From: steve (steve365@btinternet.com)
Date: Tue May 28 2002 - 13:06:42 MDT
Very interesting. If it is so cheap and generally pleasant to live in small
town/rural America (as I'm sure it is) then why do people pay to live in
Silicon Valley etc? Is it just that all of the jobs are in the high cost
metropolitan areas? Or is there some other reason? You can see the same
phenomenon here in Europe. The French are abandoning the countryside and
small towns (very beautiful, fantastic quality of life) to live in mass
suburbia around Paris and Marseilles. Here in Britain London is like Silicon
Valley - a house like the one I live in (4 bedrooms, £50 thousand) would
cost £500 thousand in many areas. I just don't understand:)
Steve Davies
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Rogers" <jamesr@best.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 7:06 AM
Subject: Cheap Living (was Invisible Friends)
> On 5/27/02 6:24 PM, "Samantha Atkins" <samantha@objectent.com> wrote:
> > Thanks for the interesting information, James. In Silly-Con
> > Valley and surrounding locales it is very difficult for a single
> > adult to live on $25k, much less a family of three! Do you or
> > does anyone reading this know of a good map of such areas?
> > Perhaps it is time to reconsider telecommuting. My semi-single
> > burn-rate in the valley is around $5K/month but $2100 of that
> > goes to the ex and kids. And that is with renting part of a
> > house rather than having one of my own.
>
>
> It is pretty much like Mike stated: eliminate SF, Manhattan, and a few
other
> similarly expensive metropolitan areas and that's about it. There are
many,
> many cities where one can get a decent apartment for $500. In many
cities,
> premium neighborhoods with very nice houses top out at around $300k. If
you
> avoid trendy hotspots with atypically high real estate prices, you can
have
> something quite nice for not a lot of money. Housing costs are a primary
> unavoidable living expense, so where you live can make a huge difference
in
> the cost of living.
>
> While the cost of essential commodities such as food and gas in many of
the
> cheaper areas is similar (although almost always a little cheaper than the
> expensive metros), the cost of service and facilities is very low, which
> affects the price of everything you do where local service is priced into
> the good you are purchasing. This translates into service oriented
> industries such as restaurants being MUCH cheaper than their equivalent in
> the expensive metros. When you go into the "backwater" towns and cities,
you
> would be hard pressed to spend more than $20 a person for a really
superior
> dinner.
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