And if you're on your own for it, it's the same, except you pay more and the quality of care is a lot lower because the "marketplace" plans are the absolute minimum the insurers can get away with and still comply with the law.

Yes, it’s called tax.

Entry-level tech compensation is ~$180K/year, mid-career = ~$600K/year. If you're not in tech you're screwed here - formerly middle-class professions like teachers/police/firemen live 4 to a 2BR apartment, or they buy houses an hour or more away. Even mid-career finance professionals get screwed - salary for CEO of a local (not nationwide) bank is in the ~$150-200K range, and barely competes with a new grad at Google or Facebook.

That's way high. A million-dollar house on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, assuming a 20% down payment, is ~4800/month including property tax. With a 10% down payment it would be about $5800/month.

To get to a $10k/month housing bill you need to buy a place that costs close to $2 million. The median sales price in Santa Clara county is closer to $1.3 or $1.4 million. Most people are paying a lot less than $10k/month for their house.

Low-end SFHs - we're talking a 3/2 built in the 1950s - go for about $1.8-$1.9M in Mountain View, $1.6-1.7M in Sunnyvale. A SFH like what you'd get in most of the rest of the U.S. - 4/2.5 or 5/3 on 1/4 acre lot, built somewhere between the 70s and 00s - will run about $2.4-2.8M.

Mountain View is one of the most expensive cities in the county, second to Palo Alto and maybe Los Altos. Most of the area is cheaper.

[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/atd-U...

The minimum wage for adults worked full time in the UK (and similar in France) currently equates to 1,524EUR, which comes out as 1,807USD. Most salaried positions would yield more than that.

$2,400/month is the legal minimum wage in some cities. ($15/hour)