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by totalgeek 1816 days ago
Let's not also forget the ability to take your pay from say a major metropolitan area like San Francisco, and work remote where you get more bang for your buck like Wyoming.

When I was working in the bay area I would've happily taken a 10-20% pay cut in order to work remote from anywhere. I would've been happy with a mandate of 'come into the office for a week (on the company dime of course) once a quarter, bi-annually or whatever'

2 comments

I think many of the companies that have announced remote options will also be adjusting salaries based on the local area's cost of living or cost of hiring or some other similar factor.
Of course, a lot of people taking their big tech paychecks to some lower-cost place will just be exporting the problem to another place. A sudden big inflow of cash into a low-cost area is going to raise prices.
You're assuming that every city refuses to build housing. That is true in California but not in the US as a whole.
the economics are there for every city.

Who's going to let housing be built if it devalues the houses they own?

When their property taxes go up a large amount too.

Prop 13 in California is a key thing cited as why NIMBYism is stronger than usual, because current entrenched residents don't feel the pain of their behavior.

Gov'ts also do not willingly pass something like prop 13 themselves, because they don't like to limit their ability to tax.

Since before anyone on this board was born companies, have adjusted pay based on location using charts like this;

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/05/25/us-dollar-ho...

To think this time is different is to be ignorant.

Some people earning more money and reducing the income/wealth gap is not a terrible problem to have. The rapid-ness might cause some friction in the short term, but the alternative of stagnation and deflation in the long term is a far worse problem.