Within a specific, ideal job they always wanted and got without having to make hard tradeoffs somewhere, or do a ton of searching?

This is what folks are talking about. Expecting things to just fall into place 'just because' without having to do the legwork to actually make/find something workable.

It's an entirely solvable problem at the data level.

We know where the employers and residential zones are. We could put together a model to minimize average commute time.

The problem is that we need to have a grand "rehoming" moment to deliver it. The day where everyone gets assigned a new residence in accordance with the optimization scheme. A day that would doubtless be deferred to long past the heat-death of the universe in endless court challenges by those who ended up on the losing side of the deal in some way.

In a way, the fact we still have powerful regimes which aren't tied down to "rule of law", and specifically the "property rights as sacred" segment of it gives me hope; I'd expect to see this day occur in Beijing long before it happened in San Francisco.

100% agree. Most cities in the US (not just SF, but definitely SF) are locked in this bizarre ‘you can’t make it better because you’d stub my toe’ mode that enforces stasis. SF in particular is in this bizarre Byzantine political deadlock where it seems the only thing the city is allowing itself to do is stuff that it knows doesn’t work.

In Europe, you could easily get that, except the car or driving part.

> except the car or driving part

Don't threaten ME with a good time!

At half/third of the salary maybe.

Why is that relevant? The cost of maintaining a reasonable standard of living is what matters, not the amount listed on your paycheck (as long as the latter is >= the former).

Still better off if that third actually enabled living within driving distance of said job.

I live in a place with very good transit and people just complain about their 45 min one-way commute by train.