[Zahlmeister]

Wages don't naturally rise just because rent is higher, if anything the converse is true.

You'd end up paying 25$ for a coffee just so that the barista can afford their overpriced housing.

If you're just raising the cost of living, but not the standard, you're not gaining anything for anyone.

[TuringNYC]

>> Wages don't naturally rise just because rent is higher, if anything the converse is true.

I'll offer a lay-person first-person view in contradiction to this theory: rents set a solid bottom salary level acceptable to people. A typical Bay Area rent can consume 100% of your salary once you have a family involved.

As countless HN threads discuss, i'll pre-answer the typical nay-sayers. Yes, i realize I can raise my entire family of four in a studio apartment. I choose not to. Most people I know choose not to. Yes, i realize I can raise my entire family on ramen noodles, i choose not to. Yes, perhaps i'm picky. Yes, I realize I can drive 5hrs a day and live in a nice house -- I choose not to (mostly because my workday is already 10+hrs.). Yes, I can have roommates live with my family (seriously, someone suggested this on another HN thread. This is down-right creepy. I dont want a roommate living in the same house as my 1yo daughter.)

Call me prissy, but I just figured that Ivy League educations, CS degrees from top-5 institutions, 15yrs of experience and two decades of hard work would afford me more than a studio apartment.

Where does this all put me? It means I have a hard-hard bottom on what salary is acceptable in the Bay Area. Practically speaking, it has meant that I stay in NYC where live is more affordable (yes, i've done the math 10x and can demonstrate it.). I have a great live in NYC on a good tech salary. I'd give up half my quality of live to live in SF, which means that I need a much, much higher salary in SF to make it worth moving there.

[Zahlmeister]

What are you contradicting? You are supporting my point. You are sitting in NYC because you're not getting enough money in SF. High rents didn't make wages rise enough to make SF attractive even for you, a hot shot software developer. Now think about all the ordinary people that hail from SF...

[closeparen]

Someone usually replies to statements about not being able to raise a family on a professional income in SF by suggesting these sacrifices and acccusing the poster of being entitled and having unrealistically high lifestyle expectations. ("Of course you can't live a suburban lifestyle here. Change your lifestyle"). Looks like parent was responding preemptively.

[TuringNYC]

I see what you are getting at and I see your point, thank you. I had an orthogonal point that high rents put an absolute minimum on required salaries. You are absolutely right that sometimes that absolute minimum required salary is realized by the job simply not being taken!