<story><title>Evidence for the “great resignation” is thin on the ground</title><url>https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/evidence-for-the-great-resignation-is-thin-on-the-ground/21806659</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>honkycat</author><text>So sick of seeing this. I grew up in rural Illinois, first 20 years of my life. Also spent 10 years in Chicago proper. 40 miles outside of Chicago is the middle of nowhere.&lt;p&gt;It is not a substitute for living in a city. I do not see the draw in buying a cheap house in a rural community with nothing to do and nothing around it. My family owns a house in a rural community. It is dead weight. Nobody wants to buy it from us.&lt;p&gt;It is not a good place to raise your kids. The schools are under-funded. The people you interact with are bigots and they will teach your kids to be bigots.&lt;p&gt;If your kid is gifted they will sit them in a corner and do NOTHING to address how they are learning more quickly than their peers. They will suffer from under-funded schooling that is just desperately trying to keep the bottom half of the students from spilling out.&lt;p&gt;Kids are heavily influenced by their peers. There are no &amp;quot;garage bands&amp;quot; or art groups or clubs or anything for your kids to participate in. There is school and sports. If you are lucky there will be a marching band.&lt;p&gt;Also, you are assuming this person is a cis hetero white male. There IS sexism in these communities, there IS racism, there IS bigotry. You will not be welcome if you do not fit in. You WILL be confronted, you WILL be harassed.</text></item><item><author>derekp7</author><text>To add on to this, point a real estate app (Zillow, etc) to Racine Wisconsin.  The east side is fairly nice.  Also, look at north-eastern Illinois, starting in a radius about 40 miles or so outside of Chicago.  The grate thing about that area is there is a lot of open farm land, and pieces get converted to housing development periodically whenever the market can support it.  So that means many areas have 1500 sqft on 1&amp;#x2F;4 acre homes in the $200K range (or $100k if you want to put some work into fixing it up).&lt;p&gt;And everything is &amp;quot;close enough&amp;quot; to a major city, and there is enough of the city that expands out in the surrounding areas (a number of large employers aren&amp;#x27;t downtown, although some have been migrating back to the city to attract the employee demographic that prefers the city life).</text></item><item><author>jrochkind1</author><text>So this all sucks, and you&amp;#x27;re in a rough situation, and I sympathasize, and I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; trying to tell you not to complain or that it&amp;#x27;s under your control. I think  you wrote that well in a way that is aware of a lot of what&amp;#x27;s going on and your position.&lt;p&gt;BUT. &amp;quot;where does this leave the majority of this country?&amp;quot; -- well, the majority of the country does not have as crazy a real estate market as Seattle, as far as paying ~$1.5 mil for a dump where you&amp;#x27;re basically just paying for the land. That is not most of the country.&lt;p&gt;So... have you considered moving elsewhere? Even if you take a salary drop, you can probably wind up ahead overall with cost of living, especially if buying a home is a main goal you have. Of course, you won&amp;#x27;t get to live in Seattle. Seattle is awfully nice, it&amp;#x27;s true. But maybe you can afford a nice home and &lt;i&gt;without&lt;/i&gt; working 60 hour weeks either.&lt;p&gt;But as far as &amp;quot;where does this leave the majority of this country&amp;quot; -- definitely not in the insane Seattle or San Francisco (or other &amp;quot;hot&amp;quot; cities with tech money) real estate market, is where.&lt;p&gt;Where I live (on the east coast even, but in a disinvested non-top-tier city) you can easily get a perfectly liveable no-repairs-needed if modest-sized ~1300 sq ft townhome for $200K, or easily a nice detached larger home in a &amp;quot;good&amp;quot;  neighborhood for $500K. which I almost don&amp;#x27;t want to talk about, becuase if the tech money comes here, maybe that won&amp;#x27;t last.&lt;p&gt;But there&amp;#x27;s plenty of the country that&amp;#x27;s not on the coasts and is not Austin or Boulder or something, that is like this or even cheaper.&lt;p&gt;(And, as we both know, there are also plenty of people in even these cities who don&amp;#x27;t make nearly as much as you or I, and have trouble affording a home in them too!)</text></item><item><author>ozzythecat</author><text>I don’t know what exactly the truth is, but I’m one of the tech workers living in the Seattle area.&lt;p&gt;I’ll start off by saying that I work 60 hours a week, at least. My stress and anxiety levels are manageable now, but only because I found ways of managing them. They’re not reasonable though and most importantly, they’re not sustainable.&lt;p&gt;Based on the neighborhood I live in and my compensation, I am extremely privileged. I don’t have money concerns that my parents had. Most things that I might need, I can buy them without having to think too much or without putting a dent in my net worth.&lt;p&gt;But my job is not sustainable. So, I live way below my means and avoid any lifestyle creep.&lt;p&gt;I would like to own a home, a nice one. Not a $1M property that’s not even comparable to my parents home. Given my compensation and many, many years of savings, this would be reasonable. I looked at several houses over the weekend. One dump after another, going for $1.3MM at the minimum. One actually had an offer accepted, merely hours after we toured it. They told us the buyer offered $1.6MM.&lt;p&gt;But Seattle has become a lawless dump. The east side has started homes for $1.4MM where the inspection report shows you that you’re basically just paying for the land.&lt;p&gt;If I have to be a renter my whole damn life and can’t even afford a house, what is the god damn point? Yeah I get paid very well, but I am a pawn of people who earn significantly more. And it’s not that I’m just comparing myself, but even after all this work and money I can’t comfortably buy a house - then where does this leave the majority of this country?&lt;p&gt;I don’t know.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hardwaregeek</author><text>Yeah...there&amp;#x27;s something spooky about places like Racine, Wisconsin or rural Illinois. And I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s specific to me. Get Out resonated with a lot of people (ofc it&amp;#x27;s way different and difficult for Black people) because there is some fear and discomfort in going to a white, rural area. Even if the white, rural area is ostensibly liberal and friendly. There&amp;#x27;s something disturbing about being alone, the only one of your race and surrounded.</text></comment>
<story><title>Evidence for the “great resignation” is thin on the ground</title><url>https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/evidence-for-the-great-resignation-is-thin-on-the-ground/21806659</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>honkycat</author><text>So sick of seeing this. I grew up in rural Illinois, first 20 years of my life. Also spent 10 years in Chicago proper. 40 miles outside of Chicago is the middle of nowhere.&lt;p&gt;It is not a substitute for living in a city. I do not see the draw in buying a cheap house in a rural community with nothing to do and nothing around it. My family owns a house in a rural community. It is dead weight. Nobody wants to buy it from us.&lt;p&gt;It is not a good place to raise your kids. The schools are under-funded. The people you interact with are bigots and they will teach your kids to be bigots.&lt;p&gt;If your kid is gifted they will sit them in a corner and do NOTHING to address how they are learning more quickly than their peers. They will suffer from under-funded schooling that is just desperately trying to keep the bottom half of the students from spilling out.&lt;p&gt;Kids are heavily influenced by their peers. There are no &amp;quot;garage bands&amp;quot; or art groups or clubs or anything for your kids to participate in. There is school and sports. If you are lucky there will be a marching band.&lt;p&gt;Also, you are assuming this person is a cis hetero white male. There IS sexism in these communities, there IS racism, there IS bigotry. You will not be welcome if you do not fit in. You WILL be confronted, you WILL be harassed.</text></item><item><author>derekp7</author><text>To add on to this, point a real estate app (Zillow, etc) to Racine Wisconsin.  The east side is fairly nice.  Also, look at north-eastern Illinois, starting in a radius about 40 miles or so outside of Chicago.  The grate thing about that area is there is a lot of open farm land, and pieces get converted to housing development periodically whenever the market can support it.  So that means many areas have 1500 sqft on 1&amp;#x2F;4 acre homes in the $200K range (or $100k if you want to put some work into fixing it up).&lt;p&gt;And everything is &amp;quot;close enough&amp;quot; to a major city, and there is enough of the city that expands out in the surrounding areas (a number of large employers aren&amp;#x27;t downtown, although some have been migrating back to the city to attract the employee demographic that prefers the city life).</text></item><item><author>jrochkind1</author><text>So this all sucks, and you&amp;#x27;re in a rough situation, and I sympathasize, and I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; trying to tell you not to complain or that it&amp;#x27;s under your control. I think  you wrote that well in a way that is aware of a lot of what&amp;#x27;s going on and your position.&lt;p&gt;BUT. &amp;quot;where does this leave the majority of this country?&amp;quot; -- well, the majority of the country does not have as crazy a real estate market as Seattle, as far as paying ~$1.5 mil for a dump where you&amp;#x27;re basically just paying for the land. That is not most of the country.&lt;p&gt;So... have you considered moving elsewhere? Even if you take a salary drop, you can probably wind up ahead overall with cost of living, especially if buying a home is a main goal you have. Of course, you won&amp;#x27;t get to live in Seattle. Seattle is awfully nice, it&amp;#x27;s true. But maybe you can afford a nice home and &lt;i&gt;without&lt;/i&gt; working 60 hour weeks either.&lt;p&gt;But as far as &amp;quot;where does this leave the majority of this country&amp;quot; -- definitely not in the insane Seattle or San Francisco (or other &amp;quot;hot&amp;quot; cities with tech money) real estate market, is where.&lt;p&gt;Where I live (on the east coast even, but in a disinvested non-top-tier city) you can easily get a perfectly liveable no-repairs-needed if modest-sized ~1300 sq ft townhome for $200K, or easily a nice detached larger home in a &amp;quot;good&amp;quot;  neighborhood for $500K. which I almost don&amp;#x27;t want to talk about, becuase if the tech money comes here, maybe that won&amp;#x27;t last.&lt;p&gt;But there&amp;#x27;s plenty of the country that&amp;#x27;s not on the coasts and is not Austin or Boulder or something, that is like this or even cheaper.&lt;p&gt;(And, as we both know, there are also plenty of people in even these cities who don&amp;#x27;t make nearly as much as you or I, and have trouble affording a home in them too!)</text></item><item><author>ozzythecat</author><text>I don’t know what exactly the truth is, but I’m one of the tech workers living in the Seattle area.&lt;p&gt;I’ll start off by saying that I work 60 hours a week, at least. My stress and anxiety levels are manageable now, but only because I found ways of managing them. They’re not reasonable though and most importantly, they’re not sustainable.&lt;p&gt;Based on the neighborhood I live in and my compensation, I am extremely privileged. I don’t have money concerns that my parents had. Most things that I might need, I can buy them without having to think too much or without putting a dent in my net worth.&lt;p&gt;But my job is not sustainable. So, I live way below my means and avoid any lifestyle creep.&lt;p&gt;I would like to own a home, a nice one. Not a $1M property that’s not even comparable to my parents home. Given my compensation and many, many years of savings, this would be reasonable. I looked at several houses over the weekend. One dump after another, going for $1.3MM at the minimum. One actually had an offer accepted, merely hours after we toured it. They told us the buyer offered $1.6MM.&lt;p&gt;But Seattle has become a lawless dump. The east side has started homes for $1.4MM where the inspection report shows you that you’re basically just paying for the land.&lt;p&gt;If I have to be a renter my whole damn life and can’t even afford a house, what is the god damn point? Yeah I get paid very well, but I am a pawn of people who earn significantly more. And it’s not that I’m just comparing myself, but even after all this work and money I can’t comfortably buy a house - then where does this leave the majority of this country?&lt;p&gt;I don’t know.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mechanical_bear</author><text>Calling all (or at least most) rural dwellers bigots… ah, the irony.</text></comment>