No rent control, or required solar where I live. Also first two years at local community college are free.
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Iâve never understood the Silicon Valley shuffle. Here are huge companies selling services to others companies to make the âfreeâ, so they are no longer dependent on physical geography, their employees can work anywhere in the world, they can telecommute, they can be parts of virtual teams with virtual meetings.
Yet when it comes to themselves, everything has to congregate around some of the most expensive real-estate in the USA, if not the world. Why are their own products so bad that they wonât use them themselves to save costs on real-estate and attract talent that doesnât want to live in a huge metropolis? It is hardly a good advert for their products. âBuy our products and save money on large offices and having employees tied to a certain area. Just ignore us, while we squander your money on expensive offices and employee tied to a certain area.â
I live in a medium sized town (30-40,000 citizens) and we are about 20 minutes away from the 4th largest city in our state (160,000 citizens). It is a lovely area, prices are reasonable and there is no way you could get me to live in a city like LA or SF. My commute is 20KM and takes around 20 minutes, there are no big traffic jams, no huge crowds of people, everything is relaxed and peaceful.
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We get a lot of Americans studying over here, even though they have to learn German before they can matriculate.
University costs something like 150⏠per semester for administration costs and a public transport ticket for the whole state during term time. Obviously you have to calculate in the $300-$500 a month for rent, plus food and course materials - for our local university.
I meant what I said about venture inflation. Research (in partnership with free public higher-ed) founded the Valley, not venture; venture came later, and is showing itself to be the interloper it is. I wouldnât be sorry to see it go. What you describe might more accurately in English be called the Silicon Valley, or better yet the VC-shark, hustle. But what Wall Street and much of the rest of the business world are loathe to acknowledge is the synergy of Silicon Valley as part of a larger ecosystem in The San Francisco Bay Area and California generally for creativity, of which âinnovationâ is only one kind of byproduct. âDisruptingâ a hard-nosed industry like auto manufacturing or financial services or even digital art production is one thing; creating new ones is something else, and coalescing skeins of relevance therewithin as innovation (and, more marginally, successful enterprise) needs some of that creativity for its interests to prove relevant. Thatâs not the kind of thinking you get from a mentality that canât see the beautiful forest because itâs so busy peering through the microscope at the bark of fiscal abstraction.
How come most of the rest of the country does not have the same issue? You cannot regulate âfairâ prices. Throttle supply. Demand (price) goes up. The only way to lower rent is to increase supply. You can no more circumvent the hands of the free market than you can mother nature.
Youâd have to ask the zillions of people who want to live there. Also, fun facts: for almost a decade, San Francisco has been the richest city on planet Earth, the most billionaires per capita, and also the most expensive in the US. If that doesnât make its affordability problems exceptional, what could?
Relative to demand. Pressures against demand have little to do with supply, since ostensibly supply develops in response to it. To the extent the market arbitrates that exchange, inflationary pressures such as from the geyser of venture funding can distort its relation to actual supply and demand, which is what weâre seeing. Far from propping up the housing market and the government as Schwarzenegger suggests, venture money endangers it, all while inveighing against any temerity the state might muster to impinge upon their profiteering binge even as the infrastructure around them is stressed to the breaking point by the distortions they are causing. Meanwhile, arguments like yours flagellate the state for daring to slay its supposed golden calf, all while claiming the impulse to do so is a foolhardy bleeding-heartâs deranged and illegitimate socialist agenda guaranteeing a failed state, which to hear you talk is actually your goal since you seem to think that only business should exist (as though it could without state administration and infrastructure).
That 17th-century chestnut is about as discredited as the view of nature vis a vis climate, to say nothing of ecology, taken by many who happen to, not coincidentally, share your view of the market.
I was referring to cost of housing.
Disagree. Artificial restraint of supply by the local govt causes a spike in prices. Itâs how the market allocates scarce resources.
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If I understand this story correctly, California residents are not losing their homes but their financial growth? Is it so broad that it only affects certain wage earners?
So demand doesnât drive prices, after all, youâre saying, now? Thereâs both too much demand to live there and too much money chasing the available stock. A solution of building more and charging market rates will not stanch the bleeding of newly homeless (in fact, the biggest spike in the past 5 years are 55+ who werenât homeless a day in their lives prior, but are losing what had been secure long-term accommodations thanks to market-driven inflationary frenzy and landlords wanting in on the action). People have been leaving because they are being driven out by the market.
Itâs also true that others at the opposite end of the spectrum are leaving because as many have pointed out in this thread California to them makes little sense on paper for its price-premium relative to what they need out of a location for their business, and to them I say yes, please do leave, itâs better for everyone, including you (which does not necessarily carry disrespect; where I get punchy is when they try to couch it as some indictment of California and, particularly, Californians and the culture that built Silicon Valley).
Thatâs not the only source of price spikes, and flailing this brittle, shriveled fig-leaf of a supposed axiom as a broad-brush is pretty, shall we say, rich, IMO.
Hey! I resemble that!
I got a two year AA at Casper college and to finish my degree I had to move out of state. Completed my degree in northern Colorado and never went back. Iâm not in the tech industry but the medical field. My degree is portable to anywhere with a hospital.
I have a close cousin that lives in the LA area. What surprised me wasnât so much the high price of housing but rather that my profession didnât pay much higher than Colorado! I was much more financially secure and able to buy a house in Colorado than California.
I keep hearing talk of the college bubble is about to burst (referring to the cost). Is this just wishful thinking or is there some truth to it?
Iâm sure everyone in that photo is there because they just hate everywhere else so much.
Edit: Oh, nice, @sawgrass, editing your original post that showed a homeless encampment. Nice try.
Now you show a photo of a traffic jam. Good thing those never happen outside California, and Iâm sure wherever thereâs too few cars for that to happen is the very best place for a new business that relies on that infrastructure 'cause like hell are they gonna build transit since thatâs icky government red tape and unions and all sorts of other âperversions of the marketâ.
Letâs see what you change it to next! Or maybe youâll delete it?
For posterity, hereâs your version 2 (notice the edit icon):
And yes, I edit my posts a lot for precision, not deceitful, wholesale replacement of content.
Do you mean to tell me that problems donât revolve around California? Surely, Californian policy is why its problems could be perceived as worse, rather than its being host to orders of magnitude greater ones far larger than itself, and inherent to the market, than elsewhere!
I think California just happens to be in the spotlight because Trump telling Newsom to fix or feds will step in.
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If you think itâs in the spot-light now, just wait 'till that âfixâ, which is likely to lead to a protracted legal battle while further destabilizing conditions on the ground. Meanwhile, corporations set a new record for tax not paid on profits, and their politics ensures as little aid as possible, ideally none, reaches those who require it for any viable opportunity to escape such conditions. If criminalizing victims of systemic inequality is your goal, you could at least be intellectually, to say nothing of rhetorically, honest about it.
Edit: Oh, really? You liked the reply identifying your animus to be animosity? Social media, indeed!
Iâm sure it does appeal to you to have authority swoop in to solve problems brought about by causes you find challengingly complex and frustratingly dissatisfactory to address, hamstringing means to constructively address them be damned. To relish othersâ suffering in lieu of your facing fear for your evident comfort in a system you deem them to threaten isnât a good look, I feel you need pointed out to you. Convincing yourself that fighting injustice is unjust for shielding/enabling whom you by definition deem therefor undeserving betrays a hubris, hypocrisy, and supremacism I find to go beyond race and class to a self-absorbed royalism, the antithesis of a democratic representative republic of, by, and for its people.
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Yeah thereâs no traffic jams, homeless, poverty, addicts, or liberals where youâre from. 