FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

My three children each have their own room. They can ride their bicycles on our sleepy street without having to constantly worry about reckless drivers. They can explore the walking trails and wooded areas our community maintains. They can play baseball in one of the nearby fields without having to worry about breaking a car window in doing so.

My wife has a large crafting area. I have an office. We have a home theater. We have a workshop in our garage. We have a large sunroom which opens to a large deck suitable for entertaining many friends at once.

Getting even a fraction of what I described above in a city would cost a fortune.

Its the weird middle ground that has all of the downsides of the country and all of the downsides of the city all packed into one that we're talking about.

That's the thing, a lot of Americans really don't like this idea of being squeezed in tightly. People really don't like having a shared wall. And it's not that people like these tightly squeezed lot lines, they'd prefer 1 acre lots. These tiny lots are all they can afford while still being somewhat acceptable to them about commutes. Which Americans seem to really just not care about commute times when comparing to tradeoffs on house size and not having shared walls.

And in the end, you can only buy what the cities and towns allow to have built. Which is chosen by those who live there at the time. The cities then make single family structures a requirement, have minimum setbacks and lot sizes, have rigid separations between residential and commercial spaces, etc. So even those people who would want to own an apartment over a commercial suite in what you'd consider an urban area can't make that choice because that choice is illegal.

But people act like these zoning laws just come about on their own. The thing is, these zoning laws are popular. They get put into place because that's what the people who actually vote in local elections push for. I've seen proposal after proposal in cities around me to change zoning to allow density even in limited areas get fought tooth and nail by residents. I remember a project nearby where there was a proposal to build a mixture of 2-3 unit townhouses, some single-family narrow lots, and a tiny spot of commercial for like a coffee shop on land that was currently zoned industrial. All of this connected to the bike network, a large city park and a nature preserve nearby, and good transit connection at the end of the neighborhood. The neighborhoods around fought it tooth and nail and eventually the builder walked away after trying to negotiate for a few years. Well, the land was already zoned industrial, construction broke ground months later to build warehouses. Now instead of a nice neighborhood on my bike path there's warehouses with semi-trucks rolling through all day long. Good job, NIMBYs!

Sure, it isn't coincidence that the "American Dream" has always been portrayed the sizeable house on a large acreage out in the country surrounded by white picket fences. But we're talking about the people who are choosing to cram in beside one another, but aren't bringing the services and joy that such density normally offers to go along with it.

> These tiny lots are all they can afford while still being somewhat acceptable to them about commutes.

I've lived in cities and on farms and the commute times end up being about the same if you ever have to leave your immediate community that is within walking distance. You have to drive further from the farm, sure, but the highway is surprisingly efficient. Is there some reason people are more concerned about distance than time?

The city offers a clear advantage when you are travelling short enough distances that you can walk. But, that brings us right back to wondering what you need costly transportation for? The two dangly things beneath you are right there! (Yes, I know, some people hazve disabilities, but the discussion isn't about them)

> But people act like these zoning laws just come about on their own.

Not at all. That's why we question why people are doing it. It is clearly their own choice. But why when we then hear them crying that the transportation costs are too high?

People routinely leave their community for their job all the time here. Go take a look at that map I shared earlier. Most of the people in that neighborhood probably don't work in Princeton. They probably don't even work in McKinney or Fairview. Good chance they work in North Plano, Frisco, Addison, Dallas, maybe Garland. Most people living here are probably driving about an hour to their job, each way, every day. With a lot of those people with those kinds of commutes having that take place on a tollway.

They do that because they can buy that 4-bedroom 3-bath 3-car garage ~2,400sqft with a gameroom house on its own lot for $375k. Meanwhile, a similar house within a few miles of their work (say, Frisco) is probably anywhere from $590k to $2M. Property taxes can be pretty steep here, so that $590k house gets like $14k/yr in property taxes in Frisco while that $375k house in Princeton is only $9k/yr, over $400/mo in additional taxes. They could potentially accept a smaller and thus cheaper house, but to them it's not worth the tradeoff. They need that 3-car garage, they need that gameroom.

My wife has coworkers who live in Forney and commute to jobs in Plano and Frisco. They do that commute 3-5 times a week and see nothing wrong with it. They value having a large home with tons of space, and with the kind of income they make there's little chance they could afford it anywhere near where those jobs are. Think a security guard and a building engineer (like an on-site maintenance tech for a commercial property) are going to own a $1M+ house? No. But they still want a 3 bedroom home with a pool and a spa and an outdoor kitchen, and they can get that for $300k in Forney.

Just trying to share the follow on mindset. If you're having to leave your home by car every day for work, then you're absolutely going to have a car. If you already have the car, why go to the little grocery store at the edge of the neighborhood when you just spend a little more transit time and go to the big store that has everything else you'd want to buy?

They don't want complete separation from other people. They want conveniences of the city/metropolis (access to jobs, entertainment, and education) while having a lot of space around their home for recreation & privacy.

They don't want farm work (required for that income) either - it's physically and emotionally hard and margins are thin and fragile depending on the weather.

Sure, where the compensation is sufficient to cover your travel costs you would reasonably consider it. But then transportation costs aren't an issue, making the unaffordability idea that started this moot. But, if we want to move beyond the topic of cost, that just brings us right back to the point that travel time ends up being the same living in the city and living in the country, so what have you gained by living in the city?

What one normally thinks you would gain is having other amenities, like bars, restaurants, healthcare, shopping, and just an all round vibrant community right there to enjoy when you get home from work. But the particular city homes we are talking about don't even have that. They are just houses upon houses upon houses all jammed up against each other with nothing in-between.

And it is that way because people want it to be that way. They don't want the restaurants, shopping, healthcare, etc. to be anywhere nearby. Even though they cry that they afford to the transportation to get to them, funnily enough. But why? What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them?

Hardly. Agriculture is hard work and not at all profitable unless the operation is at scale.

But not without having to travel. And once travel is in the picture, you can be to the same places just as fast from a farm as you can from another point in the city. It might be hard to appreciate if you have never lived on a farm, but once you do you'll realize that the highway is unbelievably efficient.

Your point only holds for when that stuff is available within walking distance of one's home. But now we're back to not needing costly transportation, so...

> They don't want farm work (required for that income) either

Where do you get the idea that farm work is a necessary condition to realize an income from farm land? Most farmers (in the legal sense) don't farm their own land, they have other farmers work it through sharecropping/rental agreements.

You seem a bit confused. While that is more or less true for the farmer, it is that way because the landlord usually takes most of the profit. As is to be expected. They hold all the cards. You can't farm without land. But given that in this scenario you are the landlord, not the one doing the work...

The key to farm profitability is to own your own land free and clear. But, of course, unless you have a high paying job doing something else instead of farming that's really hard to pull off, so most farmers end up renting (either to a landlord directly, or renting money from a lender). That's when you need scale to make up for the vast majority of the profit going to someone else.

Children, among other things. Let's make this concrete.

I live ~40 minutes from Washington DC and ~30 minutes from Baltimore. I have three children.

I'd need, at minimum, a four-bedroom, two-bathroom property in the city. It will need to be zoned for a good school for obvious reasons.

The 30y mortgage on my six-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom home in the suburbs is ~$3,500/month.

Can you find a condominium in either city for this price or less?

(For reference: my property value at the time of purchase was $575,000.)

Check out a settler home sometime. They were tiny, one room houses that housed themselves and their eight+ children just fine. You don't need this in any way, shape, or form. I do understand why you find it desirable, though.

> It will need to be zoned for a good school for obvious reasons.

I don't live in crazy orange man land. What are the (unfortunately, not so) obvious reasons? It befuddles me that different school zones would be different in any way beyond their geographic positioning, which isn't usually a concern when it comes to schooling. I've never heard of such a thing before.

> Can you find a condominium in either city for this price or less?

What's wrong with where you already are? If you found the lack of jobs, restaurants, entertainment, healthcare, etc. in walking to be a problem, you'd have changed it already. Like we established, the only reason those things aren't found where you are is because you and your neighbours have decided you don't want it.

I just don't understand your logic as to why you don't want it, but also don't want to live in the country. What's the benefit of living where you have all the downsides of the city and all the downsides of the country all wrapped up in one?

Jobs, hopefully paying a good bit more than minimum wage. If not for the city they wouldn't have any kind of income. They don't move to the city because they want some Parisian lifestyle, they move to the city because there are practically no jobs in the actually rural areas.

> They don't want the restaurants, shopping, healthcare, etc. to be anywhere nearby

Correct. They see these things as unsafe for their families to be around. They don't want to live within walking distance of a nightclub.

> Even though they cry that they afford to the transportation to get to them, funnily enough.

Most of the people arguing for better walkability and better transit access are absolutely not the same people actively choosing to live in places like Forney and Princeton and what not. They're generally fine having that commute and are fine driving to the Walmart when they need something that isn't just delivered to their home. Why even bother getting in the car to go to a restaurant, Uber Eats will bring the restaurant to them, and they don't have to deal with the crowds. Which, the few places with actual stores in these areas are massively crowded, because it's just oceans of houses around a few dots of shopping areas with giant parking areas surrounding them.

> What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them?

That they were willing to settle for the hour commute and not a two-hour commute, and that was the biggest single-family home they could afford in that hour commute radius and had a decent school district.

You're looking at it in pretty much the opposite direction from how they're looking at it. You're looking at a community you want to live in and then decide the home you can afford. They're looking for the house they want to live in, and then find the community they can afford to buy in. People didn't choose to live in Princeton or Forney or Melissa or Anna (or dozens of other "cities" around DFW) because of city amenities, outside of maybe a school district. They live there because they could buy a big single house cheap.

When I talk to friends about "if you could just move tomorrow, where would you want to live in DFW", their choices are rarely based in closeness to amenities. It is often about wanting more land, more space, more rooms. A family of four with a four-bedroom house with a dining room and two living rooms, too cramped. Need to move further out and get a bigger house. Definitely down to trade close access to the bike trails, walking distance to a large shopping area, walkable to the transit system to go all over the city, public parks with public swimming pools within walking distance, the elementary school around the corner and the middle school down the street for another few hundred square feet of land.

You haven't gained that, though. Not without travel, and once travel is in the picture then you can be located anywhere. Like was said in other comments, in practice, the time to get to a point in the city is the same if you start in the city, or if you start outside of the city. Cities build up as hubs for the surrounding area and the world at large, so getting things in and out of the city really fast is core to their design.

> no jobs in the actually rural areas.

1. The data clearly shows that rural areas, as a rule, have more available jobs. But you aren't apt to be able to work your way up to becoming a professional football player or CEO of a Fortune 500 in those jobs, so, granted, the jobs aren't appealing to the temporarily embarrassed superstar. I'll give you that.

2. I don't know where you think this walled city is that prevents anyone who doesn't live in the city from entering, but I can assure you that we're not talking about it. There is nothing that excludes you from city jobs if you live in the country, and likewise there is nothing that excludes you from working in the country if you live in the city.

In fact, those Fortune 500 CEOs and professional football players often live in the country!

This is objectively, radically untrue. It takes my wife 10-15 minutes to get to that same office where it takes the people living in Forney an hour to get in. She'll spend 20 minutes of her day commuting, they'll spend two hours. I used to ride my bicycle to the office before I mostly worked from home and have it take me maybe 15 minutes. Coworkers living in a town literally called Farmersville routinely took over an hour and a half each way. One person has to take a 30-mile trip, one person is taking a five-mile trip which is essentially the same final five miles as the 30-mile trip, how could it possibly be the same time.

> once travel is in the picture then you can be located anywhere

They'd agree with this entirely. I already have to have a car to get to work, so why wouldn't I just use that to go to whatever restaurant or shop I want across the city, why limit myself to only where I could walk? Personally, I enjoy going to the restaurants right at the edge of my neighborhood, on the days I go into the office I like strolling through the parks and to the restaurants nearby. But lots of people wouldn't want to "limit" themselves to only a mile or two, when the shop they'd prefer to shop at is a similar time distance away but by car.

> There is nothing that excludes you from city jobs if you live in the country

Time. Time excludes you from those city jobs. You're eventually having to spend more and more time driving through all those seas of neighborhoods to those decent paying jobs, its eventually just not worth it. People aren't going to be willing to drive two hours each way, it's amazing they're even willing to put up with an hour each way.

Once again, go back to that map of DFW. To really get an "affordable" truly rural place on that East side of DFW where you'd actually have dozens of acres without spending millions, you're probably looking at Josephine, Blue Rdige, maybe Westminister as a few examples. Go see what the commute time is starting at like 7:00 AM from there to Addison. Nearly two hours. Maybe you're going to work at a more industrial job in Garland. Nearly two hours. Are you willing to spend four hours of your day every day in your car?

> The data clearly shows that rural areas as a rule have more available jobs.

More available total jobs or more available comparable jobs? Please do share this data. Other than specific industries like oil and gas it's pretty much the opposite from what I can tell.

But what happens in the places we're talking about is that the people accept a small backyard in order to keep everything close, but also work to ensure that amenities aren't welcome, only allowing other houses to be close. So you get all the downsides of the city, having to trip over your annoying neighbours, but also the downsides of living in the country, having to waste large amounts of time driving to do anything.

What do people see in these strange middle places?

More actual opportunity, perhaps? Cities have lots of available jobs (assuming they aren't fake; that is a thing, apparently), and lots of people without jobs, but they never seem to align such that the people without jobs ever fill the open jobs. It's quite curious. As a result, people are much more likely to be without work in cities, as seen in the data. Yes, I'm sure you can find exceptions if you pick particular locations. We were never talking about a specific location.

> Please do share this data.

I'm sure you can look it up just as easily as I.

I was about to suggest that you can hire an assistant if you can't find the time to do it yourself, but whatever causes the above disconnect is apt to bite you too, assuming you are in a city. Oh well.

> You're eventually having to spend more and more time driving through all those seas of neighborhoods to those decent paying jobs

What kind of jobs are trapped in these seas of neighbourhoods? Most businesses need to get supplies into the city and their product out of the city, so usually the jobs are located on the fast track in and out of the city. This means that, if anything, it is easier to access the jobs when you don't live in the city.

Tech might be an exception to that. Maybe that's where your mind went, given the nature of this site. But tech doesn't require an in-person presence at all, so that one doesn't really fit our discussion.

I think it's a large and growing cultural divide.

There is a growing class of predominantly progressive people who look to walkability scores and the variety of ethnic restaurants and music venues to evaluate the desirability of a place to live. And an older more conservative cohort who value what you describe.

Your phrase "having to travel" is painting with a very broad brush.

There are naturally huge variations in transit time depending on where you live in a metropolis, where you are going, and how you are getting there.

I can walk 15 minutes to a coffee shop and grocery store, drive 20 minutes to a Walmart, and take a train 35 minutes to the office.

All are very convenient and the latter two require transportation.

> Where do you get the idea that farm work is a necessary condition to realize an income from farm land? Most farmers (in the legal sense) don't farm their own land, they have other farmers work it through sharecropping/rental agreements.

Even if you aren't doing the hard labor, you have to want to manage that kind of business. Most people evidently prefer not to, and instead like urban jobs. The last 150 years of urbanization isn't a fluke.

Not any datasets that actually agree with your assertions. Most datasets showcase the hollowing out of rural job opportunities as globalization and automation has massively cut back on manufacturing job opportunities, automation has reduced farm jobs, rural depopulation leads to education closures, etc. So if you have a lot of data otherwise please do share.

And once again it completely goes against everything I've personally seen in nearly a dozen metro areas. I've got family who live in absolutely rural areas and operate farms in the Midwest. I've lived in a few metro areas. I've got close coworkers in other metro areas from me. I've got close friends who came from other rural areas, and know many people who live on these fringe of metro/rural kind of spaces. They all see the rural areas getting hollowed out economic-wise and the only real job opportunities are moving closer into cities.

I've driven through probably a dozen dead rural towns in Texas. Places that had what were probably lively town squares even in the 70s, probably had their last gasps in the 80s, and have been largely boarded up since then.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/chan...

> We were never talking about a specific location.

I've absolutely been talking specific areas. Have you not been reading my comments and actually looking at the map in question? And then, this is still pretty similar for almost all the other, I dunno, top 30 or so cities by population?

> What kind of jobs are trapped in these seas of neighbourhoods?

Not in those neighborhoods, through those neighborhoods. Decades of continuously pushing the fringe suburb line further and further out has done this. The towns that were once the edge of the city are now 30+mi into the urban area, and they've never been allowed to densify. Once again, it feels like you haven't actually looked at that map I linked once. It would be pretty obvious spending not even five minutes looking at that map to see what I'm talking about.

> Tech might be an exception to that. Maybe that's where your mind went, given the nature of this site.

No. My wife doesn't work in tech and those people in Forney I'm taking about are security guards and building engineers. That's not tech. Once again, are you reading my comments? Where are you going to get a commercial property building engineer paying nearly $100k in a rural area? Going to get a finance job with JPMorgan Chase in a rural area? Far easier finding a civil engineering job in a place where civil engineers are actually building things like skyscrapers and giant highway interchanges and what not than a place that barely has a stoplight. You're not going to have as well paid healthcare job working at a rural hospital struggling to stay open especially after this next round of Medicaid cuts compared to the giant hospital networks like Baylor, UTSouthwestern, Memorial-Hermann, etc, especially if focused on some speciality.

Not to make it sound like a competition, but I can do it in 5 not living in a city. Why does it take so long in a place that should be optimized for keeping everything close by?

> drive 20 minutes to a Walmart

I can be to two different Walmarts given 20 minutes. That is also an unusually long time for a heavily populated area. Are you actually living in a rural area with a train and I misunderstood?

> and take a train 35 minutes to the office.

Okay. You got me there. I don't have a train in my backyard. It would take me 20 minutes to get to the station.

But, to be fair, when I lived in a big city downtown it also took me 20 minutes to get to the station, so perhaps your situation of having a train sitting right outside your door waiting on you is a bit unusual?

That said, perhaps you have included, say, 20 minutes to get to the station, and a few minutes waiting on the train. But in that case is the 5-10 minutes of actual train time really that advantageous? In this scenario you're almost at your destination before you even get on the train. Presumably this isn't what you meant.

> you have to want to manage that kind of business.

You'd have to report your income to the government. What else is there?

The onus will be on the farmer working the land to do everything else. I know that well, because I'm one of those farmers. The industry is much too competitive to think you can make the landowner do anything.

I'm not entirely sure it's fully an age divide. Definitely age-weighted, I can agree. Other than family that grew up in NYC, most of my family >50 thinks I'm crazy for taking my kids on public transit and can't understand why I'd like to live closer in the city with kids compared to living in the sticks on a large property and a 15 minute drive to the grocery store. But there's also a lot of conservative younger-ish (millennial and younger) people who also seem to have that same mindset of wanting to live further out of the city and don't care or are against things like transit and tax dollars spent on city parks and bike lanes.

That example of the family of four where a four bedroom house is just too cramped for their needs I gave elsewhere? They're barely 30. They're absolutely not alone in what they're looking for.

But yeah, go work a job in Addison, Las Colinas, deep in Plano, etc. You'll find a lot of coworkers living in Farmersville, Prosper, Melissa, etc.

> Their reasoning was home affordability, home value growth, and school quality

This is yet another set of data points showing what I'm talking about, thank you. These people live there because it was cheap when they bought it, they expect the metroplex to keep growing increasing the value of their eventually "closer in" home from where the outskirts will be in a decade, and schools are better than other places they might have afforded to buy. Am I wrong?

In the end transit time to the American Airlines Center to watch a Mavericks or Dallas Stars game didn't matter. It didn't matter it wasn't the restaurant capital of the region.

And I don't blame them, that was the choice they were given with the options presented. Housing in the US is a mess, and it seems few get what they'd really prefer they just have to live with the tradeoffs of what's on the market at the time.

Hollowed out opportunity, or hollowed out available jobs? As noted earlier, there is a pretty big difference. My impression from your comment is that you are trying to say that there are fewer jobs available, which isn't what we were talking about.

> I've absolutely been talking specific areas

What part of "as a rule" made you think this was about a specific area?

> Have you not been reading my comments

Can I assume this implies that you have diligently read mine? If so, in all seriousness, I'd really like to know what part of "as a rule" you took to mean that the focus was on a specific area. My intent was very much to try and avoid focusing on a specific area as I understand full well that conditions can vary from place to place. I'd like to understand how I failed to communicate that.

But perhaps you were so busy trying to tell me your life story that you didn't actually read it after all.

As a rule that just happenes to not work in any of the large metros of the country in question. I've got a rule that a pen always rolls off on the left side of a desk, too bad it only works on my desk here that is missing a couple of legs!

> Hollowed out opportunity, or hollowed out available jobs? As noted earlier, there is a pretty big difference

Sure they'll go work minimum wage jobs at the highway fast food and gas stops. Buc-ees is iticing for jobs to sling BBQ sandwiches and scrub toilets! Big opportunity there. Once again, where's your data? I've linked mine, you're a foreigner going arguing against my lived experiences without even pointing to actual data, instead berating me and taking down to me about asking for you to actually give examples.

> Can I assume this implies that you have diligently read mine?

Yes, I have read yours. Have you actually read mine? I'm taking about one of the largest metro areas in the US trying to describe why people make the choices I do, showing real examples backed by federal reserve data and actual maps and housing costs and tax data. You're seemingly ignoring them and instead giving your own imagined ideas of transit times and job opportunities and property values not backed by any kind of data.

You're giving assumed ideas while ignoring actual factual linked data and multiple lived experiences in this chat while accusing me of not reading the data you refuse to share. You might want to re-evaluate who is going by gut assumptions.

I can walk to 3 different ones in 5 minutes - I live in an actual city - but I was trying not to make it about showing off my housing privilege. Note I said "a coffeeshop", not "the nearest coffeeshop".

> I can be to two different Walmarts given 20 minutes. That is also an unusually long time for a heavily populated area. Are you actually living in a rural area with a train and I misunderstood?

Big dense city, "urban residential", not a suburb. 10 feet between my house and my neighbor's. So Walmart is not "nearby" because those tend to be in lower-middle income suburbs. However, 2 Targets & a Costco are a 10-15 minute drive away.

> But, to be fair, when I lived in a big city downtown it also took me 20 minutes to get to the station, so perhaps your situation of having a train sitting right outside your door waiting on you is a bit unusual?

> That said, perhaps you have included, say, 20 minutes to get to the station, and a few minutes waiting on the train.

5 minutes walk to the station. 20 minutes on the train. 10 minute walk to the office. If I time it right, no waiting for the train.

> > you have to want to manage that kind of business.

> You'd have to report your income to the government. What else is there?

I get that you don't do any actual physical labor, but don't you have to negotiate deals with labor suppliers (or laborers), seed/fertilizer suppliers, check on the quality of work and the condition of the land, facilities, and equipment?

If you hire people to do that all for you, then what's the ROI? It's hard to imagine that small-hold farming is as easy (and has similar returns) as buying an indexed fund, otherwise everyone would be dumping their capital into it.

But hey, maybe after reading this comment thread, everyone will!

There are feedback mechanisms at play here: the people who want a good education for their kids want to be around the types of people who want a good education for their kids, and they will pay a premium to be around the kinds of people who will pay a premium to do so, reinforcing the class effect. It can't hurt to have bright, engaged kids when trying to recruit and retain good teachers either. The net result is that in some areas the schools have literally 0% of students meeting standards while others have most of the students completing the first year or two of university during high school.

Somewhere like DC where GP lives, schools struggle to get the kids to show up[0]. Meanwhile I live a 10 minute walk from a school where over half the students are in AP classes and 80% of those pass the AP exams.

[0] https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/about-4-in-10-d...

Not sharing a wall or ceiling with other people is great actually

I am constantly told that dense housing "built right" is quiet and peaceful and you never hear your neighbors through the walls, but my experience in apartments in my 20s was not like that

I constantly had neighbours that would play loud music at all hours, or get into fights with their partners or otherwise just be extremely disruptive and stressful to share a building with

I'll take the trade of having to drive a couple more minutes to get to a store if it means I never have to hear my neighbours having loud sex through the walls again at 2am when I'm trying to sleep

I think you are wrong, yes

Could be I'm the one who is wrong, but I don't think most people buy homes with this sort of speculation in mind. Most people are just looking for the most comfortable and nicest house they can afford on their budget, and probably don't actually think too much about "what might be built later"

Well, I personally do the physical labor (if you call riding around in an air conditioned tractor physical labor). You are right that the landowner doesn't.

> but don't you have to negotiate deals with labor suppliers (or laborers), seed/fertilizer suppliers, check on the quality of work and the condition of the land, facilities, and equipment?

That's on me, not the landowner. Why would the landowner do any of those things? Again, their only job is to count the money.

> then what's the ROI?

For me, mostly the fun. I enjoy it. I do also make pretty tidy financial profit doing it, which is admittedly a great bonus, but I expect I would still do it even if that weren't the case. Not everything in life has to be about money. Sometimes it's okay to bask in the pleasure of a hobby.

> It's hard to imagine that small-hold farming is as easy (and has similar returns) as buying an indexed fund

An index fund will, on average, provide greater returns than renting out your land, albeit with greater risk as greater returns expect. You wouldn't move to the country as some kind of get rich quick scheme.

But, if you've somehow already forgotten what we're talking about, when you are already living in the country for whatever reasons life has found you there, the land provides an income that offsets the cost of the necessary transportation.

Large... metro? What? Where did you see me say "large metros as a rule..."? Perhaps you need to read it again? It clearly asserted "rural areas as a rule". You even literally quoted that exact bit in your response! How do you have absolutely no awareness of what is going on now?

> I've linked mine

You certainly did for some strange reason, but I have no idea why. It was rather bizarre. If I wanted to have a discussion with the FED, I'd go talk to it directly. I don't need you to act as a pointless middleman. That is a waste of your time and mine. I suppose I should have some appreciation for your obedient dog-like behavior as you deliver your chew toy to me with glee, but I really cannot find any reason to care. That's not what discussion forums are for. They are, surprisingly, for having discussions. I want to know what you have to say. If you have to rely on someone else to feed you what to say, why bother?

Is that in some way unique to the US? I would say the same is true here. Certainly when talking to people out on the street, there are clearly some who value schooling to the utmost degree while others dismiss it entirely. I expect this is the case anywhere a sizeable population is found.

> the people who want a good education for their kids want to be around the types of people who want a good education for their kids

…But I have never heard of this happening. Looking at the data, I don't see any significant variation between schools found within a general area where you might conceivably choose a different school by moving a few miles in another direction. A couple of schools in extremely remote areas show up with struggles, in the worst case seeing only ~40% of the students meeting the standard, but I think it is fair to say that the goings on in remote places is something else entirely.

> It can't hurt to have bright, engaged kids when trying to recruit and retain good teachers either.

So would it be reasonable to think that it is ultimately an issue of lacking teacher standards in the US? Different people are going to be different, sure, but around here you aren't allowed to be a teacher within the school system unless you at least are able to live up to a minimum standard that carries a sufficiently high bar such that there really aren't any qualms about what teacher a student gets.

I take from this that in the US, the schools that don't have sufficiently bright, sufficiently engaged kids are apt to get teachers who aren't capable of doing the job. Here, if a school lacking sufficiently bright, sufficiently engaged kids scared off good teachers, the school simply wouldn't have any teachers.

> Perhaps you need to read it again? It clearly asserted "rural areas as a rule"

Yeah, it's comparing rural areas to urban areas as a rule. So comparing and talking about metro areas is absolutely relevant here. And the metro areas I've been talking about include a mix of rural and urban areas. Metro doesn't mean urban.

> You certainly did for some strange reason, but I have no idea why.

You have no idea why someone would link to data to back their assertions instead of just saying things like "as a rule" without supppying any data. As a rule US males are 12 feet tall. As a rule dogs have eight legs. Don't bother linking to any data about these things, don't bother actually engaging with real examples, I'm not talking about any specific dogs or specific people, just some imagined models in my head. It's a total waste of time to actually research the data when I've conjectured a general rule in my head!

While that is absolutely true, rural areas within metropolitan areas are not the rule. What do you find notable about exceptional rural areas to offer relevance when discussing typical rural areas?

> Yeah, it's comparing rural areas to urban areas as a rule.

At one point such comparison was made, but we also moved on from that long ago and narrowed our focus to rural areas alone. There was no reasonable sequitur that brought us back to comparison with urban areas. If you want to talk about some random thing outside of our discussion, why not start a new thread?

> Don't bother linking to any data about these things, don't bother actually engaging with real examples, I'm not talking about any specific dogs or specific people, just some imagined models in my head.

Exactly. If I want to know more about the height of US males (male what? you'd better link to something to clarify!!) and how many legs dogs have, I can consult the records. There is absolutely no reason for me to come to you for that information. I am logically, given that this is a discussion forum, not a data collection agency, here to understand that what isn't documented and only revealed through discussion — things like your inner workings.

Which, granted, is still being revealed through this diatribe. And the inner working are quite unusual, indeed. I know we're really starting to go off-topic here and I understand I am being "that guy" in perpetuating it, so I won't continue to push the issue like that curious case above any further if there isn't mutual participation, but I would love to dig into this deeper if you are game. Do you understand HN to be simply a place where you can find free secretarial labor rather than as a place for discussion?

If we're trying to understand and discuss reality, we should absolutely be referencing real data and information and build our conjectures from there. Not just making some statement that reality is a certain way, refusing to engage in any data that points otherwise, and berating people who bring evidence contrary to the conjecture. Otherwise, we're just discussing fantasy and being rude to each other. Personally, I'm wanting to talk about reality, not some urban/rural areas 9rx is envisioning in his mind entirely divorced from any real places and data in the United States.

You say things like "as a rule", give arguments of a drive from a rural area into an urban area should take the same time as just transiting around within the urban area, and offer zero actual real examples, data sets, or proof to your conjectures and berate those who show real data pointing opposite to your statements.

Science is for understanding reality. Discussion is for understanding what someone is thinking.

> we should absolutely be referencing real data

If that's all that your limited thought is able to offer, I guess, but what, then, do you understand as the value you are bringing to the table? Data is already recorded and I can just as easily go talk to the people who had the minds capable of coming up with that data in the first place if I want to know more about the thinking behind the data. Your involvement would be absolutely pointless.

As you are actually defying your own premise here right now by sharing what you are thinking, not regurgitating someone else's thoughts and data, you remain a valuable contributor. But if you were to devolve into what you suggest you want to be, how could the discussion go anywhere?

> Otherwise, we're just discussing fantasy

If fantasy is what someone is thinking about in the moment, I suppose that is what you are going to get. But that's exactly what discussion seeks to learn. If that's not what you are actually looking for, consider that discussion isn't what you need. As hinted at earlier, there are other ways to explore the world around you. Use the right tool for the job.

They close the distance gap, but thanks to poor civil design often (yes, there are exceptions, always) they don't close the time gap. I don't suppose it is being able to see a mostly occluded, hazy silhouette of the downtown skyscrapers is the appeal there. Surely this is about minimizing travel time?

A family member once lived in the suburbs of a large city. I live 50 miles clear of that city. It was always fun to razz them about the fact that I could be to the amenities in the city faster than they could. Many cities (not all, there are exceptions, always) develop as economic hubs, needing to get things in and out of the city as fast as possible, often at the cost of intercity movement. This leaves it more advantageous, if not in the heart of the action, to live outside of the city with respect to the matter of time.

Perhaps people just end up in the suburbs out of happenstance (e.g. they were born there) and never give it any more thought? It would be fascinating to hear from those who gave all three types of places a fair shake and still settled on the suburbs in the end.

For example:

> As a result, people are much more likely to be without work in cities, as seen in the data.

This is a demonstrably untrue statement. In the US, labor participation rates are lower in rural areas. Unemployment is generally higher in rural areas. Poverty rates are generally higher in rural areas. I'd link the data, but it's not like you'd bother actually reading it from what I gather.

> Data is already recorded and I can just as easily go talk to the people who had the minds capable of coming up with that data in the first place if I want to know more about the thinking behind the data. Your involvement would be absolutely pointless.

Seeing as how you're making statements not grounded in reality and data, I'd say my involvement would have a point of actually directing you to the real statistics and data. I'd hope that one would change their preconceptions when given actual data showing their statements are incorrect. If I continued to push the point that generally dogs have eight legs and you managed to provide me with sources that showcased dogs actually usually only have four, I wouldn't just say your involvement of showing real data is pointless. But pointing out your fantasies aren't based in reality and aren't backed by actual data just results in you berating me.

I agree, we're also wanting to delve into the "whys" of how the world works, which isn't always just directly looking at what the numbers say. But when our base facts we start from aren't actually grounded in reality, the whys we come up with are largely meaningless. The "general rules" we concoct from our fantasies become pretty useless if we take those rules to actually then measure reality and find reality doesn't line up with those rules.

> As hinted at earlier, there are other ways to explore the world around you.

Yes, we can look at data or we can base our ideas of the world off delusions and assumptions. But I take it you'd rather continue to live in your delusions and berate those pointing out when those statements aren't grounded in truth.

During peak hours maybe, or in very poorly designed or overcrowded cities, but ultimately if everyone is using the same roads then you will eventually sit in the same traffic if you're trying to get to the same places? Travel time might not be that much longer but it will be longer

> It would be fascinating to hear from those who gave all three types of places a fair shake and still settled on the suburbs in the end

I am one of those people. I grew up in suburbs, my family moved to the countryside in my teens, and I spent my 20s in dense urban areas, settled in the suburbs now

When I lived in the country I did often joke with my friends that I could be anywhere in the city in 20 minutes faster than they could, because I could get far north or far south faster than going through the city

But the tradeoff was that 20 minutes was a hard minimum. I could not get anywhere faster than that really

Our thoughts, ideas.

> This is a demonstrably untrue statement.

My thoughts disagree, but that was said with respect to my country, not the US, so whether or not you are right, the US data is not indicative of that. While I do understand I wasn't fully clear in expressing my thoughts there, what is fascinating is that you jumped into assuming that I meant the US instead of asking "Are you sure you are talking about the US?" or something to that effect.

That is the kind of cool thing you learn in discussion. Who gives a rat's ass about data? I mean, there is good reason to care about data, but the data is right there to look at directly if you really are more interested in the data. Use the right tool for the job.

> I'd say my involvement would have a point of actually directing you to the real statistics and data.

So can I take from this that you aren't looking for discussion, but rather you want to be a teacher? While there is definitely a place for teachers in this world, a place of discussion isn't it. Colloquially, what we call the place you are looking for is "school".

Definitely anecdotal, but I know of several families which decided to move to certain areas which were rapidly developing at the time based on the projected value growth from the planned new developments. For example, lots of people I know moved from Dallas/Plano/Richardson area to Frisco during the explosive growth of Frisco to get in on that rapid development growth, buy a house cheap today in seemingly the middle of nowhere which will become a massively developed area in the next 10 years, sell the house and move to Prosper where the same will happen, on and on until I guess we hit Oklahoma. I know people who moved to The Colony when the rumors of the Grandscape development started and talk of Toyota moving to the area, expecting home values to rise.

I'm sure people living in places where development is a lot more static probably don't buy with these ideas in mind. But from what I've seen again in again in DFW and Houston and Austin and San Antonio it seems to be a pretty common mindset.

You were wondering:

> Yes, but why would anyone want to live on what is effectively a farm, but without the benefit of separation from other people or land (read: income) that a farm offers?

> I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I question why people are doing it.

I gave lots of data and analysis as to why Americans seem to make this choice. You berated me for giving an actual analysis, gave conjectures not grounded in reality for those people making these choices explaining why my analysis is wrong, and continued to wonder why people would make these choices. Your conjectures weren't valid for the people in question. They weren't based in their reality. But you seem to not want to actually engage in the reality of it.

> Colloquially, what we call the place you are looking for is "school".

People can learn new things and be corrected on their false preconceptions without necessarily being in a school building with a teacher.

Once you get to the arterial roads that take the traffic to the amenities that's true, but it is often slow going just to get that far.

Fair to say that is less true if you are on the edge of the suburbs, but, for the sake of this discussion, are you really living in the suburbs if you are right beside the action? I think that goes against the premise presented in the beginning.

> my family moved to the countryside in my teens

Not to diminish or dismiss your experience, but can a teenager really give something like that a fair shake? Like you indicate, you ended up there because your family brought you there, not because you chose to go there to make your own life. Typically, teenagers have limited autonomy and really can't experience it for what it is. You had an experience, but don't you think it would be an entirely different experience if you moved to the countryside now when you can fully shape the experience into being what you want it to be, not what your parents (or equivalent) wanted it to be?

I wondered what the thoughts about why people make the housing decisions they do were. My country is within America, as it happens, so I suppose if it were to be limited to America that would be all well and good, but it wouldn't have been a detail of any significance.

> You berated me for giving an actual analysis

I engaged in your analysis to see if I can understand if you were confusing opportunity with number of jobs. I don't think we ever gained that understanding, and eventually we just moved on as it was clear that the only thoughts present were about the concept of data itself, which was well outside of the topic at hand and not producing anything of interest to latch onto.

If your thinking sees that as a berating: Fascinating. Can we dive deeper into your thought process there?

> I engaged in your analysis to see if I can understand if you were confusing opportunity with number of jobs

It sure seems more like you engaged with the analysis to say I'm wrong about objectively factual things and called me a dog when I provided sources.

> I wondered what the thoughts about why people make the housing decisions they do were

You're wondering why people make the housing decisions they do but unwilling to actually engage in looking at the actual data of job opportunities, home values, etc. that might actually give you insights into it, from what I can tell. Because, who gives a rat's ass about the data to answer our questions when assumptions and conjectures will do. Obviously, the answer is because these houses in the exurbs are more likely to be tan and people just love the color tan for their home. We don't need to actually look at any information to see if this is true or not, we'll just discuss as if this is truth. Are the houses more likely to be tan? Do people even prefer tan houses? Who cares.

Like I said, to a first approximation, "good schools" are much more about the kids and families than the teachers. Teachers in the US are required to have bachelors degrees, and I believe AP teachers need masters, so there's some bar (though I don't find degrees/credentialism to be particularly compelling). Good schools are where the students set good examples for each other and drive each other to do better. Bad schools are where you're automatically in the top half of your class merely for showing up and no peers treat education seriously, so you learn not to either. There's plenty of passable schools too where you can get an adequate education, but middle class and above tend to have higher expectations for their kids, and want all of their kids' friends to have the attitude that working hard in school is completely normal and expected (i.e. they want a "good school").

Schools in bad areas do have retention problems, and the government offers incentives to teach there, but teachers aren't miracle workers.

How so? What are you thinking?

Additionally, it is interesting that you left out the "if". What was the thought process there?

> called me a dog when I provided sources.

I likened you to a dog wanting to pointlessly please its master. Call it berating if you will, but that is the behavior I see dogs exhibit and that is the behavior I observed here. I'm sure you have data to contradict my understanding, but to the extent of the understanding I have, that is simply a factual account.

> You're wondering why people make the housing decisions they do

I asked what others thought about it.

> but unwilling to actually engage in looking at the actual data of job opportunities, home values, etc.

This wouldn't indicate what others thought about it. There is a place for looking at the data, but that would happen independently and wouldn't carry into a discussion. Different tools for different jobs.

Is this a euphemism for "it is really about being around people who are white"? Another commenter here used similar language to this and, once we drilled down into the nitty gritty, it turns out that is what was being said. "White flight" is certainly a thing.

Admittedly, where I am only 2% of the population are visible minorities. You can live anywhere your heart desires, in any school district, and you are, for all sake of practicality, only going to find white people. Perhaps this is why the concept you present seem so foreign to me?

No. If someone has limited thought capacity, they have limited thought capacity. That is just a fact of life. For someone so concerned about the veracity of data, how can you see a datapoint as being berating?

Granted, the datapoint in this case is only hypothetical (as you would have noticed if you retained the "if"), but such datapoints also do exist in the real data. There absolutely are people in this world with limited thought capacity. That much is not a hypothetical.

> You don't see how being called a dog is berating.

Likened to a dog. But, no. Why?

> You might want to re-evaluate what people would commonly find berating.

I'm sure you've got some great data for me to look at, but my understanding is that people find something berating when they understand a statement as some kind of truth that they don't want to admit to themselves. It is quite obvious that nobody feels berated when an assertion is so outlandish that it couldn't be true. That becomes comedy.

I have no illusions of being anything related to a dog, so if you likened me to — or even straight up called me — a dog, I would not find that berating, no. If you went after my actual insecurities, then sure. I would then. I am certainly not immune to silly human emotion, but silly human emotion does not get triggered by random strings of text.

So, perhaps this is good opportunity to dive into why you feel insecure about your thought capacity and animal shapeliness for these particular strings to activate your emotions. What are your thoughts there?

(And my apologies for finding your insecurities. I would have never guessed those particular things would bother anyone. The things you learn from having a discussion!)

The spending per student is below average and lower than nearby worse schools, so it's not that the rich people have a higher tax base to create better schools. It's that the professional class takes for granted that of course their kids are going to take every AP class. They want their kids' friends to have that attitude too, and they expect the school to offer AP everything. If it doesn't, they won't live there.

"Buy the cheapest house in the most expensive neighborhood" is an adage here for aspirationally upwardly mobile people. So basically use your money to mix with higher classes rather than on material goods (and put your kids in school with the highest class group you are able to).

We were talking about someone who found a $575,000 home to be stretching him to his limits. Have we gotten a bit off track here?

> The more relevant factor is that a bunch of doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.

I'm one to talk as an engineer living in a $300,000 (maybe, on a good day) home, but I technically could afford a multimillion dollar home if I found some strange reason to show off to others. Generally speaking, a $575,000 home is really a "working man's" home.

What you describe is interesting, but is it the same obvious reasons as what was brought up before? Said person isn't of the class you describe.

> but silly human emotion does not get triggered by random strings of text

Once again, seemingly completely divorced from reality. You must live on an entirely different planet far away from actual humans if you think human emotions are usually not affected by strings of text.

> but my understanding is that people find something berating when they understand a statement as some kind of truth that they don't want to admit to themselves

No. Things can be berating even if one knows that statement isn't true about them. But I imagine you know that. If someone calls you a worthless piece of trash its being berating regardless of if you think you are or are not a worthless piece of trash.

Incredible it is, I agree. But that's why I'm here. So that I can learn to imagine such things. Learning has to start somewhere. That's what discussion is all about!

> ...unintelligent dogs.

I am intrigued that you think dogs are unintelligent. The exhibit intelligence as far as I can see. What is the thinking there?

> You must live on an entirely different planet far away from actual humans if you think human emotions are not affected by strings of text.

Strings of text and random strings of text are not one in the same. How did your thought process lead you here?

I never made the claim. My statement was you effectively called me that through your comments. But sure, just make things up.

> Strings of text and random strings of text are not one and the same. How did your thought process lead you here?

Are you suggesting all your words are just random and have no intention or structure or meaning behind them?

Truly seems like I've just been talking to a bot this whole time.

I likened your behavior to that of a dog. Nothing said you or dogs are unintelligent. That was first seen in the previous comment – the one written by you.

> Are you suggesting all your words are just random and have no intention or structure or meaning behind them?

The fact that emotions are not triggered by random strings of text does not equate to, or even suggest, an inexistence non-random strings of text. How did you think up that one?

> Truly seems like I've just been talking to a bot this whole time.

Would that make a difference? Discussion doesn't have to be only about learning what a human thinks. What a robot thinks can be just as interesting. Hell, if you can figure out how to communicate with a dog to learn what it thinks, why wouldn't you jump all over that? That would be amazing.

Maybe you just don't like learning? It seems like you don't care for it much based on what you are responding with, but that may be a poor interpretation on my part. What do you think?

In any case, you asked why people are concerned about being "zoned for good schools" and why that would be obvious to Americans, and I think I explained it to you: making sure their kids are surrounded by the "right" peers who will pressure them into the "right" behaviors is a high priority for a lot of people, particularly in the professional-managerial class. They generally won't word it that way because overt classism is uncouth, but that's what they mean when you think about it. Obviously that's not a concern you have (it's also not "showing off" to live in an expensive area; everyone around you will necessarily also live in an expensive area...).

Not explicitly, but they indicated that for them to move into the downtown they would require the price to be the same or less. That necessarily implies that $575k is the stretch point. If they had a $1-5M budget, we could have looked at downtown homes in that price range too.

> Just that it was the price when they bought it

That is what it said, but as the mortgage sits at 30 years it is likely that it was purchased recently. Yes, perhaps it is technically possible that he has owned it for 30 years already and just remortgaged it for another 30, or that it was a 40 year mortgage initially, but these are unlikely scenarios. If the commenter is concerned about any detail inaccuracy, he can provide an update.

> it's also not "showing off" to live in an expensive area

I mean, fair enough. Growing up in a rural area that was home to many big-co CEOs and professional athletes who were clearly showing off their extensive fortunes, it's apparent that the real flex is getting as far away from the city as possible. But at the same time I don't expect these houses of which you speak are exactly crack shacks either. Would you not say that they were very nice homes? Nicer than what the janitor at the school lives in? Location, location, location. I get it. However, $5M buys a lot more than just location in a suburb.

But it remains that it would be showing off for me. What useful functionality would a $1-5M home offer that I don't already have in my current home?

Sort of my whole point is that there is no situation in life that we can "fully" shape into what we want, every situation comes with upsides and downsides which are often not really in our control, because we have to share space with other people

I grew into an adult and commuted to my local college from the countryside. I didn't live out there for long, but a couple of years at least. Long enough to realize it wasn't really for me

I am not sure I intended for you to take it that literally, but to the extent that you can fully shape it within the constraints of reality. For example, it is abundantly clear that countrysides are not all equal. Even on the surface, countryside can vary from farmland, mountains, lakes, forests, etc. which each enable completely different lifestyles. Going deeper, the social experience can vary wildly from one countryside to the next. You get the idea. There are some countrysides I'd have no qualms about living in, and others I wouldn't even want to vacation in, let alone live there (even while others quite happily live there). That choice is something within your control.

> I grew into an adult and commuted to my local college from the countryside.

I assume this means that you carried on your stay still living with the same family? If so, I'm not sure that changes the calculus. It is not like something magical happens when you turn 20. The significance of being a teenager earlier was only in that it implied that you were following your parents around. If you continued that into your 20s, 30s, 40s, hell if you are 80 and living in a place of someone else's choosing rather your choosing then I'd say the same applies.

Let me ask this: If you, for some reason, were forced to move to the countryside today, are you choosing to move to the exact place your family chose all those years ago or are you going elsewhere? Assuming you give it some thought, my expectation is latter. The world is a pretty big place. The statistical likelihood that the place you ended up in as a teenager with presumably little to no input also being the best option you can independently find among all of the different countrysides is low.

If you don't find transportation costs to be problematic in your budget, wonderful news, but that is not fitting in the topic at hand. Those with "fuck you" money live a very different life.