I guess that is my point. The OP says that having a family in the US would be a struggle but if you set aside the handful of cities with out of control costs in the US like SF, NY, and DC the rest really are quite affordable.
Exclude the east and west coast mega cities and you have a lot of land but a small chunk of the population. This tends to tie you much closer to a specific employer and has long term risks.
this is just not true, at least on the east coast.
i rent a 4br house just over the city line that's listed for ~$200k . 10 minute drive to downtown and a 30 minute commute to work. if i wanted to i could easily come up with the down payment for this house in a couple years on my entry level engineer's salary. in my office park alone, there are already several other software companies right there that i could conceivably work at.
once you rule out NYC, Boston, and the other megacities, there are still many mid-sized cities with good food, music, etc. they don't have nearly the same troubles with traffic, so it's often pretty easy to find a good job in the burbs if they dont do software in the city center.
A '30 minute commute to work' is a long time every day. It adds up to 250 hours a year, and over 10,000 hours over a lifetime.
Accepting a longer commute means more options, but the price is steap. Mine is currently 10 minutes and in a prior job I walked to work. However, that means I either need to move regularly or have a lot of options very close to me.
It's a direct time and money trade-off. People are spending time to obtain a standard of living that they do not have enough money to purchase with dollars.
You can light your money on fire by renting or you can be paying off a house at the same rate at the time cost of whatever your commute is.
If you want to eat healthy the options for fast meals get expensive. If you prepare everything from close to scratch you can eat just as health at the cost of time.
