Quote:
Originally Posted by Sidd Finch
You like to assign one reason to this: Wages are higher because productivity is higher here.
Okay. I guess waiters, janitors, and bus drivers here are sooo much more productive than in any other city. And lawyers, I-bankers, and hedge fund managers too. So I'll accept the higher productivity as a reason (even as I contradict its existence by posting here).
But, I tend to believe that there are multiple factors that contribute to most results. So, higher costs are one such factor: You have to offer people higher salaries here, because otherwise they won't come here, where they know that $x doesn't go nearly as far as it goes where they live.
I also believe that the higher costs are a bigger part of this. Perhaps your workplace is one where the powers-that-be think, "We could pay our secretaries $x per year, but they are just so much more productive in the Bay Area that we'll voluntarily pay them 150% of $x." I think most businesses would prefer to pay as little as they can to retain people -- and that "as little as" number moves higher when the cost of living moves higher.
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I was living in DC the first time I visited SF. In DC there were too few sane people to populate service jobs. Jobs like rental car shuttle driver were filled with people who were typically fucking nuts. I arrived in SF and got in a shuttle driven by this wonderfully articulate person, someone who would be a manger of something in DC. I just assumed that so many people wanted to live in SF, compared to DC, that people were willing to work jobs "beneath" them. I don't know if that supports or destroys Ty's latest blog, cuz I do not read them.
