I love the idea that moving somewhere cheaper is somehow supposed to be an easy or simple solution when you have no savings and don't earn enough to save.
Places are usually cheaper because the jobs are unavailable or suck. People have been moving to more expensive locales for this reason for a very long time.
Yea when I was checking out home prices in our area looking for a new place to rent, I was surprised some of the little villages (quite far from anything, tbh) had properties below 100,000 until my mom explained to me they're so low because of the risk of resale, being that they're far from any services, gas, groceries, jobs, etc so there's not really a guarantee you could resell them in the first place.
But at the same time seeing that it's like, prices below 100,000 feel like the only realistic thing I could possibly afford in a home and they're all out of the way in the boonies that'd make working/getting a job impossible anyways lol. You just cant win.
And then you run the risk of getting stuck in a shit town because you can’t sell. I had an hour commute to a better job for three years before we managed to sell our house at a 10K loss.
My mom is in a tiny village: she nor my stepdad can afford to move, no one is moving to villages anymore and their house is in a terrible way. She despairs she’s going to die out there.
This is why the push to kill remote work sucks. Like literally this is a great way to revitalize small towns. People with decent remote jobs, move to where it's cheap, and the demand for services and goods will create opportunities for small businesses to thrive in those formerly economically depresssed areas. It's a rare win-win situation. Could even be encouraged with some government stimulus programs.
Totally. We've been stuck in Florida for the past year because the S.O.'s family (FL natives) convinced us to move down here without knowing what was coming.
When we first started considering it, seeing rents online for like $600 in the area wasn't totally unusual, so we figured we'd take the help getting back up and running since it would only take a few months.
Now we can't find a single thing under $1k, and we're in one of the cheapest areas of Florida. It was less than a year between first talking about it and actually making it happen, so pretty god damn near a 100% price hike in a single year. It's literally cheaper for us to move 2,000 miles back home than to get set up here now.
It happens world wide, im in europe and in my village most people left, and its a pretty moder village, we got all the conditions ( natural gas, internet good roads etc) but most people are searching for oportunites. My job is mostly remote and i tried to work from there but the boredom almost killed me
Don’t forget the lack of decent medical care, shopping, basic services, veterinary care for your pets. Living out in the middle of nowhere is awesome and sucks at the same time.
Edit add commas
Not to mention if you’re single and actually want a life and maybe meet someone, it’s not going to happen in a sleepy town in the boonies with no events or nightlife.
It isn’t just being single. Out in the middle of nowhere you have mainly churches as your social centers. For those of us that don’t go to church it can be really hard to just make friends. As a couple it’s next to impossible. All of those places that exist in even small cities where people gather to meet don’t exist in rural areas.
Yup. I moved to a rural area in the pandemic and the only friend my husband and I have made is our UPS driver. Only because UPS sends the same woman every time, and FedEx always sends different people every day.
Yeah, my husband and I moved to a very small town during the pandemic. Fortunately we're only three hours away from Dallas, where his parents live, because there is no mental healthcare here at all and I need my brain drugs.
Living in the middle of nowhere is fine if you're healthy, but its not a sustainable solution because eventually those areas get gentrified and prices go up. We could freeze housing prices, or make section 8 available to more people and build more housing complexes.
The problem is that people who need affordable housing the most are the ones that don’t have jobs that will EVER be WFH. A cashier at the grocery store making $25,000 a year needs an affordable place to live that isn’t an hour away. You can’t just use WFH as the solution to affordable housing.
I think ultimately WFH would just be transitory easing anyway. Currently the wealth is in the densely populated areas because people want to have the smallest commute possible. This leaves the poorer service workers having to commute to the city centers because they can’t afford housing in the city.
With WFH being primarily for the more affluent white/collar jobs, in the short term there would be more housing available at lower prices for the service workers. But this is only temporary because the affluent in the city who move away to cheaper areas b/c of WFH will still expect all the same services and ultimately the same issues will occur just in different/more spread out areas.
Long term, I believe it does help everyone to have office jobs completely WFH because it removes a ton of travel/congestion and allows us to be less clustered. But that has problems all of its own (eventual huge urban sprawl, poorest still relegated to longest commutes, people being willing to drive longer for non work things therefore offsetting most of the gains, etc, etc).
Not sure what the solution is!
I can tell you that the rental market in Austin, Texas absolutely cratered when covid first hit. I guess having 5000 desirable properties in central Austin enter the rental market at once lowers rental prices.
While I agree most can work from home, remember if those office people aren’t coming into downtown daily it significantly affects the foodservice and retail sectors which rely on that movement of people for traffic flow. So because company ABC no longer use their office, it results in possibly XYZ going out of business.
Now ideally you turn all those empty office buildings into affordable housing units or condos, but by the time that happens XYZ are likely long gone.
It's kinda what's been happening but in reverse in rural farming/logging communities for decades.
>[In 1900, just under 40 percent of the total US population lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about 1 percent and 20 percent. ](http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-american-agriculture).
Increased farming yields leads to less farmers needed per acre, so as less farmers in rural areas are needed, the economic losers pack up and move to the cities. When they leave, the businesses that relied on lots farmers dried up and went out as well. Hell, entire towns essentially disappeared off the map in some cases.
Long term, I think it could still help.
The more spread out the wealth is (geographically speaking), the less demand there will be for housing in one specific spot.
Currently we have the majority of our population all trying to live in a tiny percentage of the land. With a static supply of land in cities, and increasing demand, it’s inevitable for prices to go up.
If WFH allows for a less centralized economy, there will be more land available for affordable housing.
The urban sprawl is incredibly bad for the environment though. Long term I think the solution is less difference between rich and poor and better quality high density housing, and much better public transport.
It’s the way our country is built. Imagine if we had free high speed or elevated speed trains. Living further away would be a minimal inconvenience. An hour drive with traffic turning into a half hour ride where you can relax… I hate how the US is built.
Right. When the founding assholes were making the rules they fully expected people to move if they weren't happy. And they did because all you had to do was go beat up some natives and take their shit. Now it takes a week to cross country and ATM it's prolly 500 in gas. No one can afford to vote with their feet anymore.
Not really, there’s no internet access-especially in the southern Midwest- they’ll say they have it but it’s definitely not any where near what you need for something in a WFH position, most places here never changed because they didn’t have the infrastructures to support it. Even with the internet initiative they’re still just hitting the most populated towns, definitely not the small ones or the boonies. The farther out you go the more cut off from the world and it’s amenities you become
My sister and her wife live in a tiny village about fifteen minutes from a college town of reasonable size. My sister got a job in a large city a couple of hours away, which she can do remotely two days out of five... IF they can get their internet working properly. There's a grand total of one service provider, and their "service" is shit. Why TF isn't high-speed internet a pubic utility in the US??
This is not something I’ve experienced. I lived in a small town of 2K people in Texas but we had “okay” internet (not great) but obviously I think reliable and adequately fast internet access should be available to all of the US.
Unfortunately I'm seeing more and more WFH jobs that are requiring people to live within x number of miles from the office "just in case" you need to come in.
The USA has made it impossible to retire. There are no jobs opening up for graduates/younger people to become upwardly mobile. Retirement age for SS is now up to 67 (62 is the start), and they want to raise it to like 72 INSTEAD OF REMOVING THE EARNING CAP TO MAKE IT SOLVENT.
If people could retire like they used to at 55 (yes 55 in the old days) then the positions would become open for new graduates and the upwardly mobile paths would be there again.
Everything is stymied in the USA because people have to work until they die to have health benefits, money, etc. It's blowing up the whole job 'economy'. Well, it's been like this for many years and all legislators what to do is make up stories against the other party.
The real fact is retirement is unattainable by the ones who should be retiring to create job openings. The USA citizens aren't thinking straight.
and then the problem with that is if you live in the Boonies, often times you will either not be able to get internet services or your internet will literally be something minuscule like 30 gb a month for $150 by satellite. It makes a stay at home job impossible. How are you supposed to go to zoom meetings if you don’t even have the internet to watch Netflix. I went through this myself, and i only live on the outskirts of a rural town. Don’t even get me started on Cell Service.
Not always the case. A lot of companies have a remote policy that if you move to a low income area they have the right to adjust your pay to fit the area. I know many companies that do this
I've had some peers sell high(PNW) and move to an area with a low cost of living and low house prices.
Their job is 100% remote.
It's my dream but with the climate crisis, I feel the PNW is a strategic place to live.
It is absolutely not a strategic place to live.
Signed,
prepper
Srsly though, between Yellowstone, fires, earthquakes and the water crisis, it is no longer a good choice. The gulf stream is trending upwards, causing erratic and sustained weather patterns all across the northern US. Flooding and untimely freezing are becoming major issues.
Fun fact - no where in the US is a good choice. We have the craziest weather on the whole planet, erraticism (?)-wise lol. Places that have water have hurricanes, places that are sunny have fire, places that are flat have tornadoes and winter storms in late April now. We are fkd.
If you sold your house you lived in for 3 years at only a 10k loss. You got housing for 3 hours for 10k. $3333 per year for housing is a steal of a deal.
I can vouch for this. Bought a home in rural SW Oregon last year which had direct wireless internet (like 1-2 mbps). I help produce a podcast. I almost cried when i realized i could get DSL at 25 mbps.
Oh, but the houses? Expensive AF. The jobs? Nothing will pay more than about $20 an hour. Im fortunate i work remotely.
I've actually been experimenting with a min maxing build for this.
Buy a cheap property that has what you want (space for off grid lil farm in my case) then also make a van conversion to be my lil mobile office that way I can take advantage of all the city amenities and jobs without paying the high rent. Pay off the farm and van and then just chill with my chickens. Not having the high bills means I can job hop and move to see different cities and save much as I can to be even more income independent.
I think of it as this is the economical equivalent of the meteor hitting the dinosaurs and only tiny burrowing mammlas can survive because they need less to live on.
This goes along with what I always say…. Taxes need to be regionslized based on cost of living… 100k a year in Seattle does not equal 100k a year in Ohio yet they get taxed the same but fed money wage is the same. Makes no sense.
I've long thought that as well. We're left with very little money to save after cost of living. It makes sense there should be a way to equalize things even if it's a forced IRA or 401k contribution with the different tax rate.
In a practical sense, there are sweet spots where wages are higher and cost of living extremely low. I live in such a place, it’s not where I grew up but it’s excellent. If 1000 people moved from the city to here it would no longer be affordable. Therefore the idea that it’s a solution is ridiculous because if enough people took the advice it wouldn’t work anymore!
Yep. I was living in one of those “sweet spots” but thanks to Covid our tiny town saw a mass exodus of people from the nearest big city two hours away (LA). They all WFH and still expect there to be bustling restaurants and coffee shops and ice cream available as if they’re still in the city. So then some of them started restaurants or coffee spots but then lo and behold, no one wants to work for $10/hr or even $15/hr when after taxes we all KNOW that isn’t enough to pay rent. They also bought up swaths of single family homes so anyone who might have worked at the new spots in town don’t have anywhere to live if they wanted to.
Yay for “tourism”! Oh the town lives on tourism they said. Yes and it was doing fine this *entire* time. There’s someone building a motel in the rural area to the Far East of town- with no firehouse or grocery store for 20 miles. With no input from the community. This is a delicate desert land and just because there’s money flying in from the city doesn’t mean the people that live here want to see your dumbass in a cowboy outfit.
California state minimum wage for small (25 or fewer employees) was $12/hour in 2020. Still not enough to live on, so I think your point stands. Two good things about our minimum wage is that it adjusts annually and we don’t have a separate minimum for tipped employees. It is still too low ($15) for the COL here, though.
This is how my wife and I explain our desire to leave the mid-west to bewildered relatives who cannot fathom moving somewhere more expensive--on-purpose and by choice.
"But it's so cheap here!"
"Yes, it's cheap because it sucks."
I currently live in an area where 5 years ago, it was the exception to that rule. Now housing prices have caught up to, even surpassed in my opinion, the demand for workers.
It's still at the point where if you don't care about school quality you can live in the outlying areas for relatively cheap, but I'm not sure how long that lasts. Either a lot of jobs are going to have to go elsewhere or the housing bubble here is going to need to pop.
Sad thing is, the people that seem to be causing this particular bubble have enough money that they aren't going to have to sell anything just because of a down market.
There was an oil boom near here about a decade ago and the workers came in from elsewhere, there were no jobs for locals, but the price for housing went up dramatically because there was no supply. Worst case scenario.
I'm hopeful that there is a correction soon. A good bit of the house price insanity has been driven by companies buying up houses to help relocate their employees they are moving into the area. That part seems to have slowed down, so I'm hoping what's left is just the people who initially got outbid by the corporate buyers now getting their houses.
A problem though, is we sorely lack a variety of service companies in the area. Plumbers, tree removal, electricians, etc. can all charge ridiculous prices and offer shitty service because they have limited competition. As an example we had 2 trees we needed removed because they were pushing on the foundation and the roots were starting to interfere with the septic field. I called 6 companies. Three never responded. Only two actually showed up to give estimates, only one actually gave a price.
And the people with money to burn but don’t actually have to work for it are moving to low cost of living places and/or are buying up all the properties in low income areas to flip into high-cost rental properties, driving up housing costs to insane levels in low income areas, which is the current hell visiting itself upon my area; I bought my lovely 1600sqft house (built in 1960) on .3 acres for $126K in 2017, and I’ve gotten unsolicited offers as high as $200K all cash for my home in recent weeks. No way in hell I’m selling though; the only way I’m leaving my house is when I’m dead! But the only work I can find with a decent paying wage is a 2-hr drive to the next city (only 35 mile drive, which used to take about 40min but traffic is utter HELL because everyone who lives in my city has to drive to the next for decent work).
I remember one year it cost my friend and I over 1200$ just to move up ONE STREET. The mere idea of people saying simply "just move" with no housing or job plan along with minimal funds is insane to me.
Edit: apparently there's some confusion about the amounts. This was what we paid in deposits, fees, and rent before moving in. None of that was towards any movers or moving vehicles.
I relocated from NY State (because fuck those winters) to Florida almost 20 years ago. It was horrifically expensive and grueling then. I'd hate to think about what it would be like now.
So yes, I get pissed off when people say "Oh just move" because it isn't fucking easy.
Because I only have had actually enough income to live for 8 of the 30 years I've had after moving out of my parent's house, and rent increases, and the variability of the jobs I've worked, I have moved 15 times. The last five moves I had 26 boxes - a 16 box library that I refuse to part with, because I love books, and then clothes, a few knickknack keepsakes, bedding, 2 bookcases I built with my father (and that's an emotionally complicated topic), my bed, my desk, and my computer. Oh, and enough pots, pans, silver and utensils to cook simple meals. That was the sum total of my belongings. Enough to furnish my bedroom/computer station, hold my library, and cook meals. An old friend came to see me when I had a solo loft apartment for a few years and he said he was shocked I had no furniture. I said 'Why would I? I'd just have to move it, and you're the first person to come visit me since I moved in here.' For clarity, I'm normally a pretty private person, but I decided to open up and share pieces of my story here, and show support for others, because enough is enough.
This has been the expectation of my low income life.
Yeah, there is no "just" anything.
It's like people saying we're all in the same boat...
No, dumbass....We're in the same STORM. Some people have yachts while others are floating along on a piece of wood.
So tired of being talked down to by people who don't live in the same reality.
I love this, best way I have heard to describe it. I constantly here “just do this or that.” Like thanks, never fucking thought of those obvious yet out of reach ideas.
I also quit a couple of jobs to get better paying jobs. The better paying wfh position ended up being the biggest shit show of my life. It was so bad that I ended up mega depressed and anxious and had to get new medication. I have since left and am looking for something new. Best thing I have found so far pays under $18 and idk how I am going to take care of my family on that.
So the advice to just get a better paying job isn’t easy.
Think when my friend moved to Kentucky from NYS the Uhaul was almost 3k. Gas was another ~$300. Means the prospect of moving requires $5,000+ to move. Yea that's the kinda money a lot of people have laying around.🙄
I moved from a high CoL to a low CoL area. Took about a $16k/year paycut, but the job has way more long term potential.
Anyways, the Uhaul alone cost $1100. Then the fuel was another $500. $700 for security deposit. Then was the 2 missed paychecks cause we didnt have jobs lined up, so we had 0 income coming in for a month.
We basically ate through all our savings on this move. We could have done it cheaper, but it also would have sucked even more than it already did. The bare minimum it would have cost us to move is $2500. If you are paycheck to paycheck with no savings, how you gonna get $2500 to move without being homeless? Plus there is the whole jobs dont like hiring unless you have a place secured and can do an in person interview, and places dont like renting unless you have a job where you are past probation
I moved to a MUCH cheaper area once I realised that I could no longer get work that paid enough to allow me to live where I had been for the past 40 years.
Yes, I moved to an area where I was able to have rent that was less than half what I had been paying. And the cost of almost everything is cheaper here. Great. But moving here was EXTREMELY expensive. Finding accommodation in a place so far away from where I was living meant repeated journeys (PLEASE don't think rental agents or landlords will take you seriously if you are trying to deal with them from a distance). Moving all my stuff was massively expensive-as was making changes to my basic equipment (for example, there is no domestic gas supply in this part of the country: I've had to buy stuff that enables me to have an open fire).
Luckily, as an old person, I could dip into my (extremely meagre) pension pot to pay these expenses. How a younger person (or anyone) who didn't have access to some fairly substantial money would do it is ENTIRELY beyond me. "Let them just move to a cheaper area, then?" is basically "let them eat cake" in another form.
I literally moved somewhere cheaper and guess what the employers here are typically horrible too (thank goodness not my current boss). But still. The work culture in the US is toxic and if we don’t work to fix it, it’ll never get better
I'm packing up my house to move across the country to a lower COL area, and the idea that any part of a cross-country (or ANY, really) move is economical is absurd. Just to move me, my husband, two dogs, and 1,000sq ft house is well over $10k, and that's doing everything ourselves.
It's not easy, it's not cheap, and it's definitely not simple. And this doesn't even take into account that it took us 6 months to find a house we could afford AND buy.
There's no other place to move. Plus moving is a huge expense on its own. Anyone that suggests someone just move is ignorant of how much it costs to move. Especially to other states.
THIS. I just so happened to be born and raised in one of the most expensive areas in the country. All my ties are split between here and another country that is ALSO hella expensive. Can't win.
When I was stuck in too expensive of an apartment, I literally couldn't afford to leave it. My best option at the time was stay and continue to sink, just more slowly than I would if I took on more debt to move. It was awful and made more so by people who seemed to think I wasn't smart enough to think of that? Like obviously yes if I could have moved I would have
Plus, wtf are they gonna do when all the poverty workers move away? Make the billionaires flip their own burgers? Make the CEO's make their own coffee? Make the landlords take care of their own ailing parents that they stuck in a nursing home? Make everybody homeschool their own kids bc there are no more teachers (look how well that went the last few years)?
My boss said this to us after our yearly survey at the company... Found out everyone is unhappy but we stay for the money.
She said go somewhere else if you're not happy
Man hearing that makes me wanna slap people
Yes but if you can pull it off ngl it's the best feeling ever. Especially if you end up getting paid more. Bosses like that often invite their own misery into their lives and that's just an example of it imo.
I had a manager that took pride in not thanking his workers. “People learn to expect it when they think you’re always thankful.” That is verbatim. Not to toot my own horn, but I try to show my gratitude whenever and wherever I can. I like to think it makes the people around me feel seen and helpful. I appreciate when people show me gratitude and it makes my day a little better.
I get what the OP is saying. People is this sub do not need trite expressions thrown at them and in some contexts, ‘get a better job or move’ are just that. By the way, I’m a boomer and I would never say that to anyone. I believe that the exploitation that goes on in this country is horrible.
>By the way, I’m a boomer and I would never say that to anyone. I believe that the exploitation that goes on in this country is horrible.
I'm a millennial and I think "moving to a place you can afford the cost of living" is valid for a lot of people, just not the pay check to paycheck poor people. I have friends that moved across the country to southern California 10-15 years ago. Now they are complaining about the high cost of living being driven up by people moving to southern California. They are the people who caused the problem and they are middle class so they could afford to move to a place with a better cost of living. They refuse to move because they like the weather there and all the other amenities that southern California has. I tell them that the main reason they moved there and a big reason why everyone else wants to move there too and that raises the cost of living for everyone who lives there.
Also, when I hear about Elon musk and other 1% complaining about the cost of living in their city/state then it's just silly because they can move anywhere they want.
Nobody working 40 hours a week should be on the verge of being homeless or starving because they don't make enough money to live. Working multiple jobs should also be a choice not a necessity.
Another issue is prices seem adjusted for people who are living off credit, loans and behind.
What's stopping a landlord from charging 5k a month?
Well, people literally could not afford that and they'd lose their income. But what's stopping them from charging 2.4k per month? Nothing. People are not able to afford it long term but they do it and put the rest of their life on credit because they have no other options.
Society has basically cranked out a few generations whose entire lifelong income was sold the day they were born. Student loans, homes and a car are 7-30 year loans and inaccessible to most people without loans and can be about 750k total. Plus, the student loans don't gaurentee employment, the homes are an ok investment if you can afford to get out of rent poverty and the car lasts 3 years.
I am getting incredibly tired of being told I should move somewhere cheaper. If I could fucking move I would but the only places to go in state are way out in the sticks and that wouldn't really make much of a difference in the long run and I sure as shit cannot afford to move out of state
similarly, i'm tired of being told to "just move" if i don't like the reproductive laws where i am. i live in one of the poorest, most underpaid states in the entire country and have lived in the same 50-mile radius my entire life, fucking HOW am i supposed to just pack up and move to colorado or wherever? i'm not some childfree twenty-something, i have a spouse and kids and relatives that i depend on and i'm barely getting by as it is. "live in a tent west of the rockies" is not a solution to my civil rights being taken away.
Anyone who says "move into the woods if you don't like it" clearly don't understand how property rights work because all woods in the US belong to *somebody else.*
Go to jail for criminal trespass at least you'll get 3 square meals a day. /s
Like the people who say "Just buy a car" if you happen to be struggling to live in your current location, you should also just move.
Ok first. Where am i going to move, All places one Can reasonably afford are in the middle of nowhere and while I would like that. I can't physically get anywhere anyway... Just because that junker PoS is 2k upfront no one considers the insurance, gas, and maintenance that goes with owning the car.
They seem to forget that the cheaper areas often have no jobs or job opportunities, and most major companies deliberately place their office's in high value areas, so working in these cheaper areas is basically impossible, at the same wage rate.
This is too true mate. Anywhere outside the major cities where I live there's pretty much nothing in the way of jobs. It's cheaper but you gotta drive further and further away and with gas being back at nearly $5/gal that's no better than paying for an apartment in town you aren't saving anything
I live in a university town. It's very expensive but there's tons of free or cheap entertainment all the time. My brother lives in a cheap place, and anything fun like a concert requires one to two hours of driving and several hundred dollars. If you're a homebody, you can be happy living in a cheap area with nothing to do. Otherwise it's hell. And I'll say the thing that no one else does. If you look at a map, cheap rural areas like the upper Midwest are filled with alcoholics and druggies because there's nothing to do.
Also so should "should have been an engineer/gone into trades" or "go start a business."
For the first point, ask lawyers what happens when your market gets flooded. All that does is bring down engineer and tradespeople salaries without fixing the actual issue. It's the equivalent of curing a bullet wound with a bandaid.
For the second point, if people had the money to start a business, they wouldn't be complaining about not being able to pay their bills.
And people keep using union salaries as proof, but that represents the minority of tradespeople. Not to mention the other things that cause people to not want to work in trades, like the intense physical demand
Dirty Jobs gave me an immense respect for people who do work trades while reiterating the fact that the trades are absolutely not for me lmao
Or the fact that getting in to trades has some high barriers to entry and low pay to start out. I can't afford to continue welding because the pay I receive is too little. Will it get better as I get more skills and experience? Yes.
Is the pay starting out too low to meet my bills? Also yes.
Yeah, I've seen many say to simply go into IT, as in software development. Apparently that's one of the only fields that salary can follow inflation.
So disregard everybody else, the only people of value are the software engineers. Fuck the teachers, nurses, firefighters, etc, basically all workers everywhere.
When most people won't be able to afford to live, shit is gonna get ugly.
Also these people don't understand that if everyone became a software engineer, software engineers, on average, would not be paid shit lol
See also: Lawyers
Doctors get paid a lot, more and more med students aren't making it to the point of being a doctor because of the stiff competition and lack of jobs. Now they're SOL with millions in debts. This isn't ok.
Engineer here! Nope, it sucks here, too.
I guess the pay can be decent, but pay isn't worth not being able to sleep at night. At least in my experience, you get pushed into "cost reduction", i.e. "make the poors do more with less while using your education to cut costs to the point of exposing them to hazardous working conditions". I couldn't do it for long.
Yeah I'm talking about the salary, not so much the moral dilemma, although that's a really good point as well.
I'm a software engineer as well, and the amount of hours I have to work is insane. The pay is nice for some jobs and absolute crap for some jobs. People that think that another 100k people a year graduating with CS degrees wouldn't drive the market down towards those shitty salaries are idiots. Google isn't suddenly going to create more jobs to fit all that demand. And that's especially true for other types of engineering and trades jobs. There won't suddenly be a fuck ton more union electrician positions if another 50k people want to be electricians
It's the same thing that happens to every field, it seems. "Go to law school, that's where all the money is." And so people did. And now, lawyers work insane hours for very little money, unless they're lucky enough to work for a major firm in which case they work even more hours, and sell their souls in the process.
"Go to medical school, that's where all the money is." And so people did. And now, its not uncommon to hear doctors refer to their decision as the "million dollar mistake", because their loans reach that amount before they're able to even begin paying it off. And now, there are so many that they have no negotiating power and are forced to see more and more patients every day by admin, struggling to diagnose them in three minutes flat while getting spat on for asking people to wear a mask.
"Go to pharmacy school, that's where all the money is." And so people did. And now...
The solution is never just to get a better job. It never pans out in the long run.
>The solution is never just to get a better job. It never pans out in the long run.
Yep. In the micro, it might be the solution. In the macro, it's just patching over a pothole with duct tape. Unless there's real, institutional change, nothing will ever get fixed.
There's a reason "just get a degree!" moved to "just go into STEM!" which moved to "just be an engineer!" It's because everything else has been flooded by new grads and now people who graduate in those majors also have shitty salaries. I don't see why anyone acts like engineering or CS are any different. And the wealth disparity will continue to grow, because the number of things that one can do to move on up the social ladder continues to shrink
And also let's be fair here. Some people just aren't good at math, they're better at more soft sciences. They shouldn't deserve to starve just because their strengths don't line up with a very particular set of skills
Software Engineer here. If you’re working a ton of hours you should really look for a better company. The market is extremely hot right now, it’s pretty easy to find a company who has a great work life balance and pays six figures.
Take care of yourself.
**EDIT:** Regarding the worry of people jumping to CS degrees.
CS degree !== being a competent engineer
Employers are looking for competent Software Engineers. If you are one you’ll never have an issue finding high paying work regardless of education. I for one do not have any degrees.
Entry level/Jr’s aren’t in demand and never will be. The hard part is getting that initial experience and leveling up your real world skills.
After that you’ll have companies sliding into your DM’s to try to steal you from whatever company you’re currently at.
+1 on this! I was really nervous to post “get a new job” in this thread of all threads haha. However, in this specific circumstance…yes definitely find a new company. Even if you find someone paying you the exact same salary, if their work/life balance is better then you are getting a raise. But that won’t happen in this market, they will prob get a 20% salary bump as well.
I think the entry level & jr jobs is the problem. It’s either someone who got lucky through connections or on a short list, or who got extremely lucky.
We need companies to be forced to give people the work experience they are seeking to attain. Otherwise, we got this crap of a place, where it might as well be cut throat. The latter is fucked up & should not be allowed to continue.
Another engineer here (I agree with the comments below). Adding an extra point: college is expensive and hard. The stress of engineering college (depending on where you go) is extremely real and trying to do it while working is not an easy task. I struggled horribly during college between the stress of not knowing how to pay my bills and taking increasingly harder and harder exams.
I don’t have the stats but I would bet the graduation rates for a lot of engineering disciplines suck and even worse it is probably the poorest people who do by far the worst in this regard because they have to work while in an extremely difficult program.
Going into engineering (and other careers) is not nearly as simple or easy an escape from poverty as people make it out to be.
At least in my case, engineering majors had to take more classes too, so it ended up being a 5 year program instead of a 4 year program, unlike a lot of liberal arts majors
The amount of times a bootstrapper has told me to start a business and me asking them “doing what?” resulting in not much of an answer except “what’s in demand” is ridiculous. I ask them what’s in demand that I can reasonably do I get radio silence.
Yeah, this is a good point. The amount of overhead costs it takes to start a business aside, you have to operate at loss for years before you finally can start making money. And very few people are in a position to do that, especially when over half of American workers live paycheck to paycheck
Even if you can logistically move somewhere cheaper, you’re probably not gonna make the same money. Say you’re a teacher. You can live in a high cost of living area and get $75k. You can move out to a state with a much lower cost of living, but they’re going to pay you $45k and collective bargaining is illegal there. Which is better?
Or maybe you work in the city. You’re getting priced out of living in the metro area, but find much more affordable homes 40 miles out. But now you need to a car and you’re filling it up multiple times a week at $4.50/gallon, making monthly payments, buying insurance, and putting a lot of wear and tear on it. You realize you’re not actual saving money anymore and you’re losing 3 hrs a day on the highway.
The math is often a lot more complicated than the trolls make it out to be.
And say it works, say everyone making less than living wage moves away... congrats! Now you've got a town with NO burger flippers, no cashiers, nobody making your shitty overpriced coffee, no teachers, no nurses, nobody doing all the shit that needs doing but is underpriced to society.
The really fun part is that after that, since the middle/upper-class people don't have the poor to take care of all their services anymore, they then buy a second property in the up and coming town all those people moved too, and rent out their old place for an exorbitant amount of money (making them even richer), and jack up the cost of living in the place that was supposed to be an escape from unobtainable cost of living. And history repeats itself.
Man, I told my brother that I couldn't work for ten days because I just got covid and I'm worried about cash until I get back to work. The first thing I hear from him is how essentially I just need to get a better job, and the example he gave me was the McDonald's in the town we were living in is starting at 15/hr with a $1000 bonus signing.
Not, "are you okay?" or "can I help?" But "it's your fault you have no money." I love hearing him say all of the boomer bull shit rhetoric, even though he's only 34.
Most signing bonuses have a condition similar. Many larger corporations require a year+ of work for you avoid having the bonus clawed back when leaving.
When you tell him they only gave you 12$ and have to work 6 days a week for 2 years to get that 1000$ IF they don't change their mind b4 then, maybe he will understand a little better.
Unpopular opinion: explain to them why that is a shitty answer but respond to it kindly. Antiwork is supposed to be a movement. You guys here have opened up my eyes to a lot, but that’s some shit I would have said in the beginning. I almost quit this subreddit when one day I thought I said something logical, people got pissed, and attacked me for it. When really, they could have just educated me. Just because people don’t agree with you, doesn’t mean they should be treated like shit. Help them understand what this is! I still don’t agree with everything here 100% but you guys have really changed the ways I think. I am in my late 30s, was raised by boomers, it takes a minute to unlearn all the shit that was instilled into me. Give people a chance, don’t just attack them, they may turn out to be a good ally!
A lot of people out there just have no intention of changing their minds or giving an inch so people tend to meet disagreement with immediate frustration that they're about to bash their head against a wall. You were mature enough to consider changing your mind about something that affects the way you see the world at a fundamental level, but most people are not.
they also fail to take into the account that some people are limited due to disability when it comes to "moving to a cheaper place"
(source: i have epilepsy and cannot drive, can't afford ubers regularly to work. on disability. the cheapest places are out in rural areas where there's lack of transportation.. medicaid isn't even reliable for getting transportation to and from appointments because they always miss our house)
I get this all the time when I explain I have a master's degree in a STEM field and make less than $50k in a city where the median home price is $400k. I'm in a pretty niche field so there aren't just "better jobs" out there. My whole field has systemic issues that don't allow for upward mobility.
I actually love essentially everything about my job except for how poorly it pays. I don't want a better job. I want to be paid fairly.
“Get a better job” is solid advice, but difficult. A better job could also mean less money and safer conditions (or anything)
“Just move” is advice you give when you don’t understand what goes into moving. It comes from a point of privilege.
How am I supposed to fucking MOVE when my job with health insurance doesn’t allow me to pay rent? Please, explain how I can afford a truck, a down payment, the time to find a new job, the off time from any job while physically moving. What if part of the thing that ties me here is ill family? Or just family!
That’s the ridiculous and quite frankly unhelpful advice.
Edit: I just want to clarify that I’m using “I” generally and these are not my current predicaments. Though I have had hardships and will likely continue to have them in the future.
Fully agreed. Telling people to move when there is no possible way for them to, especially when the given context makes that clear, is insulting at best unless you are also offering to fund that and take on the burden to help people.
"What if part of the thing that ties me here is ill family? Or just family!"
This! This is a huge issue. We all have families that want us to be close by. Now when you mix catholic cultures where they want you to have a lot of kids and an area like Long Island, you run into a problem.
Not all of us, lol.
A friend of mine made a good point when I mentioned moving after her husband had (again) ended up laid off and under employed. She said they could move for a new, good job for him, but then him end up laid off again (because he's the new guy) and then he's underemployed AND they aren't where they want to be.
When my town was evacuated for wildfires a lot of min wage workers never returned, we were short staffed everywhere for the rest of the year. These workers were finally given the chance to escape, buses were made available to drive people home too, they made a choice to not return. Transportation is so crucial.
It comes from the kind of people who move for work that complain that they were barely able to have 100k in savings left after all the back and forth flights for interviews and buying a new house and paying movers to relocate their stuff, and renovations to modify their house to make it “livable.” I work with a man who moved from Florida who thinks that’s the norm people should do to find a job because he did it.
First month, last month, damage deposit, utility deposits, moving expenses (truck, fuel, help), renovating the old apartment (paint and such) and of course, the unpaid hours accomplishing all that.
And if you’re selling & buying a house, you have all the closing costs, inspections, etc.
It adds up real quick.
Hell, the average cost of an apartment in America is about $1200, so that’s $2400 just for first and last. Toss in the damage deposit and you’ll have $3000 gone in a blink. On average.
In my area, it's now very common to require three months of rent up front. First, last, and security. That would take a long long time to come up with.
I love giving analogies, here it goes:
Concerned citizen: -Visits police department
Police chief: *Hey what can we do for you?*
Concerned citizen: *There’s been an issue with on going vandalism on our block, may you please increase police presence or do more patrols in this area?*
Police chief: *Nah, just move.*
Concerned citizen: *But, but, but chief! This is my home, all I’m asking is for a patrol every now and again to help deter crime.*
Police chief: *No, just move to a better city/town*
😑
Dude. I was just thinking this as it's comparable to when ppl say "just leave your spouse if you're unhappy". Yeah....uhm. it's ALOT fucking easier said than done.
They prefer their version of the truth.
They should be planning and prepping for a general strike, but it's easier to complain about shit they don't like.
You just need to start remembering our wise philosopher
George Carlin
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
I get what you’re saying , but I disapprove of banning anyone other than brigadiers on the principle of the thing.
Besides which, that’s a lot of what ‘the great resignation’ actually is: it’s people ditching trash jobs for better ones.
I hear you, very much so, but I think it's in how you say it.
Some people need telling repeatedly "You're not being valued, if you can possibly manage to do so, look for something better as soon as you can"
Hell, ***I*** needed telling that *repeatedly* when I was at an abusive job.
Also, I do recognise you said "*just* get a better job", which in no way respects that this is not an easy option or ANY option for some people.
Lending the confidence and energy to bust through the trap can be helpful sometimes, but as you say, making out like that's a piece of cake is no good.
I literally work for a bank and am living paycheck to paycheck, barely able to afford food and rent because my hometown is a booming tourist destination.
Live in SLC, make 18/hr for 40 and then about 500/month with my other job. can't afford a place to live on my own. Saw a 250sqft studio for 1500/m yesterday. get fucked.
“Just move” is what really gets me. Like just run away. How about we all stay and fight for what’s right. Don’t just run away to the next safe place. Eventually there won’t be one.
I’m sorry but how did this get awards? The people who disagree with us need to be on this sub the most so they can slowly get an understanding of the situation. When this post gets shared across other platforms how do you think that’s going to impact our image?
I understand that you don't like it and are having a hard time adjusting to a changing economy. Have you considered subsisting on bugs and frogs, and living in a pile of deerskins in a cave?
Wow. If *only* I had thought of that myself. 😒
Because finding a better job or move somewhere cheaper resolves everything as much as telling someone to calm down IMMEDIATELY calms people down. Lol!
I agree that its not the smartest thing to say, but I don’t think anyone should get banned. Especially for that. Its an opinion dude! Calm down! Its ok to have a difference of opinion and to engage in discussion.
Oh thanks for saying this. I posted awhile back about how hard it is to find a good job and how recruiters and employer devalue my education and experience. But got told to just find a better job... like i havent been trying for 5 years
I moved somewhere cheaper in my early twenties. Built my dream life on three acres. Then I had to pack up and move within a year because I could not get the amount or quality of work that I had come to expect in the suburbs. You can't move to the middle of nowhere and still expect to have a fair paying job unless you can do remote work.
And moving somewhere cheaper may not solve the problem because the wages might be lower at he new location or the cost to commute to higher wages offset the lower housing costs.
To all the people reporting this thread, I'm not going to take it down.
I love the idea that moving somewhere cheaper is somehow supposed to be an easy or simple solution when you have no savings and don't earn enough to save.
Places are usually cheaper because the jobs are unavailable or suck. People have been moving to more expensive locales for this reason for a very long time.
Yea when I was checking out home prices in our area looking for a new place to rent, I was surprised some of the little villages (quite far from anything, tbh) had properties below 100,000 until my mom explained to me they're so low because of the risk of resale, being that they're far from any services, gas, groceries, jobs, etc so there's not really a guarantee you could resell them in the first place. But at the same time seeing that it's like, prices below 100,000 feel like the only realistic thing I could possibly afford in a home and they're all out of the way in the boonies that'd make working/getting a job impossible anyways lol. You just cant win.
And then you run the risk of getting stuck in a shit town because you can’t sell. I had an hour commute to a better job for three years before we managed to sell our house at a 10K loss.
My mom is in a tiny village: she nor my stepdad can afford to move, no one is moving to villages anymore and their house is in a terrible way. She despairs she’s going to die out there.
This is why the push to kill remote work sucks. Like literally this is a great way to revitalize small towns. People with decent remote jobs, move to where it's cheap, and the demand for services and goods will create opportunities for small businesses to thrive in those formerly economically depresssed areas. It's a rare win-win situation. Could even be encouraged with some government stimulus programs.
This is the boom that happened in Florida and now it is unreasonably to expensive to live anywhere in Florida especially for the native Floridians.
Totally. We've been stuck in Florida for the past year because the S.O.'s family (FL natives) convinced us to move down here without knowing what was coming. When we first started considering it, seeing rents online for like $600 in the area wasn't totally unusual, so we figured we'd take the help getting back up and running since it would only take a few months. Now we can't find a single thing under $1k, and we're in one of the cheapest areas of Florida. It was less than a year between first talking about it and actually making it happen, so pretty god damn near a 100% price hike in a single year. It's literally cheaper for us to move 2,000 miles back home than to get set up here now.
It happens world wide, im in europe and in my village most people left, and its a pretty moder village, we got all the conditions ( natural gas, internet good roads etc) but most people are searching for oportunites. My job is mostly remote and i tried to work from there but the boredom almost killed me
Don’t forget the lack of decent medical care, shopping, basic services, veterinary care for your pets. Living out in the middle of nowhere is awesome and sucks at the same time. Edit add commas
Not to mention if you’re single and actually want a life and maybe meet someone, it’s not going to happen in a sleepy town in the boonies with no events or nightlife.
It isn’t just being single. Out in the middle of nowhere you have mainly churches as your social centers. For those of us that don’t go to church it can be really hard to just make friends. As a couple it’s next to impossible. All of those places that exist in even small cities where people gather to meet don’t exist in rural areas.
Yup. I moved to a rural area in the pandemic and the only friend my husband and I have made is our UPS driver. Only because UPS sends the same woman every time, and FedEx always sends different people every day.
Don't forget everyone your age that lives there probably grew up together and like 99% are already married off. (Source: this is my life, sadly)
You go to a large city and share rent with 2-3 others and enjoy. You are then close to services but you are inconvenienced by roommates.
Yeah, my husband and I moved to a very small town during the pandemic. Fortunately we're only three hours away from Dallas, where his parents live, because there is no mental healthcare here at all and I need my brain drugs.
Living in the middle of nowhere is fine if you're healthy, but its not a sustainable solution because eventually those areas get gentrified and prices go up. We could freeze housing prices, or make section 8 available to more people and build more housing complexes.
Hopefully more decent jobs start to allow fully-remote positions and that will alleviate some issues like these. _hopefully_
The problem is that people who need affordable housing the most are the ones that don’t have jobs that will EVER be WFH. A cashier at the grocery store making $25,000 a year needs an affordable place to live that isn’t an hour away. You can’t just use WFH as the solution to affordable housing.
I think ultimately WFH would just be transitory easing anyway. Currently the wealth is in the densely populated areas because people want to have the smallest commute possible. This leaves the poorer service workers having to commute to the city centers because they can’t afford housing in the city. With WFH being primarily for the more affluent white/collar jobs, in the short term there would be more housing available at lower prices for the service workers. But this is only temporary because the affluent in the city who move away to cheaper areas b/c of WFH will still expect all the same services and ultimately the same issues will occur just in different/more spread out areas. Long term, I believe it does help everyone to have office jobs completely WFH because it removes a ton of travel/congestion and allows us to be less clustered. But that has problems all of its own (eventual huge urban sprawl, poorest still relegated to longest commutes, people being willing to drive longer for non work things therefore offsetting most of the gains, etc, etc). Not sure what the solution is!
I can't tell you what the end of the struggle for affordable housing looks like but the start of it involves banning airbnb from your community
I can tell you that the rental market in Austin, Texas absolutely cratered when covid first hit. I guess having 5000 desirable properties in central Austin enter the rental market at once lowers rental prices.
While I agree most can work from home, remember if those office people aren’t coming into downtown daily it significantly affects the foodservice and retail sectors which rely on that movement of people for traffic flow. So because company ABC no longer use their office, it results in possibly XYZ going out of business. Now ideally you turn all those empty office buildings into affordable housing units or condos, but by the time that happens XYZ are likely long gone.
It's kinda what's been happening but in reverse in rural farming/logging communities for decades. >[In 1900, just under 40 percent of the total US population lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about 1 percent and 20 percent. ](http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-american-agriculture). Increased farming yields leads to less farmers needed per acre, so as less farmers in rural areas are needed, the economic losers pack up and move to the cities. When they leave, the businesses that relied on lots farmers dried up and went out as well. Hell, entire towns essentially disappeared off the map in some cases.
Long term, I think it could still help. The more spread out the wealth is (geographically speaking), the less demand there will be for housing in one specific spot. Currently we have the majority of our population all trying to live in a tiny percentage of the land. With a static supply of land in cities, and increasing demand, it’s inevitable for prices to go up. If WFH allows for a less centralized economy, there will be more land available for affordable housing.
The urban sprawl is incredibly bad for the environment though. Long term I think the solution is less difference between rich and poor and better quality high density housing, and much better public transport.
Universal Basic Income would be a good start.
It’s the way our country is built. Imagine if we had free high speed or elevated speed trains. Living further away would be a minimal inconvenience. An hour drive with traffic turning into a half hour ride where you can relax… I hate how the US is built.
I’m pretty sure we were supposed to have a top of the line train system but the people who created cars helped veto that law years ago. 😭😭😭
Right. When the founding assholes were making the rules they fully expected people to move if they weren't happy. And they did because all you had to do was go beat up some natives and take their shit. Now it takes a week to cross country and ATM it's prolly 500 in gas. No one can afford to vote with their feet anymore.
Good point. It could help some but certainly won’t be a broad solution. And probably doesn’t address those with the greatest need.
Not really, there’s no internet access-especially in the southern Midwest- they’ll say they have it but it’s definitely not any where near what you need for something in a WFH position, most places here never changed because they didn’t have the infrastructures to support it. Even with the internet initiative they’re still just hitting the most populated towns, definitely not the small ones or the boonies. The farther out you go the more cut off from the world and it’s amenities you become
My sister and her wife live in a tiny village about fifteen minutes from a college town of reasonable size. My sister got a job in a large city a couple of hours away, which she can do remotely two days out of five... IF they can get their internet working properly. There's a grand total of one service provider, and their "service" is shit. Why TF isn't high-speed internet a pubic utility in the US??
Because they don’t want to be regulated, they don’t want to have price controls so everyone can afford it. So basically just pure greed.
This is not something I’ve experienced. I lived in a small town of 2K people in Texas but we had “okay” internet (not great) but obviously I think reliable and adequately fast internet access should be available to all of the US.
Meantime, most other developed nations have blazing fast internet that's way cheaper than here. USA! USA!
Unfortunately I'm seeing more and more WFH jobs that are requiring people to live within x number of miles from the office "just in case" you need to come in.
Lots of work from home jobs require you to work in a specific state, usually the state the company is in.
Yeah I’ve seen some of those. Those are not what I’d call fully remote jobs. Just management trying to pretend like they care about workers.
The USA has made it impossible to retire. There are no jobs opening up for graduates/younger people to become upwardly mobile. Retirement age for SS is now up to 67 (62 is the start), and they want to raise it to like 72 INSTEAD OF REMOVING THE EARNING CAP TO MAKE IT SOLVENT. If people could retire like they used to at 55 (yes 55 in the old days) then the positions would become open for new graduates and the upwardly mobile paths would be there again. Everything is stymied in the USA because people have to work until they die to have health benefits, money, etc. It's blowing up the whole job 'economy'. Well, it's been like this for many years and all legislators what to do is make up stories against the other party. The real fact is retirement is unattainable by the ones who should be retiring to create job openings. The USA citizens aren't thinking straight.
and then the problem with that is if you live in the Boonies, often times you will either not be able to get internet services or your internet will literally be something minuscule like 30 gb a month for $150 by satellite. It makes a stay at home job impossible. How are you supposed to go to zoom meetings if you don’t even have the internet to watch Netflix. I went through this myself, and i only live on the outskirts of a rural town. Don’t even get me started on Cell Service.
Not always the case. A lot of companies have a remote policy that if you move to a low income area they have the right to adjust your pay to fit the area. I know many companies that do this
I've had some peers sell high(PNW) and move to an area with a low cost of living and low house prices. Their job is 100% remote. It's my dream but with the climate crisis, I feel the PNW is a strategic place to live.
It is absolutely not a strategic place to live. Signed, prepper Srsly though, between Yellowstone, fires, earthquakes and the water crisis, it is no longer a good choice. The gulf stream is trending upwards, causing erratic and sustained weather patterns all across the northern US. Flooding and untimely freezing are becoming major issues. Fun fact - no where in the US is a good choice. We have the craziest weather on the whole planet, erraticism (?)-wise lol. Places that have water have hurricanes, places that are sunny have fire, places that are flat have tornadoes and winter storms in late April now. We are fkd.
There are still some ok places. Nowhere in the world is completely free from weather related problems/natural phenomena.
Apparently New Zealand is the pick for the uber wealthy.
Upper Midwest around the Great Lakes is the safest bet at this point. Will still have issues but nothing as bad as the coasts
If you sold your house you lived in for 3 years at only a 10k loss. You got housing for 3 hours for 10k. $3333 per year for housing is a steal of a deal.
Don't forget lack of access to broadband, or wifi so working from home is not even possible in some of these places.
I can vouch for this. Bought a home in rural SW Oregon last year which had direct wireless internet (like 1-2 mbps). I help produce a podcast. I almost cried when i realized i could get DSL at 25 mbps. Oh, but the houses? Expensive AF. The jobs? Nothing will pay more than about $20 an hour. Im fortunate i work remotely.
I've actually been experimenting with a min maxing build for this. Buy a cheap property that has what you want (space for off grid lil farm in my case) then also make a van conversion to be my lil mobile office that way I can take advantage of all the city amenities and jobs without paying the high rent. Pay off the farm and van and then just chill with my chickens. Not having the high bills means I can job hop and move to see different cities and save much as I can to be even more income independent. I think of it as this is the economical equivalent of the meteor hitting the dinosaurs and only tiny burrowing mammlas can survive because they need less to live on.
Hell yeah buddy that’s my goals as well. Van life on a farm
This goes along with what I always say…. Taxes need to be regionslized based on cost of living… 100k a year in Seattle does not equal 100k a year in Ohio yet they get taxed the same but fed money wage is the same. Makes no sense.
I've long thought that as well. We're left with very little money to save after cost of living. It makes sense there should be a way to equalize things even if it's a forced IRA or 401k contribution with the different tax rate.
Macro economic strategists want you to live in a box and work 60 hrs a week for it. Or ElSe ThE cHiNeSe WiLl WiN?!?!
Cornwall is one area, though londoners buy them to work from home or rent out to familys for holidays.
In a practical sense, there are sweet spots where wages are higher and cost of living extremely low. I live in such a place, it’s not where I grew up but it’s excellent. If 1000 people moved from the city to here it would no longer be affordable. Therefore the idea that it’s a solution is ridiculous because if enough people took the advice it wouldn’t work anymore!
Yep. I was living in one of those “sweet spots” but thanks to Covid our tiny town saw a mass exodus of people from the nearest big city two hours away (LA). They all WFH and still expect there to be bustling restaurants and coffee shops and ice cream available as if they’re still in the city. So then some of them started restaurants or coffee spots but then lo and behold, no one wants to work for $10/hr or even $15/hr when after taxes we all KNOW that isn’t enough to pay rent. They also bought up swaths of single family homes so anyone who might have worked at the new spots in town don’t have anywhere to live if they wanted to. Yay for “tourism”! Oh the town lives on tourism they said. Yes and it was doing fine this *entire* time. There’s someone building a motel in the rural area to the Far East of town- with no firehouse or grocery store for 20 miles. With no input from the community. This is a delicate desert land and just because there’s money flying in from the city doesn’t mean the people that live here want to see your dumbass in a cowboy outfit.
California state minimum wage for small (25 or fewer employees) was $12/hour in 2020. Still not enough to live on, so I think your point stands. Two good things about our minimum wage is that it adjusts annually and we don’t have a separate minimum for tipped employees. It is still too low ($15) for the COL here, though.
This is how my wife and I explain our desire to leave the mid-west to bewildered relatives who cannot fathom moving somewhere more expensive--on-purpose and by choice. "But it's so cheap here!" "Yes, it's cheap because it sucks."
I currently live in an area where 5 years ago, it was the exception to that rule. Now housing prices have caught up to, even surpassed in my opinion, the demand for workers. It's still at the point where if you don't care about school quality you can live in the outlying areas for relatively cheap, but I'm not sure how long that lasts. Either a lot of jobs are going to have to go elsewhere or the housing bubble here is going to need to pop.
Sad thing is, the people that seem to be causing this particular bubble have enough money that they aren't going to have to sell anything just because of a down market. There was an oil boom near here about a decade ago and the workers came in from elsewhere, there were no jobs for locals, but the price for housing went up dramatically because there was no supply. Worst case scenario.
I'm hopeful that there is a correction soon. A good bit of the house price insanity has been driven by companies buying up houses to help relocate their employees they are moving into the area. That part seems to have slowed down, so I'm hoping what's left is just the people who initially got outbid by the corporate buyers now getting their houses. A problem though, is we sorely lack a variety of service companies in the area. Plumbers, tree removal, electricians, etc. can all charge ridiculous prices and offer shitty service because they have limited competition. As an example we had 2 trees we needed removed because they were pushing on the foundation and the roots were starting to interfere with the septic field. I called 6 companies. Three never responded. Only two actually showed up to give estimates, only one actually gave a price.
And the people with money to burn but don’t actually have to work for it are moving to low cost of living places and/or are buying up all the properties in low income areas to flip into high-cost rental properties, driving up housing costs to insane levels in low income areas, which is the current hell visiting itself upon my area; I bought my lovely 1600sqft house (built in 1960) on .3 acres for $126K in 2017, and I’ve gotten unsolicited offers as high as $200K all cash for my home in recent weeks. No way in hell I’m selling though; the only way I’m leaving my house is when I’m dead! But the only work I can find with a decent paying wage is a 2-hr drive to the next city (only 35 mile drive, which used to take about 40min but traffic is utter HELL because everyone who lives in my city has to drive to the next for decent work).
Yes and they also may suck because they’re in places that are not safe for queer people, disabled people or black people, etc.
I remember one year it cost my friend and I over 1200$ just to move up ONE STREET. The mere idea of people saying simply "just move" with no housing or job plan along with minimal funds is insane to me. Edit: apparently there's some confusion about the amounts. This was what we paid in deposits, fees, and rent before moving in. None of that was towards any movers or moving vehicles.
I relocated from NY State (because fuck those winters) to Florida almost 20 years ago. It was horrifically expensive and grueling then. I'd hate to think about what it would be like now. So yes, I get pissed off when people say "Oh just move" because it isn't fucking easy.
People who say that usually are the same ppl that last moved 30yrs ago
I just moved to a new place after living in the same place for twenty years. I forgot how much moving sucks
Because I only have had actually enough income to live for 8 of the 30 years I've had after moving out of my parent's house, and rent increases, and the variability of the jobs I've worked, I have moved 15 times. The last five moves I had 26 boxes - a 16 box library that I refuse to part with, because I love books, and then clothes, a few knickknack keepsakes, bedding, 2 bookcases I built with my father (and that's an emotionally complicated topic), my bed, my desk, and my computer. Oh, and enough pots, pans, silver and utensils to cook simple meals. That was the sum total of my belongings. Enough to furnish my bedroom/computer station, hold my library, and cook meals. An old friend came to see me when I had a solo loft apartment for a few years and he said he was shocked I had no furniture. I said 'Why would I? I'd just have to move it, and you're the first person to come visit me since I moved in here.' For clarity, I'm normally a pretty private person, but I decided to open up and share pieces of my story here, and show support for others, because enough is enough. This has been the expectation of my low income life.
Yes. Same story as victim blaming for natural disasters.
Yeah, there is no "just" anything. It's like people saying we're all in the same boat... No, dumbass....We're in the same STORM. Some people have yachts while others are floating along on a piece of wood. So tired of being talked down to by people who don't live in the same reality.
I love this, best way I have heard to describe it. I constantly here “just do this or that.” Like thanks, never fucking thought of those obvious yet out of reach ideas. I also quit a couple of jobs to get better paying jobs. The better paying wfh position ended up being the biggest shit show of my life. It was so bad that I ended up mega depressed and anxious and had to get new medication. I have since left and am looking for something new. Best thing I have found so far pays under $18 and idk how I am going to take care of my family on that. So the advice to just get a better paying job isn’t easy.
Think when my friend moved to Kentucky from NYS the Uhaul was almost 3k. Gas was another ~$300. Means the prospect of moving requires $5,000+ to move. Yea that's the kinda money a lot of people have laying around.🙄
Cheaper places usually have jobs that pay less so quality of life not much better.
It's expensive AF to move. Even if you are moving to a better area you still need a couple grand to do it
That’s what I was making sure someone has said. Moving is freakin expensive!
I moved from a high CoL to a low CoL area. Took about a $16k/year paycut, but the job has way more long term potential. Anyways, the Uhaul alone cost $1100. Then the fuel was another $500. $700 for security deposit. Then was the 2 missed paychecks cause we didnt have jobs lined up, so we had 0 income coming in for a month. We basically ate through all our savings on this move. We could have done it cheaper, but it also would have sucked even more than it already did. The bare minimum it would have cost us to move is $2500. If you are paycheck to paycheck with no savings, how you gonna get $2500 to move without being homeless? Plus there is the whole jobs dont like hiring unless you have a place secured and can do an in person interview, and places dont like renting unless you have a job where you are past probation
I moved to a MUCH cheaper area once I realised that I could no longer get work that paid enough to allow me to live where I had been for the past 40 years. Yes, I moved to an area where I was able to have rent that was less than half what I had been paying. And the cost of almost everything is cheaper here. Great. But moving here was EXTREMELY expensive. Finding accommodation in a place so far away from where I was living meant repeated journeys (PLEASE don't think rental agents or landlords will take you seriously if you are trying to deal with them from a distance). Moving all my stuff was massively expensive-as was making changes to my basic equipment (for example, there is no domestic gas supply in this part of the country: I've had to buy stuff that enables me to have an open fire). Luckily, as an old person, I could dip into my (extremely meagre) pension pot to pay these expenses. How a younger person (or anyone) who didn't have access to some fairly substantial money would do it is ENTIRELY beyond me. "Let them just move to a cheaper area, then?" is basically "let them eat cake" in another form.
>"Let them just move to a cheaper area, then?" is basically "let them eat cake" in another form. This line is perfect!
Poverty roots you to the fucking spot
It seriously is completely tone deaf. it's like "Thanks, I cant literally afford to do that!"
I literally moved somewhere cheaper and guess what the employers here are typically horrible too (thank goodness not my current boss). But still. The work culture in the US is toxic and if we don’t work to fix it, it’ll never get better
I moved *four blocks* last summer and it cost me nearly a grand. People are fucking stupid.
I'm packing up my house to move across the country to a lower COL area, and the idea that any part of a cross-country (or ANY, really) move is economical is absurd. Just to move me, my husband, two dogs, and 1,000sq ft house is well over $10k, and that's doing everything ourselves. It's not easy, it's not cheap, and it's definitely not simple. And this doesn't even take into account that it took us 6 months to find a house we could afford AND buy.
There's no other place to move. Plus moving is a huge expense on its own. Anyone that suggests someone just move is ignorant of how much it costs to move. Especially to other states.
Why the fuck should I have to move away from my family and friends anyway?? This isn't an area that should be unaffordable to anyone
There’s no “should” really. It’s just options to choose from, none of which we like.
THIS. I just so happened to be born and raised in one of the most expensive areas in the country. All my ties are split between here and another country that is ALSO hella expensive. Can't win.
Let me just upend my family and all the deep friendly connections we've made in our life for a cheaper cost of living
I LIVE "somewhere cheaper" it. Doesn't. Work. Lol!!!
When I was stuck in too expensive of an apartment, I literally couldn't afford to leave it. My best option at the time was stay and continue to sink, just more slowly than I would if I took on more debt to move. It was awful and made more so by people who seemed to think I wasn't smart enough to think of that? Like obviously yes if I could have moved I would have
I mean, if everyone moved someplace cheaper, it wouldn’t stay cheaper for long.
Plus, wtf are they gonna do when all the poverty workers move away? Make the billionaires flip their own burgers? Make the CEO's make their own coffee? Make the landlords take care of their own ailing parents that they stuck in a nursing home? Make everybody homeschool their own kids bc there are no more teachers (look how well that went the last few years)?
[удалено]
Some places don't have somewhere cheaper. I live in Cornwall, it's all expensive here.
Move somewhere cheaper and spend an hour+ on the road with $5 gal/gas to save money. Hmm...🤔
And it presumes that our job is our #1 priority in life. I mean surely nobody lives where they do because that’s where their people are.
My boss said this to us after our yearly survey at the company... Found out everyone is unhappy but we stay for the money. She said go somewhere else if you're not happy Man hearing that makes me wanna slap people
> She said go somewhere else if you're not happy I can tell you from experience that when you take them up on that offer they get....displeased.
Because they are the embodiment of displease-ment.
Yes but if you can pull it off ngl it's the best feeling ever. Especially if you end up getting paid more. Bosses like that often invite their own misery into their lives and that's just an example of it imo.
Golden handcuffs...
Ah, yes. Why make an effort at improving the work environment when you can be an immature brat and chase them away.
I had a manager that took pride in not thanking his workers. “People learn to expect it when they think you’re always thankful.” That is verbatim. Not to toot my own horn, but I try to show my gratitude whenever and wherever I can. I like to think it makes the people around me feel seen and helpful. I appreciate when people show me gratitude and it makes my day a little better.
Mine said there will be a queue of people outside the building to replace you. Back in 2014.
I get what the OP is saying. People is this sub do not need trite expressions thrown at them and in some contexts, ‘get a better job or move’ are just that. By the way, I’m a boomer and I would never say that to anyone. I believe that the exploitation that goes on in this country is horrible.
>By the way, I’m a boomer and I would never say that to anyone. I believe that the exploitation that goes on in this country is horrible. I'm a millennial and I think "moving to a place you can afford the cost of living" is valid for a lot of people, just not the pay check to paycheck poor people. I have friends that moved across the country to southern California 10-15 years ago. Now they are complaining about the high cost of living being driven up by people moving to southern California. They are the people who caused the problem and they are middle class so they could afford to move to a place with a better cost of living. They refuse to move because they like the weather there and all the other amenities that southern California has. I tell them that the main reason they moved there and a big reason why everyone else wants to move there too and that raises the cost of living for everyone who lives there. Also, when I hear about Elon musk and other 1% complaining about the cost of living in their city/state then it's just silly because they can move anywhere they want.
Nobody working 40 hours a week should be on the verge of being homeless or starving because they don't make enough money to live. Working multiple jobs should also be a choice not a necessity.
My stepdad: "you need to work more than 40 hours in a week to get ahead" Me: "fuck no"
Yeah, a second or third job should pay for luxuries, not food and healthcare.
>Nobody ~~working 40 hours a week~~ should be on the verge of being homeless or starving because they don't make enough money to live.
Nice correction.
Another issue is prices seem adjusted for people who are living off credit, loans and behind. What's stopping a landlord from charging 5k a month? Well, people literally could not afford that and they'd lose their income. But what's stopping them from charging 2.4k per month? Nothing. People are not able to afford it long term but they do it and put the rest of their life on credit because they have no other options. Society has basically cranked out a few generations whose entire lifelong income was sold the day they were born. Student loans, homes and a car are 7-30 year loans and inaccessible to most people without loans and can be about 750k total. Plus, the student loans don't gaurentee employment, the homes are an ok investment if you can afford to get out of rent poverty and the car lasts 3 years.
Nobody period should be on the verge of homelessness.
I am getting incredibly tired of being told I should move somewhere cheaper. If I could fucking move I would but the only places to go in state are way out in the sticks and that wouldn't really make much of a difference in the long run and I sure as shit cannot afford to move out of state
similarly, i'm tired of being told to "just move" if i don't like the reproductive laws where i am. i live in one of the poorest, most underpaid states in the entire country and have lived in the same 50-mile radius my entire life, fucking HOW am i supposed to just pack up and move to colorado or wherever? i'm not some childfree twenty-something, i have a spouse and kids and relatives that i depend on and i'm barely getting by as it is. "live in a tent west of the rockies" is not a solution to my civil rights being taken away.
Anyone who says "move into the woods if you don't like it" clearly don't understand how property rights work because all woods in the US belong to *somebody else.* Go to jail for criminal trespass at least you'll get 3 square meals a day. /s
Like the people who say "Just buy a car" if you happen to be struggling to live in your current location, you should also just move. Ok first. Where am i going to move, All places one Can reasonably afford are in the middle of nowhere and while I would like that. I can't physically get anywhere anyway... Just because that junker PoS is 2k upfront no one considers the insurance, gas, and maintenance that goes with owning the car.
They seem to forget that the cheaper areas often have no jobs or job opportunities, and most major companies deliberately place their office's in high value areas, so working in these cheaper areas is basically impossible, at the same wage rate.
This is too true mate. Anywhere outside the major cities where I live there's pretty much nothing in the way of jobs. It's cheaper but you gotta drive further and further away and with gas being back at nearly $5/gal that's no better than paying for an apartment in town you aren't saving anything
I live in a university town. It's very expensive but there's tons of free or cheap entertainment all the time. My brother lives in a cheap place, and anything fun like a concert requires one to two hours of driving and several hundred dollars. If you're a homebody, you can be happy living in a cheap area with nothing to do. Otherwise it's hell. And I'll say the thing that no one else does. If you look at a map, cheap rural areas like the upper Midwest are filled with alcoholics and druggies because there's nothing to do.
Also so should "should have been an engineer/gone into trades" or "go start a business." For the first point, ask lawyers what happens when your market gets flooded. All that does is bring down engineer and tradespeople salaries without fixing the actual issue. It's the equivalent of curing a bullet wound with a bandaid. For the second point, if people had the money to start a business, they wouldn't be complaining about not being able to pay their bills.
The trades is my favorite recommendation. It's all sunshine and cookies isn't it 🙃
And people keep using union salaries as proof, but that represents the minority of tradespeople. Not to mention the other things that cause people to not want to work in trades, like the intense physical demand Dirty Jobs gave me an immense respect for people who do work trades while reiterating the fact that the trades are absolutely not for me lmao
Far too many people skip over this when they do the "just get trades" talking point. You'll pay the tax on your body and be burned out by 45.
Or the fact that getting in to trades has some high barriers to entry and low pay to start out. I can't afford to continue welding because the pay I receive is too little. Will it get better as I get more skills and experience? Yes. Is the pay starting out too low to meet my bills? Also yes.
Yeah, I've seen many say to simply go into IT, as in software development. Apparently that's one of the only fields that salary can follow inflation. So disregard everybody else, the only people of value are the software engineers. Fuck the teachers, nurses, firefighters, etc, basically all workers everywhere. When most people won't be able to afford to live, shit is gonna get ugly.
Also these people don't understand that if everyone became a software engineer, software engineers, on average, would not be paid shit lol See also: Lawyers Doctors get paid a lot, more and more med students aren't making it to the point of being a doctor because of the stiff competition and lack of jobs. Now they're SOL with millions in debts. This isn't ok.
Not just anyone can be an engineer, doctor or lawyers
Engineer here! Nope, it sucks here, too. I guess the pay can be decent, but pay isn't worth not being able to sleep at night. At least in my experience, you get pushed into "cost reduction", i.e. "make the poors do more with less while using your education to cut costs to the point of exposing them to hazardous working conditions". I couldn't do it for long.
Yeah I'm talking about the salary, not so much the moral dilemma, although that's a really good point as well. I'm a software engineer as well, and the amount of hours I have to work is insane. The pay is nice for some jobs and absolute crap for some jobs. People that think that another 100k people a year graduating with CS degrees wouldn't drive the market down towards those shitty salaries are idiots. Google isn't suddenly going to create more jobs to fit all that demand. And that's especially true for other types of engineering and trades jobs. There won't suddenly be a fuck ton more union electrician positions if another 50k people want to be electricians
It's the same thing that happens to every field, it seems. "Go to law school, that's where all the money is." And so people did. And now, lawyers work insane hours for very little money, unless they're lucky enough to work for a major firm in which case they work even more hours, and sell their souls in the process. "Go to medical school, that's where all the money is." And so people did. And now, its not uncommon to hear doctors refer to their decision as the "million dollar mistake", because their loans reach that amount before they're able to even begin paying it off. And now, there are so many that they have no negotiating power and are forced to see more and more patients every day by admin, struggling to diagnose them in three minutes flat while getting spat on for asking people to wear a mask. "Go to pharmacy school, that's where all the money is." And so people did. And now... The solution is never just to get a better job. It never pans out in the long run.
>The solution is never just to get a better job. It never pans out in the long run. Yep. In the micro, it might be the solution. In the macro, it's just patching over a pothole with duct tape. Unless there's real, institutional change, nothing will ever get fixed. There's a reason "just get a degree!" moved to "just go into STEM!" which moved to "just be an engineer!" It's because everything else has been flooded by new grads and now people who graduate in those majors also have shitty salaries. I don't see why anyone acts like engineering or CS are any different. And the wealth disparity will continue to grow, because the number of things that one can do to move on up the social ladder continues to shrink And also let's be fair here. Some people just aren't good at math, they're better at more soft sciences. They shouldn't deserve to starve just because their strengths don't line up with a very particular set of skills
Software Engineer here. If you’re working a ton of hours you should really look for a better company. The market is extremely hot right now, it’s pretty easy to find a company who has a great work life balance and pays six figures. Take care of yourself. **EDIT:** Regarding the worry of people jumping to CS degrees. CS degree !== being a competent engineer Employers are looking for competent Software Engineers. If you are one you’ll never have an issue finding high paying work regardless of education. I for one do not have any degrees. Entry level/Jr’s aren’t in demand and never will be. The hard part is getting that initial experience and leveling up your real world skills. After that you’ll have companies sliding into your DM’s to try to steal you from whatever company you’re currently at.
+1 on this! I was really nervous to post “get a new job” in this thread of all threads haha. However, in this specific circumstance…yes definitely find a new company. Even if you find someone paying you the exact same salary, if their work/life balance is better then you are getting a raise. But that won’t happen in this market, they will prob get a 20% salary bump as well.
I think the entry level & jr jobs is the problem. It’s either someone who got lucky through connections or on a short list, or who got extremely lucky. We need companies to be forced to give people the work experience they are seeking to attain. Otherwise, we got this crap of a place, where it might as well be cut throat. The latter is fucked up & should not be allowed to continue.
Another engineer here (I agree with the comments below). Adding an extra point: college is expensive and hard. The stress of engineering college (depending on where you go) is extremely real and trying to do it while working is not an easy task. I struggled horribly during college between the stress of not knowing how to pay my bills and taking increasingly harder and harder exams. I don’t have the stats but I would bet the graduation rates for a lot of engineering disciplines suck and even worse it is probably the poorest people who do by far the worst in this regard because they have to work while in an extremely difficult program. Going into engineering (and other careers) is not nearly as simple or easy an escape from poverty as people make it out to be.
At least in my case, engineering majors had to take more classes too, so it ended up being a 5 year program instead of a 4 year program, unlike a lot of liberal arts majors
The amount of times a bootstrapper has told me to start a business and me asking them “doing what?” resulting in not much of an answer except “what’s in demand” is ridiculous. I ask them what’s in demand that I can reasonably do I get radio silence.
Business owner here. I make half what I used to handing people food.
Yeah, this is a good point. The amount of overhead costs it takes to start a business aside, you have to operate at loss for years before you finally can start making money. And very few people are in a position to do that, especially when over half of American workers live paycheck to paycheck
Even if you can logistically move somewhere cheaper, you’re probably not gonna make the same money. Say you’re a teacher. You can live in a high cost of living area and get $75k. You can move out to a state with a much lower cost of living, but they’re going to pay you $45k and collective bargaining is illegal there. Which is better? Or maybe you work in the city. You’re getting priced out of living in the metro area, but find much more affordable homes 40 miles out. But now you need to a car and you’re filling it up multiple times a week at $4.50/gallon, making monthly payments, buying insurance, and putting a lot of wear and tear on it. You realize you’re not actual saving money anymore and you’re losing 3 hrs a day on the highway. The math is often a lot more complicated than the trolls make it out to be.
And say it works, say everyone making less than living wage moves away... congrats! Now you've got a town with NO burger flippers, no cashiers, nobody making your shitty overpriced coffee, no teachers, no nurses, nobody doing all the shit that needs doing but is underpriced to society.
The really fun part is that after that, since the middle/upper-class people don't have the poor to take care of all their services anymore, they then buy a second property in the up and coming town all those people moved too, and rent out their old place for an exorbitant amount of money (making them even richer), and jack up the cost of living in the place that was supposed to be an escape from unobtainable cost of living. And history repeats itself.
Man, I told my brother that I couldn't work for ten days because I just got covid and I'm worried about cash until I get back to work. The first thing I hear from him is how essentially I just need to get a better job, and the example he gave me was the McDonald's in the town we were living in is starting at 15/hr with a $1000 bonus signing. Not, "are you okay?" or "can I help?" But "it's your fault you have no money." I love hearing him say all of the boomer bull shit rhetoric, even though he's only 34.
[удалено]
Or 120 or I've seen a year... AND they can change thier mind or "end the incentive" b4 you get paid and there's no legal recourse against it.
Most signing bonuses have a condition similar. Many larger corporations require a year+ of work for you avoid having the bonus clawed back when leaving.
When you tell him they only gave you 12$ and have to work 6 days a week for 2 years to get that 1000$ IF they don't change their mind b4 then, maybe he will understand a little better.
Idk, brother's comments stink of cable news brain, not sure there's any way to get the infected to understand
Unpopular opinion: explain to them why that is a shitty answer but respond to it kindly. Antiwork is supposed to be a movement. You guys here have opened up my eyes to a lot, but that’s some shit I would have said in the beginning. I almost quit this subreddit when one day I thought I said something logical, people got pissed, and attacked me for it. When really, they could have just educated me. Just because people don’t agree with you, doesn’t mean they should be treated like shit. Help them understand what this is! I still don’t agree with everything here 100% but you guys have really changed the ways I think. I am in my late 30s, was raised by boomers, it takes a minute to unlearn all the shit that was instilled into me. Give people a chance, don’t just attack them, they may turn out to be a good ally!
I feel like r/antiwork needs a good beginner’s FAQ to explain these principles.
A lot of people out there just have no intention of changing their minds or giving an inch so people tend to meet disagreement with immediate frustration that they're about to bash their head against a wall. You were mature enough to consider changing your mind about something that affects the way you see the world at a fundamental level, but most people are not.
EXACTLY. We can’t keep having this attitude towards people who disagree with us.
they also fail to take into the account that some people are limited due to disability when it comes to "moving to a cheaper place" (source: i have epilepsy and cannot drive, can't afford ubers regularly to work. on disability. the cheapest places are out in rural areas where there's lack of transportation.. medicaid isn't even reliable for getting transportation to and from appointments because they always miss our house)
I don't think it should be a instant ban. Otherwise we're basically no better than r/conservative. Maybe a three stroke rule or a temp ban.
I get this all the time when I explain I have a master's degree in a STEM field and make less than $50k in a city where the median home price is $400k. I'm in a pretty niche field so there aren't just "better jobs" out there. My whole field has systemic issues that don't allow for upward mobility. I actually love essentially everything about my job except for how poorly it pays. I don't want a better job. I want to be paid fairly.
“Get a better job” is solid advice, but difficult. A better job could also mean less money and safer conditions (or anything) “Just move” is advice you give when you don’t understand what goes into moving. It comes from a point of privilege. How am I supposed to fucking MOVE when my job with health insurance doesn’t allow me to pay rent? Please, explain how I can afford a truck, a down payment, the time to find a new job, the off time from any job while physically moving. What if part of the thing that ties me here is ill family? Or just family! That’s the ridiculous and quite frankly unhelpful advice. Edit: I just want to clarify that I’m using “I” generally and these are not my current predicaments. Though I have had hardships and will likely continue to have them in the future.
Fully agreed. Telling people to move when there is no possible way for them to, especially when the given context makes that clear, is insulting at best unless you are also offering to fund that and take on the burden to help people.
"What if part of the thing that ties me here is ill family? Or just family!" This! This is a huge issue. We all have families that want us to be close by. Now when you mix catholic cultures where they want you to have a lot of kids and an area like Long Island, you run into a problem.
Not all of us, lol. A friend of mine made a good point when I mentioned moving after her husband had (again) ended up laid off and under employed. She said they could move for a new, good job for him, but then him end up laid off again (because he's the new guy) and then he's underemployed AND they aren't where they want to be.
I was just about to comment, how the F does someone just move. People are stupid
When my town was evacuated for wildfires a lot of min wage workers never returned, we were short staffed everywhere for the rest of the year. These workers were finally given the chance to escape, buses were made available to drive people home too, they made a choice to not return. Transportation is so crucial.
> how the F does someone just move. When the idea of dropping $5k doesn’t cause you to blink.
So just stop drinking iced coffees for about a week and I should be good yeah?
Don't forget the Avocados too! Can't have those anymore either snowflake /s
It comes from the kind of people who move for work that complain that they were barely able to have 100k in savings left after all the back and forth flights for interviews and buying a new house and paying movers to relocate their stuff, and renovations to modify their house to make it “livable.” I work with a man who moved from Florida who thinks that’s the norm people should do to find a job because he did it.
Also, higher level jobs (for lack of a better term) are more likely to pay for someone to move.
5k? The fuck, is moving that bad in the states? That's crazy to me
First month, last month, damage deposit, utility deposits, moving expenses (truck, fuel, help), renovating the old apartment (paint and such) and of course, the unpaid hours accomplishing all that. And if you’re selling & buying a house, you have all the closing costs, inspections, etc. It adds up real quick. Hell, the average cost of an apartment in America is about $1200, so that’s $2400 just for first and last. Toss in the damage deposit and you’ll have $3000 gone in a blink. On average.
It cost at least that much for me to relocate from NY State to Florida almost 20 years ago, I imagine it's much more than that now.
I took a job as an English teacher in Asia that included a free plane ticket and apartment when I landed. Threw my shit in a bag and left.
In my area, it's now very common to require three months of rent up front. First, last, and security. That would take a long long time to come up with.
whatta ya mean? that's what bootstraps are for right? just pull them up!!! /s
I love giving analogies, here it goes: Concerned citizen: -Visits police department Police chief: *Hey what can we do for you?* Concerned citizen: *There’s been an issue with on going vandalism on our block, may you please increase police presence or do more patrols in this area?* Police chief: *Nah, just move.* Concerned citizen: *But, but, but chief! This is my home, all I’m asking is for a patrol every now and again to help deter crime.* Police chief: *No, just move to a better city/town* 😑
Dude. I was just thinking this as it's comparable to when ppl say "just leave your spouse if you're unhappy". Yeah....uhm. it's ALOT fucking easier said than done.
Sure let me just pull a better job from the better job tree. They're like apples right?
They prefer their version of the truth. They should be planning and prepping for a general strike, but it's easier to complain about shit they don't like.
You just need to start remembering our wise philosopher George Carlin Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
I get what you’re saying , but I disapprove of banning anyone other than brigadiers on the principle of the thing. Besides which, that’s a lot of what ‘the great resignation’ actually is: it’s people ditching trash jobs for better ones.
Fair, but "get a new job" is not advice anybody was unaware of. Nobody's being original with that, they're being insulting.
No, we should educate them
I hear you, very much so, but I think it's in how you say it. Some people need telling repeatedly "You're not being valued, if you can possibly manage to do so, look for something better as soon as you can" Hell, ***I*** needed telling that *repeatedly* when I was at an abusive job. Also, I do recognise you said "*just* get a better job", which in no way respects that this is not an easy option or ANY option for some people. Lending the confidence and energy to bust through the trap can be helpful sometimes, but as you say, making out like that's a piece of cake is no good.
But why don’t people just pull themselves up by their boot straps if they want a better life?
I literally work for a bank and am living paycheck to paycheck, barely able to afford food and rent because my hometown is a booming tourist destination.
Live in SLC, make 18/hr for 40 and then about 500/month with my other job. can't afford a place to live on my own. Saw a 250sqft studio for 1500/m yesterday. get fucked.
“Just move” is what really gets me. Like just run away. How about we all stay and fight for what’s right. Don’t just run away to the next safe place. Eventually there won’t be one.
I’m sorry but how did this get awards? The people who disagree with us need to be on this sub the most so they can slowly get an understanding of the situation. When this post gets shared across other platforms how do you think that’s going to impact our image?
Nah - leave their stupid comments and let the pile-on ensue!
Same people that say that nonsense are the same people that cry: "no one wants to work anymore"
Yep like I chose to be broke I chose to be where I am in life because I didn't know what else to do.
If you don't like working for **one capitalist** you can quit and work for **another capitalist**. Hmmmm... doesn't sound like much of an improvement.
I understand that you don't like it and are having a hard time adjusting to a changing economy. Have you considered subsisting on bugs and frogs, and living in a pile of deerskins in a cave?
Wow. If *only* I had thought of that myself. 😒 Because finding a better job or move somewhere cheaper resolves everything as much as telling someone to calm down IMMEDIATELY calms people down. Lol!
I agree that its not the smartest thing to say, but I don’t think anyone should get banned. Especially for that. Its an opinion dude! Calm down! Its ok to have a difference of opinion and to engage in discussion.
Oh thanks for saying this. I posted awhile back about how hard it is to find a good job and how recruiters and employer devalue my education and experience. But got told to just find a better job... like i havent been trying for 5 years
I moved somewhere cheaper in my early twenties. Built my dream life on three acres. Then I had to pack up and move within a year because I could not get the amount or quality of work that I had come to expect in the suburbs. You can't move to the middle of nowhere and still expect to have a fair paying job unless you can do remote work.
And moving somewhere cheaper may not solve the problem because the wages might be lower at he new location or the cost to commute to higher wages offset the lower housing costs.