Costs of living [LWN.net]

Costs of living

Posted Aug 2, 2002 13:35 UTC (Fri) by pm101 (subscriber, #3011)
In reply to: Costs. by Inoshiro
Parent article: Is it really The End?

This is primarily for the foreign readers (not for the LWN staff).

$3000 per month is not a lot in the US. I rent a room in an old,
broken-down apartment in Cambridge, MA. That's $525 a month. If I had a
family, I'd need the whole apartment. That's $2100/month. Food runs me
about $10/day, and I eat fairly cheap compared to most other graduate
students. You can scale that appropriately for a family. Having a car costs
a few thousand a year for insurance, in addition to the costs of gasoline,
buying a new one every 10 years, etc. In most parts of the US, there is
not enough public transportation to survive without a car. Add to that
clothing, medical costs, occasional entertainment, etc., and you run into
a heck of a lot of money.

Also, compare the opportunity cost of running LWN; how much less money they
make than in a normal job. A competent programmer in the US will make on
the order of $5,000 per month. A good programmer will make about
$8,000-9,000 per month.

The last thing to remember is the estimate is for the total cost of
LWN. That includes insurance, taxes, and other expenses. Usually, total
labor costs run about twice salary, so $3000/month/employee would come to
considerably less than $2000/month/employee salary. In many parts of the
US, that's not close to enough to raise a family on.

I was born in Eastern Europe, and I understand US salaries seem outragously
large compared to the second and third world. But costs of living and
expenses are much, much higher as well. Trust me when I say that the
salaries the LWN staff are requesting right now are very minimalistic by
US standards.

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I'm glad you replied.

Posted Aug 3, 2002 0:46 UTC (Sat) by Inoshiro (guest, #3070) [Link]

I know you've had some econ at some point if you mention opprotunity costs :)

But you seem to miss the point that I said they should get day jobs, and just do this on the side.

Granted, costs can be more in the US, but consider North Dakota. $6,000 there is like $10,000 in many other states. I mean, it's great to have your cake and eat it too. Use the internet to live where it's cheap, but get money from the better paying parts of the world.

My father lives in Hawaii, and I visited him last year. Costs there are moderately higher (raw #s wise) and that accounts for shipping. The tourist areas are outrageously expensive, though :) Much like your appartment sounds, which is a matter of the density of universities and colleges in Boston (I visited there last year as well, nice place).

Even if you don't live in Canada, you can reap some of the benefits of living near Canada. The MPAA has artificial price restrictions on DVDs. A DVD which is 20$ USD in the US is 20$ CDN in Canada. This makes importing very nice, especially if you're not to pikcy about declaring things (even then, there are minimum limits you can always stay under).

So there are many ways they could still reduce costs. If I'm going to support LWN further, I want more transparency on their accounting so I can vote with my money on what I agree and don't agree with.