[HN Gopher] Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 mile...
___________________________________________________________________
Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they
grew up
Author : amyamyamy2
Score : 112 points
Date : 2022-12-08 19:01 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.census.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.census.gov)
| jchanimal wrote:
| I wish the data explorer also showed per-capita moving rates.
| It's hard to tell if a place is sending proportionately more
| migrants to another place or if the source just starts with a
| high population.
| occamschainsaw wrote:
| I am currently very conflicted about this. I grew up in India but
| was fortunate to live in the US and now in Europe for
| undergrad/grad school. I am (slightly) older than the demographic
| in the article. I am planning on settling down with my girlfriend
| soon, after I finish some career related stuff. If I want to
| start a family, I really want to move back to my hometown in
| India, with the strong social support system. While moving around
| has been exciting and an eye-opening experience, I am tired of
| constantly making new friends and leaving them after a few years,
| and miss my family some times, and eventually the kids would
| benefit from being around their grandparents. On the other hand,
| moving back would be career limiting.
|
| Does anybody who is further along on the journey have any advice?
| How did you make this decision?
| crooked-v wrote:
| I'd be interested to see this data weighted against population
| density. As-is, I suspect it's massively tilted by how in places
| like Los Angeles, Chicago, or NYC you can go 5 miles and
| practically be in a different country.
| atlgator wrote:
| If I had become a doctor or a hotelier I definitely would've
| stayed in my home town. I miss it greatly, but there's zero tech
| presence and remote jobs seem to be drying up.
| dibt wrote:
| > If I had become a doctor or a hotelier I definitely would've
| stayed in my home town.
|
| According to the study, you would likely have not stayed:
|
| "By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this
| migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in
| affluent families."
|
| A low-income family is less likely to send their kid to school
| to be a doctor or hotelier.
| bombcar wrote:
| 60% of young adults live within the metro area they grew up in,
| at age 26.
|
| That's not surprising, especially with how many college graduates
| move home now.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if a substantial amount of the remainder
| stay near where they colleged.
| layman51 wrote:
| I think I count as one of the six. Since I live in an expensive
| and affluent area, I think I am one of the few people who lives
| close to where they grew up. In my opinion, moving away gives you
| more opportunity and life experiences. It is a very US American
| and "immigrant" thing to do. Personally, I haven't taken that
| route because I have no idea what my living situation would be
| like and I think it would probably be worse for me in terms of
| psychology and social life.
| Yhippa wrote:
| I moved from where I grew up. The biggest advantage is access to
| better career paths and potential with my career. If I get laid
| off, there are more diverse work options, unlike where I grew up.
|
| The flip side is that being able to have family help out easily
| when our kid is sick. Also I have friends who stayed back home
| (the ratio matching this article title pretty closely) and they
| have barbecues together, can hang out on a random night around a
| fire pit, watch movies in their backyard, and other fun things.
| About planting roots and settling down.
|
| I'm really torn about these two ways of going about it. There's
| something very comforting about setting down roots and having a
| solid network of friends and family. The flip side is that you're
| probably leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. The history
| of success in America seems to lean towards being nomadic.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I feel like with remote work, it's possible to have your cake
| and eat it, too. Depends on your career, but at least in
| software, it no longer feels like you have to move to a tech
| hub to make it, for example.
| siquick wrote:
| Depends on your definition of success?
|
| I moved to the other side of the world from where I grew up in
| my early 30s, and I grew up at the other end of the country
| from where I was born and lived my early years.
|
| I have a great group of mates I met in my early twenties and
| still speak with daily on WhatsApp.
|
| As you say they meet up regularly, know each others families
| well, and they have not left their home area and have been
| friends since primary school.
|
| They're all jealous that I have lived an "adventurous and
| exciting" life and I'm jealous that they have amazingly solid
| roots.
| dorchadas wrote:
| I'm in pretty much this exact situation right now (we
| actually all left then returned in early/mid 20s after
| university), and, well, it's still lonely. WhatsApp (or, in
| our case, Discord) is no substitution for physically being
| able to meet up. I have friends where I live now, but it's
| not the same level of depth in the friendship, where we'd
| just go to each other's houses and shoot the shit for hours
| about everything and nothing (as we've done since high
| school) and I feel that is something I didn't realise I
| wanted and was missing until I moved. It's actually got me
| seriously reconsidering returning. Gonna be hard leaving
| after Christmas this year.
| fdsfdxfvcx wrote:
| i had the best of both worlds. moved from my hometown to seattle
| for while, made a lot of money in tech, bought and sold a house
| in seattle at the right time, moved back to my hometown. now i
| have a paid off house 5 mins from the house i lived in during
| high school. i was able to keep the seattle salary so now i am
| living like a king in my old hometown, honestly its amazing
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| I've regularly read that most people in the world live and die
| within 50 miles of where they were born. Even now that travel is
| so common.
| kube-system wrote:
| Travel is common for the top 10-20% richest people in the
| world.
|
| For 80% of the world, travel is something that 'other people'
| do.
| Hasz wrote:
| While I am not within the 60%, I live about 80km from where I
| grew up (basically the same metro area), and I feel fortunate
| enough to not have to move very far for my career. I have only
| ever worked remote, and truly love where I live.
|
| I have traveled to most US states and about a dozen countries,
| and wouldn't trade my home for any of them. The structural
| advantages (family, friends, regional knowledge, activities) are
| tremendous. If you are planning to have children, having
| parents/relatives around to share in the childcare is an enormous
| financial advantage.
| rr888 wrote:
| I'm just amazed in my new job I actually have an American in my
| team.
| rr888 wrote:
| Actually after being away from home for 20 years I'd love to go
| back but wife and kids prefer staying :(.
| granshaw wrote:
| Same sometimes I dream of working remotely and taking my USD
| savings and enjoying the luxe life back in SE Asia
| amelius wrote:
| America, land of the free ... well perhaps not.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| I don't think many commenters in this thread realize the
| minuscule size of a human and how the things which most impact
| our happiness are located in our close proximity and
| surroundings. It's almost like a physical law , the weight that
| something has on our happiness diminishes exponentially with the
| distance from ourselves. The importance of the setup is
| constantly underappreciated.
|
| Each and everyone of us has 150 people in their circle of
| acquaintances . And 90% of our happiness depends on the quality
| of our relationship with the top 10 people in such list.
|
| Similarly with the external enviornment. 90% of our happiness
| depends on the conditions of the external enviornment in a radius
| of 300 yds.
|
| It's very easy to be blinded by the lights of NYC or Hollywood,
| but those megalopolis are incredibly big and again humans are so
| small.
|
| A good setup in Albuquerque or Salt Lake City beats a mediocre
| setup in NYC or LA every day of the week.
|
| Sure the Empire State Building is nice to look at,but it gets old
| fast, especially while you see it in passing while on your way to
| be screamed at by your boss at your second job that you had to
| take because you can't make the rent.
|
| Given how small humans are, the ideal setup can be everywhere
| except for maybe Somalia or Congo. But even then if you are the
| undisputed king of Somalia, that's much better than being an
| Investment Banker in NYC. Despite the fact that a block in NYC
| generates more GDP than the entire country of Somalia,the claim
| of the king on such small GDP is almost total, whereas an
| investment banker has zero claim on the GDP being produced in a
| block in NYC, he has zero claim on anything period.
|
| I think it was Julius Caesar who said: "I would rather be first
| in a little village than second in Rome".
| nerdjon wrote:
| This just seems insane to me.
|
| I purposefully graduated early from highschool (1 semester less
| and it only worked because of where my birthday was) to move 853
| miles from where I grew up to where I currently live. My partner
| did a similar move (before we met).
|
| When I talk to most of my friends it is a similar story.
|
| I just can't imagine not wanting to explore a new area and have
| distance from your parents. I love my parents, we talk a couple
| times a week, but I don't need them physically close to me. (last
| couple years being the exception for obvious reasons).
|
| Maybe this is because I am gay and I needed out of the south (as
| are many of my friends), I also wanted to move to an urban city
| like so many in my generation.
|
| This just seems insane for me to think about.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| Here's my 2c (I'm 30 for the record):
|
| I was born in a flyover state. There's ~no coding jobs here,
| and the ones that are here, pay pittances compared to anywhere
| not adjacent to a (feed)corn field.
|
| I moved 250 miles away (to the other side of my state... dang
| is the US huge) to take a tech job that payed closer to what
| coastal companies will pay.
|
| The next step was probably to move to Seattle or SF and take a
| "real" tech job there. But two things happened at the same
| time:
|
| 1. remote work really grew up. now I can work from anywhere and
| (mostly. geo-adjusting etc. luckily that seems to be on the
| decline.) get paid well.
|
| 2. We had our first child. Now suddenly close access to our
| support network (parents etc) is both logistically important
| ("hey mom can you watch the kids for a weekend so we can
| sleep") and emotionally important (grandparents getting to see
| the kids every weekend or two instead of significantly less
| often).
|
| So now instead of looking to move an additional 2k miles away,
| I moved back to be ~2 miles from one set of parents and ~20
| miles from the other set.
|
| I'm not really thrilled about the local jobs or local politics
| etc. But family is incredibly important to have physically
| close, and so here I am. Thank heavens for remote coding jobs.
| piyh wrote:
| Seconding this as my exact scenario too.
| why5s wrote:
| > I just can't imagine not wanting to explore a new area and
| have distance from your parents. I love my parents, we talk a
| couple times a week, but I don't need them physically close to
| me. (last couple years being the exception for obvious
| reasons).
|
| We want to. But between housing prices and student loans, we
| can't afford to.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Whereas I can't imagine leaving everyone I know, my entire
| social support structure, to run off to some strange new are
| where I know nobody and need start all over again.
|
| > Maybe this is because I am gay and I needed out of the south
|
| ...well ok, that makes a lot of sense.
| paulcole wrote:
| It seems insane to me to think about taking to my parents
| weekly. I know they exist, I don't need to talk to them.
|
| What seems unimaginable to one of us is not just normal but
| desirable to the other.
|
| The same is true for deciding where to live.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Just to clarify, what I find insane is the numbers because it
| doesn't line up with my experience within most of the people
| I generally talk too
| _jal wrote:
| I left the south and never looked back, too. (Not gay, but I am
| non-conformist, which didn't play well in an evangelical town
| with more cows than people.)
|
| In talking to people who got out vs. some who didn't, there
| seem to be three main, interrelated things that hold people
| local: money, class and fear.
|
| - Obviously money makes moving to the Big City much easier, and
| more of it is always better. But below some point, it becomes
| incredibly hard to make work - if your parents are in the
| bottom half of the income gradient, first, last + deposit on a
| San Francisco apartment and a couple $k on moving and move-in
| is a huge expense.
|
| - Class matters a lot, in that it colors how distant, urban
| places are perceived. Some members of my family have an almost
| cartoonishly apocalyptic fantasy vision about what cities are
| like, and the fact that nobody's sucked the marrow from my
| bones in 30 years of urban living will never change that.
|
| It also effects the likelihood of knowing people who did move
| away. If nobody you personally know has done it, it really does
| become much harder to do for multiple reasons, both
| psychological and concrete.
|
| - Finally, fear of "not making it", of something Bad happening,
| and of making a costly choice that you regret, of having to
| "slink back home" for whatever reason really weigh on people.
| Of course if you don't know anyone who's ever lived in a major
| metro, and if the cost of trying is big enough, that fear can
| massively amplify.
|
| I moved to SF almost 30 years ago. It was a leap of faith - I
| landed with enough money for food for about two weeks and slept
| on a friend's floor for a few months while I worked shit jobs
| to get established. That path is harder now - I wouldn't now be
| able to get an apartment here now washing dishes and serving
| drinks. So if anything, I suspect the above is more salient now
| than it was a generation ago.
| kcb wrote:
| The differing cultures in the US. I come from an Italian
| America family in the the NYC suburbs. All of my siblings and
| extended family live within like at most a 30 minute drive and
| I have 4 close family members within like a 2 block radius.
| There was never any idea of having to get out of here to make
| it because we were already in commuting distance to Manhattan.
| bluGill wrote:
| I've live many hours away from my parents, and I no consider it
| insane to do so. When I lived with my parents I could make a
| few phone calls and have a dozen people on my roof - now if
| there is a problem I have to pay a crew even though I know how
| to do the work (since there are things that cannot be done
| alone) When my wife and I want a date - too bad: there is no
| babysitter nearby that will work on Friday night that we trust,
| so we don't have that option. There are many other similar
| things about being close to family that I miss.
|
| I enjoy exploring the world. However eventually I want to come
| back home.
| caned wrote:
| > However eventually I want to come back home.
|
| Make a move before it's too late. Or convince them to move
| close to you.
|
| If you love being with your parents, your window of doing so
| is fast shrinking.
|
| I wish I had understood this sooner.
| duped wrote:
| It's probably helped by just the difference in scale between
| urban and rural communities. Most people wouldn't share your
| feeling to move to an urban city, because most people are
| already in one.
|
| I did the same thing though and moved away from my family. I
| moved back during the pandemic and while I know everyone has a
| different family dynamic, I can't believe what I was missing.
| The physical, financial, and emotional support system of having
| family 15 min down the road is hard to quantify.
| cletus wrote:
| So my family has long described ourselves as nomadic. We just
| seem to get the wanderlust and want to pick up and move after
| some years in some place. I myself have lived in 5 different
| countries so far.
|
| My great-grandfather (who died long before I was born) was a
| fairly extreme example of this. Shortly before WWI he decided to
| jump on a boat in Germany and immigrate to Australia (coming
| originally from the Baltic states). It seems like a fortuitous
| time to leave Europe.
|
| I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. His brother did
| basically the same thing (although in his case he was partly
| motivated by escaping getting conscripted into the Army). His
| story is fascinating too. A book was even written about it. He
| actually found an abandoned boat, fixed it up, made his own
| instruments and sailed to America in the 1930s across the Pacific
| Ocean because he always wanted to visit America.
|
| I think about that and wonder what is it about some people who
| seem to be constantly restless while others seem content to
| staying pretty much exactly where they were born. I don't really
| understand that mindset but in some ways I envy it.
|
| One of the most culturally identifiable songs to Australians is a
| song from the 1970s called Khe Sanh by a band named Cold Chisel.
| It's quite literally about a Vietnam vet with PTSD. it has a
| verse that goes like this: And I've traveled
| 'round the world from year to year And each one found me
| aimless, one more year the worse for wear And I've been
| back to Southeast Asia, and the answer sure ain't there
| But I'm drifting north, to check things out again, yes, I am
|
| I think about that too.
| canniballectern wrote:
| > what is it about some people who seem to be constantly
| restless while others seem content to staying pretty much
| exactly where they were born
|
| IMO the main factors would be your economic situation and your
| relationship with your family. People with little money and
| tight family ties probably wouldn't be keen to move very far,
| whereas someone with a bad or indifferent relationship to
| family and the means to head elsewhere would probably do so.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I feel like relationship to family isn't as big of a limiter
| these days. I'm pretty close with my family and do miss them
| (they being on the other side of the world), but being able
| to video call them essentially whenever our waking times line
| up takes care of a lot of the issues. As a result of which I
| can still share any problems I have and get advice or
| similarly help them in dealing with their problems.
|
| The few years my siblings spent half the world away from us
| prior to the proliferation of smartphones (and thus the
| ability for video calls to just happen whenever instead of
| being specifically organized) did seem to strongly weaken
| their relationship with the rest of the family though. They
| seemed to feel abandoned due to essentially having to grow up
| on their own (ie finish up college and start working) due to
| not being able to as easily share their issues.
| ifightcrime wrote:
| Makes sense.
| irrational wrote:
| That is mind boggling to me. I don't know anyone that lives in
| the same state they grew up in. I live about 3,000 miles away
| from where I grew up. I have 7 siblings and none of us live in
| our home state (and none of us live in the same state as another
| one - we live in NY, CA, MI, TX, OR, OH, UT, CO - we grew up in
| FL).
|
| Though, I remember that one of my brothers once lived in
| Pennsylvania and he met 2 women who had never left their county
| and were amazed that he lived in so many other places and
| wondered out loud if he had been scared to live in places other
| than where he lived right then in PA. The mind set that other
| places are scary to live in is so foreign to me.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Moving for a job has a huge social cost for most people. You
| leave behind everyone you know.
|
| That might be worth it for someone who wants to forge a career
| or explore. But for the average person who pushes paper at a
| generic office? You can do that anywhere. So why not do it
| where everyone you know lives?
|
| There is a trade off to never putting down roots.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, for people going to college, not everyone has really
| deep roots with their high school and grade school friends.
| (Though some may. And family although family can move too as
| in my case.) There can certainly be a bigger costs as you
| move on especially with people who establish large local
| networks.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Probably the "move around a lot" people don't talk much with
| the "don't move around much" people, and vice-versa.
| ghaff wrote:
| You have e.g. lifelong New Yorkers who may have gone to
| school elsewhere but can't really imagine living anyplace
| else.
|
| But you have a couple of different groups broadly speaking.
| People who never moved out of a small town and people who
| gravitated back towards some major metro for any number of
| reasons.
|
| And remember there are a lot of basically "small towns" that
| are counted with urban areas in the US.
| iak8god wrote:
| The "don't move around people" are busy hanging out with
| their family and high school friends.
| drivers99 wrote:
| Sometimes those small town groups move together as well!
|
| My example: Shortly after college, I moved to the city half
| way across the country because my high school friend lived
| there. And then several other of our high school friends
| (all from a small town) moved there with their spouses as
| well, and we'd all hang out and even started a company
| together for a while. We eventually all went our separate
| ways, at least as far as what states we live in. (There is
| still some amount of moving to be closer again going on as
| well. For example my ex's family and a friend from the
| state we moved to moved closer to her.)
| vlunkr wrote:
| Definitely selection bias in some way.
| emodendroket wrote:
| When I used to live in Massachusetts I found it boggling how
| many people had never lived anywhere else. Southern
| California, where I now live, I think actually has a narrow
| transplant majority.
| thebradbain wrote:
| Which is fascinating, because while we know California is
| technically net-outward migration (people moving to other
| states), the demographic of people net MOVING to California
| is by people in the top 5%.
|
| California is essentially gentrifying at the state level
| with wealthy transplants, pushing working and middle class
| people who grew up here out of the state.
|
| [1] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-
| income-t...
| emodendroket wrote:
| You can't win, huh? Move to California, you're
| gentrifying it. Move out of California, you're
| gentrifying wherever you go. Perhaps this framework isn't
| the best to think about it.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Better to not interact with California whatsoever.
| eropple wrote:
| I find Massachusetts to be pretty big, for a small place. I
| moved here from Maine after college and there isn't really
| anywhere else I want to be. I travel recreationally, but
| like--if I'd been born here, I don't know why I'd live
| somewhere else. (Spent time in California, for example. Not
| my thing.)
|
| Sometimes I think about buying a place back near where I
| grew up, but my parents don't live there anymore and it's
| really not that much cheaper than my current house for
| losing out on a lot of things, so...I don't know why I
| actually would. It's just more lawn-mowing.
| daveslash wrote:
| I'm similar -- 3k miles, but still within the US. My
| siblings/cousins/family that I grew up less than 10 miles from
| are now spread between NY, CA, PA, TX, RI, NH, NC, ME, MI.
|
| I was travelling through PA once as well and was at a local
| dive bar chatting up some folks - and they'd never even left
| their county either - not even for casual travel.
| wronglebowski wrote:
| Maybe it's just the area. I'm in the Philly suburbs and while
| I love it here I cannot express how little people travel.
| Even going downtown is a "big deal" if you've grown up to
| believe either,
|
| 1. Cities are awful dangerous places with no value 2. Strip
| malls and chain restaurants are the pinnacle of civilization
|
| When I moved from Bucks County to Chester County I was
| "moving away" and many people just wrote me off. Despite
| being an hour or two drive away.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I notice I do not hang out with people that live further
| than 30min (reliably). I might be willing to make the trek
| if I was single, but with kids and spouse, it becomes too
| time consuming for my taste.
| bombcar wrote:
| 30min away is about the limit for "eh, let's go over" -
| anything more and you're talking planning, etc.
|
| This is the reason people are willing to commute so damn
| far; you're _forced_ to commute but if you 're not near
| your friends, you'll never see them again.
| jcims wrote:
| I'm from northwestern PA and most of my family on my dads
| side (9 kids, Irish Catholic) is like that. A divorce
| separated my brother and I from the pack and we live a few
| hundred miles away.
|
| My moms side (7 kids, German Methodist) is scattered about,
| CA,OH,NC,NY,CO,GA and one uncle that stayed near my grandma
| in PA.
|
| Hands down, far and away I'd take the first situation over
| the second. The family bonds and stories are incredible. They
| get together all the time, work together, some go to church
| together. It's an incredibly tight knit family and at last
| look three of the women that divorced out of the family still
| come to gatherings and still carry that family name for
| decades.
| bombcar wrote:
| Those large families are impressive; I'm tangentially
| related by marriage to one and know of a few others in the
| area, and you quickly realize how something like the Mafia
| could easily start.
|
| You let it be known you need some help with X and suddenly
| a cousin appears who specializes in X.
| bombcar wrote:
| A lot of this depends on where in the country you are.
|
| You can't hardly move at all in Texas without ending up in
| another county, but you can go 1000+ miles and still be in
| the same state.
|
| Whereas there are counties in California that are larger than
| the nine smallest states.
|
| There are many Californians that have been to another
| _country_ (Mexico) but have never been to another state; they
| 're far away.
| emodendroket wrote:
| When I was growing up I always thought this was kind of a sign
| of, like, giving up, so I'm surprised the numbers are so high. I
| guess not everyone was thinking the same way.
| kcb wrote:
| Most Americans live in and around big cities. Ive lived my
| entire life in commuting distance to Manhattan along with 10s
| of millions others. There was never any notion from myself or
| my peers of having to move to "make it". The end goal was
| always to find a job and get on a bus or train every morning.
| emodendroket wrote:
| So did I (well if you can tolerate a long commute but many
| people did it). It's not about chasing opportunities that
| don't exist, necessarily, but striking out on your own and
| leaving the familiar.
| ckosidows wrote:
| Coming from a smaller town (<30,000) I was pretty much taught
| this. I couldn't go a month without someone wishing I would
| move away and leave the town behind. I live in a bigger city
| now and I'm glad but it took effort not to feel ashamed of
| living in my home town for so long.
|
| Most people in America are born and live in metro areas and I
| wonder if the same kind of mentality is taught to those people?
| emodendroket wrote:
| I lived in the metro NYC area.
| bradlys wrote:
| > When I was growing up I always thought this was kind of a
| sign of, like, giving up, so I'm surprised the numbers are so
| high. I guess not everyone was thinking the same way.
|
| It's possible that they just gave up earlier than you did. Many
| people where I grew up never put any effort into anything
| because they had resolved themselves to being helpless.
| saraton1n wrote:
| I was a military child, and so I moved around my whole life. My
| best friend has lived their whole life in the city I live in now.
|
| Sometimes I get a little jealous because I don't have any heart-
| connection to any place. Most of the friends I regularly talk to
| are people I've met within the last 5 years, and I still don't
| have any still-standing friendships from the time before my dad
| retired.
|
| But also, I cannot imagine that life, nor do I know if I really
| want to. Moving around so much gave me such a wide array of
| interests and cultural knowledge about places in and outside of
| the US. I think the benefits of that well-rounded background
| outweigh whatever pangs of sadness I get occasionally about not
| really feeling like I have a homeland.
| another_story wrote:
| I split my childhood between three places, and my adult life
| between four, many in different countries. The wife and I are
| planning to move again next year.
|
| It's sometimes hard when you see others with their consistent
| lives, and roots laid down, but at the same time they'll often
| say how they envy you.
|
| It's similar to the choice of having or not having kids. The
| trade off in life experiences is neither better or worse, just
| different.
| fdsfdxfvcx wrote:
| had that too, the place my dad retired to became my "hometown"
|
| having said that, as i got older and started having kids, i did
| move back to that hometown. i honestly did enjoy moving every
| 1-3 years as a kid, but my wife had a similar experience and
| did not enjoy it. now my kids have a home town and can see both
| sets of their grandparents every week or so. its also pretty
| cool taking my kids to the same restaurants and places that i
| went to when i was younger. based on how much trouble my 5 year
| old had with this move its not something i want to subject them
| to any more times(shes happy about it now and we wanted to get
| it over with before kindergarden etc starts). people like us
| who had a positive outcome from moving constantly are the
| outliers i think, its better to give the kids a sense of
| continuity.
| aaronax wrote:
| What are the concrete benefits of such a well-rounded
| background?
| Kye wrote:
| Not the person you asked, but it's harder to have harmful
| conceits about people and places when you've been to or met
| people from them. I've noticed that as the internet has
| grown, the rhetoric has moved from "lol, Americans" to "why
| do you vote for these people" to a lot more empathy for how
| our system is designed to inhibit change (good and bad).
|
| I've changed my understanding of other countries the same
| way. Mostly from meeting people online, but sometimes in
| person. Just something as simple as someone asking "what is
| ketchup?" in line at an elevator at a convention can expand
| the mind. How do you describe _ketchup_? Everyone knows
| ketchup! It made me wonder what else was normal and obvious
| to me that isn 't to someone who's never experienced it.
| maurits wrote:
| I'm a child of expats who became an expat. Lived in over a dozen
| countries.
|
| Sometimes I feel like an enlightened citizen moving about.
| Sometimes I feel like I'm perpetually living in an airport. To
| quote fight-club, single serving friends and nothing ever stays.
|
| Which is to say, i did me, but i don't see anything wrong at all
| with staying put.
| Finnucane wrote:
| I live not far from where I grew up--I moved away and lived in
| NYC for a while, but eventually came back. I live only about a
| mile from where my great-grandparents lived when they first came
| to the US from Romania.
| keewee7 wrote:
| Ten miles is huge in an increasingly urbanized world. Within a
| ten miles radius from where I lived in 2017 there was some of the
| most expensive housing in the world and ghettos with weekly gang
| shootings. However the city I lived in is objectively regarded as
| one of the best places to live in the world: Copenhagen, Denmark.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Ten miles might make a difference in housing or neighborhood
| quality, but makes little difference in access to job
| opportunities, higher education, social activities, etc.
| Especially if one owns a car, as most Americans do.
| user3939382 wrote:
| All IMHO of course: we'd be better off if it was 9 of 10. The
| family is the most important institution we have, it is the
| backbone driving the most valuable members of our society. The
| stronger and more cohesive it is the better.
|
| There's a countervailing factor which is that more earnings and
| economic output arise from jobs in urban areas, which
| historically can only happen if some members relocate.
|
| Hopefully the trend towards remote work helps alleviate this
| conflict.
| rayiner wrote:
| I live about an hour away from where I grew up, but my family
| moved nearby so they're just a few miles away. Modern economic
| trends that rip families apart have many downsides. It's much
| harder to raise kids without family nearby. Likewise, people
| who don't have family close are much more likely to fall
| through the cracks if they don't have family around.
| hnthrowaway7518 wrote:
| I get kind of why you could think this, but honestly I think
| it's far more important to leave your circle and experience
| something new as a young adult. It becomes increasingly
| difficult to move as you age, the longer you stay tied to your
| familiar environment that you were raised in, the harder it is
| to take the plunge and explore something different.
|
| I am the only person in my direct family that lives outside of
| the county (very rural) or neighboring county that I grew up
| in. I really absolutely cannot fathom living my (probably) only
| life worrying about social cohesion or economic value of
| society. I live like 2500 miles from my family, and it used to
| be a lot further (I lived in east Asia for a while). Despite
| the distance, technology has allowed for me to keep in close
| contact with my family.
|
| Taking the chance to explore new cultures and really immerse
| myself in them, and also live through the crazy Bay Area tech
| bubble before deciding it wasn't for me, really has provided a
| lot of excellent life experiences and perspectives. I wouldn't
| trade these opportunities for anything and strongly encourage
| younger people to try and leave the nest, at least for a bit,
| while it's still easy to do so and before they have to decide
| on things like staying near their parents once they become
| elderly.
| babelfish wrote:
| [Citation required] for almost every sentence in your post -
| most importantly "it is the backbone driving the most valuable
| members of our society". What a ridiculous assertion.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Citations aren't required for opinions.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I guess you missed the first two words of my comment.
| [deleted]
| tsol wrote:
| It's not that crazy. Even economically, the people that are
| gonna support us when we are old and senile are currently
| being reared as part of families
| grumple wrote:
| It's easy to verify that married people make more money than
| unmarried people: https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/married-
| wage-gap/#:~:text=....
|
| It's easily verified by data you can find in many studies,
| and presumably the census itself. Of course it doesn't
| technically prove causality - it could be that the type of
| people who are successful just happen to be the same type of
| people who get married. Or maybe they get married precisely
| because they are successful - or unsuccessful people have a
| harder time finding spouses.
| abeyer wrote:
| But that's totally orthogonal to the statistic under
| discussion about people living near their blood-relations.
| You can move across the world and still get married, or
| live nearby and never.
| rayiner wrote:
| Given that virtually every human is raised in a family, I
| think you're the one that needs to prove your outrageous
| statement to the contrary.
| p0pcult wrote:
| I think we would be better if it was 3 of 10; Americans are too
| clustered into tribes. Urban people would benefit from
| understanding rural lifestyles and vice versa.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| 11% have never travelled outside of the state where they were
| born, so this doesn't actually surprise me that much.
| fullshark wrote:
| A lot of upperwardly mobile, ambitious people don't realize this,
| or they generally understand it only in terms of chastising their
| high school peers who stayed home. If you build a society based
| on the assumption everyone will simply move and re-skill to the
| regions with economic opportunity, you get a lot of regions of
| bitter people who stayed behind somewhere and watched their local
| economy get destroyed by trade deals and technological advances,
| and that's how you get an anti-globalization populist political
| movement.
| parker_mountain wrote:
| Part of it, as well, is that a lot of these regions that people
| moved out of are the suburbs. Many suburbs are not sustainable,
| and are degrading.
| Yhippa wrote:
| > Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading.
|
| Genuinely curious: what is the basis for that claim? Even if
| you don't cite a source.
|
| Edit: these responses are very insightful. Thank you all for
| the responses.
| mwest217 wrote:
| Lots of resources on the subject from Strong Towns[1], Not
| Just Bikes[2], and various consulting firms like Urban3[3]
|
| [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI [3]
| https://www.urbanthree.com/
| tomrod wrote:
| Not the OP. It's a literal claim, not metaphorical.
|
| Pipes break. Schools wear out. Roads wear out. Houses and
| fencing wear out, etc.
|
| Many cities don't budget in perpetuity and (further) can't
| maintain existing infrastructure as a population bulge
| dissipates or as young people move away.
| akiselev wrote:
| See the Strong Towns article "The Growth Ponzi Scheme" [1]
| and the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card for more concrete
| data [2].
|
| The gist is that we've funded the construction of our
| infrastructure nationwide without accounting for the cost
| of maintenance. Now after decades of neglect, the cost of
| fixing all of our infrastructure is astronomical, far worse
| than if we had been doing it correctly from the beginning.
|
| [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
|
| [2] https://infrastructurereportcard.org/
| beambot wrote:
| And yet, the entire cost of FDRs New Deal was $1-Trillion
| (2022 dollars) compared to $5-6 Trillion in COVID
| stimulus...
| 88913527 wrote:
| If it is indeed that much cheaper to start from scratch,
| we have the open land to do so. Housing prices might fall
| in the areas that are chosen for divestment, but if we
| can't afford it, it's unclear what other paths remain. I
| largely believe in Strong Town's thesis, but we can't
| make everything a 5+1 because there is too much
| underdeveloped land use to justify that level of density
| everywhere given the total population size. There
| certainly are plenty of areas where's it's economical to
| upzone, but in many areas it won't be.
| ethanbond wrote:
| What? We can't do 5+1 everywhere because first we need to
| litter every last bit of countryside with failed
| sprawling towns that were swallowed by their own
| maintenance costs?
|
| That doesn't seem workable.
| 88913527 wrote:
| You can't do 5+1 on the current total land area occupied
| by low-density because you'd end up with far more housing
| than 330 million or so people need. You add that level of
| density to the core of small towns, then you have enough
| for everyone. That leaves a long tail of abandoned
| infrastructure in the areas that you're describing
| (rural/exurbs not picked for 5+1 upzoning).
|
| The suburbs take a huge amount of land. If everyone lived
| in NYC-level of density, we could all fit in New Jersey.
| If we all lived in middle-missing housing level density,
| that amount of land is still far less than the total area
| of all the suburbs.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Oh... it sounds like you're saying the proposal is to
| _actually convert_ all existing developed land to 5+1. I
| don 't think that's _anyone 's_ proposal?
|
| Upzoning does not mean you automatically _get_ a building
| at maximum allowed density, it means you increase what is
| _allowed_ and let the market decide what makes sense
| where. It would play out exactly as you describe.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You just have to densify existing towns and smaller
| cities, and go back to something more like the
| traditional model of small-scale urbanization. Density is
| _more_ efficient than suburban sprawl.
| kbf wrote:
| Density. North American suburbs built around cars spread
| taxpayers thin over a large area that requires a lot of
| expensive infrastructure. These places can't actually
| afford the services they depend on and infrastructure debt
| is usually paid off by new developments kind of like a
| ponzi scheme.
| karamanolev wrote:
| Aside from the other replies, they are degrading in terms
| of "living experience" - infrastructure, budgets, HOAs and
| whatnot. The infrastructure is being subsidised by dense
| cities, as there's simply too much street/pipe/wire per
| capita to support. So you either get prohibitive taxes,
| unsustainable budgets or subsidies from some level of
| government. Either way, they're not heading in a good
| direction.
| duped wrote:
| Not GP but locally there are a few exurbs that have serious
| budget problems because they overbuilt infrastructure and
| don't have the tax base to fully maintain it which creates
| a feedback loop of poorly maintained roads, water systems,
| parks, etc.
|
| Some of it had to do with the murder of brick and mortar
| retail in tightly packed downtowns in favor of the big box
| stores on the edge of town. That creates an enormous waste
| in municipal resources, doubly so if the store got
| property/sales tax subsidies.
|
| This is less of an issue in the denser near suburbs where
| populations and revenues have been consistently rising the
| last few years.
| escalt wrote:
| It is said that the infrastructure required to sustain
| suburbs costs more money than these suburbs bring in. In
| the US a city gets federal money to build new suburbs, but
| when it comes to renewing them after a few decades, the
| city has to pay on its own and it often has not enough
| money to do it.
|
| I am by no means an expert on this topic and just poorly
| summarized the contents of this video:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0
| parker_mountain wrote:
| It's also affecting some cities, such as Chicago. Wacker
| Drive is an example of this.
|
| It turns out that core infrastructure should be built to
| be inexpensive to maintain, and density helps greatly
| with that goal.
| ethanbond wrote:
| At least American suburbs are ultra car-dependent meaning
| you're not walking anywhere (literally _physically_
| degrading to both you and the environment) and you do not
| have chance social encounters at nearly the frequency of
| any walking city (socially degrading).
|
| This is not to say there aren't real benefits to life in
| the burbs and serious disadvantages to city life, but it's
| fairly evident by now that American suburbia is not the
| utopian dream it was sold as.
| Alupis wrote:
| Perhaps for you city dweller's, but for the rest of us,
| we really like our suburbs.
|
| Not being able to walk everywhere is literally not even a
| factor I look for when moving to a new area. I want
| quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy and affordability.
|
| I have yet to see the metropolis that checks all of those
| boxes, or any of them for the matter.
| [deleted]
| ethanbond wrote:
| Pick any moderate sized city in Europe! There's no reason
| Americans _have_ to choose between glass and concrete
| imposing megastructures a la (parts of) NYC or sprawling
| car-dependent and socially atomized burbs a la Houston
| /Phoenix etc.
|
| We can have moderately dense, highly walkable, transit-
| connected, safe, clean, private, quiet, socially vibrant,
| affordable towns and suburbs all over the country.
|
| We just choose not to in large part because many
| Americans, brainwashed by The Automobile, _can 't even
| imagine_ such a state of affairs.
| karamanolev wrote:
| I see why you like the suburbs. But it's essentially a
| hoax, it's like living above your means on a bunch of
| credit cards - at least for most people (not all).
|
| Affordability for a lot of suburbs is when you allow for
| degrading infrastructure and moving more and more towards
| bankruptcy of cities. Budget analysis for a lot of
| suburbs show very troubling trends. In essence, living in
| a properly maintained suburbia is not affordable. Too
| much street, pipe and wire per capita.
|
| Cleanliness - it's only in appearance. The dirtiness is
| externalized to the environment by means of CO2 and other
| emissions due to personal transport. A lot of concrete
| and asphalt being poured require massive excavations and
| destruction of nature elsewhere. More than cities.
|
| Quiet is also externalized - cars are extremely noisy and
| suburbia basically requires a lot of 4000 lbs metal hunks
| with mostly a single person inside.
|
| Privacy is there, but it costs quite a lot in total
| societal costs.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| > I want quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy and
| affordability.
|
| Most of these are pretty cliche. New York City is one of
| the safest cities in the country per capita. But as with
| "cleanliness" is usually trotted out in a dog whistly
| kind of way that really is about something else. And
| affordability: yep. You've got that for a couple reasons:
| 1. People LIKE living in cities. Good old supply/demand.
| 2. As this thread is discussing, suburbs are massively
| subsidized to the detriment of the cities they neighbor.
| seneca wrote:
| > Most of these are pretty cliche. New York City is one
| of the safest cities in the country per capita. But as
| with "cleanliness" is usually trotted out in a dog
| whistly kind of way that really is about something else.
|
| Calling someone's preferences cliches and dog whistles is
| a really lazy way to have a discussion and degrades this
| forum.
| abeyer wrote:
| > New York City is one of the safest cities in the
| country per capita. But as with "cleanliness" is usually
| trotted out in a dog whistly kind of way
|
| Having lived in other big cities that manage to collect
| garbage in containers, NYC's continued practice of
| dumping uncontained garbage on the sidewalk for
| collection gives it a very real non-dog-whistly
| feeling(/sight/odor) of dirtyness.
| drivers99 wrote:
| I just heard they were working on that. It looks like it
| actually started in April. Clean Curbs Pilot Program
| https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/site/our-
| work/containerized...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| It's funny how globalised the anti-globalisation populist
| political movements may be. Yesterday's news included
| "Reichsburger" getting busted in Deutschland for conspiring to
| coup, and it was mentioned the suspects were also pretty QAnon-
| aligned. However, Reichsburger are not indigenous, but are
| derived from US "Sovereign Citizens", who result from an
| amalgam of nuttery derived from XIX and XX conspiracies wishing
| to stand athwart history yelling "stop!": from those who
| thought the 14A is bogus to those who thought the 16A is bogus
| to those who didn't care for the Civil Rights Act, etc. Anyway,
| all these conspiracies apparently became more mainstream in the
| 1970s US because of the many newly embittered people due to the
| farming policies of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz .
|
| (incidentally, our farming policy here is diametrically opposed
| to both "get big or get out" and "plant fencerow to fencerow",
| and we still have major political centre parties, as well as
| left and right wing parties. But that correlation may have no
| relation to causation...)
| pessimizer wrote:
| This heavily underestimates the influence of Ezra Pound
| through his disciple and biographer Eustace Mullins. Butz
| certainly upped the economic pressure on rural people, but
| the theory is regular old European conspiratorial
| antisemitism as revived through Dreyfus, then post-WWI
| central European "stabbed in the back" fantasies, and
| interpreted by the fascist Europhile Pound.
|
| If the US government hadn't just completed a program of left-
| wing eradication in the early part of the 20c, the pressure
| probably would have turned rural people towards the populism
| that they had turned to throughout the 19c and very early
| 20c; the kind of populism that culminated in the 4-term FDR
| presidency and the New Deal.
|
| "Populism" as you use it here (to refer to right-wing
| antisemitic groups), was intentionally turned into a slur
| that was used to attack the working-class left-wing:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Party_(United_States)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustace_Mullins
| tsol wrote:
| It's strange the level of distrust in the west over
| institutions that the majority of the world find completely
| uncontroversial. It takes a village to raise a child, and in a
| world without villages families are the biggest support system
| most people have. I have a feeling this is another instance of
| the minority being louder than the majority.
| kaitai wrote:
| Two sets of assumptions, though:
|
| * The "stay behind" terminology is both evocative and biased. I
| didn't "stay behind". I moved away several times, thousands of
| miles, and lived in other places that ambitious people live,
| and then moved back to within 10 miles of where I grew up
| because the quality of life is better here. I can afford more,
| I have cultural amenities like world-class music and art, I'm
| near family and old friends as well as new friends, and people
| aren't all totally consumed by their work. The "upwardly mobile
| ambitious" set can frankly get stultifyingly boring and
| disconnected. I like having friends in construction, non-
| profits, pet services, etc.
|
| * Like many Americans who really do "stay behind", I contribute
| to elder care in my family. A lot of people stay put because
| they need to care for someone, and America does not make it
| easy to get vulnerable or ill people services. This is part of
| what contributes to what you call the "bitterness" -- lack of
| support for child care, elder care, care for the mentally ill
| or those struggling with addiction, and in many cases it's a
| vicious circle: gotta stay in Podunkville to take care of
| grandma and your cousin 'cause you can't afford to get grandma
| other help and your cousin doesn't qualify for anything but SSI
| so he can't afford to move either, but staying in Podunkville
| you tank your own educational and job prospects, therefore
| keeping you in Podunkville forever. Sometimes it seems you can
| only truly be upwardly mobile if you can avoid caregiving
| responsibilities.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| That honestly sounds like a lot of spurious causal assumptions.
| The Rust Belt and coal mining regions didn't get economically
| depressed _because_ people left. People left because of the
| economic collapse. You seem to be saying if all those college
| kids just moved back to Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and
| Ohio, the people there wouldn 't be mad about their economies
| being destroyed? Because they still would have been destroyed.
| the_optimist wrote:
| There's a deeper level here. Conforming economic, security, n
| judicial blocks to geography more strongly maps onto the
| governance structure for the US. In other words, this is a
| system that inherently creates and maintains divisions.
| cossatot wrote:
| While I partially agree with your assessment, it's worth noting
| that much of the dynamic settlement of the US has been based on
| commodity booms, which really can't be considered perpetual
| parts of the economy. People had to leave their homes to go
| clear the prairie, log virtually all of the US forest, mine the
| West Virginia coal and then the Wyoming coal after that, etc.
| Once those resources are used up, there is little left for
| people to do, regardless of technological advances that require
| fewer workers for the same output, much less trade deals (how
| much wood and grain do we import?). The economies oriented
| around renewable resources (Oregon timber for example) simply
| can't sustain as many people because the environment can't
| continually produce the output that it did during the initial
| exploitation.
|
| This of course affects the downstream, more industrial elements
| concentrated in cities as well, which process the ore and
| lumber and make engines and furniture.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| I'm one of the "upwardly mobile" folks who moved out, and I'm a
| bit shocked at all the comments here treating the headline like
| it's a bad thing. Having a local and consistent community is an
| essential part of a "good" city. I know that many of the places
| we moved away from were... lacking, but simply abandoning
| everything isn't going to help at all either.
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| I have moved quite a bit myself and honestly still miss
| 'home'. Hopefully soon I'll stay somewhere for the rest of my
| life, or a good chunk of it, so I can be 'home' again. My
| wifes a researcher and we follow the academic positions so I
| probably have another 3 or 4 locations to live in first (:
|
| There are a lot of perks of having that stable community
| feeling around you.
| cpsns wrote:
| I fall into this group in Canada and I wish I didn't at this
| point.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Wow, I really did not expect it to be that high. I could
| understand that number if it was "live in the state where they
| grew up" (esp. if they went to college in-state which most do),
| but within 10 miles? That's a pretty small radius. In many cities
| you could move to the other side of town and be outside the 10
| mile range.
| cwmoore wrote:
| ; the other four are outnumbered.
| cassonmars wrote:
| I moved away from my Midwest hometown in my early twenties, lived
| in Seattle for nearly a decade, then got fed up with the path the
| city was on and moved back. I feel like moving away is valuable,
| and teaches you to appreciate the things you took for granted
| living somewhere during your childhood. Now that I'm back, I get
| to help fundamentally transform the city into a new tech hub,
| reviving from the state of decay produced by an industry that
| mostly abandoned it. This has been extremely fulfilling in a way
| that living in an already established big city cannot -- the
| skyline is yours to help manifest.
| thepangolino wrote:
| That's a pretty common statistics all around the world. People
| connect to their the place they grew up in and people they grew
| up with.
| mikrl wrote:
| In my experience, moving is related to aspiration. If I stayed
| where I grew up I'd honestly likely be an opioid statistic and
| definitely not doing anything worthwhile with my life. I still
| keep in touch with a few people from youth who didn't ruin
| their lives, and I'm the standout success story despite being
| the socially awkward and poor one.
|
| Moving thousands of miles has changed my life in ways I'd never
| dream of, staying still was not on the cards: it would have
| been lethal. I had to upend to get the education I needed, find
| my person and the tech job I love.
| Gigachad wrote:
| So moving was more related to the starting location being
| bad. If you already grew up in a good area then you'd want to
| stay.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| I consider myself lucky that my parents looked around and
| chose a place with many positive attributes, and they were
| able to make a living there. I haven't felt a big need to
| move from here, though I lived away during college.
|
| Of course if I had a bad relationship with my family, or
| had wildly different interests/beliefs I would likely want
| to move away.
| tricksforfree wrote:
| Imagine if you and similar, "driven" folk stayed and made
| where you're from better.
|
| Imagine if you started small businesses and hired/trained the
| locals.
|
| Maybe everyone left behind wouldn't have to work at a big box
| store or just die to reduce the societal burden.
|
| Edit: Not blaming, just food for thought.
| avgDev wrote:
| I grew up in a small city in Poland.
|
| If my parents have not moved to the US. I would've not had
| good access to a computer as we were relatively poor on the
| global scale. The stars aligned and I attended a university
| in the US, where I met influential people who later offered
| me a job.
|
| I am now in a place where my income allows me to think
| about paying back.
|
| I am definitely sure I would not have the common sense, the
| business sense, understanding of self, and the capitol to
| do anything of value if I have stayed.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Imagine if the Saudis grew wheat in the desert! Oh wait
| they tried that and even with all the capital in the world
| it wasn't competitive, because it turns out the desert is a
| horrible environment for growing wheat.
|
| The less fortunate places of today weren't built for no
| reason, back when they were new there was money to be made
| to support them. Then economics shifted and there's less
| money that can be made in that location, so
| people/businesses move away. Expecting capable people to
| intentionally stunt their achievements to try and do the
| equivalent of growing wheat in the desert is just
| mythologizing places that once served an important economic
| purpose but no longer do. This notion that you'll never
| need to adapt to changing circumstances, that there's some
| sort of societal guarantee of growing old in the same
| community you grew up in, is incredibly entitled and
| fundamentally anti-American.
|
| What we need is federally funded moving expenses for lower
| income earners, that way no one's stuck in a modern-day
| ghost town.
| cpsns wrote:
| > stayed and made where you're from better.
|
| In my experience this is a recipe for burnout, depression,
| social ostracization, and the like. Some places are not
| fixable, many are actively hostile to the idea of change.
|
| A lot of these places were abandoned for a reason, not just
| because people felt like it one day.
| emodendroket wrote:
| A little fantastical to imagine well-meaning people with
| zero experience of work are going to fix places that nobody
| else managed to but hope springs eternal, I guess.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > Imagine if you and similar, "driven" folk stayed and made
| where you're from better.
|
| > Imagine if you started small businesses and hired/trained
| the locals.
|
| If I had stayed in my hometown I wouldn't have had the
| resources to even think about doing those things. The town
| is in the poor half of a county in a poor state. The best
| most can hope for out there are part time jobs at grocery
| stores and fast food restaurants, both paying almost
| nothing.
|
| I probably could've gotten hired on as a county public
| school tech which pays decently for the area, but it still
| would've taken decades to bootstrap the kind of resources
| required to start a business, because I'd be starting out
| with almost nothing.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm wondering how a glut of uneducated young adults all
| trying to start businesses is going to help anything.
| lukas099 wrote:
| All else equal I would love to live by all my family and
| friends, but the fact is that my skills are not as useful
| there as they are where I live now, so I wouldn't be able
| to provide as much value to the world if I still lived
| there.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I'm not sure you realize how hopeless large swaths of the
| country are. There's simply no coming back in many cases.
| They just need to slowly die out over a few generations and
| be given back to nature.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Trying to jump-start a modern economy in a place that isn't
| currently participating in one is difficult, like
| attempting a breakaway in bike racing. It's a worthy public
| project, but a risky private one.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| It depends where you're from. IMO it is generally good and
| positive for families to stay in the same area for
| generations, since it allows for stronger ties among the
| community, leading to generally less fragile lives. But
| you're right that those same ties can hold you down in the
| right (wrong) circumstances.
|
| ...which I guess is just a long-winded way of saying that you
| should stay near home if it's good, and stay away if it's bad
| (for whatever values of good and bad).
| emodendroket wrote:
| I feel like those strong ties are more likely to be fetters
| than supports but who am I to tell other people what
| they're feeling, I suppose.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I used to feel this way but have since realized that it
| is a WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized,
| democratic) perspective. For the majority of human
| history, we _needed_ our birth community in a very direct
| way simply to eat, keep ourselves housed, find a mate,
| etc. Many of those needs can now be taken care of by the
| market but IMO it pays to be careful about committing
| completely to such a course.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Sure, I don't imagine I can somehow totally divorce my
| own thinking from the culture I live in or my education.
| That doesn't mean it is necessarily wrong (the germ
| theory of disease is also WEIRD, or was at one point). I
| think it is telling that most people in the modern world
| who continue to live this way do not have the resources
| to do otherwise.
| knaik94 wrote:
| I am glad you were able to have such a positive impact on the
| trajectory of your life by moving. But you shouldn't
| generalize your experiences with your home town with everyone
| else's. Sometimes moving is necessary for growth, but it
| could also be completely orthogonal. It depends on the place
| and also the person.
|
| I grew up 30 minutes from a respected state college, about 15
| miles, and about an hour away from both Philly and NYC,
| almost exactly 50 miles to each. The ongoing joke in my high
| school is at least 50% of each graduating classes ended up at
| the same state college. I'm not sure the real statistic, but
| I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
|
| 10 miles sounds far enough away from parents to be able to
| feel independent but also not far away enough to feel any
| kind of culture shock. Not everyone will have this privilege,
| but I just want to share another perspective.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Not ever feeling any kind of culture shock is itself
| limiting.
| knaik94 wrote:
| There is a lot of value in learning about different
| cultures by physically travelling, but I think there are
| other options now. I believe the hyper-globalization of
| society due to technology allows many more people to
| experience other cultures without needing to travel. It's
| up to individuals to take advantage of it and lean into
| certain discomforts.
|
| I don't believe it's possible to integrate with modern
| society successfully without having to go through some
| kind of culture shock. It's not limited to culture
| defined by regions, older generations feel culture shock
| constantly when trying to stay integrated or understand
| the culture of new generations. But things like YouTube
| have allowed me to experience culture in a way that
| wasn't possible 20+ years ago.
|
| I have been loving the relatively recent trend of older
| people, parents and grandparents making cooking videos. I
| recently found De mi Rancho a Tu Cocina, a channel where
| Dona Angela, a 72 year old grandma teaches Mexican
| recipes. The channel has 4.2 million subscribers and the
| first video was uploaded in August 2019 and hit 2M
| subscribers by December 2019. Very simple production
| value, except the wood fire cooking which is probably out
| of necessity as she lives on a ranch. A similar channel
| with more production value, but still very homey is
| Cowboy Kent Rollins, 2.32M subs, who is verified on
| YouTube and has built a brand and a merch shop related to
| outdoor cooking. I grew up in the suburbs in the tristate
| area, but love making myself traditional style Mexican
| and TexMex food, homemade refried beans is a favorite.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@DemiRanchoaTuCocina
|
| Best Authentic Refried Bean Recipe - Cowboy Kent Rollins
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC5mR5s70bE
| emodendroket wrote:
| I don't think YouTube videos or even a two-week trip are
| substitutes for living somewhere different. Too many
| small things you can't notice at that level of
| engagement.
| ckosidows wrote:
| This is a privileged opinion, no? Not everyone has the
| resources or means to leave the place they live.
| mikrl wrote:
| Not everyone has the resources or means to stay where
| they are. The Great Recession flung people far and wide.
|
| I am not disagreeing with you though, just two sides of
| the issue re resources.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Ok so that's another way poverty harms them. Is it less
| "privileged" to pretend that is not the case and someone
| who has no ability to leave their hometown has no
| disadvantage?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| 70% of americans live in urban centers where this isn't
| really true.
| ghaff wrote:
| Most Americans live in what the US Census categorizes as
| urban. Which is a very broad definition of basically
| communities somewhat in the orbit of an urban area.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _In my experience, moving is related to aspiration._
|
| Highly dependent on where you grew up.
|
| My parents grew up in a farming town in Scotland. Moving out
| was the best way to solid careers.
|
| I grew up in DC. I stayed because when I finished college,
| there were ample jobs here and that hasn't changed. Sometimes
| I wish I had moved, but at the same time, when I look
| elsewhere, the grass isn't any greener.
| selectodude wrote:
| >In my experience, moving is related to aspiration.
|
| And where you grew up. I grew up somewhere that aspirants
| move to. So I never left because why would I bother? As the
| US becomes more urbanized, people are going to have less of a
| reason to move to places with more opportunity because
| they're already in places that have opportunity.
| quartesixte wrote:
| Growing up where the aspirants move to is such an odd place
| to be in certain social circles. Simultaneous jealousy and
| judgement.
|
| But yeah. As an LA native, I don't have much reason to
| leave. But it's not like I'm some kind of sheltered, naive
| farmboy.
| mikrl wrote:
| > But yeah. As an LA native, I don't have much reason to
| leave.
|
| Are houses cheap in LA? Aren't a bunch of people leaving
| California for cheaper property inland?
| trgn wrote:
| But most people actually live in the big metros. If you grew
| up in LA, Chicago, Atlanta, ... area, why would you really
| need to move? Unless you have a highly specific skillset,
| most people can have a fine career locally. High mobility can
| be a sign of weak local job markets, this is the dominant
| view. You can also take an optimistic view; low mobility is a
| sign of sustained local wealth accumulation and strong local
| job markets.
| civopsec wrote:
| One of the more baffling anecdotes I've read in a while. The
| response to a very general comment about where most people
| end up is "opioid statistics" and then just the usual
| bravado. The response to such a malappropriate reply is so
| obvious (for most of 60% of young adults this opioid thing is
| not what they are signing themselves up for, so where is the
| relevance?) that it feels tedious to state it as a question.
| mikrl wrote:
| I'll take baffling as a compliment.
|
| The opioid thing is relevant because lots of people I grew
| up with in my home city fucked up their lives, and I'd have
| done the same had I stayed because social networks, living
| in poverty, decay and hopelessness etc.
|
| Leaving broke me out of that and gave me access to better
| social capital which was (perhaps an exaggeration) a
| difference between life and death.
|
| YMMV but if you've grown up in a decaying urban area, you
| know what I'm talking about.
| dibt wrote:
| This is is an important detail missing from the title:
|
| "Childhood locations are measured at age 16 and locations in
| young adulthood are measured at age 26."
|
| "By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this
| migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in
| affluent families."
|
| It's not all young adults, just a specific demographic we would
| expect to move away farther from home.
|
| Many people in this thread are using this to confirm their bias
| that it says something about the young adults. The title is doing
| more harm than good.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I would say that I owe my career to _not_ staying in my home town
| or even my home state. The state has plenty of charms but
| opportunity is generally speaking not among them. Those of my
| graduating high school class who I 've followed since also moved
| out of state. Looking at the data from this tool it seems we were
| outliers, though.
|
| With remote work being more common now I could probably move
| back, but that would carry some amount of risk as long as I'm
| working for another company rather than running a business of my
| own. Where I live now has a decent balance between locally
| available jobs and cost of living which is a bit scary to give
| up.
| perardi wrote:
| We have become an increasingly urbanized country. Lots and lots
| of people in massive metro areas--think of the hypersprawl around
| Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, LA...
|
| Living 10 miles away from where you grew up around Chicago can
| put you in a total different socioeconomic level of suburb.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| Yep, I live in Chicago and I'm about 10 miles from my parents'
| house, as the crow flies. I have at various times in my life
| regretted not moving around and living in different cities, but
| I didn't feel the urgency to move a thousand miles away from
| home since I grew up next to one of the largest cities in the
| US. I imagine that if I had grown up in a small town, like my
| wife, moving far away from home would have been the only
| option.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I left Chicagoland and wish I could go back.
| granshaw wrote:
| Chicagos great so long as you don't live on the ground
| floor and don't have to shovel snow :)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I grew up in a small town. Lived in and around Chicago for
| about 10 years as a young adult. Didn't ever like it enough
| to think that I wanted to put down roots there. Moved back to
| my hometown and still live there.
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| That's what it was for me. I grew up in a tiny farming town;
| if I wanted a job other than farmhand, retail, or local
| government, moving was the only option. And I did, 3 days
| after graduating.
| samgranieri wrote:
| As someone who has lived in Chicago and the Chicago suburbs,
| this is completely true
| TedShiller wrote:
| Nothing wrong with that, I wish I did too
| theonemind wrote:
| It's really too bad that people have to move around for economic
| and other opportunity. It kind of speaks to the damaged modern
| psyche with illnesses like schizophrenia virtually absent in the
| ancient world that anyone would regard not dispersing from their
| home area as a bad thing. Like, we all just aspire to the
| condition of the multi-national economic elite, paying allegiance
| to no country or place, making an abode of bouncing around a few
| world cities.
|
| Like, maybe we just shouldn't have crappy places that people need
| to flee, by putting roots in the community and making it a place
| to be.
| dibt wrote:
| > It's really too bad that people have to move around for
| economic and other opportunity.
|
| The article doesn't support your bias. It's mostly those from
| affluent families that move farther from home, not people
| looking for work.
|
| "By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this
| migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in
| affluent families."
| aftbit wrote:
| I moved away from home but I moved back as well. I now live
| within 10 miles of where I grew up, but I spent 7 years in the sf
| bay area, 2000 miles away.
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