Bad career advice from the National Review
A reader referred to a story at National Review [link fixed] about a guy who happily moved to Mississippi to escape the high cost of living and high real estate taxes in New Jersey.
He writes:
I then explain that my work is mostly done by the phone or internet. So where I live has little bearing on how much I earn. But it has a whole lot to do with how much I keep.
This snippet is false. Maybe if human beings acted in a hyper-logical fashion it would be true, but my experience in corporate America is that people tend to like those who they know personally. Working at the office means that other people in the company will have an opportunity to like you, and the only people who get promoted are the people who are liked.
Furthermore, being in Mississippi makes it a lot harder to switch employers, because all of the best jobs are in places like New York City, and in the majority of cases they are not going to want to interview someone in Mississippi who will only work by internet and telephone. There is a lot of career advancement that takes place when people switch jobs.
So the guy from the National Review is wrong, location has an important long-term impact no how much money you earn. The high cost of living in places where all of the jobs are can be seen as a sort of value transference.
My boss lives in a different state and travels back and forth, but it works because he has a bunch of customers who he has a solid relationship, he has a wife who has a high-income job and he doesn’t mind traveling basically all the time.
albert magnus
February 7, 2013 at 11:40 am
Typical rootless cosmopolitan. No culture, no nation, and only loyal to the almighty dollar.
Lovely how he rips Blue States when Oxford benefits _massively_ from blue state-esque government largesse, by being the hometown of Ole Miss, and all the economic and cultural gravitas that comes with it.
‘Grats on the McMansion in that terribly planned, auto dependent development made with toxic chinese materials slapped together by Mexican migrant labor in a rushed, substandard fashion. Its too bad we all can’t be affirmative action neocon hirings in dying media platforms like Talk Radio.
sufficiently_maladroit
February 7, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Typically, National Review is referred to as National Review, not the National Review.
There is certainly the risk of job security from working remotely, but this has to be considered against the much better lifestyle one can achive in the hinterlands.
dbp
February 7, 2013 at 12:23 pm
Michael Church wrote a good post explaining how the fewer and fewer locales from which one could be gainfully employed was essentially a wealth/value transfer to the people that already owned property in those locales.
At root, is a gov interference as the decision makers all hold property (ie. live) in those locales so they will favor policies that are going to increase employment and property values where they are already highly invested.
http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/the-rent-really-is-too-damn-high-and-the-surprising-cause/
Portlander
February 7, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Several years ago I went to a talk by EO Wilson at a local college, and the students there seemed to be very much in favor of raising him up as an environmentalist hero (oddly enough, given how reviled he used to be). One thing he said that would make one of the greatest impacts on saving the environment was to stop commuting. Although you are currently correct in saying working remotely harms your career, one should always emphasize that telecommuting is better for Gaia and that people who object to telecommuting are destroying the planet.
faffy
February 7, 2013 at 1:29 pm
You mean all the high-paying jobs in fields such as mining and petroleum engineering have moved to new York? And all the IT jobs from places like Silicon Valley? And the doctors in New York make more than other doctors?
Black Death
February 7, 2013 at 1:34 pm
If you dont’t have a medical degree, it doesn’t matter to you where doctor jobs are.
Yes, IT jobs are all located in high cost of living areas like Silicon Valley. Good luck finding an IT job in Mississippi.
Mining jobs are lousy jobs that smart people don’t want.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 7, 2013 at 3:48 pm
OTOH if you do have an MD you can get a doctor job anywhere. Why live in a high cost-of-living state? Probably only because your whiny and demanding wife insists on it. You are too busy to do much of the “exciting” cosmopolitan stuff anyway, so what do you care if it’s not available?
Tarl
February 7, 2013 at 5:24 pm
What about mining engineers? They’re smart. Do they all work in Midtown Manhattan?
DaveinHackensack
February 7, 2013 at 7:24 pm
Probably some did when Exxon’s corporate headquarters used to be at Rockefeller Center.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 7, 2013 at 8:18 pm
The reason for physicians to live in a large urban area is that their spouse is also a physicians or works in some other post-graduate degree required career field. When physicians marry other physicians, they generally live in larger urban areas. However, it is just more profitable for a physician to live in Houston, Nashville, or Florida rather than NYC.
superdestroyer
February 8, 2013 at 6:42 am
Dude is vice president of content for a company that produces a bunch of right wing talk show hosts. Basically, if the talent likes him(Medved,Hewitt and others) he has a safe job. Also, the talent is spread out across America so they aren’t bummed that they don’t see him every day. Being in Mississippi probably helps him meet people who actually listen to the shows he works with. Better jobs in New York, probably, more competition certainly. I wish he would write another article explaining what he actually did. Vice president of content, isn’t Obama generating all the content anyway.
mark
February 7, 2013 at 1:46 pm
National Review online is getting less and less readable. You might think that with so many pundits contributing to The Corner, it would be one of the more interesting blogs out there. Instead you have to wade through dozens of eye-rolling nut-posts to find anything good.
steve
February 7, 2013 at 1:53 pm
Derbyshire was the only reason to go to The Corner. Without him, it’s just jabbering lightweights and pathetic imbeciles like Kathryn Lopez. I have been boycotting NRO since they treated Derb badly, and frankly I don’t miss it.
Tarl
February 7, 2013 at 5:28 pm
No offense to Derbyshire, but back in the days when he was in their good graces, it was all “the Derb” this and “the Derb” that, and even then (and without then knowing much of Derbyshire’s work) I thought this sort of John Hughes high-fiving was unsightly and couldn’t end well.
It’s long been mostly about the Jonah Goldberg world over there– if not him personally, then John Norman’son or who-have-you. It’s a cruiseship coterie of pampered, overfed and forced-celibate frat boys. Derbyshire’s doubtless better off without them, but all the same I would find it disappointing if he doesn’t sometimes gently upbraid himself for ever getting mixed up in that gang.
Lucius Somesuch
February 8, 2013 at 12:27 am
+1
Peter the Shark
February 8, 2013 at 3:38 am
I agree with you that living out of the thick of things might limit one’s future earnings. But the savings and wealth accumulation can far exceed any loss of income. It really depends on the job and the person. I have a cousin who lives in New York but is now working for a company in Texas. I assume he has an office in the city and flies pretty regularly to Texas.
Oxford isn’t the typical town in Mississippi, or in flyover America for that matter.. There are a good number of wealthy people in Oxford. I’m not a regular at Ole Miss basketball games, but at the last one I attended Shepard Smith and Morgan Freeman were both there. Shepard has a home here and Freeman lives a short drive away. John Grisham has a home here but is rarely in town, preferring his home in Charlottesville, Va.
$350,000 will buy a 3,500 to 4,000 square foot house on a really nice lot in a really nice subdivision served by a dedicated school bus (so your seatmates will be from your subdivision). Virtually no taxes. Reasonably good public schools, where up to 10 percent of the white (and Asian) students get National Merit honors each year, so no school tuition unless you just have to send your kids to private school.
It’s easier to get a National Merit slot in Mississippi as you only have to score in about the 98.2 percentile nationally. If you’re willing to attend an honor’s college at Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Oklahoma or a few other places you will go for free or almost free, and these honor’s colleges have dedicated classes and an average ACT of 31 or higher. (I wouldn’t want to go to Oklahoma, but they give five years free tuition, making it possible for students with lots of AP credits to make it almost all the way through law or med school tuition-free).
I know you are a big proponent of private schools, and I agree there is a lot to be said for them. I would consider boarding school for my kids if it weren’t for the fact that it would make them less likely to be National Merit finalists. And if my kids want to apply to the United World Colleges and attend sixth form school that suits me fine as it won’t affect their NM eligibility.
Let’s do the math here. What would a 4,000 sq. ft. home in a decent neighborhood cost in New York City or LA? Okay, make that a 2,500 sq. ft. home, which is roughly the minimum amount of space a family of four can live in comfortably. Are your kids going to be able to attend a good public school, or will you have to pay $30,000 each to send them to private school? Do your kids consistently score in the 99.8th percentile on tests? If not, you probably need to kiss that NM status goodbye and plan on spending an extra $120,000 or more per child on college. (I know you think the only way to go is an elite Ivy league school, but again you can accumulate wealth by making a lot of money or by not spending a lot). A family income of $200,000 or more provides one with a near-upper-class lifestyle in most of flyover America; in New York I would think that would make one poor.
I would guess that you will need an extra $1.5 to $2.5 million in income over 20 years go live in a high-cost area versus a low cost area; and even then you will have an inferior standard of living. But you are right, being in the thick of things will give you a greater chance to promotions and earning a higher income. But you are going to need it.
ColRebSez
February 7, 2013 at 2:28 pm
A 2,500 square foot coop in Manhattan would cost about $2.5 million on the lower end, and $4 million for a desirable view or a newer building.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 7, 2013 at 3:52 pm
Why are you putting so much importance on being a National Merit Scholar? I was one, and IIRC it got me a one time $2000 scholarship. It certainly was not something I would plan my whole life around.
Anne
February 7, 2013 at 11:03 pm
Well Anne, if you are willing to attend an honor’s college at Auburn, Alabama, Ole Miss, or a few other schools, where most of your classes will be exclusively with students from the honors college, then you can go to college for free. That’s free everything, no tuition payments, no books, no food, no rent, and sometimes spending money is provided. So it’s worth more than $100,000.
ColRebSez
February 8, 2013 at 12:48 am
Both NYC and Miss have the (can I say this on the new blog?) advantage that college educated whites are more competitive in the job market than in all white areas like Seattle. The underclass is largely non-white in these areas and pushes the whites up.
Nicolai Yezhov
February 8, 2013 at 9:05 am
The high cost of living in places where all of the jobs are can be seen as a sort of value transference.
Nah. Supply and demand.
Tarl
February 7, 2013 at 3:22 pm
Oxford, Mississippi, is a college town, and college towns tend to have their own local cultures regardless of where they are located. As places to live for non-students, they have their benefits and drawbacks.
This brings to mind #16 from the 100 reasons NOT to go to grad school: http://www.100rsns.blogspot.com/
Nine times out of ten, academics have no choice about where they live. There are so few jobs and so much competition for every job that if you’re offered a professorship, you take it, whether it’s in Mississippi or New Jersey.
It’s a career that puts enormous constraints on your freedom of movement.
Pyrite
February 7, 2013 at 3:25 pm
It reminds me of a weekly column syndicatd by WSJ, called “Love and Money” (I think) and it took the stupidest turn of events: they left NYC for La or MS so th wife could be near her family and work as a hospital administrator. So they uprooted the kids, guy worked from their new home..then she decided she didn’t really like working the new job and quit. So there they are. Reflected badly on the wife IMO, and made him look like a world class beta.
And yeah I think the moving to flyover and working from home thing is overrated. Compared to NYC a guy would go crazy just from all the stupid people in the new place.
funmachine!! (@caroljeanne11ty)
February 7, 2013 at 3:42 pm
Like there aren’t thse people in NYC. Coming from PDX, NYers are rude and foul-mouthed retards.
Nicolai Yezhov
February 8, 2013 at 9:08 am
I’m with Nicolai. Rural areas of the south don’t have a higher percentage of stupid people than NYC has. I’m not sure why; I’d expect them to concentrate in rural areas, because somebody stupid in Oxford MS has a considerably higher standard of living. I guess it’s home and they just don’t want to leave; well, except for the couple you describe.
J1
February 8, 2013 at 2:39 pm
You’re assuming the guy doesn’t work for himself.
Nicolai Yezhov
February 7, 2013 at 4:02 pm
Does it matter where this business is located: http://www.taigagroupincorporated.com/?
It’s hq is a single family home and its website appears to be written by Indians.
Question for LOB
February 7, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Sorry, should’ve been “Its”.
Question for LOB
February 7, 2013 at 4:21 pm
Taiga Group’s name reminds me of the road that I really want to drive some day.
Peter
ironrailsironweights
February 7, 2013 at 6:46 pm
A gravel road through swampland infested with bazillions of biting flies and mosquitoes… what’s not to like?
Tarl
February 8, 2013 at 9:19 am
Re: this “stay-at-home dude” story everyone’s been talking about…
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/02/i_m_a_married_guy_with_no_kids_and_i_cook_clean_and_mend_call_me_the_stay.html
I wonder if author Finn Boulding is grandson of Kenneth Boulding and Elise Boulding, who were bigtime pacifist/feminist Quaker academics. This guy Finn tries to present himself as just some average bro who decided to be a househusband with no kids and somehow got Slate to publish a story about it.
Fiddlesticks
February 7, 2013 at 4:29 pm
Lee Habeeb is most likely a Lebanese Christian. Apparently having a somewhat exotic background doesn’t make him stick out in Mississippi, at least not to the extent where he would mention anything.
Your first point, about the advantages of actually being in the office, ties in with a theory I’ve had for a while. `It seems paradoxical that rush hour traffic is as miserable as always even though unemployment is high. Surely the people on the road can’t all be traveling to or from job interviews. What I figure is that although many employers offer the option of telecommuting, if not every day then maybe a day or two a week, people are afraid that if they’re not physically present in the office every single day they won’t be seen as absolutely vital to their companies’ operations.
Peter
ironrailsironweights
February 7, 2013 at 4:31 pm
I would guess Habeeb is a Lebanese name. Mississippi has a fair number of Lebanese/Syrians, Italians, Chinese and Jews in the Mississippi Delta although the Jews are tending to move away, so he really would not stand out anywhere but some small towns in east Mississippi. I’m not sure “planter” is an occupation many people think of when they think of Jews, but there are a fair number of them in the Delta.
ColRebSez
February 7, 2013 at 7:45 pm
Shelby Foote’s Jewish grandfather was a planter in the Delta. He started off as a bookkeeper and married the heiress of the plantation whose father, I believe, had died a few years earlier. The Godchaux family were also very successful sugar cane planters in Louisiana.
nebbish
February 18, 2013 at 8:13 pm
Lion, I am on the board of multiple companies and we have people telecommuting from places all over the usa. In my companies telecommuters get promoted just as fast as the people that show up in the office. work product is written. Lion, I think that your experience may be limiting your perspective
afd;jksdsakjf
February 7, 2013 at 8:25 pm
Bad career advice
a guy who happily moved
These two statements are in a world of conflict. I’ll leave it at that; your commenters have told you a thousand times that not everyone (not even every “smart” person!) wants a high-stress, high-paying job in New York City.
Samson J.
February 7, 2013 at 9:07 pm
I recentely reached a level of income where I don’t much care about advancement anymore. My new job is work at home 4 days a week and I love it. Even if I could earn say 20-30% more I’d turn it down to keep this arrangement going.
If I ended up getting laid off because I’m not in the office its not like it will be that hard to get a new job making around the same money doing kinduv the same thing. In fact I’ve saved up so much money I wouldn’t mind taking a little gap year if it comes to that.
asdf
February 7, 2013 at 9:48 pm
First of all, strange as it may seem to this ex-NYCer, some people actually like Mississippi. Hunting, fishing, camping, shooting…I don’t care for the South, but the Southerners seem to like it just fine. The flip side of anti-intellectualism and ruralism is that you don’t have to spend huge amounts on clothing to keep up with the Joneses.
Second, the cost of living in one of these places is much lower. A doctor in NYC is lower-middle-class; a doctor in Mississippi is upper-middle-class, owns his own large home, and has fewer ambulance-chasing lawyers to deal with. If his daughter gets pregnant and needs an abortion…well, she just goes to visit NYC (or Raleigh-Durham) and miscarries.
SFG
February 7, 2013 at 9:50 pm
Mississippi really isn’t all “hunting, fishing, camping, shooting.” I really haven’t done any of these things since college almost 30 years ago. We go out to eat, have friends over, go to parties, go to fund raisers, go to sporting events and so forth. It really depends on where you live. Some parts of the state are pretty wretched.
Yes, our doctors are “rich.” Fewer ambulance chasing lawyers? Try almost none. Since tort reform it is virtually impossible to successfully sue a doctor in Mississippi. As for abortions, I think they are readily available in Memphis and New Orleans, although after a certain point I think you have to go to Atlanta.
ColRebSez
February 8, 2013 at 1:09 am
The 1% in Manhattan is 850k/y.
Nicolai Yezhov
February 8, 2013 at 9:10 am
“A doctor in NYC is lower-middle-class”
are you kidding?
Ivan
February 8, 2013 at 2:43 pm
A medical doctor is by definition upper-middle class.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 8, 2013 at 2:55 pm
It’s interesting to me that every post and comment regarding employment seems to take as granted the desired outcome of working for somebody else. I can understand the republicans slave owner mentality, it’s good to own slaves. I don’t understand why more people don’t think in terms of self employment and self sufficiency. Is it better to be an attorney in NY in a million $ apartment or a plumber in SC with an acre of fertile soil? Neither of them are reading Proust you know. Give a hoot, read a book, Don’t be a slave, Screw the man.
S_McCoy
February 8, 2013 at 6:37 am
If the attorney is a partner, then he actually is working for himself.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 8, 2013 at 8:15 am
LOL most times “No manager for me, I am a self-employed plumber/handyman” = “my wife gets up and goes to work every morning at the office, earns more than I do and provides health insurance for the whole family, though on the sporadic days that I do happen to earn $500-600 I spend the next 3 weeks end-zone dancing about it.”
Fiddlesticks
February 8, 2013 at 10:04 am
“There is a lot of career advancement that takes place when people switch jobs.”
I just read Peter Cappelli’s “The New Deal at Work.” He makes this point repeatedly. Career advancement post-1980 occurs *within* a field (career track in LOTB terms). Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Universities, and Wall Street are the best examples…And the best ones are in the biggest cities.
aki (@DSGNTD_PLYR)
February 8, 2013 at 11:49 am
“I can understand the republicans slave owner mentality, it’s good to own slaves. I don’t understand why more people don’t think in terms of self employment and self sufficiency.”
In my experience it’s the libertarian/Republican types more often pushing the free agent, be-your-own-boss kind of rhetoric. Progressives think that’s wishful thinking BS and are de facto advocates of bosses and even larger-the-better companies, often explicitly (see Dissent and Jacobin mag etc.)
mupetblast
February 8, 2013 at 10:10 pm
On of my hobbies in the past few years has been studying maps. I study all types of maps toward the end of making a conclusion about the best/most strategic place to plant oneself for the best quality of life. Now, this process isn’t as easy as it seems. Consulting one of the myriad of quality of life lists can sometimes give you a lead or some perspective, but there are things to consider outside of what Mercer considers when ranking places, for instance. One of those considerations is your current social class and the probable opportunities that are going to allow your progeny to at the very least maintain, but ideally raise their social class in the event that you raise them in a way that equips them to do as much. To illustrate, you could probably live like a King in South Dakota while telecommuting to New York, but then your progeny may find it difficult to escape South Dakota, or have good opportunity within the state, should they not have such a telecommuting opportunity. By moving from New York to, for the love of god, Mississippi one may run the risk of setting his lineage back generations. Mississippi is cheap for a reason. By almost all standards of measurement, it’s the worst state to live in the Union. It’s denizens are the most unhappy, it’s economy is one of the worst, and it has the crime to match. It’s also one of the worst from an HBD perspective. However, if you’re going there to just work, not reproduce, and die then you have less to think about. If one was doing that, though, why not just retire to Mexico or some other cheaper and more pleasant locale than Mississippi? Anyway, if your family’s future opportunity is a concern than there are really only a few decent places in the USA worth considering, the NYC, Phila area being one. There are roughly 2-3 more in the entire Union. I recommend looking at an animated map that shows how jobs expand and contract over time in the past decade. This will give you a good perspective on the places in the country that are worth living in if you don’t want your future kids to be trailer trash. However, it’s a brave new world and there are no guarantees. One can certainly live in a better area, more modestly than they can in NYC, without moving to an economic wasteland. My personal preference isn’t for the USA when everything is considered, but nothing beats it in terms of economic opportunity.
To the second commenter who made the “No culture, no nation, and only loyal to the almighty dollar” comment, this nation is not a nation. It’s a multinational largely culture-less country wherein groups and individuals have zero loyalty outside of the genetic groups that they can marginally maintain. It’s a sad existence but this is what the liberals demand: a society of individuals. The money just allows you to briefly anesthetize yourself from that soul-killing reality.
Tom
February 28, 2013 at 11:23 pm