surly

No you make more hooking don't you?

simongb

Actually, I do ok for myself. But I had a lot of advantages to start with. However, just because I earn a wage and have a job, I don't forget that there are millions who struggle to make it. We have to ask ourselves why, in 'the richest' country in the world, why are their people who have little or nothing? They are not all lazy people (as the Republicans would have us believe). I guess what I am trying to say is that there is not much of a safety net here for people nor is there a general attitude of caring for ones neighbour. Sad really.

surly

I'd question whether the US is the richest country in the world, it has the most debt.
Those millions you speak of do have a vote, as do the so 47 million uninsured.

Redlippie

Of course. I know what I'm doing.

surly

There you go, I knew you must be good for something.

Redlippie

I do have my standards.

BritGuyTN

A 200K gbp flat with a mortgage of 180k is about 1200 gbp a month excluding council tax etc

this is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on housing IMO

one of the reasons my cost of living is low here is because our housing expense is so low... our mortgage which we refinanced to buy some land on the river is about 600 quid a month total!!! i don't live in podunkville, I live on a city block...

snowbunny

Engineering that requires a professional engineering licence (or the oversight of a PE)?

The pay is too low and if the employer uses artificially low prevailing wages to hire H-1Bs..... that's bad.

surly

H-1Bs are usually IT I've never seen an H-1b Mech or Elect engineer, and PE isn't generally a requirement.

From my experience these salaries are pretty close out here.

Salaries SV

Xebedee

Nope, no PE and I've never had to answer to one. Thats usual with civils anyway, not so much ME's. Typically, a master's degree in Engineering will jack up the salary, but companies just don't need it for 90% of the work we do, so an MBA is better. $50k is average for someone with 5-10 yrs experience here. New grads get 36ish, maybe 40k. I don't know anything about H-1B's so can't comment there.

Sorry, like I said, I don't know about the H1B visa, its not how I did it. You, in Silicon Valley have very, very high living costs tho. For example, your mortgage might be $4k/mo, wheras mine would be $1 1/2k/mo. Its all proportional. I understand, I lived in your area before the dot-com bust.

Basically, companies are out to pay as little as possible for technically trained staff, yet are amazed that they cannot hire the numbers they really need. Retention is getting better for the companies, due to the usual factors being jacked up slightly over the last few years. Fear of job loss, higher domestic bills, health insurance, etc.

Steerpike

Just one clarification ... in Silicon Valley you have high living costs ONLY if you moved here (or bought your first house) in the past ~8 years. I bought my house in 94, and saw prices languish for several years until they started shooting up in the late '90s. My mortgate didn't change, and has not changed since ... so I'm paying about 2k/month for a house that's now worth silly money.

Even property taxes are capped at/near the purchase price thanks to proposition 13 in CA. So while I feel sorry for those coming here today, it's not as if we are all buried under the burden of massive mortgages here.

I could even 'trade up' on this house and still my mortgage would only go up in proportion to the increased loan size, not the property value (prop. tax would kill me though). That is, using simple examples - if you sell a house for $1m, and buy another for $1.1m, the most you are likely to need to borrow extra is the $100k difference; the fact the house is valued at $1.1m is somewhat incidental (except for determining property taxes).

Giantaxe

All good points, and the the reason why renting is almost certainly a better bet for people moving to this area right now. The after tax carrying costs are typically so much lower and the current mortgage mess is going to get much worse before it gets better imo. Now Bloomberg is saying Countrywide may go bankrupt - yikes.

snowbunny

It would be so much more humane to let the "free market" work by paying an attractive wage rather than turning to the government to scare the people into submission.

Cape Blue

not sure if anyone has already posted this, does give an indication of the UK's improvment over the past 15 years in comparison to the US.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7174372.stm

surly

According to your link the UK has been catching up since 2001. So what's been happening to the US over the last 7 years?:curse: