> there is nothing necessarily irrational

I think your statement isn't strong enough. Choosing lower compensation in exchange for work that aligns with your value system is an entirely rational thing to do.

He is about to leave engineering and become a pilot... Yeah...

I don't think people here have a good sense of what a low cost of living really means. I was still an Army officer in my early 30s and still fairly junior. Made more than 80k, but not a ton more, and it isn't totally comparable, especially with completely free healthcare, but we lived like kings. My first house was on nearly a quarter acre, four beds, three baths, three-car garage, historic trees, in a very quiet neighborhood, no crime, and the purchase price was $120,000. Not only could I easily raise kids, but much lower paid enlisted personnel still raised kids, too. That was only 2010. Housing costs have certainly gone up since then, but nowhere near the ridiculous costs on the coasts. My wife's sister just bought a townhouse in Queens that is finally big enough for their kids, and it's not any bigger than my first house, and they paid $2.5 million. You just can't compare what counts as a livable salary when some places cost 10 times as much for similar housing. And the fact that they're even in Queens at all is because they can't afford Manhattan. I'm not even sure it truly is comparable since the places there don't have garages. Her last place they had to buy a parking spot separately, for only one car, for an additional $60,000. That's half the price of my first house to park one car.

Even in a LCOL area, with a family, I would not feel comfortable on $80k per year as I would not be able to save enough to afford out of pocket healthcare expenses for family, plus premiums, plus retirement savings, plus education savings for kids.

Plus it is LCOL area, implying that there probably will not be many alternative $80k jobs if the one I had went away.

Yeah, the 200k+ salaries have only recently became available to much of the country thanks to the proliferation of remote work. Not everyone is willing to make the sacrifice of living in the bay area for those faang salaries. There are more important things in life than money once you earn enough to take care of your needs.

Yeah the OP seems kind of elitist?

people are irrational about their jobs and compensation, like those people who decline raises because they think its puts them in a higher tax bracket and they'll lose more money.

True! But the only solution to that is to organize/unionize. Wages must go up (to outpace inflation, which there is strong evidence is not being caused by a wage-price spiral [1] [2]), and profits must go down (which arguably have nowhere to go but down due to go forward interest rate policy, tax policy, structural demographics, etc [3] [4]). This is the only lever available to arrive at that outcome. Shareholders, boards, and executive leadership aren't going to give profits back willingly to the people who do the actual work.

Follow along the current Teamsters/Yellow trucking conflict. Yellow is threatening to close up shop vs pay reasonable wages, and the union is willing to kill the business versus allow them to continue to squeeze labor for their profits [5]. In a macro where labor is in excess demand for the next decade [6] [7], this is a reasonable way to operate.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35077748

[2] https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/feds-powell-acknowledges-...

[3] https://www.marketplace.org/2023/05/25/decline-in-corporate-...

[4] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/end-of-an-era-th...

[5] https://www.freightwaves.com/news/why-teamsters-is-willing-t...

[6] https://www.axios.com/2023/05/08/us-labor-shortage-older-wor...

[7] https://www.businessinsider.com/baby-boomer-retirement-surge...

I live in Miami, where the hospitality industry dominates the employment landscape. Jobs are being taken left and right....but for very little pay and even poorer working conditions.

There is some tech but comparatively very little when stacked against any other growing major metro area, and those that are here aren't hiring locally, they're just companies relocating here for tax purposes and bringing existing workers with them.

"I know WSJ has coined the term "richcession" to describe the elimination of high paying jobs and their replacement with more lower paying ones."

"Middleclasscession" would be a better term although even harder to pronounce. It seems no matter what's happening, the rich will get richer, middle class and lower will get poorer. I still can't get my head around the fact that during COVID the top x percent doubled their net worth while most of everybody else lost out.

> It appears there is a reallocation going on in the economy.

There's a reallocation going on all right. From more middle class people to more poor people.

Feel that we’re at the beginning of a shift in the global order. Every country seems to be scrambling to secure critical raw materials and goods. Should be a good time if you’re a worker as a lot of jobs lost overseas start coming back.

Small/medium sized businesses have always accounted for most jobs and job growth. This isn't new.

If anything that's a good thing because it seems to reduce inequality. There's too much inequality for the investment/consumption balance to be healthy long term.

Okay but your comment is just your opinion with very little or zero basis in reality.

Quiet quitting is when people don't actually quit, so no stats.

You're very lucky, I'd say.

Someone who can put up 66-75% for a desirable home generally is.

I realize this is hypothetical, but I’d run the numbers before putting that much down… If you do 20%, you can put the rest in an index fund which will probably earn more than the interest rate on the loan. (Though at this point it’s going to be close.)

Not all debt is bad. I have enough cash to buy a car, but the manufacturer was willing to give me a loan at 0% interest. I pay for as many things as possible on my credit cards and then pay them off every time I get paid while accumulating rewards. There are tax benefits to having a mortgage, and the loan is backed by the house; it is usually a far better situation than renting.

On the other hand, taking out massive loans (several times what you had) for education is questionable in most cases. I've known people who are reasonably intelligent who think it is a good idea to send their children to private universities with high tuition for undergrad degrees in fields that the school isn't known for, which I find baffling.

> The only exception might be a mortgage of 25-33% of a house value, I'd put 75-66% in cash.

Can you explain your rationality for this? You're still allowing the bank to have senior ownership of your house except... for less money.

If you default, they keep your house, no matter what the debt-to-value is.

Like, I understand saying "I couldn't make my mortgage payments so the bank took the house, but I guess they did pay for 90% of it".

But this seems like all the insecurity of a mortgage for a lot less money?

i like my 2.8% mortgage in a high inflation environment.