> In my father's day a cashier could buy a home in a nice neighborhood (like the bay area) and live comfortably; Saying "I just want to live in a nice neighbor

> In my father's day a cashier could buy a home in a nice neighborhood (like the bay area) and live comfortably; Saying "I just want to live in a nice neighborhood (like the Bay Area)", is like saying "I just want to drive a decent car (like a Lamborghini)." The Bay Area is absolutely nothing like the vast majority of America, and should be the absolute last place you'd look if your goal is to live a low-stress middle-class life. The reality is that the median home in America costs $125 per square foot. I don't know how old your father is, but let's say 1973 as the benchmark. The median home then was 1500 square feet. An equivalent home would cost $187 thousand in today's market. I don't know about cashier, but the average electrician makes $55,000 per year. More than enough to easily afford the $1000/month mortgage needed for the 1973 home your father bought. Right now there's a desperate shortage of electricians and anyone with a high school diploma and a work ethic can easily move into that career. Nor are we talking about homes in burned out cities or isolated rural communities. Just check listings for Omaha, NE for example. Omaha has one of the strongest job markets in the US, with the third lowest unemployment rate in the country. Plenty of homes at that price with that size can be found in the center of the Omaha metro. The typical HN audience is massively distorted when it comes to this. By and large the average HN reader lives in one of America's ultra-high-priced metros like the Bay Area, NYC or DC. The average HN reader isn't anything even remotely approaching a middle-class American life. They're competing in cut-throat winner-take-all games to obtain ultra-prestigious positions at elite startups, FAANGs or Wall Street firms. I'd strongly suspect that the average HN reader making $100k a year "feels" poor, even though that's the top quartile of Americans. (And much higher than that adjusted for the average age of HN.) My guess is that many HNers making $500k+ a year still don't even "feel rich", despite being in the top 1% of Americans. The point is that the perception of economic conditions found on HN probably tells us about as much about everyday Americans, as the court of Versaille would tell us about the lives of 18th century French peasants. [1] https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/average-price-per-square-foot-for-a-home/ https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/average-price-per-square-... [2] http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/ http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s... [3] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/electrician https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/electrician