I've know a software engineer, and he really is an engineer, born and educated in Britain, as an electrical engineer, though he's been working as a software weenie for so long I can't remember the last time he put together a circuit.

He started out working for company ABC in locale #1, and, subsequently, his company was sold to a major west-coast company in the same product market area, and was, of course, moved to the West Coast with a significant cost of living adjustment. That company, having bought the physical plant back here (locale #1), was sold to yet another megacorp, again in the same product market, which moved this fellow, who had purchased a home in California, where his house back here, valued at $150K, would have cost $2.5E6, back here, where he'd retained ownership of his home and, since it was no longer rented, simply moved back into it, and the company liquidated his California house at a substantial profit, large enough to enable him to pay off the mortgage on his original house, and pocket enough profit to pay off the national debt, which is what the large income taxes, presumably, were used to do.

In the interim, of course, he'd gotten a major raise for cost of living, and, since nobody moves to take pay cut, he actually got a raise for moving back here. The result was that he'd made a huge profit on his real estate, paid a huge amount of taxes, and pocketed enough after-tax revenue to buy the TajMahal, and gotten a significant raise along the way. Now he lives in the same house he bought 15 years ago, yet he earns 5x as much and has $2E6 in the bank.

I wish I could cut a deal like that!

RE