4 ms·

You know, no matter how much disposable income I get in Warsaw, Poland, I can't make it suddenly sprout Dutch or Swiss quality of public transportation, health

You know, no matter how much disposable income I get in Warsaw, Poland, I can't make it suddenly sprout Dutch or Swiss quality of public transportation, health care, food and entertainment. And commuting (by public transport) encourages cohesion within cities as well. So yeah, sorry, but I'd rather have the 120, lower disposable, and live in a nicer place. I also remember climate in SF was pretty nice. Not that remoting is evil or anything, but if it became a monoculture just like working from office was just a few years ago, the side effects can be devastating to some finer points of life. Too many great food places live off office workers eating lunch in them, and if a regular 15-minute rhythm train service between nearby cities stops making sense for commuters, my ability to visit a friend in there on a whim disappears as well.

marknutter 14y ago
There are plenty of cities in the world that have a cost of living that's a fraction of the cost of living in San Francisco but have just as impressive infrastructure and weather.
- dataminer 14y ago
  Can you point out some of those.
  - marknutter 14y ago
    Minneapolis
- milesf 14y ago
  Dang, I wish I had the results, but a friend of mine wrote some code to pull in data from several different sources on all of the cities in the world. He's a remote worker, single, and can live anywhere in the world. He compared all kinds of things including cost of living, weather, crime rate, internet speed, and a bunch of other variables. He moved to Panama City, Panama.
  - pretoriusB 14y ago
    So he had no attachment to any lover, friend, family, city or even country. Could be also described like hell on earth for some of us...
    - jtheory 14y ago
      Sometimes your family & friends are already spread all over the globe, and you can't live near more than one or two of them at best. Sometimes the city you're living in is a haunted place for you already -- after a severe personal loss, attack, stalker, etc.. Sometimes you suddenly find yourself with few close connections where you currently live (prime example: finishing grad school), and you have the opportunity to stretch your boundaries by not simply moving back to your hometown (or even home country). Or you may just have "itchy feet" syndrome, and you start getting pretty unpleasant to be around if you're stuck in one town for more than a few years, seeing the same people around. I'm married and we have two kids; each of us was born in a different country. I didn't leave the US initially for lack of people who liked my wife & I; to the contrary, the support of our friends was quite necessary because it was not always easy, initially. But it gets easier; and making human connections in a few disparate environments is enlightening, to say the least.
  - BerislavLopac 14y ago
    http://www.numbeo.com http://www.numbeo.com

marknutter 14y ago

There are plenty of cities in the world that have a cost of living that's a fraction of the cost of living in San Francisco but have just as impressive infrastructure and weather.

dataminer 14y ago
Can you point out some of those.
- marknutter 14y ago
  Minneapolis
milesf 14y ago
Dang, I wish I had the results, but a friend of mine wrote some code to pull in data from several different sources on all of the cities in the world. He's a remote worker, single, and can live anywhere in the world. He compared all kinds of things including cost of living, weather, crime rate, internet speed, and a bunch of other variables. He moved to Panama City, Panama.
- pretoriusB 14y ago
  So he had no attachment to any lover, friend, family, city or even country. Could be also described like hell on earth for some of us...
  - jtheory 14y ago
    Sometimes your family & friends are already spread all over the globe, and you can't live near more than one or two of them at best. Sometimes the city you're living in is a haunted place for you already -- after a severe personal loss, attack, stalker, etc.. Sometimes you suddenly find yourself with few close connections where you currently live (prime example: finishing grad school), and you have the opportunity to stretch your boundaries by not simply moving back to your hometown (or even home country). Or you may just have "itchy feet" syndrome, and you start getting pretty unpleasant to be around if you're stuck in one town for more than a few years, seeing the same people around. I'm married and we have two kids; each of us was born in a different country. I didn't leave the US initially for lack of people who liked my wife & I; to the contrary, the support of our friends was quite necessary because it was not always easy, initially. But it gets easier; and making human connections in a few disparate environments is enlightening, to say the least.
- BerislavLopac 14y ago
  http://www.numbeo.com http://www.numbeo.com