But here’s the rub: I am able to afford this faux middle-class life on $40,000 a year because I live around poverty. The median income in the city of Cleveland is $26,179; the median income in Shaker Heights, where I live, is $75,177. Nearly a quarter of Clevelanders live below the poverty line, and only about 15 percent have a B.A. And yet, true to form, there are a few small areas within the city limits that I can no longer afford to live, as developers have rushed in to build overpriced housing for a tiny segment of educated professionals.
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So it turns out you can get richer simply by moving to where people are poorer. That is horrifying. And some might find it insensitive to praise the virtues of living a middle-class life in a region beset by deindustrialization and poverty, where the low cost of living is enabled, in part, by the difficulty so many have in scratching out a living.
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– Opting Out of Coastal Madness to Live a Low-Overhead Life
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