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by enraged_camel 924 days ago
Not sure if Paris vs. Seattle is a good comparison. The former is the crown jewel of France and a historic world-class city. The latter is one of the smaller cities on America's West Coast and is fairly unremarkable.

If anything, I'm stunned that the price for square foot in Paris is only 180% of that in Seattle.
2 comments
jandrewrogers 924 days ago
Not to take anything away from your post but Seattle has roughly half the GDP of Paris with less than a third of the population. The past is the past, if you wanted to place a bet on the future, I wouldn’t take Paris over Seattle. Seattle isn’t just tech, it is one of the major deepwater ports on the Pacific Rim and with a famously diversified industry. It is still on the upward part of its trajectory.

Seattle is not a cosmopolitan global city, this is true, but Paris wishes it had Seattle’s economic dynamism by almost any measure. Like many European cities, its status is the accumulated capital of a prior era that is not being replenished at replacement rate. I have my qualms about Seattle but European cities are largely worse when looking forward.

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xyzzyz 924 days ago
> The former is the crown jewel of France and a historic world-class city.

How is this relevant to my point, which is that in Paris (and most of major European metros), the prices-to-incomes ratio is much worse than in Seattle, and pretty much anywhere in US? In what way it is a crown jewel, if, by US standards, 3/4th of the population barely makes the ends meet?

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