Let me tell you about a show we used to call “Sliders”…

It’s very bingeable, but I feel like half the fun of LOST was talking and theorizing about LOST with your friends and coworkers. It’s this whole element of the show new viewers just won’t be able to experience.

The salaries have to be higher because the cost of living/housing is higher in the Greater Boston area than the vast majority of the country.

If you had a choice of plans, at least one of which was MA compliant, you’re probably out of luck. Definitely switch during open enrollment.

Are you the employer's only MA employee or are there a bunch of you? I would definitely contact any coworkers in MA you know to push for them to at least get on a compliant plan for 2023.

From the Boston Sunday Globe cover story this weekend.

>Unquestionably, stratospheric housing costs are a major factor in why people leave Massachusetts, especially now. Before the pandemic, a family making $100,000 a year could afford to buy 37 percent of homes available in the state. Today that figure is just 12 percent. In metro Boston, it’s just 6 percent, compared with 34 percent nationally.

To be succinct, if you're making the median income in MA, you are likely not buying a home in MA unless you already own one or have some other source of wealth.

Which is why single family zoning needs to be eliminated in greater Boston.

Oh, the cape is in a terrible bind. The entire economy is geared toward tourism, but the residents refuse to allow anything to get built where all those restaurant/hotel/retail workers can actually afford to live. This article from the Globe recently about Barnstable residents trying to stop an old closing golf course from being turned into apartments makes it clear how bad the NIMBYism is there.

The biggest issue is zoning laws created decades ago to keep the suburbs segregated by limiting multi-family housing. Zoning being under local control means those who already own property in all these towns to have all the power to approve or prevent new housing, particularly multi-family housing. And the expense of building here means developers are mostly building huge, luxury houses because they can't make a profit off building starter homes on the limited real estate available. We've taken some baby steps with the law requiring suburbs to zone for multi-family housing near commuter rail stops, but the NIMBY pushback has been fierce. (Weston in particular has been going apeshit.). What we need is for the state to take more control of zoning away from localities. What Gov. Newsom has been doing in CA to tackle the same problem recently is probably a good example to look to.

Things like rent control and affordable housing lotteries are red herrings. The only thing that's going to fix the problem is increasing the supply...by a lot.

Yes it’s nationwide, but it’s much worse in the greater Boston area than most major metros save SF and NYC.

The people making $129k household income did not buy their house in 2023. They likely bought in 10, 20, 30 years ago. If you look at most of these towns, there's barely any housing stock even on the market. Owners aren't yet willing to take the hit the mortgage interest rate increases gave to their property values, even if the house is worth ten times what they paid in the 80s or whatever. Even owners who want to downsize and stay in the area aren't because the smaller homes and condos people would normally downsize to are in extremely short supply.

Basically, if you didn't already get into the market a while ago, you're screwed for the foreseeable future here. $129k isn't 3br house money in Greater Boston anymore unless you win an affordable housing lottery. It's 2br apartment in a triple decker income now. The issue is fixable, but much of the power to change things is in the hands of people with a vested interest in not doing that.

​

>The report by a national nonprofit called Up For Growth found Massachusetts needed to build 100,000 additional homes per year to keep up demand in recent years. It also found the shortfall doubled between 2012 and 2019.

We've built less and less homes every decade since the 80's, even as we kept adding more and more jobs.

Bedford is great with the appropriate technology and small elementary school class sizes. The question is can you afford at least 850k for a single family 3br house? (Edit: if you can even find a smaller home for sale - most listings on Redfin right now are 4br in the 2 mil range)

Grabbing some ice.

Is that for paras? No way the starting salary for a teacher in Somerville is 35k.

They are. Haverhill, Malden, Brookline and Melrose already. Most unions work on three year contract cycles, so we’re going to keep seeing these very contentious renegotiation break downs as contracts come up for renewal the next two years and teachers and support staff try to get CoL raises that match what’s happened with inflation and housing prices in greater Boston since the start of the pandemic.

Late night is weird because it’s this one ubiquitous part of pop culture history that you just can’t really ever educate yourself on if you weren’t there for it. Like I can listen to every Bob Dylan recording and watch every episode of every Star Trek and pick up on all the references to both. But I will never have more than a vague awareness when something references a famous Johnny Carson bit or moment.

Malden and Haverhill teachers and paraprofessionals still did it this year though.

But…who’s gonna keep paying $15/month for that?

On the opposite end, we don’t want a situation like the Handmaids Tale where they finish the story from the book and then just keep making seasons that get progressively worse.

Yes, having teaching experience on the resume will help get you interviews. You may want to consider working as a TA in a school system or as an after-school program teacher at a public school. If you already work for a school system in one of those roles, you will have a much better chance of getting a teaching job there when one pops up.

Aldi sells off-brand Fritos for like $1.50.

It was a good place for grad school as far as instructors, facilities, flexibility, price, etc. The only thing that sucked was there's just no easy way to get there from out of town.

I used to commute to Salem State in the evenings. October kinda sucked for that.

Cable television is a big one.

It would benefit consumers at the expense of giant corporations, so I won’t hold my breathe.