The Salary Needed To Afford Rent in 10 of the Largest US Cities ---Good grief!!!!!!

[Straw Man]

25. I lived in Manhattan for only three years ...

... and left in 2001. Before that, I spent eight years in Tokyo, so I thought I knew about high housing prices. That was nothing compared to what I faced in NYC. By the time I left, I was paying $1500 for a studio. And that was 15+ years ago -- it has only gotten worse.

I have friends with middle-class salaries who desperately tried to hold on. But even with two-income households, they finally had to pack it in. One friend put it this way: "They just don't want me here anymore." He was right: "they" didn't.

And who are "they"? People with lots of money and a shitty value system; people who will pay anything to live where it's "cool" but don't realize that they are not ones that create the coolness; people who are willing to spend lavishly in a vain attempt to sustain an outsized self-image. F. Scott Fitzgerald would recognize them in a heartbeat.