The reason this guy declined a job offer from Amazon is the same reason I’d never live in a “hub” American city again: Seattle, Los Angeles, NYC, or any place like that.

Right now, I make a fairly high salary in a pretty cheap area. Not as inexpensive as most of Florida, but my salary here is much larger than any I could earn in FL and here I could find a new job in a week (real recruiters contact me nearly every day with actual interviews and offers).

In Seattle (where I once lived), I’d need to make about $300,000 a year to have the same standard of living as I do here. Think anyone is going to pay me $300,000 a year?

Of course not.

And on the flip side, if I said “screw it” and decided I wanted to work much less or do something else, here I could live on almost nothing. In Seattle or LA or San Diego, to have any sort of decent middle-class-ish standard of living (ok housing, food, etc) you need to earn at least $60,000 a year.

Here, I could get by on 1/3 of that and not suffer.

What’s the reason for moving to a hub city, then? The housing stock is worse and is also ridiculously expensive. The jobs don’t pay enough to remunerate one for all the inconveniences and expense of living in such a place. And they are only getting worse and more untenable for anyone not making well above six figures, so your standard of living will decline over time.