[Jach]

"Relocation isn't an option", well not with that attitude. Your excuse for why doesn't seem very good. In this thread about blue collar jobs, how many blue collar workers are in the US illegally and working their butts off in order to send just about everything they make to their family back across the border? They often have wives, sometimes children, extended family, depending on them. Quite a number of people here legally do the same, too. All relocated despite the same or worse conditions you use as excuses. Maybe they're just not as selfish? Selfishness isn't necessarily a bad thing but it's important to recognize.

Suppose you could find a job elsewhere for $90k+. If you can't, sure, that's a good reason why relocation isn't an option, and finding a job in a location you don't live in is by no means easy. But if you can, then you ought to consider moving, by yourself (since your wife is busy with a career), live in an apartment with one or two other roommates, and live frugally saving/investing as much as you can. Make visits back home when you can, but at $90k+/yr that shouldn't be so hard, depends on how you want to balance your triple sized income. (Higher COL areas will eat into that, but living frugally, not very much.) Do this for 3-4 years, you'll have made more than 10 years at your current location and pay, handwaving away taxes/bonuses/raises/better opportunities. Then quit and relocate back, except now you have a savings cushion and it only cost you another few years of your time.

[TheAdamAndChe]

Telling everyone to just move where the jobs are and live like an immigrant within your own country is why Trump got elected, and will by why similar candidates get elected in the future. Economic growth and development shouldn't be limited to only a handful of cities in the country. It's not good for our workers, society, or culture in general.

[Jach]

Well, if you want, you can live quite better than most immigrants at $90k+, even in the expensive coastal cities, it's just that you're setting yourself up for having to work throughout your 30s and 40s and maybe your 50s. A lot of people are fine with that. But if people took frugality more seriously, they could plan for retirement by their 40s or earlier. Working 3 years out West gives you several years to spend back home with your family without having to work during that time.

Sounds like you want to redistribute the economic gains? Good luck with that, we know where that leads. Economic inequality is fine if people are also raised out of poverty, like over a billion people have been since 1990 while inequality has raised. Inequality can be a good sign. (http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html)

At the very least, America can't have it both ways, being an economic power house and evenly redistributing the fruits internally. You might have a shot if you require Americans roll back into a farming economy where half the population farms for each other and the other half, but you'll have to kill a lot of people and take and salt a lot of land and forbid a lot of machinery to get it done. I don't think that's why Trump got elected. The voters don't tend to want handouts, they just want certain existing handouts to other parties to go away so they can effectively compete again in certain domains. Dissatisfaction with the economy in their area is a big component, sure, and Trump actually cares about making the country's economy better, and he's already done good things to help some areas out, but neither he nor anyone else will ever make e.g. all the state capitals equally economically viable with similar growth rates. Physics is against them, math is against them, human nature is against them, morality is against them. SV and other tech hubs will pass one day, too, just like the ghost towns you can visit all over the western states albeit probably not so dramatically, but that'll just be because the economic centers have moved elsewhere, not because they've been redistributed. Exploit their opportunities while they're there.