6 ms·

This is fantastic. Young folks get to take advantage of wage arbitrage. Midwestern towns gutted by 40 years of foreign slave wages get an influx of new blood a

This is fantastic. Young folks get to take advantage of wage arbitrage. Midwestern towns gutted by 40 years of foreign slave wages get an influx of new blood and a revitalized service sector. Two, seemingly warring, demographics get to cross pollinate and empathize with each other while collectively giving the middle finger to an unholy Government/Big Corp alliance trying to corral everyone in a few big geographical regions. Plea to young knowledge workers... Don't give in on remote work, take advantage of it.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
> Midwestern towns gutted by 40 years of foreign slave wages get an influx of new blood and a revitalized service sector. I think that is what is most galling about the fight against remote work. It is the way for knowledge workers to have quality of life (versus heading to a coast to save up before you have to leave because the COL is unsustainable into parenthood or retirement) while also providing a sustainable economic base for smaller towns that would otherwise be hallowed out. You don't want to cater to companies (who can play jurisdictions against each other for tax breaks and if they leave, can cause outsized impact to the tax base and local economy), you want to cater to remote workers [1] [2] (who will settle down and anchor themselves to your community, hopefully). [1] https://www.bobvila.com/slideshow/13-u-s-cities-incentivizing-remote-workers-to-relocate-578931 https://www.bobvila.com/slideshow/13-u-s-cities-incentivizin... [2] https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job#relocation-incentives https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job#relocatio...
- thatfrenchguy 3y ago
  > It is the way for knowledge workers to have quality of life (versus heading to a coast to save up before you have to leave because the COL is unsustainable into parenthood or retirement) Meh, what you gain in square footage of your house moving in the Midwest, which is what I think you meant by "quality of life", you loose in career opportunities , weather / outdoor activities, quality of food, and cultural enrichment for your children. > (who will settle down and anchor themselves to your community, hopefully). Folks with 4-5x the median income coming into a county is more likely to create resentment than anything too, if they end up staying.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/cities-pandemic-moving-trends https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/cities-pandemic-moving-tren... https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/05/03/why-americans-are-leaving-big-cities-behind https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/05/03/why-americans-are-le... (Control-F "On the move from big cities to rural communities" and "On where Americans want to live now") https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/3479076-americans-are-moving-out-of-major-cities-and-opting-for-southeastern-states-data-show/ https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture... https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/04/metro-areas-shrinking-population-loss/629665/ https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/04/metr... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Enjoy the city if that's your jam, genuinely! Lots of options for everyone to live their best life.
  - ROTMetro 3y ago
    Let's see, I gained a local ski mountain with reasonable locals season pass rates (cheaper to take the kids skiing than the family going to see a movie every weekend in the winter), got a great boat for the local lake and my kids grew up boat camping (at spots only accessible by boat) where they saw beavers, otters, etc every week. We hiked and picked huckleberries and saw black bears, moose, elk. Friends had wakesurfing boats. We white water rafted and floated rivers. In Santa Cruz we would kinda body surf/boogie board and hike crowded trails. Not sure what culture there was in Santa Cruz we're missing, we went and saw the old missions but other than that??? Biggest thing we missed was the Monterey Aquarium and some food, but we just learned how to make it ourselves.
  - bart_spoon 3y ago
    > Meh, what you gain in square footage of your house moving in the Midwest, which is what I think you meant by "quality of life", you loose in career opportunities , weather / outdoor activities, quality of food, and cultural enrichment for your children. Strongly disagree on virtually every point, and this seems to be a common refrain I hear from those seemingly trying to convince themselves as much as anyone why the sky-high cost of living in certain areas of the country is worth paying. Yes, it's true there is more to eat and go do in many HCOL areas in the country, but there are diminishing returns. Perhaps 20 years ago the gap was significant enough to matter. But these days, even in medium sized Midwestern cities there is typically more variety in cuisine, entertainment, and cultural options than the average person can actually utilize. Weather can also be a driving factor, but even some places that are particularly expensive like Seattle or NYC don't have particularly great weather. And with global warming, the Midwest is generally getting less cold in the winter, while HCOL areas like those out west are getting regular wildfires, record breaking floods, and extreme heat waves, so even on this front the gap is diminishing. As for careers opportunity, that seems to be rapidly disappearing with the advent of remote work. I'm not making the claim that Michigan or Wisconsin are toppling NYC or LA as top destinations for tourism. But there is a difference between a vacation destination and a place to make a living, and it's getting hard to see how some of these HCOL areas in the country make sense given the other options these days, given the cost difference.
inglor_cz 3y ago
"two, seemingly warring, demographics get to cross pollinate and empathize with each other" Or fight to the death, like the European far left and far right in 1930s Berlin, Madrid etc. Proximity sometimes breeds understanding, sometimes explosion.
woodruffw 3y ago
The article is about the 40-to-64 demographic, not young folks. (This isn't your fault for misunderstanding that -- the article's phrasing goes to lengths to imply otherwise.)
f1yght 3y ago
This assumes that small towns that have shrinking and aging populations are more desirable to live in than cities for the sole purpose that housing is cheaper. Cities have large advantages like proximity to other jobs should it be lost, services, better schools, better restaurants, more people your age you can hang out with.
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  I know a powerful, politically connected woman who moved from the DMV to Aimes Iowa. She absolutely loves it, and is shocked by how much more walkable, affordable, and cultured the town is than where she came from. This is maybe the ... 15th? person I know who's said something like this. I think people literally don't know how nice a lot of America is.
  - __derek__ 3y ago
    Ames is not a gutted Midwestern town, though. College towns centered on large research universities benefit from a similar dynamic as the DMV.
tivert 3y ago
> Young folks get to take advantage of wage arbitrage. Midwestern towns gutted by 40 years of foreign slave wages get an influx of new blood and a revitalized service sector. Two, seemingly warring, demographics get to cross pollinate and empathize with each other while collectively giving the middle finger to an unholy Government/Big Corp alliance trying to corral everyone in a few big geographical regions. That sounds like a fantasy that's misrepresenting the effects that are already happening. You don't get the cross-pollination, you get more and different resentment, because the "new blood" may "revitalize" the physical area, but they don't revitalize the original residents. Those people get driven out through gentrification, and you end up with a little colony full of coastal colonizers.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

> Midwestern towns gutted by 40 years of foreign slave wages get an influx of new blood and a revitalized service sector. I think that is what is most galling about the fight against remote work. It is the way for knowledge workers to have quality of life (versus heading to a coast to save up before you have to leave because the COL is unsustainable into parenthood or retirement) while also providing a sustainable economic base for smaller towns that would otherwise be hallowed out. You don't want to cater to companies (who can play jurisdictions against each other for tax breaks and if they leave, can cause outsized impact to the tax base and local economy), you want to cater to remote workers [1] [2] (who will settle down and anchor themselves to your community, hopefully). [1] https://www.bobvila.com/slideshow/13-u-s-cities-incentivizing-remote-workers-to-relocate-578931 https://www.bobvila.com/slideshow/13-u-s-cities-incentivizin... [2] https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job#relocation-incentives https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job#relocatio...

thatfrenchguy 3y ago
> It is the way for knowledge workers to have quality of life (versus heading to a coast to save up before you have to leave because the COL is unsustainable into parenthood or retirement) Meh, what you gain in square footage of your house moving in the Midwest, which is what I think you meant by "quality of life", you loose in career opportunities , weather / outdoor activities, quality of food, and cultural enrichment for your children. > (who will settle down and anchor themselves to your community, hopefully). Folks with 4-5x the median income coming into a county is more likely to create resentment than anything too, if they end up staying.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/cities-pandemic-moving-trends https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/cities-pandemic-moving-tren... https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/05/03/why-americans-are-leaving-big-cities-behind https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/05/03/why-americans-are-le... (Control-F "On the move from big cities to rural communities" and "On where Americans want to live now") https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/3479076-americans-are-moving-out-of-major-cities-and-opting-for-southeastern-states-data-show/ https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture... https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/04/metro-areas-shrinking-population-loss/629665/ https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/04/metr... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Enjoy the city if that's your jam, genuinely! Lots of options for everyone to live their best life.
- ROTMetro 3y ago
  Let's see, I gained a local ski mountain with reasonable locals season pass rates (cheaper to take the kids skiing than the family going to see a movie every weekend in the winter), got a great boat for the local lake and my kids grew up boat camping (at spots only accessible by boat) where they saw beavers, otters, etc every week. We hiked and picked huckleberries and saw black bears, moose, elk. Friends had wakesurfing boats. We white water rafted and floated rivers. In Santa Cruz we would kinda body surf/boogie board and hike crowded trails. Not sure what culture there was in Santa Cruz we're missing, we went and saw the old missions but other than that??? Biggest thing we missed was the Monterey Aquarium and some food, but we just learned how to make it ourselves.
- bart_spoon 3y ago
  > Meh, what you gain in square footage of your house moving in the Midwest, which is what I think you meant by "quality of life", you loose in career opportunities , weather / outdoor activities, quality of food, and cultural enrichment for your children. Strongly disagree on virtually every point, and this seems to be a common refrain I hear from those seemingly trying to convince themselves as much as anyone why the sky-high cost of living in certain areas of the country is worth paying. Yes, it's true there is more to eat and go do in many HCOL areas in the country, but there are diminishing returns. Perhaps 20 years ago the gap was significant enough to matter. But these days, even in medium sized Midwestern cities there is typically more variety in cuisine, entertainment, and cultural options than the average person can actually utilize. Weather can also be a driving factor, but even some places that are particularly expensive like Seattle or NYC don't have particularly great weather. And with global warming, the Midwest is generally getting less cold in the winter, while HCOL areas like those out west are getting regular wildfires, record breaking floods, and extreme heat waves, so even on this front the gap is diminishing. As for careers opportunity, that seems to be rapidly disappearing with the advent of remote work. I'm not making the claim that Michigan or Wisconsin are toppling NYC or LA as top destinations for tourism. But there is a difference between a vacation destination and a place to make a living, and it's getting hard to see how some of these HCOL areas in the country make sense given the other options these days, given the cost difference.

inglor_cz 3y ago

"two, seemingly warring, demographics get to cross pollinate and empathize with each other" Or fight to the death, like the European far left and far right in 1930s Berlin, Madrid etc. Proximity sometimes breeds understanding, sometimes explosion.

woodruffw 3y ago

The article is about the 40-to-64 demographic, not young folks. (This isn't your fault for misunderstanding that -- the article's phrasing goes to lengths to imply otherwise.)

f1yght 3y ago

This assumes that small towns that have shrinking and aging populations are more desirable to live in than cities for the sole purpose that housing is cheaper. Cities have large advantages like proximity to other jobs should it be lost, services, better schools, better restaurants, more people your age you can hang out with.

local_crmdgeon 3y ago
I know a powerful, politically connected woman who moved from the DMV to Aimes Iowa. She absolutely loves it, and is shocked by how much more walkable, affordable, and cultured the town is than where she came from. This is maybe the ... 15th? person I know who's said something like this. I think people literally don't know how nice a lot of America is.
- __derek__ 3y ago
  Ames is not a gutted Midwestern town, though. College towns centered on large research universities benefit from a similar dynamic as the DMV.

tivert 3y ago

> Young folks get to take advantage of wage arbitrage. Midwestern towns gutted by 40 years of foreign slave wages get an influx of new blood and a revitalized service sector. Two, seemingly warring, demographics get to cross pollinate and empathize with each other while collectively giving the middle finger to an unholy Government/Big Corp alliance trying to corral everyone in a few big geographical regions. That sounds like a fantasy that's misrepresenting the effects that are already happening. You don't get the cross-pollination, you get more and different resentment, because the "new blood" may "revitalize" the physical area, but they don't revitalize the original residents. Those people get driven out through gentrification, and you end up with a little colony full of coastal colonizers.