropolis)?
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    > But what if all you knew was farming? Do you think you'd see a huge pay bump by moving your farm to the Bay Area (or any other major metropolis)? This has been so common throughout history that there is even a name for it (rural flight): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_flight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_flight As agriculture is increasingly mechanized, fewer farmers are needed. So it doesn’t really matter if all you know is farming, moving to the city is your best bet if you aren’t inheriting the family farm. That’s just how economics works.
jelliclesfarm 8y ago
A reasonable solution is to start living in villages that are clustered to form bigger villages. The key is self governance and that would ensure self contained units. The Dunbar number(for households) is a good number for each self sufficient ‘village city’. That would be 150 households with a max of 4 per household. 4-6 ‘village cities’ will make a networked cluster. They can share some common facilities(schools/parks) And so on. Currently, in the Bay Area, the problem is centralized claw of Sacramento. We are a ‘mega region’. Infrastructure, essential services, schools, traffic, housing...everything is failing. Bay Area is starting to rot. One has to live here to feel the despair of the working stiff. As an example: our city council has meetings every Tuesday starting at 7.00 pm. Nobody can attend and voice their ‘concerns’. Everyone is stuck in traffic. The other day, in one of our neighbourhood boards, a neighbour bemoaned Prop 13 and the retired ‘olds’ who aren’t pulling their weight. He said that he has two kids and his household makes only $500k and by the time he pays taxes and childcare and mortagage, he is broke. I had to shut down my computer and step away from the keyboard for a bit. And he is not the only one. He isn’t the exception, but the norm. He is a Silicon Valley high tech worker statistic. The 2kid/2car/2million dollar home living/resentful BROKE paycheck-to-paycheck ..waiting for the windfall IPO because he doesn’t have a lifetime pension like the low paid clerk at PG&E or police officer..and is bitter because he is stuck in traffic ..because he is anxious..because he has to keep running faster to stay in the same place...because he can’t quit his job. Meanwhile the govt is the mafia and we keep paying higher and higher taxes. Cities are getting denser, resources are getting thinner, schools overcrowded, roads are clogged. Everyone feels guilty because the average Silicon Valley worker is the poster child for unchecked privilege and the epitome of evil for promoting inequality. This is Silicon Valley. This is the Bay Area. Let us contain our curse..our little dirty secret..our infectious virus..I hope we don’t spread it to other places.
Bekwnn 8y ago
I'm a bit skeptical of the median income being lower than rural areas. I could see median income relative to cost of living being lower, but median income by itself being lower would be shocking. Do you have a source on that?
tomjen3 8y ago
That would suggest that it is not worth it for people who are only going to make a small amount of money over minimum income to move to SF, and that they shouldn't. Alternatively, put a tax on rental income then use that to found more buildings. I am not a fan of taxes, but since rents will always expand they aren't a bad subject to tax.
- randomdata 8y ago
  > That would suggest that it is not worth it for people who are only going to make a small amount of money over minimum income to move to SF Although, to be fair, it is debatable if most high earners even benefit from the move. It is not like you can't easily make $150,000+ in rural areas as well if you have the developer chops that the Bay Area seeks. As unfortunate as it may be, poor areas are poor largely because of who lives there and them moving does not change who they are.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

The city has a concentration of talent and capital, this doesn’t mean it doesn’t have other things also. In fact, cities are seen as stepping stones for many that lack much talent or capital, which is why they have a lot of poor people: the cities are not creating these people themselves, quite the opposite actually. The kid working st Mcdonads in the big city is probably making $15/hour vs. $8 back in their rural home. Still not enough to live in the big city, but then again that isn’t the only thing they are doing there (they didn’t move to the big city to work in fast food, they have their side gig going on, be it acting or education or whatever). Back home, they would simply be stuck with not much hope for improvement. Ya, their chances of striking it rich aren’t great, but in Seattle it is non zero while in Marysville it is pretty much zero.

randomdata 8y ago
> cities are seen as stepping stones Absolutely. Humans have a very long history of trying to emulate the rich, and not only with respect to choice of residence, in hopes that doing what they the rich do is the missing link in why they are not rich. We have even seen in the past times where people were leaving the city because that is what the rich had done (favouring large rural estates at the time), leaving the conclusion to be that living in the city is why one is not rich. Which, admittedly, is a fairly rational decision given the incomplete information we have about what makes one rich, no doubt, but a faulty decision due to that lack of information. But choice or residence, choice of fashion, or the many other things that people have tried to emulate over the years is not why they are not rich. The missing link is not nearly that simple. If it was, we would all be rich.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  It isn’t that they are copying the rich, they are going from places where there are few opportunities to where their are many opportunities. The Great Migrations, for example, involved African Americans moving from poor southern areas to rich northern cities because they had nothing going on back home, just pointless sharecropping. And you know what: their descendants are probably much richer than of those who stayed back south. The same with the “okies” during the Great Depression going Friday Oklahoma to big cities in California. They were not emulating the rich, this never had anything to do with “fashion”, they were (and still are) surviving and have hope that they or their children will have a better future. Rural areas can’t provide much of this unless their is a natural resource rush (eg fracking in the dakotas).
  - randomdata 8y ago
    > It isn’t that they are copying the rich, they are going from places where there are few opportunities to where their are many opportunities. The appearance of opportunities. Sometimes the opportunities are real, usually not. Plenty of people move to California in hopes of becoming a star, where opportunities are abound, but only end up in dead-end jobs. It is quite likely that those people would have been far better off in a mundane job where competition isn't fierce and where living costs won't destroy you. > this never had anything to do with “fashion” Fashion is very much driven by the rich, through hopes that dressing like the rich will result in riches. It has been for as long as we have historical records about fashion. Nobody goes out of their way to dress like a hobo, unless the rich are dressing like hobos for some reason.
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      Moving to california because you want to be a star is not "fashion", its a dream. > It is quite likely that those people would have been far better off in a mundane job where competition isn't fierce and where living costs won't destroy you. Or they would have regretted the rest of their lives not taking chances when they were young instead doing poop work on the farm or working a dead end job in a small town.

zozbot123 8y ago

> McDonalds pays more or less the same whether you are in the big city or in a small town. ...partially adjusted for local cost of living, of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balassa-Samuelson_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balassa-Samuelson_effect Which means that, yes, staying in the city is generally a bad deal for a low-productivity worker in the non-tradable sector. But not as much of a bad deal as it would be if those wage variations did not exist. And they might be able to make up for it and even come out ahead by being super frugal and saving most of their income (this is the archetypical "unskilled immigrant to a rich area" story).

lsc 8y ago

>Moving from a poor area, where cost of living is generally lower (although not always), to a rich area, where cost of living is generally higher, does not mean that you, yourself, will become rich. For the average person, that only results in skyrocketing costs, leading to a reduction in quality of life. Maybe? but there are claims that for those of us without education, how much we make depends largely on how many educated people we are near. The location-based pay differential is much larger for people who don't have a college degree than for those who do. That's a big part of why I am so stuck on the bay area; I don't have a degree, and I do really well here. All the offers I get from other parts of the country are terrible.

randomdata 8y ago
> but there are claims that for those of us without education, how much we make depends largely on how many educated people we are near. There are a lot of dubious claims about education though. I would take the whole thing with a grain of salt. Some even claim that gaining an education will result in earning more money, all while incomes have remained stagnant for decades upon decades and educational attainment has ballooned. How does one earn more money while also earning the same amount of money...? What they are probably referring to is the fact that the education system filters out people who are less capable. Someone with, say, down syndrome is unfortunately unlikely to withstand the academic rigour required to graduate from college, and is unlikely to possess the traits that employers want to see in order to pay the big bucks, leaving the data to show that this person who did not graduate from college is also paid poorly. But it is faulty logic to think that if you don't graduate from college that you will contract down syndrome. > That's a big part of why I am so stuck on the bay area; I don't have a degree, and I do really well here. All the offers I get from other parts of the country are terrible. Your strong ties to the Bay Area suggest that you are probably involved in tech. Which is no doubt centred around the Bay Area, and pays less outside of the Bay Area no matter who you are. But what if all you knew was farming? Do you think you'd see a huge pay bump by moving your farm to the Bay Area (or any other major metropolis)?
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  > But what if all you knew was farming? Do you think you'd see a huge pay bump by moving your farm to the Bay Area (or any other major metropolis)? This has been so common throughout history that there is even a name for it (rural flight): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_flight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_flight As agriculture is increasingly mechanized, fewer farmers are needed. So it doesn’t really matter if all you know is farming, moving to the city is your best bet if you aren’t inheriting the family farm. That’s just how economics works.

jelliclesfarm 8y ago

A reasonable solution is to start living in villages that are clustered to form bigger villages. The key is self governance and that would ensure self contained units. The Dunbar number(for households) is a good number for each self sufficient ‘village city’. That would be 150 households with a max of 4 per household. 4-6 ‘village cities’ will make a networked cluster. They can share some common facilities(schools/parks) And so on. Currently, in the Bay Area, the problem is centralized claw of Sacramento. We are a ‘mega region’. Infrastructure, essential services, schools, traffic, housing...everything is failing. Bay Area is starting to rot. One has to live here to feel the despair of the working stiff. As an example: our city council has meetings every Tuesday starting at 7.00 pm. Nobody can attend and voice their ‘concerns’. Everyone is stuck in traffic. The other day, in one of our neighbourhood boards, a neighbour bemoaned Prop 13 and the retired ‘olds’ who aren’t pulling their weight. He said that he has two kids and his household makes only $500k and by the time he pays taxes and childcare and mortagage, he is broke. I had to shut down my computer and step away from the keyboard for a bit. And he is not the only one. He isn’t the exception, but the norm. He is a Silicon Valley high tech worker statistic. The 2kid/2car/2million dollar home living/resentful BROKE paycheck-to-paycheck ..waiting for the windfall IPO because he doesn’t have a lifetime pension like the low paid clerk at PG&E or police officer..and is bitter because he is stuck in traffic ..because he is anxious..because he has to keep running faster to stay in the same place...because he can’t quit his job. Meanwhile the govt is the mafia and we keep paying higher and higher taxes. Cities are getting denser, resources are getting thinner, schools overcrowded, roads are clogged. Everyone feels guilty because the average Silicon Valley worker is the poster child for unchecked privilege and the epitome of evil for promoting inequality. This is Silicon Valley. This is the Bay Area. Let us contain our curse..our little dirty secret..our infectious virus..I hope we don’t spread it to other places.

Bekwnn 8y ago

I'm a bit skeptical of the median income being lower than rural areas. I could see median income relative to cost of living being lower, but median income by itself being lower would be shocking. Do you have a source on that?

tomjen3 8y ago

That would suggest that it is not worth it for people who are only going to make a small amount of money over minimum income to move to SF, and that they shouldn't. Alternatively, put a tax on rental income then use that to found more buildings. I am not a fan of taxes, but since rents will always expand they aren't a bad subject to tax.

randomdata 8y ago
> That would suggest that it is not worth it for people who are only going to make a small amount of money over minimum income to move to SF Although, to be fair, it is debatable if most high earners even benefit from the move. It is not like you can't easily make $150,000+ in rural areas as well if you have the developer chops that the Bay Area seeks. As unfortunate as it may be, poor areas are poor largely because of who lives there and them moving does not change who they are.