Stop by Buffalo, NY sometime. I’ll buy you a beer and some wings.
May also be that the pay is worse as well as the cost of living being higher.
Admittedly, I came from midlands salaries (h/t @anon73430903), but doing the same job in Seattle pays damn near twice what it did in the UK, the cost of living isn’t doubled, even with Seattle’s crazy house prices, and the quality of life is much higher than where we were - the people singing the praises of small cities clearly don’t know what small British cities are like…
We are going through the same thing and 90% sure we are going to leave the city - as the cons outweigh the pros at this point. Torn between trust-belt city with low cost of living (Detroit or Baltimore) or the sweet spot of smaller town/city. Although I work from home, my partner would have to commute an hour plus each way from anywhere we could afford to buy in NYC with two bedrooms and that’s no life to live.
In the big picture it’s fine - things change along with us. I don’t like the new and improved New York City with added chain stores, global super-rich and their annoying children, but there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. I suspect in 5-10 years we will look on Manhattan as we do the Hamptons, a place full of annoying and horrible people that we are glad choose to congregate so we can avoid them. Northern BK, LIC and Astoria will be included in that sprawl.
The people I feel sorry for are those who are too poor, too old, or have too many family ties to move away.
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I would give anything to live in London…it is one of the world’s great cities…but I wouldn’t even take a vacation in Los Angeles. This sounds like the classic perpetually unsatisfied spoiled hipster rant.
Indeed. That must be why no successful companies have been built there in the past few decades, and more business friendly states like Alabama have monopolized the computer industry.
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Namibia
Well, according to this article which cites an OECD study, Canadian doctors make less than UK doctors on a purchasing power parity scale. BUT, I imagine that study doesn’t compare specifically to London, where the cost of living is exorbitantly higher than elsewhere in the UK.
Dude come back to Canada, Montreal is the most livable large city in North America. You guys could afford a great house in the city here. And there is a lot of digital industry if that’s what you want, much better and more affordable eating than anywhere else in North America, great community organisations and green spaces… you would love it.
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We just bought a newish 1990’s 4br house in the Houston area with a nice pool. The same house in non-shi-shi parts of California (i.e. not in Carmel, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, etc) goes for easily twice as much in most of California. Probably the cheapest places to live in CA are in the Central Valley, where you might be able to find a comparable price on a 4br house.
The weather in Texas is hot and muggy. Fuckin’ bugs. Hurricanes and tropical storms. No worries about water conservation and earthquakes are tiny, ifn non-existent. Annoying displays of extreme conservatism and religiosity are everywhere. Food is good. Lots to do. Not as many cool places to go as in Ca. Traffic is horrid, but there are ways around it. Easy to fly places, because Texas is central. People are nice, just not while they are driving. Hyper aggressive on the roads, Jesus H Christ they are assholes on these roads. Schools are good, mostly, if you get out of the inner city. Housing is cheaper and there are lots of ways to have more and pay less. No income tax. Lots of pro’s. Some definite gotchas.
CA has a lot going on. The weather is nicer. Cool places to go are easily accessible. There’s the beach on one side and Tahoe on the other. Traffic sucks. People drive crazy. More crime, generally. But Cali people are mostly friendly. The arts communities statewide are very strong. Schools are meh, mostly, with a few good ones around.
I grew up in CA, lived on the East Coast for 25 years, moved to TX a few years ago. Where do I want to live? Texas not CA or the northeast. It’s a better life here, all things considered.
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The Economist disagrees.* You also left out the biggest negative of living in Montreal: you have to deal with french people.
*Though I disagree with The Economist. How the hell Vancouver is ranked #3, I have no idea. Yeah, it’s a great city, but the housing prices! My God, the housing prices!
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As a resident of Los Angeles, I am afraid I must respectfully disagree with all of these ideas.
That’s ridiculous. There are plenty of diverse, interesting neighborhoods in LA. Compared to London, most of them are pretty affordable. I’m guessing Cory’s work (and probably Alice’s too) would frequently bring them to LA, so might as well set up a home there. My recommendation would be to also get something a ways out of the city as a retreat. Cory grew up in Toronto so I know he’s familiar with the idea of cottage country. In Ontario that might be a summer cabin by the lake. In LA, that might be a bunker in the desert :).
Plus Dodger Stadium is there.
…also Disneyland is a reasonable drive away. Unfortunately Annual pass prices are insane these days.
Philadelphia FTW. Just sayin.
I’m not a huge fan of LA, the city, but the mega-region that extends many miles in each direction is a decent place to live. I’ve been living about fifteen miles east of LA for the last twenty years. I’ve also lived all over the USA. We’re too crowded and a bit expensive. Smog is a non-issue for most of the region. But it is one of the better metropolitan areas I’ve lived in.
Don’t dismiss or downplay the weather. Year-round motorcycle riding (and some awesome roads). Very little rain (not enough to support life, lol). In the dead of winter, while most of the USA is frozen, we’re basking in very moderate weather. Can get hot in summer if you’re further inland but within ten miles of the coast line we stay cool. So much cooler than, say, NYC in summer.
Earthquakes? I will take our earthquakes any day versus winters that kill so many more Americans each year. Or tornadoes. Or floods. Or deer-strike. Just be prepared for a big quake with some extra water, food, and emergency supplies. Much easier to prepare for than the other bad weather events I mentioned.
i don’t “like” your post, but i am extremely empathetic to your situation.
wearySky: I see the readers of the CBC article you linked to disagreed quite strongly with the study by The Economist. And the updated study in 2015 by the same research group ranked Toronto and Montreal 1st and 2nd of their list of 50 cities: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-montreal-best-places-to-live-economist-says-1.2937517 . Now, given housing prices in both cities (I’m familiar with both), Montreal should be light years ahead, and I’m guessing proximity to financial industries and other market considerations pertinent to readers of The Economist came into play for this study. As for dealing with the Quebecois, they are lovely people, at least the ones in Montreal are–it is a bilingual city, and even if you’re so against the French that you don’t want anything to do with them, anglo-Montreal is a pretty decent-sized city-within-a-city.
Sure, there are 81 other neighborhoods besides the 10-15 or so that make up the Westside. However, SFV isn’t much better. We are experiencing a huge increase in rent and property prices here, that’s just a fact. SFV isn’t the bastion of the young family it once was. This year alone we saw a 5% increase in rents beating NYC in year-to-year increases. If you’re looking for a combination of walkability, quality school, family friendly neighborhood, art scene, SFV prices out quickly in the same way the rest of LA does.
We have the 8th largest economy in the world.
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That’s a different ranking from “liveability”, though. Frankly, a better one - the Safe Cities 2015 paper is where that ranking came from, and the specific 1st and 2nd place rankings were an average of 6 different indexes - Safe Cities, Liveability Rankings, and cost of living, on the city-wide basis, and then Business Environment rankings, Democracy Index, and Global Food Security Index on a country-wide basis. The Economist’s Liveability index is entirely separate from the aggregate one reported in that article (and dammit CBC, will you please post a SOURCE for your stories instead of making us google it?) - and the last one is still the one from 2014. I was just pedantically pointing out that Montreal is not, in fact, the most liveable city, technically, at least according to people that measure that kind of thing. 
And as for the French people crack, I was mostly just joking. All the normal French (Montreal-based, at least) people I know are awesome. Though there’s that certain class of French asshole, when they decide to be assholes, that just elevates them to the next level… There’s nothing quite like that look of disdain, when you attempt to use your 10 year old rusty high school French and they just ignore your French and switch to English. At least you guys managed to get rid of Marois.
Or they’ve only seen it from driving up and down the freeways. I know better because I’ve occasionally gotten off in a few places, but it does indeed look pretty awful from the freeways.
