[quote=FlyerInHi]As someone who has traveled far and wide, I can say that Americans generally live the best. Australians and Canadians are pretty close.

Not every city is expensive.; and not everybody wants to live in NYC, SF, or even SD.

Maybe with globalization, more expensive American real estate is the new normal. Still real estate is cheap here, compared to any seizable city, even in the developing world where salaries are peanuts.[/quote]

USA car based living is also a lot more efficient as well, you would not believe how hard it is to get an engineer in china to get in the office at 11:00AM in the morning here our time LOL. (But I have seen engineers in our office at midnight – 2 AM handling asia issues fairly often.