[supernova87a]

Can you imagine moving to the Bay Area in the 80s? To grow up when land was still cheap, before college competition was cutthroat and unaffordable, when relatively simple competence could get you a solid job and VC/PE firms weren't plundering and incentivizing the latest 30-second attention-span app to reach $1B?

It would be me living in Los Altos now, instead of the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or reform Prop 13 and free up some affordable place to raise a new family.

Oh well.

[tasty_freeze]

You have a distorted picture. I moved to the bay area in 85, stayed 20 years, then left. If you moved there and were already well established, sure, real estate would have been more affordable then than now. But as a young engineer, things were still pretty expensive.

My starting salary as a BSEE working for a minicomputer company was $30,000. Two weeks after arriving they had layoffs. They were nice to the new hires and said we'll keep you on for a bit, but you should start looking for new jobs, plus there is a 10% pay cut, so $27K/year ($65.3K in 2020 dollars).

My shared apartment was off Maude and Mathilda was nothing special. It was 700 sq ft and was $750/month, which works out to $1800/month in 2020 dollars. Palo Alto, Los Altos Hills, and Atherton were all expensive addresses, even then.

[OkGoDoIt]

Now that is perspective I’d like to hear more about, considering how much my peers whine about how things would’ve been better if they moved to the bay area long ago and it’s all crappy nowadays. That’s not nearly as much change as I would’ve expected in inflation-adjusted dollars. I do wonder how typical your case is though. I would love to hear more data points from others in similar situations.

With all the old rent controlled apartment in San Francisco, it certainly feels like people who moved here a decade or two ago are locked into to paying basically nothing by modern standards. I personally know a couple people who still live with their exes because their rent-controlled apartment is too good a deal to give up.

[shuckles]

San Francisco rent control is below inflation, so it gets cheaper every year you stay.

[nitrogen]

If you stay in downtown SF in a "YIMBY"/new construction building, there's no rent control and the prices are astronomical. $3900ish for the cheapest studio in some buildings.

[shuckles]

What does the location or construction date have anything to do with YIMBYism? In fact, YIMBYs probably believe that San Francisco's least desirable neighborhoods shouldn't be where all housing growth occurs.

[ghaff]

I started as a product manager (with engineering degrees and an MBA) for a minicomputer company at almost exactly the same time getting paid $42K as I recall. This was one of the Route 128 companies. But, based on some recruiting conversations I had over time, the Bay Area salaries weren't really a lot higher and housing was more expensive. That's one reason I never moved out West. I think I was paying similar in rent initially but it was a bigger 2BR townhouse.

Housing has gotten relatively more expensive but it hasn't been cheap in much of the Bay Area for a very long time and tech salaries didn't used to be anything special.

[anonAndOn]

Sure 280 was known as the Billionaire's Highway and 101 was the Millionaire's Highway even back in the late 80's but there were still lots of affordable tract homes in the south bay. Nobody knew the industrial park across from Vallco Fashion Park would become the mothership for the world's most valuable company.

[lliamander]

> $27K/year ($65.3K in 2020 dollars)

Side bar: that is a breathtaking amount of inflation in just 35 years.

Even if wages kept up with inflation, the impact this would have on cash savings is just devastating.

[ChrisLomont]

> that is a breathtaking amount of inflation in just 35 years.

That's under 3% inflation which is a not breathtaking. The Fed targets 2%, which helps avoid deflationary spirals and helps both stability and lowers unemployment, two of their mandates.

>Even if wages kept up with inflation,

Wages have surpassed inflation in just about every income bracket for the past 100 years. And when you factor in total remuneration, returns to workers are even higher. Here's 50+ years of data [1]

>the impact this would have on cash savings is just devastating.

No one in their right mind holds cash savings for 35 years. It's a ludicrously long time to simply hold your savings in a cash pile.

[1] https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44705.pdf

[lliamander]

> That's under 3% inflation which is a not breathtaking.

Perhaps it is better to say that I am caught off-guard by the power of compound interest.

> The Fed targets 2%, which helps avoid deflationary spirals and helps both stability and lowers unemployment, two of their mandates.

I am generally skeptical of the Fed, but that's an entirely different discussion, so I'll just nod my head and move along.

> Wages have surpassed inflation in just about every income bracket for the past 100 years. And when you factor in total remuneration, returns to workers are even higher. Here's 50+ years of data [1]

That is good to see, thanks!

> No one in their right mind holds cash savings for 35 years. It's a ludicrously long time to simply hold your savings in a cash pile.

True, but people do usually place their money in a savings account. And while in theory the interest from the savings account should exceed inflation, it seems to me the mere fact of inflation means that people who have primarily cash savings are needlessly penalized.

But while it is absurd to store you money in a coffee can in the shed for 30+ years, I'm not sure it should be.

[ChrisLomont]

>but people do usually place their money in a savings account.

No, they don't. Some people have some money in saving accounts, but the VAST majority of people's savings are in houses and in retirement plans, which are not cash holdings. Only a very small amount of people have the majority of their savings only in cash for periods long enough that compound inflation kills the savings.

As to things like the Fed, and inflation:

Every single country in the world has chosen to use central banking due to the lessons learned over the past few hundred years, and especially during the Great Depression, that having a politically independent central bank target low inflation results in the most stable, predicable economy. It gives decent ability to balance shocks, lower unemployment, make business smooth and predictable, and avoid deflationary spirals, which are devastating. Compared the period right before the world started understanding how this can work, there is no question that volatility and destructive cycles are now vastly better.

I get the idea that you have not ever studied economics, especially monetary policy, but just like you probably have not studied quantum physics or brain surgery or ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, just know that mankind has put tremendous effort into all of these and has learned some very useful things.

So - given that centuries of good thinkers following centuries and hundreds of countries of evidence have come to the conclusion that low inflation and central banking are wise, and not the product of conspiracy Illuminati nonsense, then you should adjust your beliefs that this is wise, in the same way you'd understand medicine, physics, math, etc., are all studied and the experts do indeed understand them vastly better than the general populace.

Thus, since there will be targeted inflation of around 2%, it is dumb to assume one should simply save all their money as cash. Invest it in broad index funds, or something similar.

>I am caught off-guard by the power of compound interest.

All the more reason to not hold cash, which has zero reason to grow, and has a very solid reason to shrink in buying power, and invest in productive assets with savings. The compound growth of productive assets then works for you, not against you.

>But while it is absurd to store you money in a coffee can in the shed for 30+ years, I'm not sure it should be.

It is absurd given the rest of the evidence around us.

[lliamander]

> I get the idea that you have not ever studied economics, especially monetary policy

That is one hell of a presumption. Did I offend you?

> but just like you probably have not studied quantum physics or brain surgery or ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, just know that mankind has put tremendous effort into all of these and has learned some very useful things.

This is a complete non-sequitor. It's physics envy and posturing nonsense. The successes of physics and medicine have no bearing on whether mainstream economics is a complete crock. In the soft sciences like economics, the expert doesn't necessarily bring more to the table than the reasonably well-read layman. I'm not saying there is no value in studying these subjects, but the collective "expert opinion" is not in anyway "science".

Maybe you should study some philosophy?

[ambicapter]

> Wages have surpassed inflation in just about every income bracket for the past 100 years. And when you factor in total remuneration, returns to workers are even higher. Here's 50+ years of data [1]

> [1] https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44705.pdf

This document is 47 pages long. Can you cite the page or section you're referring to?

[ChrisLomont]

Lots of pages show the data in various ways. The chart Fig 5 on page 7 is pretty clear for household income. Table 2 page 34 shows every quintile becoming richer over time. Lots of the content also explains forces affecting this.

There's plenty of such studies from the Fed and from CBO, among others.

[Cherian]

Would you be open to doing an interview? If yes, how do I reach out?

[mikerg87]

California in the early 80s wasn’t fun. We left SF in ‘83. Interest rates around 15%. Minimum wage around $2.50/hr. Gas rationing. you could only buy gas on certain days based on your license plate. There was an apartment above a garage in SF that sold for $200,000 that was fixup and the garage wasn’t part of the deal.

My parents moved us to they east coast where they did finally purchase their own home.

[greedo]

Gas rationing in the 80s? I think you're off a decade. I lived in SoCal in the 80s and there was no rationing. During the Oil embargo in 73 there was the odd/even rationing, but that didn't continue into the 80s.

[dragonwriter]

California (and several other states) also implemented even/odd rationing in response to the 1979 oil crisis.

[bcrosby95]

My parents almost had to leave in the late 70s. They moved to San Jose to work in tech. Bought a house in 72 or so. Their home value tripled in around 6 years and so did their property taxes.

[ghaff]

Which is why Prop 13 got passed. It may have bad features and bad side effects but IMO you really don't want to force people to sell their homes because their property taxes have rapidly gone up.

[supernova87a]

One way that other states have done it more intelligently is to allow people to stay in their homes as long as they want, and not paying the proper tax bill. When they die/sell, that $ liability gets deducted from their house sale price.

[dragonwriter]

The bad features and bad side effects are the point, avoiding forcing people on limited incomes out of their homes was a convenient leverage point that could be much better served by more targeted policy.

Like, for one, if that was actually your policy goal, the policy would only apply to primary residences, not all real property.

[ghaff]

Totally agree. I have no personal stake in it but Prop 13 certainly seems to be overly broad for its goal as I understand it of not forcing people out of their homes and neighborhood if they gentrify or otherwise shoot up in value. (Mind you, you can also make points about a long-time neighborhood restaurant that's forced to close because of taxes.)

[Lammy]

> The bad features and bad side effects are the point

Agreed, especially with how good Prop 13 is at baking existing segregation in forever, since then nothing else makes economic sense on the individual level except to stay put.

[coldtea]

>It would be me living in Los Altos now, instead of the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or reform Prop 13 and free up some affordable place to raise a new family.

Yeah, you would then be the "rich [person] who others curse for refusing to die or reform Prop 13 and free up some affordable place to raise a new family"

[bloqs]

Thats the joke

[skavi]

Is that not their implication?

[machello13]

whoosh

[Taniwha]

I moved to the Bay Area in '84, bought a house in ~89 - house prices had just run up to what people considered then as high levels - Real Estate then leveled out and stopped rising for half a decade - it's done that on and off for 40 years - it was never 'cheap' at the time.

Prop 13 was already in place in '84 - the only way to get rid of it is to vote it out, it's long past time

[ghaff]

I had a couple companies interested in recruiting me to the Valley in the mid 90s or so. One of the reasons I decided not to pursue was cost of living relative to the not inexpensive Boston area. And the companies even acknowledged that was the case.

[phil21]

Yep, I also had a job offer in the bay area in either '99 or 00' (time flies!) I was seriously considering. After doing the math, I'd have had to make almost triple my flyover state job at the time so I didn't pull the trigger.

That was probably an accidentally smart decision since months later the world imploded, and the company giving the offer went up in even more spectacular fashion that most.

[WalterBright]

Prop 13 was passed in 1978.

[mattlutze]

Given the time that's passed since then, you'd be one of the old rich person.

Austin sounds like an up-and-coming Valley, as do a few other really gorgeous locations around the US. The trick is to pick one and settle in early.

[onethought]

I think Shenzhen is the new valley of 1980. (Though to the GP you’re probably already priced out of the housing market there too )

[sgt]

But China is still rotten to its core. Eventually that'll backfire heavily on both Shenzhen and entrepreneurs trying their luck there.

[Ygg2]

Being rotten, never stopped anyone.

The biggest problem is that money can get easily into China, but not so easily out of it.

[411111111111111]

They love to export goods, so it's still easy enough.

That will have complications in the future, but that's the next generations issue, not the person making the decision today that wants a nice bonus.

[elcomet]

When they export, money gets in. But they don't import much , if you look at china's trade balance, it's at + 421 billion dollars [1] (money going in) while USA is at -616 B [2].

So it's in fact hard to get money out of china.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263632/trade-balance-of-...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/220041/total-value-of-us...

[OkGoDoIt]

Regardless of your opinion on Chinese politics (or your opinion on California politics for that matter), Shenzhen is absolutely blowing up. Just talking with random tech and startup people there, you feel an energy and optimism that is hard to find in the bay area these days. As a non-Chinese citizen, investing in property there feels a bit too risky for my appetite, but I certainly would not bet against it.

[eptcyka]

And the states are not?

[sgt]

The US is a stable and functioning democracy. This is not to say it is perfect.

[bluntfang]

>The US is a stable and functioning democracy.

Our current president and almost half of the country explicitly doesn't think so.

[chaostheory]

Unlike other places, people don't own land in China right? You can only lease it for x number of years. That changes the dynamics of the real estate market.

Pollution is also terrible with no end in sight.

[bovermyer]

Minneapolis is also gorgeous, and relatively cheap. There's a "greenway" for bikes and pedestrians that's a converted railway. It has a huge music and art scene. There are tons of local breweries and more than a handful of startups and big name companies with a presence there.

[kilbuz]

As a former resident, you're not mentioning the elephant in the room -- October - May. I grew up in the Midwest, so I get it, it doesn't seem that bad. But after moving away, it's hard to imagine going back, or convincing others to overlook it.

[phil21]

Minneapolis is a glorified suburb unfortunately. I grew up in North Minneapolis without a car and know very well first hand how the no-car lifestyle works even in the most well-serviced and dense areas on offer. That's ignoring the weather.

However, if you enjoy that style of living I do agree it might be one of the best places in the nation. If I ever get tired of urban living I plan on moving back.

[OkGoDoIt]

Basically all of that applies to Atlanta as well, if you prefer weather that’s too hot and humid over whether that’s too cold and snowy.

[egypturnash]

Good luck keeping it somewhere those musicians and artists can afford to live.

[edoceo]

It's lovely, true. But! Get some warm clothes!

[JacobSuperslav]

there's always an untapped place somewhere. in the 80s people were saying this about someplace else probably.

[warent]

New York city probably. That place has been huge and expensive for like 100 years now. The new untapped places to look at might be Austin TX and Boise ID

[echelon]

Austin, definitely yes. Boise? No way. There's much more chatter about Miami.

[mxcrossb]

Isn’t Miami literally sinking into the ocean (unlike Silicon Valley which is figuratively gone Atlantis) ?

[calvano915]

Boise is booming but more focused toward retirees than young families. Miami and Austin seem to have a larger influx of all types.

[WalterBright]

I remember a lot of griping in the 70s about the boom in housing prices in Hawaii and California.

[linguae]

I'm curious about the untapped potential of other parts of California. Now that the pandemic has made remote work a necessity, I'm wondering if regions of California outside Silicon Valley will benefit from remote tech workers having more options in terms of residences. For example, Sacramento is a very popular destination for ex-Bay Area residents, and it appears to be a good location for people working remotely for Silicon Valley companies who (post-pandemic) may need to make occasional trips to the office. Sacramento is still affordable, though it's becoming more expensive each year.

Other areas that are intriguing to me include San Luis Obispo County and some of Southern California's exurbs like the Antelope Valley area and Lake Elsinore, where it's possible to buy a nice single-family house in a safe neighborhood for less than $500,000.

California gets a bad rap in some circles due to its high cost of living and its taxes, but not everywhere in California has the Bay Area's high housing costs. There are many other areas of the state where people can still reasonably make a day trip to the Bay Area to enjoy its amenities while living in a place that is affordable on an average engineer's salary.

[gnicholas]

I grew up in Sacramento and now live near Palo Alto. Sacramento has great public schools. I went to a public IB high school, whose science teams regularly placed in the top 3 in the US for Science Bowl/ Science Olympiad. In many parts of CA, the best schools are private (LA), or you have to pay millions of dollars for a house in the good districts (Palo Alto).

In Sacramento, they have what is called 'open enrollment', which allows people to send their kids to school outside of their district, if there is a program there that isn't available locally. I had many classmates from across town, and one who lived halfway to Tahoe.

I personally think that areas like Half Moon Bay and Scott's Valley will benefit from remote work. It's close enough to go into SV when needed, but farther than many people would have wanted to commute daily. And they're beautiful, with good weather. SLO will probably benefit also, and I imagine that schools will change in these areas, to become more like SV/LA. That's probably good for SF/LA families, though locals might not like the changes.

[beamatronic]

There are so many nice little towns in northern California. Any of them would be a fine place to live.

[novok]

If I wanted to stay in generic american suburbia while my location doesn't matter for my job, it's hard to justify staying in california.

[DSingularity]

Wtf. Why do you curse old people for not dying? What is wrong with you? Do you feel the same about your parents? In 30 years when you are old, are you gonna move to Kansas and sell your property under market value to some younger people?

[tdiggity]

My parents purchased a house in Milpitas in the 80s. Inexpensive, yes, and they told me that Palo Alto was still considered expensive and out of reach for them at the time.

My father worked at HP for 25 years. Solid middle class lifestyle, no complaints.

[kkylin]

My extended family moved to the Bay Area in the early to mid 80s (some a little earlier). No one ever thought it cheap, and what they said then about cost of living is not that different from what everyone says now.

[WalterBright]

> To grow up when land was still cheap

People didn't think it was cheap at the time. The 70's had seen a boom in real estate prices, especially in California, due to the boomers moving into their home buying years. (And that was before Prop 13, which was a response to high home prices.)

> the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or reform Prop 13 and free up some affordable place to raise a new family.

Supply & demand economics won't deliver the result you want even if your wish for everyone over 60 to drop dead is fulfilled.

[barry-cotter]

> Supply & demand economics won't deliver the result you want even if your wish for everyone over 60 to drop dead is fulfilled.

Depends. If building housing were legal it would. Tokyo’s population has increased 50% over the last twenty years and property prices have been flat. If supply is allowed to rise to reach demand property prices don’t go up on a never ending spiral.

[antihero]

The housing market seems like one that is fucked up, especially here in the UK, because the government consists of and is run for homeowners, who have come to expect a continuous growth in their investment or freak the hell out, regardless of the actual value of housing on the market. So it's an artificially inflated market because they are incentivised to keep houses continuously more expensive or their base loses out.

[coldtea]

>Tokyo’s population has increased 50% over the last twenty years and property prices have been flat

That's because most live in glorified living room space, and many in "comfortable elevator" size houses...

[barry-cotter]

That may contribute to affordability but if supply was constrained to stop it reaching demand prices would have risen, tiny apartments or no. See San Francisco where glorified closets are a lot more expensive than in Tokyo. Prices haven’t risen in Tokyo because supply has risen. They have in many, many cities all over the Anglosphere. That’s a policy choice. Not a law of nature.

[ido]

That's the compromise you have to make to live in the biggest city in the world (metro population: 37 million people).

[coldtea]

Is it? Sounds orthogonal to the population, as the city could just expand vertically (more highrises/scyscrapers) or horizontally (more land).

[johannes1234321]

Na issue is that with expansion distances increase. Thus you lose the benefit of being in the city (close to work, close to friends, close to cultural offerings, close to shops, close to ...) While Japan did a few things to help, like reliably working high speed railway, which allows commute over wide distance, while central places are crowded during rush hour and can't take much more.

[ido]

Haven't Tokio already done both?

[anonymoushn]

It's nice that those are legal, yes, but the price per square foot is a good deal cheaper than SF too.

[WalterBright]

Even hotel rooms are in Tokyo are tiny compared with US hotel rooms.

[linguae]

On the other hand, roughly $50-100/night gets you a clean, though tiny, place to stay at a business hotel in the Tokyo metro area. (For those of you unfamiliar with Japan, a business hotel is a type of hotel that offers rooms primarily for people on domestic business trips. The rooms are tiny [think the size of a college dorm room, sometimes even smaller], but at the hotels I've stayed at, the service is friendly and the staff does a great job with cleanliness.) By comparison, there are parts of the United States where you have to pay more than $100 per night for a dodgy motel in an unsafe area. I generally stay at business hotels whenever I take a trip to Japan, whether it is for business or for vacation.

[helen___keller]

Talking about the size of living space in a discussion of free marking housing costs is irrelevant. The only fact that matters is cost per unit area, the free market will decide how much area people are willing to pay for (assuming, of course, that there is a free market that is able to construct smaller or larger living spaces. Japan has one of these, whereas the United States typically does not thanks to most municipalities' zoning law)

In Tokyo, land is extraordinarily expensive but living space is only ordinarily expensive (and not nearly as expensive as many US cities). As a consequence, a quick google search[0] suggests that a new single family home in Tokyo's 23 wards will cost you $600,000 with about 1051 square feet of living space, or roughly $600 per square foot, and in the distant suburbs (with long train commutes, an hour minimum but maybe 90 minutes or more to shinjuku. would be fine for a remote worker though) you can get a house for around $400,000 although this article regrettably does not mention if these houses are the same size on average or not (so $400 per square foot or less, not quite sure).

In terms of the urban form of the streetscape, expensive land coupled with the fact that you can legally subdivide your land, means that houses are very crammed together with almost no space in between in major cities, and especially in Tokyo. That said it's a free market - there are larger lots you can buy, and if you really want a big property I'm sure you could buy neighboring lots and combine them somehow (demolition of existing properties is normal anyways - if you really want a buffer from your neighbors, build a house that's smaller than your lot size!). In contrast, most municipalities in the US mandate a certain space between houses and/or require getting special zoning board approval to subdivide your lot, which means that there's essentially a "minimum" lot size, which turns into a minimum house cost of (minimum lot size * land price).

Additionally there will always be concerns about standard of living. IMO Japanese homes are, in some ways better, but in many ways worse, standard of living than American homes. For example, my impression is that the HVAC situation is typically much worse than the standard american home (although where I live in boston the "AC" is usually nonexistant since most homes are 100+ years old, but atleast the heating is good). On the other hand, Japanese bathrooms are a godsend, if you haven't experienced it you don't know. The biggest concern to me is the sound insulation, which can be poor in many cheap wood-framed Japanese homes (true in many cheap new construction American homes too, as well as some older American constructions. It always depends I suppose! But atleast in sprawling american suburbs you don't hear your neighbor as often through those walls because houses are spread out enough.)

Finally, as a note, while all the above is talking about Tokyo and it's suburbs, there are other big booming cities in Japan (Osaka is popular) which are often 30% or more cheaper but with many of the same big-city amenities like transit, walkability, restaurants and culture, and so on. In terms of price, Tokyo really is like the NYC of Japan, but it's actually affordable for the average family, albeit with either a small home or a long commute.

TL;DR : in Tokyo, land is really expensive, living space is moderately expensive, the free market has converged to fairly small living spaces relative to the US. In the rest of Japan (and distant suburbs to Tokyo), land is moderately expensive and living space is fairly cheap.

[0] https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/how-much-does-it-cost...

Addendum: to someone interested in suburban/rural housing in Japan, there's a youtube channel TokyoLlama with a series on his purchasing one of those abandoned houses in a distant tokyo suburb, about 50 minutes out of the city by train. It's an old, beautiful, artisan wood house. At some point in the series he covers all the costs associated with buying the house, as well as various costs and effort to renovate it and make it livable.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/TokyoLlama/videos

[nitrogen]

mandate a certain space between houses

Just want to note that this is in part for fire reasons...

require getting special zoning board approval to subdivide your lot

...and this is for traffic and services management.

[helen___keller]

Absolutely, public policy is nothing if not the art of tradeoffs

[WalterBright]

> If building housing were legal it would.

That's a quite different scenario.

You could confiscate the homes of everyone over 60, distribute them for free to young people, and the market prices of the homes would remain the same.

[barry-cotter]

Quite. So increase supply. Build, build, build.

[edoceo]

Or reduce demand. Move move move

[novok]

And watch as the tax base to fund your pension plans and retirement evaporates away. This shit is eating your seed crop levels of stupid.

[jfk13]

On the other hand, if building were entirely unregulated, I'm not sure how long it would remain a desirable place to live.

[barry-cotter]

Building is very much regulated in Tokyo and throughout Japan. Just pointing out that unaffordable housing is a policy choice, not a law of nature.

[zepto]

It really isn’t. There is a hierarchy of desirability which will always create price competition.

Nobody would be complaining about prop 13 or California housing prices if they didn’t desire to live in California more than somewhere else.

[bryanrasmussen]

I sometimes feel we're not living in the fully realized cyberpunk dystopia we were promised without a bunch of ramshackle buildings piled on top of each other and stolen data flowing through it all.

[pkaye]

Don't worry in 25 years the next generation will be cursing your generation for having all the advantages.

[JKCalhoun]

Ha ha. So many BBS's a local-call away....

I moved to the Bay Area in the 90's and Fry's was still a destination for the hardware hacker — selling wire-wrapping sockets and Playboy magazine. (I know - wut?) Disk Drive Depot, Computer Literacy Bookstore, Weirdstuff Warehouse, HSC.... I would do the electronics-surplus run on Saturday morning and see the same HAM's and "home brewers" picking through old alphanumeric LED displays, etc....

It's definitely a different place now. Sigh.

[smnrchrds]

Combination of high income and low cost of living is ever elusive. We saw the dream get a glimmer of hope with remote work, only to be soon crushed by CoL adjustment announcements. You would be hard-pressed to find, anytime in history and anywhere on planet earth, a time and place where salaries are really high and CoL is really low.

[ChuckNorris89]

>You would be hard-pressed to find, anytime in history and anywhere on planet earth, a time and place where salaries are really high and CoL is really low.

US, Germany and most of western europe in the post war boom till the late 80's.

A factory assembly worker at VW could buy an apartment and feed his family on a single income back then. Fat chance of doing anything like that now.

[dkarl]

> when land was still cheap

Twenty years from now, you will be able to tell the same story about wherever high-earning, highly educated young people settle in the meantime. All you have to do is predict and buy in.

[giantrobot]

Land was cheap in the Santa Clara valley in the past. Huge portions were still orchards and farms that were selling out for new subdivisions. The issue is it's a valley. There's no more open land unless you move impractically far away.

Growth in any area will raise prices but here the issue was compounded by a lack of extra land available after the cheap land was sold.

[twelvechairs]

Maybe you should just be thankful for the benefits you have. Most of the world is not lucky enough to be capable of working in tech in the Bay area.

[anonymoushn]

I don't think people should be happy to be fleeced by wealthy landowners, at least because if they were fleeced slightly less then they could give the difference to people living in poverty.

[ramphastidae]

Telling someone to always accept and be thankful for injustice and exploitation because someone somewhere else is experiencing worse injustice and exploitation is not as noble as you may think.