[Runways]

Texan here. Your ad hominem attack is BS.

Our house prices, North of Dallas and deep in the suburbs - far from the bay areas and Seattles, have doubled. That includes my home. People in our profession usually have to live by big cities, like Dallas. But the homes are ridiculously priced and it's insane. My juniors have no hope of owning a home that is big enough to raise a family without years of saving. And they're college educated engineers, some of them married with dual incomes.

[wombatpm]

Dual income has its own set of problems when it comes time for kids. Lose an income or pay for child care.

[pc86]

My wife and I are expecting. Daycare is expensive, but it's only an outrageous expense if you have two people making up to about 3x minimum wage. Below that, it makes sense (at least in our area) to have one person stay home. But the cheapest state-regulated, licensed daycares are around $1500/mo for full-day infant care.

$18k/yr is a lot to spend on anything when you're making $20/hr for sure, but if you've got two professional people making $75-100k/yr each it becomes a very manageable expense and nobody considers staying home to save that.

[cableshaft]

$75k is about $56k after taxes. And many people that have children tend to have at least two children, so you can double that $18k to $36k/year for those people.

Once you get to that point, it gets harder to justify having someone work just to take home an extra $20k a year. It starts making more sense for one person to stay home (or work a part-time gig that lets them still raise their children) and the other person to try to make a bit more money on their end instead.

My parents got around the daycare cost problem by my mother running a daycare out of the home, so she was making money while still able to raise us. But I imagine that's become so much more risky nowadays (like legal issues, parental trust, etc) that it probably wouldn't be worth doing that anymore.

And as soon as we both graduated high school she stopped doing it and went back into the workforce elsewhere.

[red-iron-pine]

Yeah after taxes and then daycare it gets blurry unless you're making well above US median.

even then, I'm not crazy with the idea of random strangers raising my kids. being "qualified" to run a daycare is mostly paperwork. plus I work remotely, and that means I can see my kid 3 times a day, even if I can't really stick around to do serious parenting in between meetings.

my wife's people are also around, retired teachers no less, so having them pop in on the regular helps a immensely. they had 3 kids, several grandkids, and have educational backgrounds in early childhood development, and I trust them to do everything they can to take care of my kid, even if it means occasionally giving them extra ice cream (but, usually, it's grandpa reading books or working on basic math with them, etc.).

[giantg2]

"it gets harder to justify having someone work just to take home an extra $20k a year."

An extra $20k/yr is huge for most people. Median household income is around $80k. I've heard it's more like $100k for married couples with kids, but can't find that Stat. With either number(or even 75% of those after tax), that's a large bump (or subtraction).

[cableshaft]

This was already assuming the person quitting was making $75k though, per the parent, so presumably the other person is making more (or else they would probably be the one quitting for day care). Which means they're already making double the household median.

And once you get to that level, the person keeping the job getting a new job for a $10k-$20k bump starts becoming feasible (I got a >$60k bump when I last switched jobs), and that can make up the difference right there.

Then you have one person who can take care of the children and have time and energy to help with cooking and cleaning (keeping those costs down, especially if you were getting a lot of takeout before), and can save even more money.

There's plenty of families making this decision nowadays, it's not a hypothetical. It doesn't always make sense for every couple, but the marginal increase of income doesn't always make sense for all the added stress of trying to raise children while having two full-time jobs and the house not completely falling apart.

We don't even have children, and we aren't able to fully keep up with cooking and cleaning on two full-time jobs, we just don't have the leftover energy afterwards.

[giantg2]

This seems like a foreign world you're describing - lots of income, huge pay bumps, lots of takeout, unable to keep up a house without kids...

[giantg2]

"and nobody considers staying home to save that."

Some choose to stay home for other reasons.

I find it interesting how income tends to segregate with marriage, and how that exasperates some inequalities.

Having kids for those highly compensated dual income homes seems narcissistic when you get to the root of it. Like why have kids if we're outsourcing their raising to daycare and schools. The we only care about their accomplishments and leaving them with a large inheritance or paying for a fancy school. Then they go off to live mostly separate lives. Look at how well my kid is doing because I set them up in life, even though I barely raised them and rarely see them now. I don't know?

[pc86]

There are plenty of reasons for someone to stay home, but the comment I'm replying to is specifically talking about the financial reason(s).

[mlrtime]

There is still more affordable housing in TX than anywhere in the US. Texas is building more than any other state (Florida is close).

I just drove by a new development [in TX], with brand new homes that start at 1800/mo for a 3 Bedroom. Financing by the developer.

So if you get out of Dallas or Austin you will find affordable housing.

[pixl97]

Telling the monthly rate in Texas is not a great metric in general... you must always add the property tax costs. What are those, 300k'ish houses? You're probably looking at at least another 500 a month in properly tax pushing it up to $2300, then if they are built like this add another $200 in for summer time cooling.

That is not affordable housing.

[mlrtime]

1800/month including tax. Real estate tax is high in TX, but not income tax. I prefer this taxation which has to come from somewhere. NYC has high income tax and real estate tax, and the grocery options could still be not close at all.

[eropple]

How far do you have to drive to go to a supermarket from that development? To a library? (Silly me, expecting people to go to a library in 2024, right?)

If Dallas or Houston or Austin had decent mass transit out to those areas that'd be one thing, but they wouldn't be very "mass", and therein lies one of the problems. Car culture increases isolation and generally shits up the world ever further; somewhere like a YOLO development in the suburbs to exurbs is deleterious to human flourishing and saying "well just buy something where you need a car for everything", as opposed to like the one-off Home Depot run or something, is just trading problems.

[jf22]

Yes, but the houses farther out are affordable because they lack those amenities.

The same narrative plays out over and over again. "I can't afford a house with an easy drive to a supermarket and library, and I want to be carless."

Well yeah, so does everybody else, which is why that type of housing is expensive.

[eropple]

Yes, of course! And it's reasonable to think that living in both modest precarity and isolation is worse than living in somewhat more severe precarity; "affordable" places to live are inferior goods!

The problem, fundamentally, is that we, collectively and as a country, need to create more good places, rather than to exile people to the bad but affordable ones. We need a concerted effort to have strong towns and to put cars at the edge and not the center of those towns in order to have a healthy community future, and just sneering that you can buy a house in the hinterlands is both non-responsive and cruel to boot.

[jf22]

I agree with you. However, the discussion about housing is normally around how it's worse now than it was in the past, and these types of dynamics have existed for a long time.

[eropple]

It absolutely is worse than it has been in the "good places", though. Because we have more people, but not more good places.

[mlrtime]

Just looked it up because I was curious. Mortgage + Real Estate tax is right at 1800/month. 4 Bed / 2 Bath, new construction. Kroger is 3 miles away with a "cash and go" type place even closer, so about 8 min by car, 20 min by bike.

Point remains, that there is plenty of affordable housing in the US. It's just not where people want to live, thus supply/demand.

No amount of "fuckcars" ideology will matter here, some people actually prefer driving. I know I do, I don't want to be stuck in a subway or bus.

[giantg2]

"How far do you have to drive to go to a supermarket from that development?"

That's the system - resource scarcity and preference. If you live in a densely populated area, prices tend to be higher because real estate is constrained. Zoning won't fix all of that because many people have a preference for SFH, larger sizes, etc. You end up with options and amenities, but it will cost more due to the consolidation. Or you end up with space, needing to drive to amenities, and cheaper prices largely due to less competition.

[mlrtime]

8 minutes by car, 19 minutes by bike for a full size grocery store.

Worse than some places with public transportation, but better than a lot.

[hindsightbias]

Nobody hip wants to live in those places. Wait til their properties double or triple AND the county changes the rate to build those 6A schools.

TX, too conservative for anything like Prop13 and tollways owned by very smart Spaniards.

[red-iron-pine]

if you get out Dallas or Austin... where are the jobs?

the number of people working remotely, even now, is still comparatively small.

doesn't matter if the housing rates are 50% lower if your only options are minimum wage at some chain (dollar general, chik fil a, etc.), or scraping for one of the few non-wagie gigs.

that doesn't fix the problem, that just means you're getting paid less, while house prices may have roughly the same ratio of income-to-cost that you'd find in DFW or ATX.

and in exchange now you need a car, need to drive constantly, and have fewer amenities and choices (maybe save for access to churches or walmarts).

shit, even far flung burbs of Austin like Taylor and Hutto are getting pricy compared to when I was last out there. Hutto Hippo oughta make a reappearance and start eating the carpetbaggers who keep moving in around there.

[coldtea]

>Texan here. Your ad hominem attack is BS

Ad hominem means "against a specific person". He made a general argument. Might be good or bad, but in no way it was an ad hominem. Arguing how a group of people conflate or tend to misrepresent this or that, is not an ad hominem.

[pc86]

"Our profession" can work remotely from anywhere. Whether some companies choose to acknowledge that or not doesn't change the fact that we don't need to live by big cities. Most companies do understand that.

Unrelated; what do you think "ad hominem" means?

[brailsafe]

I'm more surprised you have juniors