Quote:
Originally Posted by emathias
While not the entire answer to they question, with California's progressive income taxes, lower-income people actually have more take-home pay in LA than they do in Chicago. I know I'd pay more in taxes in California, but a friend of mine who mostly works as a waiter says he has more take-home pay in LA even earning about the same gross income. Hollywood also has a lot of working-class and lower-middle-class jobs, the unglamorous jobs supporting the film industry, and base scale actors who few people think about when they think about high-paid producers, directors, and star-level actors.
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A lot of my family is from LA and we were talking about COL a few months ago when I was there. They were saying things are ridiculous there for the most part - and of course not everywhere, and not as bad as SF due to size, but for the most part they were very worried, most of my family being life-long angelenos. A number of my family members in LA are well-paid lawyers and still say these things. It's big enough to kind of weather the storm for awhile, but on average, LA is not more affordable than Chicago by any stretch of the imagination. You will find pockets of affordability but you can find that anywhere. A cheaper neighborhood in LA might still be around $1300/mo for a 1 bedroom which isn't terrible but the more desireable places are going to be in the $3000s average for a 1 bedroom which is more expensive than Chicago (and then if you go to a suburb like Santa Monica it's even worse).
By the way, since you mention un-glamorous Hollywood jobs. I have a cousin who is a truck driver for movie studios - he just drives around set pieces. His sister (also my cousin of course) is a long time lawyer in LA. She was joking about how her brother gets paid around the same as she does. He lives well - some of these un-glamorous jobs get paid surprisingly well. My aunt and uncle also live in a quiet bedroom neighborhood in NW LA that is next to suburbs. You can't walk anywhere really and I wouldn't call much there hip or desireable for the standards of younger people. They have pretty good schools though. Their 1900 sq ft home with a patio but almost no grass in the back yard is worth $1M. The house my father grew up in, in Pasadena (a suburb), is now 1600 sq ft and worth around $1M as well. I spent a lot of time in that house and it's shocking to me it's worth that much. If it was in a comparable suburb of Chicago it would be worth no more than $400K right now.
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