If we have the H1B or other visas only for those that make say over $130K/yr, then that would help things a great deal....that way we let in the brains, but keep out the drones...
If our real goal is to increase the number of workers who can fill those $130k/yr jobs we most likely need to bring those workers to the US far earlier than when they can command that kind of salary (outside of Silicon Valley that is). The 24 year olds making $80k/yr today are the future 34 year olds making $150k/yr. They will arguably build more experience in the US than in their home countries, so we need both current elite workers and future elite workers to come to the US via our various immigration programs.
Similar to the problem companies have hiring "enough" women and non-Asian minorities, the solution requires fixing the entire pipeline, from college students all the way to executives.
Not only that, it is clear that some of these people support foreign nationalism while at the same time saying the US shouldn't be nationalist, Its okay for China and India to look out for their people, but the US is "Racist" if it looks out for its people.
There are probably a great number of things the Chinese and Indian governments do which US citizens should rightfully be outraged and ashamed of if the US government started following suit, not just nationalist protectionism.
Actually, most presidents do in fact keep most of their campaign promises...
Actually they don't. Effort is not the same as keeping, which is the problem. You are one of the first people I've ever heard in 40 years to confuse the two but muddling the conversation with nonsequitors is a common troll.
A good faith effort is the same as keeping their campaign promises, considering no President is king and as such cannot guarantee anything. A good faith effort is defined as what a reasonable person would determine is a diligent and honest effort. That is all anyone can ever ask of anyone else in any circumstance.
See? Replacing American workers with H-1B workers actually creates more jobs in the tens and hundreds of thousands. Somehow.
I saw nothing in the snippet you posted about replacing American workers. That is something you added. If you actually understood the snippet, or at least didn't refuse to acknowledge the argument, you would have typed something more like this:
See? Hiring H1B workers to help American companies succeed actually creates more jobs in the tens and hundreds of thousands. Obviously.
Literally alternative fact just means facts that support a different narrative than the one a particular group wants.
No, literally alternative facts are exaggerations or opinions proclaimed to be facts by those who continue to circumvent the free press in an attempt to mislead the public. The first use of the term (in nationwide media anyway) was by Kellyanne Conway when she defended the flat out lies told by Sean Spicer about attendance during Trump's inauguration.
Your post is actually a good example of alternative facts. Your commentary on this topic would be insightful if any of your facts were actually true.
When your ideas are too good for criticism that's when you know they're worth having.
Ignoring criticism from people who don't know what they are talking about is different than ignoring all criticism. Listening to criticism from non-climatologists about climate change would be like having a hospital janitor criticize a team of heart surgeons during surgery. While there is no guarantee the surgeons would never make a mistake, the janitor's opinion is still irrelevant.
Scientists will continue to debate the impact and magnitude of climate change forever. Public discourse should be about how much to invest in fixing the problem, not whether the problem exists in the first place.
Show me one IT position that pays $200/hour that is like 400k per year. There is not one IT position that pays that, even for a rockstar developer. Sorry but you clearly have never worked in this industry have you?
First off, I don't know any independent contractors making $200/hour, which is why I used the figure $150/hour. I do know a couple of architect level contractors who have charged a rate in that ballpark for long term full time contracts (I personally have never been offered more than $130/hour, for full disclosure). And it is common to pay $225-250/hour for many IT contracting companies for senior resources, but most of those senior contractors likely only make $125-175k.
This is all in the Chicago suburbs, and salaries in the Bay Area are much higher.
Who is willing to pay that much for a person who doesn't know that the past tense of "pay" is "paid," not "payed?"
An employer who realizes some of the world's best employees don't speak English as a first language, for one. Also ones who understand the difference between an edited professional document and an internet forum post.
Give them the history that demonstrates the salary you want, then if they reject you you are better off.
I just lost a good candidate I was hoping would join my team because the recruiter lied about previous salary during negotiations, and it pissed off our CTO. I still don't feel we should have lost the candidate just because the recruiter was slime, but I didn't get to make the final decision (and maybe there was reason to believe the candidate was in on it).
All I know is that lying about these things will really rub people the wrong way.
Giving them the salary you want, as opposed to your salary history can achieve the same result.
Giving your current salary is just another signal you can use to give more confidence to an employer that you are worth the salary you are asking for. A high salary and promotions from within a company (instead of during a job hop) are both decent indicators that your previous employers were very happy with your performance. These are probably better indicators than some arbitrary programming assignments or generic interview questions.
Wow, don't throw out your back fellating yourself. I'd be curious to see what you really make vs what you brag about.
The salary figures mentioned in my post are not that high in the IT field. I certainly don't consider $200k total compensation to be something to brag about in my field. It gives a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle, but there are plenty of $700k and $1M+ neighborhoods in my area that I'm far from able to afford. Maybe in another decade...
Earlier in my career I never gave my current salary, because I was looking for 20%+ raises each time and giving the information would probably only hurt me. But now that I am in my mid-30's and making far more than most of my counterparts with similar job titles, giving my salary helps ensure I don't waste time with any company which cannot provide similar compensation. Most companies don't realize top IT talent often get Senior manager / Director level salaries even without many if any managerial duties, so I need to weed them out quickly. Either that or they immediately start treating me as a consultant, because many companies are more comfortable with $150/hr full time consultants than $200k "permanent" IT staff members (even for long term gigs).
That is the great thing about a healthy economy. More than one company can be winning at the same time. Anyone who thinks either Microsoft or Apple is in a bad position is either trolling or stupid. They are both huge companies with huge cash reserves and great products.They also both make mistakes, but not mistakes which create any existential threats to either company (so far anyway).
I think those who live completely off of loans for 4 years, and then expect to find immediate employment above what they could have been doing all along, are foolish.
With starting salaries for college graduates averaging $50,651, and starting salaries for high school graduates averaging $33,176, the assumption you state is hardly foolish. Believing there is no chance for hardship after college may be foolish, but believing the investment of time and money will pay off is very reasonable.
I had a full time job for 6 years before I went back to school, and continued to work full time while going to school at night.
This is exactly the type of behavior we don't want to be the norm. It's always commendable when people work hard to find ways to work within the current system, but it is a tragedy that these extreme measures are necessary. Needing to work for six years in a lower paying (and therefore probably less productive) job and then having less energy to commit to education once you start school is not an ideal situation.
We need to face that a college education is as important today as a high school education was in the mid-1900's, and asking kids to start working to pay for college is not much different than making 13 year olds start working to pay for high school.
Ironically, unending greed will eventually cause the concept of Eat the Rich to become reality, as the unemployed masses look for their just desserts.
Considering so far it has only led to the unemployed masses putting a billionaire in the White House, I'm fairly certain the wealthy will be able to continue creating bogeymen like immigrants and terrorists to keep the masses from understanding the root causes of their problems. Throwing in the delegitimization of the free press and its nearly impossible for the masses to rally against their oppressors.
If American-based ingenuity is still their moneymaker, then their hiring practices should reflect that.
Well that is obviously going to be the case. If US worker ingenuity is building their products, then by definition they are employing US workers. If foreign born ingenuity is building their products, then by definition they are employing foreign workers. I don't understand the point of your comment.
Unless you are very very sharp - like you can read the paper on MP4 encoding - and implement it from scratch and understand the math and everything on a desert island, you'll have a future.
You are missing the much larger group of people who will continue to have jobs. They are the technical staff with the soft skills necessary to interface with business and the technical skills to make high level design decisions. This is already where most of the real money in the IT industry is made. Whether they are consultants, software architects, Director of IT, etc these workers are the most insulated from shipping jobs overseas. They are also the ones who greatly benefit from the H1B and other immigration programs.
You don't need to be in the wealthy class to have a future, but you do need to work closely with the wealthy class. If you like hiding behind your desk your days are numbered.
Trump or not, it's sure good to see at least some jobs moving in the other direction for once.
According to the Reshoring Initiative, about 41,000 jobs have been returning to the US per year for the last six years. This does not even count jobs that were planned to leave but reconsidered (like Carrier) or jobs created from foreign investment (like FoxConn).
As automation becomes more capable and wages in other countries increase, it just makes sense that jobs would start to return. Unfortunately for the rust belt the jobs which return are often not the same low skill work which was off-shored over the past few decades.
It seems like what you are saying is "some jobs aren't meant to pay for someone's subsistence" My question is "what jobs are those?"
No jobs are meant to pay for someone's subsistence. Jobs are meant to fill a need of the employer. The wages are meant to provide the incentive for the need to be filled. The amount of money it takes to live a good life is completely decoupled from this arrangement. When I need a babysitter, I don't care if my wages are enough to feed and house a 15 year old girl. I only care what amount of money it will take to get the more responsible teenagers in the area to consistently disrupt their weekend plans to watch my kids for me instead.
This is why I greatly prefer a universal basic income, because it allows society to decide what quality of life everyone "deserves" regardless of their economic value. If funded in a progressive way, it doesn't lower the purchasing power of the working/middle class as much as minimum wage and doesn't disincentive economic activity which is not worth the minimum wage.
Are they "unskilled" jobs? If so, are you suggesting that there needs to remain a majority of people without proper education in order to have an "unskilled" work force so that you can go to the grocery store on Sunday or out to eat in the evening?
Unskilled really just means less skilled. Just being literate would have been considered skilled labor 200 years ago, so being "unskilled" is always a moving goalpost. Being unskilled generally means you don't have any skills which would take more than a few weeks / months to teach your average high school graduate. Just like with a business, if your skills don't create a barrier to entry for competing workers, you will probably not command a high wage. The higher the barrier to entry, whether through natural ability or training, the higher wage you will command.
What happens if everybody has an education and is competing on the same level for "skilled" jobs and nobody wants to do the "unskilled" jobs? What happens if we don't have anyone to man the register or pick your food from a field? Wouldn't you say those jobs are necessary?
If for instance the goalpost moves by every person receiving a college-level education, skilled labor will be those who have skills which cannot be quickly taught to your average college graduate (as opposed to an average high school graduate). Someone who did poorly in college and never differentiated themselves would be considered unskilled.
It seems to me that "unskilled" workers are necessary in order to provide a quality of life for the workers in "skilled" jobs.
Yes, we will continue to need many unskilled workers but as I've said there will probably never be a shortage of them since it is a relative term.
Austin is having the same problem. Families that have lived there for generations can't afford to anymore.
Yeah I guess everything is relative. As a resident of the Chicago suburbs, when I see a non-foreclosure 3000 sq ft home in the middle of Austin for $400k it seems like the house is being given away. But to many native residents just the $9k in yearly taxes can be enough to cause problems.
What qualifies as a "park" or "forest preserve" in and around San Francisco is laughable, at best. Come to Muir Woods where you can share 3 acres of forest with eleventy billion other city residents thinking they are getting in touch with their natural side, too!
Muir Woods is more like 554 acres, and sees only 6000 people per day during peak times. Far more than 3 acres and far less than eleventy billion visitors to share it with. And Muir Woods is only part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area which protects over 80,000 acres of land. This doesn't even count the numerous large parks within the city, like the Golden Gate Park, Presidio, and Land's End. Or the smaller neighborhood parks like Lafayette or Alta Plaza.
I have more forest in my back yard in Minnesota than pretty much all of NorCal combined.
Look up the concept of diminishing returns. Unless you are a real outdoorsy type, you're not going to need much more forest than even a small forest preserve to get a bit of nature in your life. But yes, those types of people are unlikely to like living in most cities. Perhaps the Denver area is one that gives both a modern city feel and easy access to a huge amount of wilderness.
Yup, exactly, that's why my neighbors are eating a 2 hour commute to the bay area. San Francisco, however, isn't a suburb.
The same is true for the desirable areas in any city. The problem with San Francisco is if you want to live in places like Pacific Heights it costs millions of dollars. In a city like Chicago you can get a decent house in many good neighborhoods for $500k. Go to Texas and it's more like $300k.
They can't admit that we're in the worst economy for young people since the Depression. They can't get jobs that pay enough for food and housing, let alone a wife and kids.
We are talking about San Francisco, where the economy is booming. The price of housing is skyrocketing precisely because people have more money to pay for housing. The problem has nothing to do with a weak economy.
The problem is caused by zoning. Existing property owners know new construction could lower their existing home values, so building permits are severely restricted. If they allowed more new housing to be built, along with improving public transportation to accommodate greater demand, these problems would diminish.
Here I am sitting in the 'middle of nowhere' on 20 acres. If the kid wants go go outside, we go out side. Walk on our own property. Go sledding, biking, or what ever else he wants to do. If I need a workout I'll go fell some trees. I can't imagine trying to raise a kid in a concrete jungle.
You do realize there are parks even in cities, right? I only live on a quarter acre of land, but we have a forest preserve and three parks within a mile of our house. The same is true of most desirable suburbs (perhaps not the forest preserves). I significantly prefer public parks to a huge private property for both the community aspect and the lack of maintenance effort.
I grew up on a farm with a nearly 10 acres of non-field/pasture land to maintain, and I sure never want to go back to that. But I can at least imagine why it appeals to others, which you should be able to do about suburb / urban life if you took the time to empathize with other peoples' priorities.
Slashdot Mirror
If we have the H1B or other visas only for those that make say over $130K/yr, then that would help things a great deal....that way we let in the brains, but keep out the drones...
If our real goal is to increase the number of workers who can fill those $130k/yr jobs we most likely need to bring those workers to the US far earlier than when they can command that kind of salary (outside of Silicon Valley that is). The 24 year olds making $80k/yr today are the future 34 year olds making $150k/yr. They will arguably build more experience in the US than in their home countries, so we need both current elite workers and future elite workers to come to the US via our various immigration programs.
Similar to the problem companies have hiring "enough" women and non-Asian minorities, the solution requires fixing the entire pipeline, from college students all the way to executives.
Not only that, it is clear that some of these people support foreign nationalism while at the same time saying the US shouldn't be nationalist, Its okay for China and India to look out for their people, but the US is "Racist" if it looks out for its people.
There are probably a great number of things the Chinese and Indian governments do which US citizens should rightfully be outraged and ashamed of if the US government started following suit, not just nationalist protectionism.
once they learn that the US's infrastructure IS a key reason why the US is the #1 tech country - they'll be back.
And if manufacturing is any guide, it will only take a half century for those jobs to come back.
Actually, most presidents do in fact keep most of their campaign promises...
Actually they don't. Effort is not the same as keeping, which is the problem. You are one of the first people I've ever heard in 40 years to confuse the two but muddling the conversation with nonsequitors is a common troll.
A good faith effort is the same as keeping their campaign promises, considering no President is king and as such cannot guarantee anything. A good faith effort is defined as what a reasonable person would determine is a diligent and honest effort. That is all anyone can ever ask of anyone else in any circumstance.
See? Replacing American workers with H-1B workers actually creates more jobs in the tens and hundreds of thousands. Somehow.
I saw nothing in the snippet you posted about replacing American workers. That is something you added. If you actually understood the snippet, or at least didn't refuse to acknowledge the argument, you would have typed something more like this:
See? Hiring H1B workers to help American companies succeed actually creates more jobs in the tens and hundreds of thousands. Obviously.
Literally alternative fact just means facts that support a different narrative than the one a particular group wants.
No, literally alternative facts are exaggerations or opinions proclaimed to be facts by those who continue to circumvent the free press in an attempt to mislead the public. The first use of the term (in nationwide media anyway) was by Kellyanne Conway when she defended the flat out lies told by Sean Spicer about attendance during Trump's inauguration.
Your post is actually a good example of alternative facts. Your commentary on this topic would be insightful if any of your facts were actually true.
When your ideas are too good for criticism that's when you know they're worth having.
Ignoring criticism from people who don't know what they are talking about is different than ignoring all criticism. Listening to criticism from non-climatologists about climate change would be like having a hospital janitor criticize a team of heart surgeons during surgery. While there is no guarantee the surgeons would never make a mistake, the janitor's opinion is still irrelevant.
Scientists will continue to debate the impact and magnitude of climate change forever. Public discourse should be about how much to invest in fixing the problem, not whether the problem exists in the first place.
Show me one IT position that pays $200/hour that is like 400k per year. There is not one IT position that pays that, even for a rockstar developer. Sorry but you clearly have never worked in this industry have you?
First off, I don't know any independent contractors making $200/hour, which is why I used the figure $150/hour. I do know a couple of architect level contractors who have charged a rate in that ballpark for long term full time contracts (I personally have never been offered more than $130/hour, for full disclosure). And it is common to pay $225-250/hour for many IT contracting companies for senior resources, but most of those senior contractors likely only make $125-175k.
This is all in the Chicago suburbs, and salaries in the Bay Area are much higher.
Who is willing to pay that much for a person who doesn't know that the past tense of "pay" is "paid," not "payed?"
An employer who realizes some of the world's best employees don't speak English as a first language, for one. Also ones who understand the difference between an edited professional document and an internet forum post.
Give them the history that demonstrates the salary you want, then if they reject you you are better off.
I just lost a good candidate I was hoping would join my team because the recruiter lied about previous salary during negotiations, and it pissed off our CTO. I still don't feel we should have lost the candidate just because the recruiter was slime, but I didn't get to make the final decision (and maybe there was reason to believe the candidate was in on it).
All I know is that lying about these things will really rub people the wrong way.
Giving them the salary you want, as opposed to your salary history can achieve the same result.
Giving your current salary is just another signal you can use to give more confidence to an employer that you are worth the salary you are asking for. A high salary and promotions from within a company (instead of during a job hop) are both decent indicators that your previous employers were very happy with your performance. These are probably better indicators than some arbitrary programming assignments or generic interview questions.
Wow, don't throw out your back fellating yourself. I'd be curious to see what you really make vs what you brag about.
The salary figures mentioned in my post are not that high in the IT field. I certainly don't consider $200k total compensation to be something to brag about in my field. It gives a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle, but there are plenty of $700k and $1M+ neighborhoods in my area that I'm far from able to afford. Maybe in another decade ...
Earlier in my career I never gave my current salary, because I was looking for 20%+ raises each time and giving the information would probably only hurt me. But now that I am in my mid-30's and making far more than most of my counterparts with similar job titles, giving my salary helps ensure I don't waste time with any company which cannot provide similar compensation. Most companies don't realize top IT talent often get Senior manager / Director level salaries even without many if any managerial duties, so I need to weed them out quickly. Either that or they immediately start treating me as a consultant, because many companies are more comfortable with $150/hr full time consultants than $200k "permanent" IT staff members (even for long term gigs).
That is the great thing about a healthy economy. More than one company can be winning at the same time. Anyone who thinks either Microsoft or Apple is in a bad position is either trolling or stupid. They are both huge companies with huge cash reserves and great products.They also both make mistakes, but not mistakes which create any existential threats to either company (so far anyway).
I think those who live completely off of loans for 4 years, and then expect to find immediate employment above what they could have been doing all along, are foolish.
With starting salaries for college graduates averaging $50,651, and starting salaries for high school graduates averaging $33,176, the assumption you state is hardly foolish. Believing there is no chance for hardship after college may be foolish, but believing the investment of time and money will pay off is very reasonable.
I had a full time job for 6 years before I went back to school, and continued to work full time while going to school at night.
This is exactly the type of behavior we don't want to be the norm. It's always commendable when people work hard to find ways to work within the current system, but it is a tragedy that these extreme measures are necessary. Needing to work for six years in a lower paying (and therefore probably less productive) job and then having less energy to commit to education once you start school is not an ideal situation.
We need to face that a college education is as important today as a high school education was in the mid-1900's, and asking kids to start working to pay for college is not much different than making 13 year olds start working to pay for high school.
Ironically, unending greed will eventually cause the concept of Eat the Rich to become reality, as the unemployed masses look for their just desserts.
Considering so far it has only led to the unemployed masses putting a billionaire in the White House, I'm fairly certain the wealthy will be able to continue creating bogeymen like immigrants and terrorists to keep the masses from understanding the root causes of their problems. Throwing in the delegitimization of the free press and its nearly impossible for the masses to rally against their oppressors.
If American-based ingenuity is still their moneymaker, then their hiring practices should reflect that.
Well that is obviously going to be the case. If US worker ingenuity is building their products, then by definition they are employing US workers. If foreign born ingenuity is building their products, then by definition they are employing foreign workers. I don't understand the point of your comment.
Unless you are very very sharp - like you can read the paper on MP4 encoding - and implement it from scratch and understand the math and everything on a desert island, you'll have a future.
You are missing the much larger group of people who will continue to have jobs. They are the technical staff with the soft skills necessary to interface with business and the technical skills to make high level design decisions. This is already where most of the real money in the IT industry is made. Whether they are consultants, software architects, Director of IT, etc these workers are the most insulated from shipping jobs overseas. They are also the ones who greatly benefit from the H1B and other immigration programs.
You don't need to be in the wealthy class to have a future, but you do need to work closely with the wealthy class. If you like hiding behind your desk your days are numbered.
Trump or not, it's sure good to see at least some jobs moving in the other direction for once.
According to the Reshoring Initiative, about 41,000 jobs have been returning to the US per year for the last six years. This does not even count jobs that were planned to leave but reconsidered (like Carrier) or jobs created from foreign investment (like FoxConn).
As automation becomes more capable and wages in other countries increase, it just makes sense that jobs would start to return. Unfortunately for the rust belt the jobs which return are often not the same low skill work which was off-shored over the past few decades.
It seems like what you are saying is "some jobs aren't meant to pay for someone's subsistence" My question is "what jobs are those?"
No jobs are meant to pay for someone's subsistence. Jobs are meant to fill a need of the employer. The wages are meant to provide the incentive for the need to be filled. The amount of money it takes to live a good life is completely decoupled from this arrangement. When I need a babysitter, I don't care if my wages are enough to feed and house a 15 year old girl. I only care what amount of money it will take to get the more responsible teenagers in the area to consistently disrupt their weekend plans to watch my kids for me instead.
This is why I greatly prefer a universal basic income, because it allows society to decide what quality of life everyone "deserves" regardless of their economic value. If funded in a progressive way, it doesn't lower the purchasing power of the working/middle class as much as minimum wage and doesn't disincentive economic activity which is not worth the minimum wage.
Are they "unskilled" jobs? If so, are you suggesting that there needs to remain a majority of people without proper education in order to have an "unskilled" work force so that you can go to the grocery store on Sunday or out to eat in the evening?
Unskilled really just means less skilled. Just being literate would have been considered skilled labor 200 years ago, so being "unskilled" is always a moving goalpost. Being unskilled generally means you don't have any skills which would take more than a few weeks / months to teach your average high school graduate. Just like with a business, if your skills don't create a barrier to entry for competing workers, you will probably not command a high wage. The higher the barrier to entry, whether through natural ability or training, the higher wage you will command.
What happens if everybody has an education and is competing on the same level for "skilled" jobs and nobody wants to do the "unskilled" jobs? What happens if we don't have anyone to man the register or pick your food from a field? Wouldn't you say those jobs are necessary?
If for instance the goalpost moves by every person receiving a college-level education, skilled labor will be those who have skills which cannot be quickly taught to your average college graduate (as opposed to an average high school graduate). Someone who did poorly in college and never differentiated themselves would be considered unskilled.
It seems to me that "unskilled" workers are necessary in order to provide a quality of life for the workers in "skilled" jobs.
Yes, we will continue to need many unskilled workers but as I've said there will probably never be a shortage of them since it is a relative term.
Austin is having the same problem.
Families that have lived there for generations can't afford to anymore.
Yeah I guess everything is relative. As a resident of the Chicago suburbs, when I see a non-foreclosure 3000 sq ft home in the middle of Austin for $400k it seems like the house is being given away. But to many native residents just the $9k in yearly taxes can be enough to cause problems.
What qualifies as a "park" or "forest preserve" in and around San Francisco is laughable, at best. Come to Muir Woods where you can share 3 acres of forest with eleventy billion other city residents thinking they are getting in touch with their natural side, too!
Muir Woods is more like 554 acres, and sees only 6000 people per day during peak times. Far more than 3 acres and far less than eleventy billion visitors to share it with. And Muir Woods is only part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area which protects over 80,000 acres of land. This doesn't even count the numerous large parks within the city, like the Golden Gate Park, Presidio, and Land's End. Or the smaller neighborhood parks like Lafayette or Alta Plaza.
I have more forest in my back yard in Minnesota than pretty much all of NorCal combined.
Look up the concept of diminishing returns. Unless you are a real outdoorsy type, you're not going to need much more forest than even a small forest preserve to get a bit of nature in your life. But yes, those types of people are unlikely to like living in most cities. Perhaps the Denver area is one that gives both a modern city feel and easy access to a huge amount of wilderness.
> The same is true of most desirable suburbs
Yup, exactly, that's why my neighbors are eating a 2 hour commute to the bay area. San Francisco, however, isn't a suburb.
The same is true for the desirable areas in any city. The problem with San Francisco is if you want to live in places like Pacific Heights it costs millions of dollars. In a city like Chicago you can get a decent house in many good neighborhoods for $500k. Go to Texas and it's more like $300k.
They can't admit that we're in the worst economy for young people since the Depression. They can't get jobs that pay enough for food and housing, let alone a wife and kids.
We are talking about San Francisco, where the economy is booming. The price of housing is skyrocketing precisely because people have more money to pay for housing. The problem has nothing to do with a weak economy.
The problem is caused by zoning. Existing property owners know new construction could lower their existing home values, so building permits are severely restricted. If they allowed more new housing to be built, along with improving public transportation to accommodate greater demand, these problems would diminish.
Here I am sitting in the 'middle of nowhere' on 20 acres. If the kid wants go go outside, we go out side. Walk on our own property. Go sledding, biking, or what ever else he wants to do. If I need a workout I'll go fell some trees. I can't imagine trying to raise a kid in a concrete jungle.
You do realize there are parks even in cities, right? I only live on a quarter acre of land, but we have a forest preserve and three parks within a mile of our house. The same is true of most desirable suburbs (perhaps not the forest preserves). I significantly prefer public parks to a huge private property for both the community aspect and the lack of maintenance effort.
I grew up on a farm with a nearly 10 acres of non-field/pasture land to maintain, and I sure never want to go back to that. But I can at least imagine why it appeals to others, which you should be able to do about suburb / urban life if you took the time to empathize with other peoples' priorities.