Day: September 26, 2025

• I moved from Wisconsin to New York City over 10 years ago.
• The Midwest still surprises me with its lower prices, larger stores, and emptier airports.
• The Midwest’s friendliness, passion for football, and strong accents also feel novel to me now.

Since moving from Wisconsin to New York City over 10 years ago, I don’t get to travel back to visit friends and family as often as I’d like to.

The longer I go without visiting the Midwest, the more novel it feels when I do return.

Here are 11 aspects of life in the Midwest that now surprise me after over a decade of living in New York.

The airport I fly to in Wisconsin is much emptier than any New York travel hub.

When I fly out of New York City, the airport is always packed, with long security lines and crowds by the gate. When I land at General Mitchell International Airport in my hometown of Milwaukee, the airport seems empty in comparison.

Compared to New York City’s 8.4 million residents, Milwaukee’s population of around 577,000 people means that the city feels less crowded overall.

Midwestern accents are stronger than I remember.

Upon landing in the Milwaukee airport, I often hear locals talking about picking up their luggage at baggage claim, pronounced “bay-gage claim.” When referring to the wholesale retailer Costco, Wisconsinites call it “Cah-stco.”

I’ve lost my Midwestern accent after living in New York City for more than a decade, but I still recognize it immediately when I visit home.

Plastic carry-out bags are still available in some Midwestern states.

New York banned plastic shopping bags in 2020 — one of several states to do so. I’ve become so used to bringing my own reusable bags on errands that I’m surprised to find plastic bags available at stores in Wisconsin.

Stores are much larger outside New York City.

For example, my New York City neighborhood features a “small-format” Target store designed specifically for urban areas with 25,000 square feet of space. By comparison, the Target in my Wisconsin hometown spans 104,000 square feet, making it more than four times larger.

Midwestern grocery chains are also much bigger than New York City’s corner stores and bodegas.

Nationwide retailers like Costco stock locally made products that aren’t available elsewhere.

Most Costco stores stock the same items at locations throughout the world, but shoppers can also occasionally find local specialties. While visiting Costco in my home state, I’ve spotted Wisconsin cheese curds and coffee beans from a company based in Door County, which I haven’t seen sold in stores in New York or abroad.

I’ve grown nostalgic for Midwestern brands that used to be routine trips.

I never used to be excited about shopping at Menards or Meijer, but you know what they say: Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

When I visit the Midwest now, I jump at the chance to accompany my family on their day-to-day errands at retailers that are exclusive to Midwestern states.

Some Midwestern grocery stores feature walk-in beer coolers.

As the home of famous breweries such as Miller and Pabst, Wisconsin takes beer seriously. At Piggly Wiggly, a grocery chain largely serving the South and the Midwest, I’ve encountered walk-in beer fridges with dozens of varieties to choose from.

I’ve never seen a walk-in beer cooler in New York City — most grocery stores there wouldn’t have the space.

While many New York City stores keep items in locked cases, I’m pleasantly surprised when I can shop more freely in the Midwest.

When I want to pick up a tube of toothpaste or pint of ice cream at Target in New York City, I have to wave my hand over a sensor to summon an employee to unlock the item for me.

At my local Target store in Wisconsin, not even items that sometimes face limited supply, like baby formula, are kept on secured shelves, which makes for a different shopping experience.

Prices for things like gas and milk are significantly lower in the Midwest.

At the gas pump and the checkout counter, I’m shocked by how much lower prices are in the Midwest compared to New York City.

In September, regular gas cost $2.86 per gallon at the local corner station in Wisconsin compared to $3.13 at the closest gas station in New York.

Grocery items like gallons of milk were also less expensive in the Midwest — $3.29 versus $3.99 as of my last visit.

Football season is a big deal.

Football hasn’t come up much during my years in New York City, so I wasn’t expecting to find Green Bay Packers banners and branded products at nearly every Wisconsin grocery store during football season.

I’d forgotten about how football games serve as both a cultural touchstone and popular topic of conversation in many parts of the Midwest.

Midwestern friendliness can feel like a culture shock.

After a decade as a New Yorker, classic gestures of Midwestern friendliness like smiling at strangers and making small talk feel odd to me. In New York City, even making eye contact with someone you don’t know can be considered a breach of etiquette.

The culture shock makes me realize how I’m constantly on guard as a resident of one of America’s largest cities — just one of many ways I’ve changed since moving away from the Midwest.

• Box CEO Aaron Levie shared six attributes he said would help make a successful H-1B visa policy.
• “In any given industry or locale, wages should go up with this talent pool as opposed to down,” he said on “The A16z Podcast.”
• President Donald Trump’s proposed $100,000 fee on H-1B visas has proved to be divisive among the business community.

If the tech industry could craft its own H-1B visa policy, what would it look like?

Box CEO and cofounder Aaron Levie and three Andreessen Horowitz partners recently debated President Donald Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee on “The A16z Podcast.” The new policy has sparked much discussion in Silicon Valley, with some lauding its potential to prevent the over-hiring of international applicants and others arguing it would weaken startups and hurt innovation.

Levie outlined six attributes he said that an H-1B policy should have to both protect American labor and keep tech strong.

First, Levie said that the government had to clarify the goals of such a policy. “What are we optimizing for?” he asked.

“Are we optimizing for, we don’t want to have wages go down? That’s an interesting thing,” Levie said. “Are we optimizing for just ensuring that we only have the highest merit people on the planet coming here? Those are all totally different goals to optimize for.”

If he had his way, Levie said he would optimize for the latter, bringing in the best talent. His strategy would be to bring the “absolute best in the world here.”

That doesn’t mean an H-1B policy could set a hard cap on the number of visas granted. There’s not a “fixed number” of the world’s best talent, Levie said.

“Some years there might be 5,000, some years there might be 50,000, some years there might be 80,000,” he said.

Critics of ample H-1B visa access don’t only complain that international applicants displace American labor. They also say that H-1B workers are wage suppressors. According to Department of Labor data, 30% of H-1B workers make $100,000 or less each year, while 10% make over $200,000.

Levie’s third position is that the H-1B policy should ensure wages are lifted.

“We probably want them to be net positive to wages,” Levie said. “Let’s agree that, in any given industry or locale, wages should go up with this talent pool as opposed to down.”

Next, Levie said that access to H-1B labor should never crush an entire industry. For example, you should never be able to “exploit the talent pools” to “wipe out IT jobs” in Detroit, he said.

A good H-1B policy also shouldn’t restrict the hiring of junior-level talent, the CEO said. Levie gave the example of a Master’s student at a state school who graduates to a position as an AI engineer, but isn’t in the top echelon of AI talent who can command $100 million Meta contracts.

“They are going to be totally valuable contributors to our economy,” Levie said. “It’s all positive sum. It’s not taking a job from anybody else. It makes us more competitive.”

Trump’s $100,000 fee makes international hiring more of a spending game. Startup founders told Business Insider that the fee could kneecap their hiring in the talent wars, sending skilled international workers to Big Tech companies that could more easily afford the fee.

Levie’s final suggestion was to make sure the policy didn’t outprice smaller startups. A16z general partner Martin Casado said that Keith Rabois, Khosla Ventures’s managing director, had floated the idea of a $20,000 fee. “Let’s just go with Keith’s number,” Levie said.

“There’s a way to do that without sort of overly putting constraints in the system that make it so a startup wouldn’t be able to economically viably participate in this,” he said. “$100K per year would be at a point where startups would be directly impacted.”