Not at all! I lived in Atlanta for a while just before the 1996 Olympics. I was paying somewhere in the $300-500 (~200-300 Euros) per month range for a 1 bedroom. It was one of the cheapest big cities in the states.
I moved to Chicago that summer and couldn't find a livable space for less than $800/mo. That was almost 20 years ago. Today I live in Los Angeles, and you could not find anything livable here for EUR 500 ($700US) per month. You could easily find something for $700US/week, though. I'm sure New York is as bad as San Fran and worse than Chicago, too. I'm not saying our rents aren't outrageous, just that it's not specific to some SF bubble. Just about any large city in the US is going to be costly to find decent living.
I moved to Chicago that summer and couldn't find a livable space for less than $800/mo. That was almost 20 years ago. Today I live in Los Angeles, and you could not find anything livable here for EUR 500 ($700US) per month. You could easily find something for $700US/week, though. I'm sure New York is as bad as San Fran and worse than Chicago, too. I'm not saying our rents aren't outrageous, just that it's not specific to some SF bubble. Just about any large city in the US is going to be costly to find decent living.