A lot of upperwardly mobile, ambitious people don't realize this, or they generally understand it only in terms of chastising their high school peers who stayed home. If you build a society based on the assumption everyone will simply move and re-skill to the regions with economic opportunity, you get a lot of regions of bitter people who stayed behind somewhere and watched their local economy get destroyed by trade deals and technological advances, and that's how you get an anti-globalization populist political movement.
* The "stay behind" terminology is both evocative and biased. I didn't "stay behind". I moved away several times, thousands of miles, and lived in other places that ambitious people live, and then moved back to within 10 miles of where I grew up because the quality of life is better here. I can afford more, I have cultural amenities like world-class music and art, I'm near family and old friends as well as new friends, and people aren't all totally consumed by their work. The "upwardly mobile ambitious" set can frankly get stultifyingly boring and disconnected. I like having friends in construction, non-profits, pet services, etc.
* Like many Americans who really do "stay behind", I contribute to elder care in my family. A lot of people stay put because they need to care for someone, and America does not make it easy to get vulnerable or ill people services. This is part of what contributes to what you call the "bitterness" -- lack of support for child care, elder care, care for the mentally ill or those struggling with addiction, and in many cases it's a vicious circle: gotta stay in Podunkville to take care of grandma and your cousin 'cause you can't afford to get grandma other help and your cousin doesn't qualify for anything but SSI so he can't afford to move either, but staying in Podunkville you tank your own educational and job prospects, therefore keeping you in Podunkville forever. Sometimes it seems you can only truly be upwardly mobile if you can avoid caregiving responsibilities.
It's strange the level of distrust in the west over institutions that the majority of the world find completely uncontroversial. It takes a village to raise a child, and in a world without villages families are the biggest support system most people have. I have a feeling this is another instance of the minority being louder than the majority.
> Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading.
If the suburbs aren't sustainable, then what about rural? What about seaside? Where everything is super spread. It sounds to me that the "because roads" is an argument constantly made by those who levy taxes and by those who wants ever more taxes to be levied on others.
I live in a super-spread out rural/seaside area where I drive across vineyards to drive my kid to school. Businesses here aren't making a lot of money and yet there are roads. I somehow don't buy that very hard that sell that the suburbs aren't sustainable "because roads".
Do I really need to pay huge income taxes (France BTW) then 21% value added tax on everything I buy then 30% on any profit I'd make in the stock market, placing there money that's already been taxed? And paying four different (yup, four) taxes on real estate (land tax, "living tax", yearly tax on real estate wealth and now, the new, to me, one: "real estate tax for micro entrepreneurs")?
The tax never stops. And then, in addition to that, I've got to listen telling me that my area is too spread out "because roads and sewers" and I should pack my stuff and go live in a city?
> If the suburbs aren't sustainable, then what about rural?
Having lived in urban, suburban, and rural areas, I would say that rural areas can sustain themselves because they have significantly less infrastructure.
People have wells for water, septic for sewage, poorer (or satellite only) internet, and less reliable/resilient electricity. The roads are narrower, sometimes without lane markers, sometimes unpaved. Fewer cars on the roads means less maintenance.
This lowers costs.
Suburbs typically have none of these options due to density. They have city-like amenities but have to run them greater distances.
There are ways to improve suburbs. One is consolidate housing but keep the same overall density with greenspace (less wire and pipe to rowhouses). Also, mixed use development with small businesses can reduce roads needed and generate tax revenue.
Rural areas are also heavily subsidized by urban areas. This is necessary because we need rural areas to make food. Suburbs are also subsidized, but without the benefits.
> The tax never stops. And then, in addition to that, I've got to listen telling me that my area is too spread out "because roads and sewers" and I should pack my stuff and go live in a city?
It seems like you are agreeing with the parent poster but are also mad at them because they are right? Unsustainable suburban development leads to crushing taxes is exactly what most folks are saying in this thread. That's how infrastructure like "roads and sewers" are funded.
You can move to the city. You could also move to a more rural area, if you like. If you want suburbs with urban amenties, it's going to be expensive.
It's not the same. Rural areas in Europe (and mostly anywhere else, for that matter; this is not about Euro-exceptionalism) are not 100% residential urban sprawl like the typical U.S. suburb. They have locally densified villages and towns, each with a self-sustaining mix of housing and local business. That's what a sensible model looks like.
The US doesn't keep local businesses the way Europe does.
Corporations with local branches is about as close as we get.
A small rural CVS next to a small rural Texaco next to a small rural Dennys is a rural town economy.
Dollar Store not CVS. Dennys will be locally owned and not a Dennys diner. Might be the town bar though. May not be a Texaco, that will depend on where you live. There are some rural chain gas stations like Caseys though (great pizza). Your gas station might sell bait too. Maybe.
Yeah but you get to live in France which is kind of awesome. Way better food and quality of life perhaps.
Your France taxes though are not far off US taxes either (30% capital gains)... The USA has property tax with multiple levies on them and they are a function of real estate wealth in most places. And you don't have the crazy healthcare premiums.
Renote work is going to change the equation for tax. Your options used to be rural France (if I understand from your post) and metro France. But now you can choose from many jurisdictions around the globe. Now they’ll have to start competing with one another on taxes charged and services provided.
you are right to be suspicious of the explanation -- the truth is partly what is said in other comments, and partly that core City Hall employees, local Police and Fire unions have built retirement and 401k investments that are insolvent -- also a Ponzi. There is soft money being pushed around a LOT right now to pretend its OK.
See the Strong Towns article "The Growth Ponzi Scheme" [1] and the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card for more concrete data [2].
The gist is that we've funded the construction of our infrastructure nationwide without accounting for the cost of maintenance. Now after decades of neglect, the cost of fixing all of our infrastructure is astronomical, far worse than if we had been doing it correctly from the beginning.
If it is indeed that much cheaper to start from scratch, we have the open land to do so. Housing prices might fall in the areas that are chosen for divestment, but if we can't afford it, it's unclear what other paths remain. I largely believe in Strong Town's thesis, but we can't make everything a 5+1 because there is too much underdeveloped land use to justify that level of density everywhere given the total population size. There certainly are plenty of areas where's it's economical to upzone, but in many areas it won't be.
What? We can't do 5+1 everywhere because first we need to litter every last bit of countryside with failed sprawling towns that were swallowed by their own maintenance costs?
You just have to densify existing towns and smaller cities, and go back to something more like the traditional model of small-scale urbanization. Density is more efficient than suburban sprawl.
Density. North American suburbs built around cars spread taxpayers thin over a large area that requires a lot of expensive infrastructure. These places can’t actually afford the services they depend on and infrastructure debt is usually paid off by new developments kind of like a ponzi scheme.
Not GP but locally there are a few exurbs that have serious budget problems because they overbuilt infrastructure and don't have the tax base to fully maintain it which creates a feedback loop of poorly maintained roads, water systems, parks, etc.
Some of it had to do with the murder of brick and mortar retail in tightly packed downtowns in favor of the big box stores on the edge of town. That creates an enormous waste in municipal resources, doubly so if the store got property/sales tax subsidies.
This is less of an issue in the denser near suburbs where populations and revenues have been consistently rising the last few years.
> doubly so if the store got property/sales tax subsidies.
Walmart is particularly good at this. Search for Walmart property tax lawsuit and you'll find hundreds of examples of Walmart filing lawsuits to get their property taxes lowered. The latest ploy for these big retailers is to push to have their property taxes valued as if the store was empty and shut down and had no inventory.
At least American suburbs are ultra car-dependent meaning you're not walking anywhere (literally physically degrading to both you and the environment) and you do not have chance social encounters at nearly the frequency of any walking city (socially degrading).
This is not to say there aren't real benefits to life in the burbs and serious disadvantages to city life, but it's fairly evident by now that American suburbia is not the utopian dream it was sold as.
At least with WFH, the trend is reversing. People are leaving urban cores and moving to the suburbs where they can get more space for less money and avoid a lot of the QOL issues.
San Francisco is a great example. The once bustling downtown is losing business at a rapid click not only because residents have left, but also office workers aren't coming in anywhere near as often.
I predict it'll be a positive feedback loop. As more businesses close, QOL issues become worse, it'll accelerate the exodus. It's like a repeat of the 60's.
I predict that with people who weren't interested in the amenities of the city and not contributing to the culture and community gone, SF will recover some of the culture it lost when high rents pushed all the creatives out. It'll make SF even better than before.
Cities are the lifeblood of any culture and economy, after all.
Perhaps for you city dweller's, but for the rest of us, we really like our suburbs.
Not being able to walk everywhere is literally not even a factor I look for when moving to a new area. I want quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy and affordability.
I have yet to see the metropolis that checks all of those boxes, or any of them for the matter.
I see why you like the suburbs. But it's essentially a hoax, it's like living above your means on a bunch of credit cards - at least for most people (not all).
Affordability for a lot of suburbs is when you allow for degrading infrastructure and moving more and more towards bankruptcy of cities. Budget analysis for a lot of suburbs show very troubling trends. In essence, living in a properly maintained suburbia is not affordable. Too much street, pipe and wire per capita.
Cleanliness - it's only in appearance. The dirtiness is externalized to the environment by means of CO2 and other emissions due to personal transport. A lot of concrete and asphalt being poured require massive excavations and destruction of nature elsewhere. More than cities.
Quiet is also externalized - cars are extremely noisy and suburbia basically requires a lot of 4000 lbs metal hunks with mostly a single person inside.
Privacy is there, but it costs quite a lot in total societal costs.
Pick any moderate sized city in Europe! There's no reason Americans have to choose between glass and concrete imposing megastructures a la (parts of) NYC or sprawling car-dependent and socially atomized burbs a la Houston/Phoenix etc.
We can have moderately dense, highly walkable, transit-connected, safe, clean, private, quiet, socially vibrant, affordable towns and suburbs all over the country.
We just choose not to in large part because many Americans, brainwashed by The Automobile, can't even imagine such a state of affairs.
>I have yet to see the metropolis that checks all of those boxes, or any of them for the matter.
I hate beating this drum because it's borderline stereotypical at this point, but Tokyo really should be studied because for an incredibly dense city of nearly 14 million people they manage to achieve quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy, and affordability
>I want quiet
Visit the residential neighborhoods of the largest city in the world, Tokyo, and discover that you can get quiet with density. These are not mutually exclusive items, we as American society have somehow decided that noise pollution was an acceptable feature of urban landscapes. Japan decided, as a society, that anti-social noise activities in residential areas were bad and makes sure it stays that way.
>safety
A controversial topic pre-loaded with mountains of baggage, but IMO this is a result of policy and philosophical decisions. Japanese cities are incredibly safe at all times of the day -- you can leave a phone out in the open and no one will steal it. A lot of theories as to why that is, but the end result is clear: Japan, a city of 14million residents, is safe.
>cleanliness
Interestingly enough, 1960s and 70s Tokyo was a bit infamous for its litter/trash problem. I am a little fuzzy on how they turned that around, but they did and today it's one of the cleanest cities in the world. Again, a societal decision that has enforcement with teeth. And mind you, there aren't a lot of trash cans on the street. You have to carry around your trash with you if you generate any until you find a suitable trashcan or take it home with you. Yet the streets stay really clean.
>privacy
I will hand it to you, a big city can be a lot less private. But there are ways to create that sense of privacy within a more dense urban residential area without sacrificing density. Also, as density rises, you can get a weird counter-intuitive effect where the crowd affords you even greater privacy.
>affordability
The average house in Japan costs around $400,000 to build from scratch. Yes. You heard me right. When you buy a house in Japan you buy the lot it sits on, demolish the previous house, and build a house customized to your liking (designed and built by one of many competing housing companies). All for around $400,000.
Now, is it smaller than the current average American 2-story house? Yes. Is such a house size necessary? As it turns out, that's also a philosophical question and society over there has decided that in a trade off between smaller house + more urban density vs bigger house + less density, the density was worth the trade. You can definitely spend a million dollars and get yourself a proper sized mansion. But at least you get a proper sized mansion.
---
This isn't direct at you specifically, but one thing that frustrates me in the debates between urbanization vs non-urbanization in the USA is the lack of imagination everyone possess. So much possibility, so much possibility that IS ALREADY PROVEN and yet we circle back around the same things. American cities aren't the only way cities are. Our cities can be so much better, they HAVE been better, and we can make them better again if we collectively as a society choose to.
> I want quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy and affordability.
Most of these are pretty cliche. New York City is one of the safest cities in the country per capita. But as with “cleanliness” is usually trotted out in a dog whistly kind of way that really is about something else. And affordability: yep. You’ve got that for a couple reasons: 1. People LIKE living in cities. Good old supply/demand. 2. As this thread is discussing, suburbs are massively subsidized to the detriment of the cities they neighbor.
Not the OP. It's a literal claim, not metaphorical.
Pipes break. Schools wear out. Roads wear out. Houses and fencing wear out, etc.
Many cities don't budget in perpetuity and (further) can't maintain existing infrastructure as a population bulge dissipates or as young people move away.
Aye, some communities get it (mayors don't typically have a lot of power or knowledge in these matters). These tend to be communities that have an industrial base of some sector, the more varied the better. Farming communities tend to have more maintainable infrastructure than bedroom communities under stable or growth regimes.
All hell breaks loose when the population sinks. Its hard to justify higher taxes now to pay for things 10 years away.
It is said that the infrastructure required to sustain suburbs costs more money than these suburbs bring in. In the US a city gets federal money to build new suburbs, but when it comes to renewing them after a few decades, the city has to pay on its own and it often has not enough money to do it.
Aside from the other replies, they are degrading in terms of "living experience" - infrastructure, budgets, HOAs and whatnot. The infrastructure is being subsidised by dense cities, as there's simply too much street/pipe/wire per capita to support. So you either get prohibitive taxes, unsustainable budgets or subsidies from some level of government. Either way, they're not heading in a good direction.
That honestly sounds like a lot of spurious causal assumptions. The Rust Belt and coal mining regions didn't get economically depressed because people left. People left because of the economic collapse. You seem to be saying if all those college kids just moved back to Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, the people there wouldn't be mad about their economies being destroyed? Because they still would have been destroyed.
More people (economists/policy makers) just ignore the rust belt's (or local regional) problems, because aggregate GDP is going up and to the right and people just go where the labor is needed so everything is going great. We don't need factory workers anymore, just learn to code and travel across the country for a job what's the problem?
No, it's we don't need factory workers and factory towns any more, so travel across the country for a job because there's no alternative, the town is gone and nobody can save it. Learn to code isn't going to work for most people, sure, but travel across the country isn't something that can be avoided.
Not everyone is agreeable to this prescription because they live in X and can't or don't want to move, and they then equate economic growth / globalization with economic death, cause that's what it means for their town and that's my original point.
I'm one of the "upwardly mobile" folks who moved out, and I'm a bit shocked at all the comments here treating the headline like it's a bad thing. Having a local and consistent community is an essential part of a "good" city. I know that many of the places we moved away from were... lacking, but simply abandoning everything isn't going to help at all either.
I have moved quite a bit myself and honestly still miss 'home'. Hopefully soon I'll stay somewhere for the rest of my life, or a good chunk of it, so I can be 'home' again. My wifes a researcher and we follow the academic positions so I probably have another 3 or 4 locations to live in first (:
There are a lot of perks of having that stable community feeling around you.
Worse: Because humans have evolved to live in close-knit communities that cooperate and human species have a 'bonding period' in which young adults bond with others in their group in order to create a social group that will collaborate to survive in the future, people leaving not only their early neighborhoods, but also their families creates subconscious anxiety in those who left. They go and live in locations where they don't know other people, changing places multiple times, often way past the early adulthood bonding period. This further isolates them and amps up the subconscious anxiety. The result are societies with psychological problems, or in worse cases like the US, entire societies running on prozac and other medication. Even further exacerbated with the system trying to isolate people more to make them into individual consumers to get maximum profit and work output out of them, pushing them also to compete with each other, further alienating people from each other.
The system uses concepts like "Social mobility" etc, but these are just terms pushed forward to avoid calling it what it is - the system forcing people to do this in order to maximize its profit by not investing where there is no immediate and maximal return, and instead milking economic centers and urban centers that are already highly profitable. For the same reason the US rural areas lack broadband - there isnt immediate, maximal profit for private companies in bringing broadband to those regions, and they also prevent municipalities from starting their own broadband service for their people with the excuse of 'free market'.
While I partially agree with your assessment, it's worth noting that much of the dynamic settlement of the US has been based on commodity booms, which really can't be considered perpetual parts of the economy. People had to leave their homes to go clear the prairie, log virtually all of the US forest, mine the West Virginia coal and then the Wyoming coal after that, etc. Once those resources are used up, there is little left for people to do, regardless of technological advances that require fewer workers for the same output, much less trade deals (how much wood and grain do we import?). The economies oriented around renewable resources (Oregon timber for example) simply can't sustain as many people because the environment can't continually produce the output that it did during the initial exploitation.
This of course affects the downstream, more industrial elements concentrated in cities as well, which process the ore and lumber and make engines and furniture.
You also have the issue of people who move to high cost locales, raise kids and then their kids who especially can't afford it move away (or wait to inherit the house from you).
It's funny how globalised the anti-globalisation populist political movements may be. Yesterday's news included "Reichsbürger" getting busted in Deutschland for conspiring to coup, and it was mentioned the suspects were also pretty QAnon-aligned. However, Reichsbürger are not indigenous, but are derived from US "Sovereign Citizens", who result from an amalgam of nuttery derived from XIX and XX conspiracies wishing to stand athwart history yelling "stop!": from those who thought the 14A is bogus to those who thought the 16A is bogus to those who didn't care for the Civil Rights Act, etc. Anyway, all these conspiracies apparently became more mainstream in the 1970s US because of the many newly embittered people due to the farming policies of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz .
(incidentally, our farming policy here is diametrically opposed to both "get big or get out" and "plant fencerow to fencerow", and we still have major political centre parties, as well as left and right wing parties. But that correlation may have no relation to causation...)
This heavily underestimates the influence of Ezra Pound through his disciple and biographer Eustace Mullins. Butz certainly upped the economic pressure on rural people, but the theory is regular old European conspiratorial antisemitism as revived through Dreyfus, then post-WWI central European "stabbed in the back" fantasies, and interpreted by the fascist Europhile Pound.
If the US government hadn't just completed a program of left-wing eradication in the early part of the 20c, the pressure probably would have turned rural people towards the populism that they had turned to throughout the 19c and very early 20c; the kind of populism that culminated in the 4-term FDR presidency and the New Deal.
"Populism" as you use it here (to refer to right-wing antisemitic groups), was intentionally turned into a slur that was used to attack the working-class left-wing:
> Most of the Progressives, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, and Woodrow Wilson, were bitter enemies of the Populists. In American political rhetoric, "populist" was originally associated with the Populist Party and related left-wing movements, but beginning in the 1950s it began to take on a more generic meaning, describing any anti-establishment movement regardless of its position on the left–right political spectrum.
edit: as far as I can tell, the only two things that are characteristic across all European cultures are drinking cow's milk and conspiracist antisemitism. Although America further developed it and fed it back to Europe (note Ford's influence on Hitler), the framework is definitely European. And of course, a lot of fascism in Europe was financed by the US post-WWII.
Interesting that these memetics[0] have been ping-ponging back and forth across the Atlantic. If you wish, search my HN comments for what (little) I know about Pound — I had not realised he'd been influential, as I'd thought he'd been dismissed as a crank upon openly embracing fascism[1].
[0] The Master and Margarita is my favourite take on deicide.
[1] with the benefit of hindsight, this is perhaps the victors' history. After all, NATO (although it no longer does) had openly fascist members within my lifetime. cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grândola,_Vila_Morena
(also: I'm not so sure about the cow's milk going all the way to the Med. Consider: "All Gaul is divided into three parts: the part that cooks with lard and goose fat, the part that cooks with olive oil, and the part that cooks with butter.")
Edit: Wow, Mullins met Pound post-WW2. ... and I guess if the goldbuggery I'd noticed earlier in Pound was coded antisemitism whose whistle I'd missed, it explains much more about how an educated, culturally open, intellectual (cf Pound's juvenilia) could embrace fascism.
no thanks for this simplified explanation -- "regular old European conspiratorial anti-whatever" is not the same as being suspicious of debt-and-foreign-trade driven core economies. There are winners and losers -- Farmers and their communities are sometimes the losers when you get cheap fruit from 5000km away, and lend money to people for basic needs from centralized and international banking.
this question is either naive or not sincere. Instead of empty symbolic theory, look at the real history of real people in place and time. All food and territory systems involve "trade" -- a specialists' word on a display shelf adds nothing to real inquiry IMO
Well, wtf is wrong with them that they stay when the economy gets destroyed? Move and make money elsewhere? Do they know there is skills and worker shortage all over the country?
Why do they think their little corner in the world is special? I think it is mix of fear and complacency because when it gets bad, it doesn't get bad enough.
As an adult you are responsible for taking care of yourself and those you love above any other obligation. Not just moving towand and states but people move to different countries and continents primarily out of their obligation and desire to fulfi that duty and lead a better life.
Then povery is the price. It's not enough that you can do pretty much what you want for a living and make good money but it also has to be available at random towns in the middle of nowhere? My experience is, people are stuck on the past when their area was prosperous. If they're not leaving because they like it there, then what's the problem? Just don't complain about it. Either work to change things there or move to a better place. America as a nation was built by people that kept moving for better opportunities elsewhere.
Only fix could be Soviet style registration system right? Where you are tied to the place where you were born unless Party sends you somewhere else?
I mean, we are over that phase even on international level. People move countries all the time. Complaining about this being the case within one country is just out of place.
And to mitigate enti-globalization populists, just better propaganda is needed. Let's face it: democracy only works when people are brainwashed (or there is a poll tax or other system that lets only well-to-do vote).
I mean, there is definitely a connection between "area is insanely inhospitable to educated youth, who then leave, and as a result those who remain have diminished opportunities," but this formulation feels like blaming those who leave instead of those who created the environment that ran the escapees off.
I grew up in a shitty place. I knew from early childhood I would leave, and I knew this even though I was living a very privileged existence in that place. My parents were upper-middle class; we had new cars and a country club membership and all that shit. And I knew this despite being low-key discouraged from wanting to leave because Family.
It was (and remains) a racist, sexist, homophobic state, and nothing is likely to change that.
There’s a deeper level here. Conforming economic, security, n judicial blocks to geography more strongly maps onto the governance structure for the US. In other words, this is a system that inherently creates and maintains divisions.
I was a military child, and so I moved around my whole life. My best friend has lived their whole life in the city I live in now.
Sometimes I get a little jealous because I don't have any heart-connection to any place. Most of the friends I regularly talk to are people I've met within the last 5 years, and I still don't have any still-standing friendships from the time before my dad retired.
But also, I cannot imagine that life, nor do I know if I really want to. Moving around so much gave me such a wide array of interests and cultural knowledge about places in and outside of the US. I think the benefits of that well-rounded background outweigh whatever pangs of sadness I get occasionally about not really feeling like I have a homeland.
I also grew up as a military kid and continued to jump from place to place in adulthood.
A few years ago I started thinking of myself as a "third culture" person. Characteristics like having an expanded worldview and ability to quickly read new cultures are some of the upsides. Unfortunately, I also find myself very misunderstood and I have a lot of trouble with relationships of all kinds. It's heartbreaking to leave people behind, and it's exhausting to spend the years fitting in with new groups of people. Most cultures are protective and cautious of outsiders, and friendships rarely stick. The Curse of the Traveler means that my favorite people and things are never where I am right now, but I'm none the poorer for having known them.
As I've grown older, I've come to appreciate the benefits more and more. I have favorite places to shop, eat, entertain myself all over the world. I'm confident that I see and use much more of cities than most people. Where you live, work, socialize, entertain yourself, seek education, and so on can all be totally different places. My worldview cherry-picks from anything anywhere. I browse the internet of many countries, and read news from all over.
I'm always thinking "wherever you go, there you are" with people around me. My mom visited me while I was living in Tokyo, and she just wanted to go to Disneyland and see fireworks, and mostly wanted to eat American food she found familiar. She found the unfamiliar things intriguing, but didn't know how to ask good questions and put the unfamiliar things to use in her life. People are largely blind to details of new people and places and it takes some real effort to penetrate layers of language and social access.
I wish individuals would reflect on their cultures more. Americans should be outraged over their broken healthcare system and work cultures (even though the pay can be good). Some places might benefit from forgetting a lot of their religious and political history in exchange for some happiness and freedom. Many cultures have surprisingly high tolerances for pollution, poverty, and civil rights restrictions.
I split my childhood between three places, and my adult life between four, many in different countries. The wife and I are planning to move again next year.
It's sometimes hard when you see others with their consistent lives, and roots laid down, but at the same time they'll often say how they envy you.
It's similar to the choice of having or not having kids. The trade off in life experiences is neither better or worse, just different.
had that too, the place my dad retired to became my "hometown"
having said that, as i got older and started having kids, i did move back to that hometown. i honestly did enjoy moving every 1-3 years as a kid, but my wife had a similar experience and did not enjoy it. now my kids have a home town and can see both sets of their grandparents every week or so. its also pretty cool taking my kids to the same restaurants and places that i went to when i was younger. based on how much trouble my 5 year old had with this move its not something i want to subject them to any more times(shes happy about it now and we wanted to get it over with before kindergarden etc starts). people like us who had a positive outcome from moving constantly are the outliers i think, its better to give the kids a sense of continuity.
Yea, my brother has wholly set his roots down there, and so I know my family will be settling here somewhat permanently, which is odd to me because I know this isn't the place for me. But, my brother has a kid and I'm much less likely to, so it makes sense my parents want to remain close.
I think I'd want to raise the kid with a sense of continuity, but also travel a lot. maybe even move to another country for a bit before returning back to the place i'd picked to raise them. who knows?
Not OP, but as someone who also moves around a lot, I'd say a few. Mainly, you don't get too entrenched in the local culture. You learn to kind of just be able to blend in with anyone. I could talk to some blue hair about radical ideas today, talk TCP pros and cons with some reserved networking guru tomorrow, and talk pro wrestling with a 50 year old redneck trucker the next day. Not that I'm super knowledgeable in all of those subjects, but would be just as comfortable doing all three. It's not as simple as having some extroverted ability or anything - anyone could do that, you just learn enough about people of different backgrounds and regions to understand how to interact that you really only get through exposure.
You also don't hold awful stereotypes that most people have - even most of those in a place like here. The south isn't all racist, the coast isn't all snobby, the southwest isn't full of dangerous cartels murdering everyone, middle America isn't a bunch of uneducated hicks, etc.
Not the person you asked, but it's harder to have harmful conceits about people and places when you've been to or met people from them. I've noticed that as the internet has grown, the rhetoric has moved from "lol, Americans" to "why do you vote for these people" to a lot more empathy for how our system is designed to inhibit change (good and bad).
I've changed my understanding of other countries the same way. Mostly from meeting people online, but sometimes in person. Just something as simple as someone asking "what is ketchup?" in line at an elevator at a convention can expand the mind. How do you describe ketchup? Everyone knows ketchup! It made me wonder what else was normal and obvious to me that isn't to someone who's never experienced it.
i mean, aside from those already listed? every 3 years i had to rebuild my life from scratch. when hard times come, do u want the person who's only ever experienced one way of life? or would you rather be with the person who has continuously had new challenges thrown at them, who has consistently been forced to learn a new way of life?
I moved from where I grew up. The biggest advantage is access to better career paths and potential with my career. If I get laid off, there are more diverse work options, unlike where I grew up.
The flip side is that being able to have family help out easily when our kid is sick. Also I have friends who stayed back home (the ratio matching this article title pretty closely) and they have barbecues together, can hang out on a random night around a fire pit, watch movies in their backyard, and other fun things. About planting roots and settling down.
I'm really torn about these two ways of going about it. There's something very comforting about setting down roots and having a solid network of friends and family. The flip side is that you're probably leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. The history of success in America seems to lean towards being nomadic.
I moved to the other side of the world from where I grew up in my early 30s, and I grew up at the other end of the country from where I was born and lived my early years.
I have a great group of mates I met in my early twenties and still speak with daily on WhatsApp.
As you say they meet up regularly, know each others families well, and they have not left their home area and have been friends since primary school.
They’re all jealous that I have lived an “adventurous and exciting” life and I’m jealous that they have amazingly solid roots.
I'm in pretty much this exact situation right now (we actually all left then returned in early/mid 20s after university), and, well, it's still lonely. WhatsApp (or, in our case, Discord) is no substitution for physically being able to meet up. I have friends where I live now, but it's not the same level of depth in the friendship, where we'd just go to each other's houses and shoot the shit for hours about everything and nothing (as we've done since high school) and I feel that is something I didn't realise I wanted and was missing until I moved. It's actually got me seriously reconsidering returning. Gonna be hard leaving after Christmas this year.
I feel like with remote work, it's possible to have your cake and eat it, too. Depends on your career, but at least in software, it no longer feels like you have to move to a tech hub to make it, for example.
That is mind boggling to me. I don't know anyone that lives in the same state they grew up in. I live about 3,000 miles away from where I grew up. I have 7 siblings and none of us live in our home state (and none of us live in the same state as another one - we live in NY, CA, MI, TX, OR, OH, UT, CO - we grew up in FL).
Though, I remember that one of my brothers once lived in Pennsylvania and he met 2 women who had never left their county and were amazed that he lived in so many other places and wondered out loud if he had been scared to live in places other than where he lived right then in PA. The mind set that other places are scary to live in is so foreign to me.
You have e.g. lifelong New Yorkers who may have gone to school elsewhere but can't really imagine living anyplace else.
But you have a couple of different groups broadly speaking. People who never moved out of a small town and people who gravitated back towards some major metro for any number of reasons.
And remember there are a lot of basically "small towns" that are counted with urban areas in the US.
Sometimes those small town groups move together as well!
My example: Shortly after college, I moved to the city half way across the country because my high school friend lived there. And then several other of our high school friends (all from a small town) moved there with their spouses as well, and we'd all hang out and even started a company together for a while. We eventually all went our separate ways, at least as far as what states we live in. (There is still some amount of moving to be closer again going on as well. For example my ex's family and a friend from the state we moved to moved closer to her.)
When I used to live in Massachusetts I found it boggling how many people had never lived anywhere else. Southern California, where I now live, I think actually has a narrow transplant majority.
Which is fascinating, because while we know California is technically net-outward migration (people moving to other states), the demographic of people net MOVING to California is by people in the top 5%.
California is essentially gentrifying at the state level with wealthy transplants, pushing working and middle class people who grew up here out of the state.
You can't win, huh? Move to California, you're gentrifying it. Move out of California, you're gentrifying wherever you go. Perhaps this framework isn't the best to think about it.
I think you’re falling into an easy trap when it comes to the word “gentrification”
No individual, be it in a state or a city or neighborhood, is to blame for gentrification. By definition gentrification is a collective movement — one billionaire with a ski chalet on a private mountain in extremely rural Montana does not gentrify the entire region, nor does it really raise the property values of any home near it.
Gentrification is systemic, and approaching California’s population loss and gain through this framework explains pretty much everything that is wrong with California at a policy and macro level.
The reason for this “gentrification” at the state level would confirm everyone’s priors: the cost of living is simply too high for most people. That would be greatly alleviated by building more housing to increase the supply for the bottom 90% of people who struggle with their mortgage payments, rent, or scraping enough money for a down payment together and realizing they can buy a home outright twice the size in Texas for what is just the down payment in California.
I find Massachusetts to be pretty big, for a small place. I moved here from Maine after college and there isn't really anywhere else I want to be. I travel recreationally, but like--if I'd been born here, I don't know why I'd live somewhere else. (Spent time in California, for example. Not my thing.)
Sometimes I think about buying a place back near where I grew up, but my parents don't live there anymore and it's really not that much cheaper than my current house for losing out on a lot of things, so...I don't know why I actually would. It's just more lawn-mowing.
I have no data, but the communities I have found in Houston are also very, very heavily comprised of out of state transplants.
Rural Texans who left home to seek their fortune are said to favor Dallas/Fort Worth more than here, and that feels fairly true, but again: no data. I know more people from out of state (or other countries) than I do from elsewhere in Texas.
I think this is a big part of why I believed 6 in 10 to such a massive number -- I grew up in southern California and then moved to the Bay, and it feels like most people I knew either had parents who immigrated before they were born or they themselves moved to the area for school or work.
Moving for a job has a huge social cost for most people. You leave behind everyone you know.
That might be worth it for someone who wants to forge a career or explore. But for the average person who pushes paper at a generic office? You can do that anywhere. So why not do it where everyone you know lives?
Well, for people going to college, not everyone has really deep roots with their high school and grade school friends. (Though some may. And family although family can move too as in my case.) There can certainly be a bigger costs as you move on especially with people who establish large local networks.
I'm similar -- 3k miles, but still within the US. My siblings/cousins/family that I grew up less than 10 miles from are now spread between NY, CA, PA, TX, RI, NH, NC, ME, MI.
I was travelling through PA once as well and was at a local dive bar chatting up some folks - and they'd never even left their county either - not even for casual travel.
I’m from northwestern PA and most of my family on my dads side (9 kids, Irish Catholic) is like that. A divorce separated my brother and I from the pack and we live a few hundred miles away.
My moms side (7 kids, German Methodist) is scattered about, CA,OH,NC,NY,CO,GA and one uncle that stayed near my grandma in PA.
Hands down, far and away I’d take the first situation over the second. The family bonds and stories are incredible. They get together all the time, work together, some go to church together. It’s an incredibly tight knit family and at last look three of the women that divorced out of the family still come to gatherings and still carry that family name for decades.
Those large families are impressive; I'm tangentially related by marriage to one and know of a few others in the area, and you quickly realize how something like the Mafia could easily start.
You let it be known you need some help with X and suddenly a cousin appears who specializes in X.
Maybe it's just the area. I'm in the Philly suburbs and while I love it here I cannot express how little people travel. Even going downtown is a "big deal" if you've grown up to believe either,
1. Cities are awful dangerous places with no value
2. Strip malls and chain restaurants are the pinnacle of civilization
When I moved from Bucks County to Chester County I was "moving away" and many people just wrote me off. Despite being an hour or two drive away.
I notice I do not hang out with people that live further than 30min (reliably). I might be willing to make the trek if I was single, but with kids and spouse, it becomes too time consuming for my taste.
30min away is about the limit for "eh, let's go over" - anything more and you're talking planning, etc.
This is the reason people are willing to commute so damn far; you're forced to commute but if you're not near your friends, you'll never see them again.
I'm a child of expats who became an expat. Lived in over a dozen countries.
Sometimes I feel like an enlightened citizen moving about. Sometimes I feel like I'm perpetually living in an airport. To quote fight-club, single serving friends and nothing ever stays.
Which is to say, i did me, but i don't see anything wrong at all with staying put.
I don't think many commenters in this thread realize the minuscule size of a human and how the things which most impact our happiness are located in our close proximity and surroundings. It's almost like a physical law , the weight that something has on our happiness diminishes exponentially with the distance from ourselves. The importance of the setup is constantly underappreciated.
Each and everyone of us has 150 people in their circle of acquaintances . And 90% of our happiness depends on the quality of our relationship with the top 10 people in such list.
Similarly with the external enviornment. 90% of our happiness depends on the conditions of the external enviornment in a radius of 300 yds.
It's very easy to be blinded by the lights of NYC or Hollywood, but those megalopolis are incredibly big and again humans are so small.
A good setup in Albuquerque or Salt Lake City beats a mediocre setup in NYC or LA every day of the week.
Sure the Empire State Building is nice to look at,but it gets old fast, especially while you see it in passing while on your way to be screamed at by your boss at your second job that you had to take because you can't make the rent.
Given how small humans are, the ideal setup can be everywhere except for maybe Somalia or Congo. But even then if you are the undisputed king of Somalia, that's much better than being an Investment Banker in NYC. Despite the fact that a block in NYC generates more GDP than the entire country of Somalia,the claim of the king on such small GDP is almost total, whereas an investment banker has zero claim on the GDP being produced in a block in NYC, he has zero claim on anything period.
I think it was Julius Caesar who said: "I would rather be first in a little village than second in Rome".
All IMHO of course: we'd be better off if it was 9 of 10. The family is the most important institution we have, it is the backbone driving the most valuable members of our society. The stronger and more cohesive it is the better.
There's a countervailing factor which is that more earnings and economic output arise from jobs in urban areas, which historically can only happen if some members relocate.
Hopefully the trend towards remote work helps alleviate this conflict.
[Citation required] for almost every sentence in your post - most importantly "it is the backbone driving the most valuable members of our society". What a ridiculous assertion.
It's easily verified by data you can find in many studies, and presumably the census itself. Of course it doesn't technically prove causality - it could be that the type of people who are successful just happen to be the same type of people who get married. Or maybe they get married precisely because they are successful - or unsuccessful people have a harder time finding spouses.
But that's totally orthogonal to the statistic under discussion about people living near their blood-relations. You can move across the world and still get married, or live nearby and never.
I live about an hour away from where I grew up, but my family moved nearby so they’re just a few miles away. Modern economic trends that rip families apart have many downsides. It’s much harder to raise kids without family nearby. Likewise, people who don’t have family close are much more likely to fall through the cracks if they don’t have family around.
I get kind of why you could think this, but honestly I think it's far more important to leave your circle and experience something new as a young adult. It becomes increasingly difficult to move as you age, the longer you stay tied to your familiar environment that you were raised in, the harder it is to take the plunge and explore something different.
I am the only person in my direct family that lives outside of the county (very rural) or neighboring county that I grew up in. I really absolutely cannot fathom living my (probably) only life worrying about social cohesion or economic value of society. I live like 2500 miles from my family, and it used to be a lot further (I lived in east Asia for a while). Despite the distance, technology has allowed for me to keep in close contact with my family.
Taking the chance to explore new cultures and really immerse myself in them, and also live through the crazy Bay Area tech bubble before deciding it wasn't for me, really has provided a lot of excellent life experiences and perspectives. I wouldn't trade these opportunities for anything and strongly encourage younger people to try and leave the nest, at least for a bit, while it's still easy to do so and before they have to decide on things like staying near their parents once they become elderly.
I think we would be better if it was 3 of 10; Americans are too clustered into tribes. Urban people would benefit from understanding rural lifestyles and vice versa.
We have become an increasingly urbanized country. Lots and lots of people in massive metro areas—think of the hypersprawl around Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, LA…
Living 10 miles away from where you grew up around Chicago can put you in a total different socioeconomic level of suburb.
Yep, I live in Chicago and I'm about 10 miles from my parents' house, as the crow flies. I have at various times in my life regretted not moving around and living in different cities, but I didn't feel the urgency to move a thousand miles away from home since I grew up next to one of the largest cities in the US. I imagine that if I had grown up in a small town, like my wife, moving far away from home would have been the only option.
I grew up in a small town. Lived in and around Chicago for about 10 years as a young adult. Didn't ever like it enough to think that I wanted to put down roots there. Moved back to my hometown and still live there.
That's what it was for me. I grew up in a tiny farming town; if I wanted a job other than farmhand, retail, or local government, moving was the only option. And I did, 3 days after graduating.
I moved away from my Midwest hometown in my early twenties, lived in Seattle for nearly a decade, then got fed up with the path the city was on and moved back. I feel like moving away is valuable, and teaches you to appreciate the things you took for granted living somewhere during your childhood. Now that I’m back, I get to help fundamentally transform the city into a new tech hub, reviving from the state of decay produced by an industry that mostly abandoned it. This has been extremely fulfilling in a way that living in an already established big city cannot — the skyline is yours to help manifest.
So my family has long described ourselves as nomadic. We just seem to get the wanderlust and want to pick up and move after some years in some place. I myself have lived in 5 different countries so far.
My great-grandfather (who died long before I was born) was a fairly extreme example of this. Shortly before WWI he decided to jump on a boat in Germany and immigrate to Australia (coming originally from the Baltic states). It seems like a fortuitous time to leave Europe.
I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. His brother did basically the same thing (although in his case he was partly motivated by escaping getting conscripted into the Army). His story is fascinating too. A book was even written about it. He actually found an abandoned boat, fixed it up, made his own instruments and sailed to America in the 1930s across the Pacific Ocean because he always wanted to visit America.
I think about that and wonder what is it about some people who seem to be constantly restless while others seem content to staying pretty much exactly where they were born. I don't really understand that mindset but in some ways I envy it.
One of the most culturally identifiable songs to Australians is a song from the 1970s called Khe Sanh by a band named Cold Chisel. It's quite literally about a Vietnam vet with PTSD. it has a verse that goes like this:
And I've traveled 'round the world from year to year
And each one found me aimless, one more year the worse for wear
And I've been back to Southeast Asia, and the answer sure ain't there
But I'm drifting north, to check things out again, yes, I am
> what is it about some people who seem to be constantly restless while others seem content to staying pretty much exactly where they were born
IMO the main factors would be your economic situation and your relationship with your family. People with little money and tight family ties probably wouldn't be keen to move very far, whereas someone with a bad or indifferent relationship to family and the means to head elsewhere would probably do so.
I don't think it's just this, I wonder if there is maybe a certain genetic factor as well. My anecdote is not data but I know that I left home at 17 with a tank of gas and some clothes and ended up living half a continent away in a totally new situation entirely on my own. I came from a completely stable and supportive home environment, I just wanted some adventure. I don't think I'm the only one with this experience or even particularly rare.
Human communities have always needed a majority of members who are focused on family, community, and stability, but they've needed a minority of members who are more interested in the horizon - these people are the traders, explorers, settlers, etc and I wouldn't be surprised if there is some reproductive advantage (maybe your offspring are more likely to have a diverse genetic composition or something) I wonder whether there might be a genetic contributor toward wanderlust.
I feel like relationship to family isn't as big of a limiter these days. I'm pretty close with my family and do miss them (they being on the other side of the world), but being able to video call them essentially whenever our waking times line up takes care of a lot of the issues. As a result of which I can still share any problems I have and get advice or similarly help them in dealing with their problems.
The few years my siblings spent half the world away from us prior to the proliferation of smartphones (and thus the ability for video calls to just happen whenever instead of being specifically organized) did seem to strongly weaken their relationship with the rest of the family though. They seemed to feel abandoned due to essentially having to grow up on their own (ie finish up college and start working) due to not being able to as easily share their issues.
Ten miles is huge in an increasingly urbanized world. Within a ten miles radius from where I lived in 2017 there was some of the most expensive housing in the world and ghettos with weekly gang shootings. However the city I lived in is objectively regarded as one of the best places to live in the world: Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ten miles might make a difference in housing or neighborhood quality, but makes little difference in access to job opportunities, higher education, social activities, etc. Especially if one owns a car, as most Americans do.
I purposefully graduated early from highschool (1 semester less and it only worked because of where my birthday was) to move 853 miles from where I grew up to where I currently live. My partner did a similar move (before we met).
When I talk to most of my friends it is a similar story.
I just can't imagine not wanting to explore a new area and have distance from your parents. I love my parents, we talk a couple times a week, but I don't need them physically close to me. (last couple years being the exception for obvious reasons).
Maybe this is because I am gay and I needed out of the south (as are many of my friends), I also wanted to move to an urban city like so many in my generation.
I was born in a flyover state. There's ~no coding jobs here, and the ones that are here, pay pittances compared to anywhere not adjacent to a (feed)corn field.
I moved 250 miles away (to the other side of my state... dang is the US huge) to take a tech job that payed closer to what coastal companies will pay.
The next step was probably to move to Seattle or SF and take a "real" tech job there. But two things happened at the same time:
1. remote work really grew up. now I can work from anywhere and (mostly. geo-adjusting etc. luckily that seems to be on the decline.) get paid well.
2. We had our first child. Now suddenly close access to our support network (parents etc) is both logistically important ("hey mom can you watch the kids for a weekend so we can sleep") and emotionally important (grandparents getting to see the kids every weekend or two instead of significantly less often).
So now instead of looking to move an additional 2k miles away, I moved back to be ~2 miles from one set of parents and ~20 miles from the other set.
I'm not really thrilled about the local jobs or local politics etc. But family is incredibly important to have physically close, and so here I am. Thank heavens for remote coding jobs.
As a new father I'm dealing with this scenario in my head. We only live 3 hours from our parents but the topic of moving back has come up multiple times.
I feel like I would lose a little bit of my soul moving back to my hometown, but like you said the support network is extremely important.
> I just can't imagine not wanting to explore a new area and have distance from your parents. I love my parents, we talk a couple times a week, but I don't need them physically close to me. (last couple years being the exception for obvious reasons).
We want to. But between housing prices and student loans, we can't afford to.
I've live many hours away from my parents, and I no consider it insane to do so. When I lived with my parents I could make a few phone calls and have a dozen people on my roof - now if there is a problem I have to pay a crew even though I know how to do the work (since there are things that cannot be done alone) When my wife and I want a date - too bad: there is no babysitter nearby that will work on Friday night that we trust, so we don't have that option. There are many other similar things about being close to family that I miss.
I enjoy exploring the world. However eventually I want to come back home.
My dad is already gone, I know exactly what you mean. My wife's family (her mom is gone) is from very far away from my family, so there is no great option for us.
The above isn't just about parents. My siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts.
It's probably helped by just the difference in scale between urban and rural communities. Most people wouldn't share your feeling to move to an urban city, because most people are already in one.
I did the same thing though and moved away from my family. I moved back during the pandemic and while I know everyone has a different family dynamic, I can't believe what I was missing. The physical, financial, and emotional support system of having family 15 min down the road is hard to quantify.
I left the south and never looked back, too. (Not gay, but I am non-conformist, which didn't play well in an evangelical town with more cows than people.)
In talking to people who got out vs. some who didn't, there seem to be three main, interrelated things that hold people local: money, class and fear.
- Obviously money makes moving to the Big City much easier, and more of it is always better. But below some point, it becomes incredibly hard to make work - if your parents are in the bottom half of the income gradient, first, last + deposit on a San Francisco apartment and a couple $k on moving and move-in is a huge expense.
- Class matters a lot, in that it colors how distant, urban places are perceived. Some members of my family have an almost cartoonishly apocalyptic fantasy vision about what cities are like, and the fact that nobody's sucked the marrow from my bones in 30 years of urban living will never change that.
It also effects the likelihood of knowing people who did move away. If nobody you personally know has done it, it really does become much harder to do for multiple reasons, both psychological and concrete.
- Finally, fear of "not making it", of something Bad happening, and of making a costly choice that you regret, of having to "slink back home" for whatever reason really weigh on people. Of course if you don't know anyone who's ever lived in a major metro, and if the cost of trying is big enough, that fear can massively amplify.
I moved to SF almost 30 years ago. It was a leap of faith - I landed with enough money for food for about two weeks and slept on a friend's floor for a few months while I worked shit jobs to get established. That path is harder now - I wouldn't now be able to get an apartment here now washing dishes and serving drinks. So if anything, I suspect the above is more salient now than it was a generation ago.
I'm in the same boat. Sometimes I wonder if there is something wrong with the way I'm wired but while I love my Dad and we've always had a good relationship, I don't need to talk to him regularly.
Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with the strong family bonds that so many in this thread have. We lived 2.5 hours away from my Dad's family and saw them about 6 times a year. We lived 1500 miles from my Mom's family and I probably visited my Mom's parents a dozen times in my entire life. Now, my wife and I live 2500 miles from our parents. Half the year it's further than that since one set winters in Florida and the other in Asia. At times I feel like I've totally missed out on something but at the same time I wouldn't move back "home" probably ever. I've lived in my current house for 18 years. It's the longest I've ever lived anywhere. This is "home" now.
The differing cultures in the US. I come from an Italian America family in the the NYC suburbs. All of my siblings and extended family live within like at most a 30 minute drive and I have 4 close family members within like a 2 block radius. There was never any idea of having to get out of here to make it because we were already in commuting distance to Manhattan.
Whereas I can't imagine leaving everyone I know, my entire social support structure, to run off to some strange new are where I know nobody and need start all over again.
> Maybe this is because I am gay and I needed out of the south
I am currently very conflicted about this. I grew up in India but was fortunate to live in the US and now in Europe for undergrad/grad school. I am (slightly) older than the demographic in the article. I am planning on settling down with my girlfriend soon, after I finish some career related stuff. If I want to start a family, I really want to move back to my hometown in India, with the strong social support system. While moving around has been exciting and an eye-opening experience, I am tired of constantly making new friends and leaving them after a few years, and miss my family some times, and eventually the kids would benefit from being around their grandparents. On the other hand, moving back would be career limiting.
Does anybody who is further along on the journey have any advice? How did you make this decision?
It's really too bad that people have to move around for economic and other opportunity. It kind of speaks to the damaged modern psyche with illnesses like schizophrenia virtually absent in the ancient world that anyone would regard not dispersing from their home area as a bad thing. Like, we all just aspire to the condition of the multi-national economic elite, paying allegiance to no country or place, making an abode of bouncing around a few world cities.
Like, maybe we just shouldn't have crappy places that people need to flee, by putting roots in the community and making it a place to be.
A friend of mine lives in a town in the Midwest and often wonders why there are so many hardworking people in California struggling to make ends meet when the foundry in his town is looking for anyone who can show up to work on-time and sober, is paying overtime (b/c there aren't enough workers), and is willing to train people. All in a town where you can buy a house for under $200k.
People don't move. We like to talk about FOMO, but fear of making major changes is much bigger.
When I was growing up I always thought this was kind of a sign of, like, giving up, so I'm surprised the numbers are so high. I guess not everyone was thinking the same way.
Most Americans live in and around big cities. Ive lived my entire life in commuting distance to Manhattan along with 10s of millions others. There was never any notion from myself or my peers of having to move to "make it". The end goal was always to find a job and get on a bus or train every morning.
So did I (well if you can tolerate a long commute but many people did it). It's not about chasing opportunities that don't exist, necessarily, but striking out on your own and leaving the familiar.
Coming from a smaller town (<30,000) I was pretty much taught this. I couldn't go a month without someone wishing I would move away and leave the town behind. I live in a bigger city now and I'm glad but it took effort not to feel ashamed of living in my home town for so long.
Most people in America are born and live in metro areas and I wonder if the same kind of mentality is taught to those people?
> When I was growing up I always thought this was kind of a sign of, like, giving up, so I'm surprised the numbers are so high. I guess not everyone was thinking the same way.
It’s possible that they just gave up earlier than you did. Many people where I grew up never put any effort into anything because they had resolved themselves to being helpless.
Good to know my siblings are representative: we're 3 of 5 living within 10 miles of where we grew up. I'm 2000 miles away (other coast), and the youngest sibling is about 500 miles away. This (likely) works even given the 26 years old milestone. I wasn't quite so far away yet, but still a few hundred miles away. The youngest sibling isn't 26 yet, but I don't expect them to move back in time to change the count.
I'd like to make bold, sweeping claims about which is better, but I don't have any. I've moved the most, and because of that make the highest salary of any of my siblings. (The other sibling who moved is likely second, but possibly not due to being younger in their career.) Because of my location it's going to be hard to be a good uncle to my first niece, due in January. There are definite trade-offs involved in moving.
I moved back in with my parents during the pandemic to provide support for some health issues, since I had the ability work remote easily during that time. It was great to be back local for that time, though there were obviously some confounding factors due to the personal and societal health issues in 2020.
I have nothing to back this up, but it feels like this has probably been the rule for most of human history, and it was just that unusual period in the 20th century where things may have been different for a while. We tend to measure everything against that period, which may someday be recognized as a specific kind of fallacy. Again, I have no data in this case, and am not going to look any up.
If you say that periods where people move a lot are "mobile" periods, and periods where people stay put a lot are not "mobile" periods, than this is one of the least mobile periods in our modern history, despite what you may believe about remote work and transplants and gentrification. [1]
Of course, this is because housing is more expensive than it has ever been. It costs too much damn money to move, even if economic opportunity is better than it used to be.
A lot of ink being spilled in this thread about non-mobile people being bitter about the lack of opportunity in their hometown. That may be part of it, but I think the far larger and more important part is that it is too fucking expensive for them to move! In large part because of all of the people who did move away and got their fancy degrees and then financialized the whole economy so badly.
I'm not familiar with the research in this area, but what exactly separates an adult from a young adult (for the purposes of research on the labour force, not biology), and why study them specifically? 60% of young adults don't move, how does that differ from the rest of the workforce? Retirees?
I would say that I owe my career to not staying in my home town or even my home state. The state has plenty of charms but opportunity is generally speaking not among them. Those of my graduating high school class who I've followed since also moved out of state. Looking at the data from this tool it seems we were outliers, though.
With remote work being more common now I could probably move back, but that would carry some amount of risk as long as I'm working for another company rather than running a business of my own. Where I live now has a decent balance between locally available jobs and cost of living which is a bit scary to give up.
While I am not within the 60%, I live about 80km from where I grew up (basically the same metro area), and I feel fortunate enough to not have to move very far for my career. I have only ever worked remote, and truly love where I live.
I have traveled to most US states and about a dozen countries, and wouldn't trade my home for any of them. The structural advantages (family, friends, regional knowledge, activities) are tremendous. If you are planning to have children, having parents/relatives around to share in the childcare is an enormous financial advantage.
I wish the data explorer also showed per-capita moving rates. It's hard to tell if a place is sending proportionately more migrants to another place or if the source just starts with a high population.
I think I count as one of the six. Since I live in an expensive and affluent area, I think I am one of the few people who lives close to where they grew up. In my opinion, moving away gives you more opportunity and life experiences. It is a very US American and “immigrant” thing to do. Personally, I haven’t taken that route because I have no idea what my living situation would be like and I think it would probably be worse for me in terms of psychology and social life.
Wow, I really did not expect it to be that high. I could understand that number if it was "live in the state where they grew up" (esp. if they went to college in-state which most do), but within 10 miles? That's a pretty small radius. In many cities you could move to the other side of town and be outside the 10 mile range.
I'd be interested to see this data weighted against population density. As-is, I suspect it's massively tilted by how in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, or NYC you can go 5 miles and practically be in a different country.
I live not far from where I grew up--I moved away and lived in NYC for a while, but eventually came back. I live only about a mile from where my great-grandparents lived when they first came to the US from Romania.
If I had become a doctor or a hotelier I definitely would've stayed in my home town. I miss it greatly, but there's zero tech presence and remote jobs seem to be drying up.
I moved away from home but I moved back as well. I now live within 10 miles of where I grew up, but I spent 7 years in the sf bay area, 2000 miles away.
i had the best of both worlds. moved from my hometown to seattle for while, made a lot of money in tech, bought and sold a house in seattle at the right time, moved back to my hometown. now i have a paid off house 5 mins from the house i lived in during high school. i was able to keep the seattle salary so now i am living like a king in my old hometown, honestly its amazing
I detect a bit of defensiveness in the comments. I also detect a certain egalitarian undertow almost tending toward "everyone should move around" or "no one should move around". There is a third option: some people benefit from moving around. And we may also speak of the social consequences of migration, both for the origin and target societies.
I would say this:
- Moving around isn't for everyone.
- There is a tinge of oikophobia that's common in much of the West today that makes the thought of caring for and willing the genuine good of your own people frightening to many, inconvenient, and for some reason synonymous with chauvinism or some weird exclusivity that construes benevolence as "either/or" instead of in subsidiarian terms. Soon, the mere general prioritization of the good of one's own family members (a duty) will come off as "not inclusive" and "inequitable".
- Statistically, there is a certain healthy amount of average migration of certain kinds (the specifics will vary). Some spice enhances the flavor of a soup, but too little leaves it bland, and too much overpowers it.
- Travel and living elsewhere can help deprovincialize the mind, but do not guarantee it.
- Social networks and social order are important. Note the principle of subsidiary. A human being typically grows up in a family that is itself nwsted within an extended family and a community and so on, like layers of an onion. People typically become alienated when removed from them.
- As people get older, it becomes more common to settle down and commit oneself to the good of some particular community (original or adopted) instead of spending one's life drifting anonymously.
- One of the big incentives behind traveling or living in different places is to learn about other cultures. But if everyone were moving around, no local culture would ever have the chance to develop because locality requires continuity and a stable, sustaining local population, i.e., a true society. Places with very high rates of inward and outward migration tend to be less distinctive and tend to resemble other hubs of the same kind with which they likely swap inhabitants. If that's what attracts you, then your travelling or moving around isn't motived by a desire to learn about other cultures so much as a desire for a change of scenery while maintaining a more or less consistent, homogenous cultural "experience" globally. It's like being an American who goes on vacation and never talks to the locals, only other Americans in the hotel, or one who wants the "locals" to be like Americans.
- There is, of course, a difference between frequent moving and living more than 10 miles away from where you grew up.
I attach moral judgement to neither "remaining in the area" nor "living far away" nor even "moving frequently". These are quite personal matters per se.
I grew up about a hour from DC and an hour from Richmond. Had I stayed, I don’t think I would have made it very far as a developer or had the chance to live an interesting life.
In my experience, moving is related to aspiration. If I stayed where I grew up I’d honestly likely be an opioid statistic and definitely not doing anything worthwhile with my life. I still keep in touch with a few people from youth who didn’t ruin their lives, and I’m the standout success story despite being the socially awkward and poor one.
Moving thousands of miles has changed my life in ways I’d never dream of, staying still was not on the cards: it would have been lethal. I had to upend to get the education I needed, find my person and the tech job I love.
I am glad you were able to have such a positive impact on the trajectory of your life by moving. But you shouldn't generalize your experiences with your home town with everyone else's. Sometimes moving is necessary for growth, but it could also be completely orthogonal. It depends on the place and also the person.
I grew up 30 minutes from a respected state college, about 15 miles, and about an hour away from both Philly and NYC, almost exactly 50 miles to each. The ongoing joke in my high school is at least 50% of each graduating classes ended up at the same state college. I'm not sure the real statistic, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
10 miles sounds far enough away from parents to be able to feel independent but also not far away enough to feel any kind of culture shock. Not everyone will have this privilege, but I just want to share another perspective.
There is a lot of value in learning about different cultures by physically travelling, but I think there are other options now. I believe the hyper-globalization of society due to technology allows many more people to experience other cultures without needing to travel. It's up to individuals to take advantage of it and lean into certain discomforts.
I don't believe it's possible to integrate with modern society successfully without having to go through some kind of culture shock. It's not limited to culture defined by regions, older generations feel culture shock constantly when trying to stay integrated or understand the culture of new generations. But things like YouTube have allowed me to experience culture in a way that wasn't possible 20+ years ago.
I have been loving the relatively recent trend of older people, parents and grandparents making cooking videos. I recently found De mi Rancho a Tu Cocina, a channel where Doña Ángela, a 72 year old grandma teaches Mexican recipes. The channel has 4.2 million subscribers and the first video was uploaded in August 2019 and hit 2M subscribers by December 2019. Very simple production value, except the wood fire cooking which is probably out of necessity as she lives on a ranch. A similar channel with more production value, but still very homey is Cowboy Kent Rollins, 2.32M subs, who is verified on YouTube and has built a brand and a merch shop related to outdoor cooking. I grew up in the suburbs in the tristate area, but love making myself traditional style Mexican and TexMex food, homemade refried beans is a favorite.
I don't think YouTube videos or even a two-week trip are substitutes for living somewhere different. Too many small things you can't notice at that level of engagement.
Ok so that's another way poverty harms them. Is it less "privileged" to pretend that is not the case and someone who has no ability to leave their hometown has no disadvantage?
>In my experience, moving is related to aspiration.
And where you grew up. I grew up somewhere that aspirants move to. So I never left because why would I bother? As the US becomes more urbanized, people are going to have less of a reason to move to places with more opportunity because they're already in places that have opportunity.
Yeah and a bunch more showing up. I think on a netwhole it will balance out.
If you’re a multigenerational Native and have some form of lockin that offsets the crazy housing price pressures, leaving becomes suboptimal. It’s not exactly fair but it would be foolish not to take what advantages you can get.
In my experience, moving is related to aspiration.
Highly dependent on where you grew up.
My parents grew up in a farming town in Scotland. Moving out was the best way to solid careers.
I grew up in DC. I stayed because when I finished college, there were ample jobs here and that hasn't changed. Sometimes I wish I had moved, but at the same time, when I look elsewhere, the grass isn't any greener.
Imagine if the Saudis grew wheat in the desert! Oh wait they tried that and even with all the capital in the world it wasn't competitive, because it turns out the desert is a horrible environment for growing wheat.
The less fortunate places of today weren't built for no reason, back when they were new there was money to be made to support them. Then economics shifted and there's less money that can be made in that location, so people/businesses move away. Expecting capable people to intentionally stunt their achievements to try and do the equivalent of growing wheat in the desert is just mythologizing places that once served an important economic purpose but no longer do. This notion that you'll never need to adapt to changing circumstances, that there's some sort of societal guarantee of growing old in the same community you grew up in, is incredibly entitled and fundamentally anti-American.
What we need is federally funded moving expenses for lower income earners, that way no one's stuck in a modern-day ghost town.
A little fantastical to imagine well-meaning people with zero experience of work are going to fix places that nobody else managed to but hope springs eternal, I guess.
Trying to jump-start a modern economy in a place that isn't currently participating in one is difficult, like attempting a breakaway in bike racing. It's a worthy public project, but a risky private one.
> Imagine if you and similar, "driven" folk stayed and made where you're from better.
> Imagine if you started small businesses and hired/trained the locals.
If I had stayed in my hometown I wouldn't have had the resources to even think about doing those things. The town is in the poor half of a county in a poor state. The best most can hope for out there are part time jobs at grocery stores and fast food restaurants, both paying almost nothing.
I probably could've gotten hired on as a county public school tech which pays decently for the area, but it still would've taken decades to bootstrap the kind of resources required to start a business, because I'd be starting out with almost nothing.
If my parents have not moved to the US. I would've not had good access to a computer as we were relatively poor on the global scale. The stars aligned and I attended a university in the US, where I met influential people who later offered me a job.
I am now in a place where my income allows me to think about paying back.
I am definitely sure I would not have the common sense, the business sense, understanding of self, and the capitol to do anything of value if I have stayed.
In my experience this is a recipe for burnout, depression, social ostracization, and the like. Some places are not fixable, many are actively hostile to the idea of change.
A lot of these places were abandoned for a reason, not just because people felt like it one day.
All else equal I would love to live by all my family and friends, but the fact is that my skills are not as useful there as they are where I live now, so I wouldn't be able to provide as much value to the world if I still lived there.
I'm not sure you realize how hopeless large swaths of the country are. There's simply no coming back in many cases. They just need to slowly die out over a few generations and be given back to nature.
It depends where you're from. IMO it is generally good and positive for families to stay in the same area for generations, since it allows for stronger ties among the community, leading to generally less fragile lives. But you're right that those same ties can hold you down in the right (wrong) circumstances.
...which I guess is just a long-winded way of saying that you should stay near home if it's good, and stay away if it's bad (for whatever values of good and bad).
I used to feel this way but have since realized that it is a WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, democratic) perspective. For the majority of human history, we needed our birth community in a very direct way simply to eat, keep ourselves housed, find a mate, etc. Many of those needs can now be taken care of by the market but IMO it pays to be careful about committing completely to such a course.
Sure, I don't imagine I can somehow totally divorce my own thinking from the culture I live in or my education. That doesn't mean it is necessarily wrong (the germ theory of disease is also WEIRD, or was at one point). I think it is telling that most people in the modern world who continue to live this way do not have the resources to do otherwise.
But most people actually live in the big metros. If you grew up in LA, Chicago, Atlanta, ... area, why would you really need to move? Unless you have a highly specific skillset, most people can have a fine career locally. High mobility can be a sign of weak local job markets, this is the dominant view. You can also take an optimistic view; low mobility is a sign of sustained local wealth accumulation and strong local job markets.
Most Americans live in what the US Census categorizes as urban. Which is a very broad definition of basically communities somewhat in the orbit of an urban area.
One of the more baffling anecdotes I’ve read in a while. The response to a very general comment about where most people end up is “opioid statistics” and then just the usual bravado. The response to such a malappropriate reply is so obvious (for most of 60% of young adults this opioid thing is not what they are signing themselves up for, so where is the relevance?) that it feels tedious to state it as a question.
The opioid thing is relevant because lots of people I grew up with in my home city fucked up their lives, and I’d have done the same had I stayed because social networks, living in poverty, decay and hopelessness etc.
Leaving broke me out of that and gave me access to better social capital which was (perhaps an exaggeration) a difference between life and death.
YMMV but if you’ve grown up in a decaying urban area, you know what I’m talking about.
I consider myself lucky that my parents looked around and chose a place with many positive attributes, and they were able to make a living there. I haven't felt a big need to move from here, though I lived away during college.
Of course if I had a bad relationship with my family, or had wildly different interests/beliefs I would likely want to move away.