I have `MaybeRequired` serving almost the exact same purpose! You are right it’s a common problem, a useful approach, and I just wish TS had better support for case analysis than chained ternaries.
Computer work is so far outside the realm of what we as humans have been doing as “work” since the dawn of time. I wonder how significant that is? Could we be evolutionarily or culturally ill-suited to working this way?
The issue I see with comparing median salary to median rent for a one bedroom is that tons of people (especially young folks just starting out) want to live in desirable places and are willing to share living costs in order to do so. So even if you could magically reset a desirable locality to have comparable median rent and salary, very quickly rent would exceed salary as people that really can’t afford it move anyway.
And if you instead pin salary and say that the median salary at every company must be $X, rents will increase for the same reason.
I suppose you could ban living with roommates, and require median salary at every company to equal some state mandated number. I don’t think that will go well for anyone but you could.
In my short lifetime computer nerds have gone from losers worth making fun of, to rockstars making gobs of cash, to villains ruining whatever place they live or hobby they take up. Pretty wild.