It seems to me this is exactly the point being made. You can live on a lot less money than whatever you currently consider "normal", but not necessarily in your current location or at your current level of consumption.
Whatever it costs you to live comfortably in SV with kids, it probably costs me half that to live comfortably in Denver with kids. I know of families living on less than half of what I do in places like Japan, who would consider themselves quite comfortable.
If financing your current lifestyle leaves you with no free time to enjoy life, you're a slave to that lifestyle -- whether it's on $5k or $500k a year. If "living in Silicon Valley" is non-negotiable, it's going to take a lot more earning power to get out of that type of "slavery" than if you're willing to live in Belize.
That's a horrible comparison. The difference in potential salaries, potential connections, business opportunities and so on would put make Denver the expensive one IMO (costs half as much as SV to have none of those advantages? wtf!).
If you're one of those near the top of the spectrum, making 25 or more times the median salary or starting up a business that truly blows up, perhaps. In which case you wouldn't be complaining that it's hard to raise kids in SV.
If you're an average joe coder, or even fairly above average, you're making 10% less in Denver and you have fewer options for tech companies (but still plenty locally, and some decent remote options). But you can buy a nice house here for well under $200k and live ten minutes from work. For the vast majority of people, it's far less expensive.
The point here is not to convince you, personally, to move to Denver. Just to clarify that there's a whole spectrum of places to live at all sorts of prices, with all sorts of advantages and disadvantages. The GGP post implied that "live a normal life in SV" was the only option, which is of course absurd. There are advantages to living in SV, but they do not come without costs.
By design, the Valley's zoning laws create an artificial shortage of housing units. It costs a lot to live a "normal life" in order to keep out the riff raff.
Every person on HN should realize that they are worth more than $10/hr. Stop defending living in poverty as an exploit of others.
Get a fucking life with several mortgages and children.
Or, better yet - go live the idolized life of the genius software development hermit you both appear to think yourself to be. What a wonderful life that will be.
I am so sick of these douchebag HNers that all think of themselves to be the next rails revolution and have no fucking clue as to what it actually costs to live a normal life in Silicon Valley with kids (even when, as I have, you have been living and working in tech for 20 years)
Get the fuck out.