Coastal Cities Priced Out Low-Wage Workers. Now College Graduates Are Leaving, Too. 156
The college graduates who fill white-collar jobs in the San Francisco area began to leave in growing numbers about a decade ago. From a report: More and more have moved to other parts of the country -- an accelerating outflow of educated workers that, in a poorer part of America, might be thought of as brain drain. When the pandemic arrived, these departures surged so sharply that the San Francisco area has lately lost more educated workers than have moved in. Over this same time, a similar pattern has been taking shape on the other side of the country. (Charts in the linked story.) And in the New York area, long a net exporter of graduates, swelling losses have reinforced the trend: Educated workers, dating to even before the pandemic, have been migrating away from the most prosperous parts of the country.
This pattern, visible in an Upshot analysis of census microdata, is startling in retrospect. Major coastal metros have been hubs of the kind of educated workers coveted most by high-powered employers and economic development officials. Economists have lamented the growing coastal concentration of their wealth. A politics of resentment in America has fed on it, too. These urban centers have become a class of their own -- "superstar cities" -- with outsize impact on the American economy fueled by the clustering of workers with degrees. But it appears in domestic migration data that, years after lower-wage residents have been priced out of expensive coastal metros, higher-paid workers are now turning away from them, too.
Working-age Americans with a degree are still flowing into these regions from other parts of the country, often in large numbers. But as the pool leaving grows faster, that educational advantage is eroding. Boston's pull with college graduates has weakened. Seattle's edge vanished during the pandemic. And the analysis shows San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and Washington all crossing a significant threshold: More college-educated workers left than moved in. For most of this century, large metros with a million residents or more have received all of the net gains from college-educated workers migrating around the country, at the expense of smaller places. But among those large urban areas, the dozen metros with the highest living costs -- nearly all of them coastal -- have had a uniquely bifurcated migration pattern: As they saw net gains from college graduates, they lost large numbers of workers without degrees.
This pattern, visible in an Upshot analysis of census microdata, is startling in retrospect. Major coastal metros have been hubs of the kind of educated workers coveted most by high-powered employers and economic development officials. Economists have lamented the growing coastal concentration of their wealth. A politics of resentment in America has fed on it, too. These urban centers have become a class of their own -- "superstar cities" -- with outsize impact on the American economy fueled by the clustering of workers with degrees. But it appears in domestic migration data that, years after lower-wage residents have been priced out of expensive coastal metros, higher-paid workers are now turning away from them, too.
Working-age Americans with a degree are still flowing into these regions from other parts of the country, often in large numbers. But as the pool leaving grows faster, that educational advantage is eroding. Boston's pull with college graduates has weakened. Seattle's edge vanished during the pandemic. And the analysis shows San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and Washington all crossing a significant threshold: More college-educated workers left than moved in. For most of this century, large metros with a million residents or more have received all of the net gains from college-educated workers migrating around the country, at the expense of smaller places. But among those large urban areas, the dozen metros with the highest living costs -- nearly all of them coastal -- have had a uniquely bifurcated migration pattern: As they saw net gains from college graduates, they lost large numbers of workers without degrees.
Guilty AF (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Guilty AF (Score:4, Insightful)
> not just laying my fat ass on a beach
Most people I know that like the beach don't just sit around on it. They swim, surf, paddle, boat, hike. Sure you might rest or relax a bit but I don't know anyone getting fat from sitting around the beach all the time.
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My guess is the poster didn't get fat from sitting around the beach. It's that the types of beach-related activities "not" involving sitting around didn't draw him. Whereas the activities in the new home do.
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I grew up in Santa Cruz, and have seen no shortage of fatasses laying on the beach. They might even have relatives who are not fatasses who are running around on the same beach. Nobody gets fat from sitting on a beach, they get fat from sitting on a beach (or a bench, or anything else really) eating potato chips and whatnot. Ask me how I know.
Priced out? (Score:2, Insightful)
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And if you look even deeper, you find that it's blue cities in red states that are dragging them down.
Re:Priced out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's cities in general dragging them down? Because ALL the major cities are blue cities. They're blue... wait... what a stupid set of descriptors red and blue are... Let's say cities are predisposed to pay attention to social issues because of their density. People in cities don't have 10 acres for every individual, they have very different problems to a deep rural area, or even a suburban area. People have to live close to each other. So you're more likely to see minorities in cities, more likely to see gays, more likely to see non-evangelical religions, more likely to see trucks without nuts hanging off the back, etc. Thus they turn someone more tolerant of social differences; or "blue".
At the same time, being crowded in like this means more crime, automatically. It also means more homeless people (why sit on the side of a rural road in Kansas asking for a handout when you can head into town instead?). It means more immigrants (go where the jobs are). And this leads towards those with fewer average brain cells saying "Cities kind of suck, therefore it's because they're liberal!"
The solution that every citizen should live on a farm is a non-starter. Get over it.
Re: Priced out? (Score:2)
Re:Priced out? (Score:5, Informative)
No, being in a denser population helps. Easier to steal cars, easier to rob houses, easier to sell drugs, etc.
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Yes, if you tolerate the wrong behaviors.
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If 7 people are shot to death in a small town or rural area, it will definitely be heard about by everyone within a couple hundred miles. It will be the talk of the town for months if not years.
Meanwhile 8 people were shot to death in Chicago just last weekend and it was merely a small footnote on the Monday evening news.
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I mean its easy to toss out statements like that.. but this is VERY much a put up or shut up situation...
And lets also get real here.. Municipalities/City Mayors don't have a LOT of power.. In fact their authority to rule and to decide actions, enact plans, and other functions are only granted by the STATE.
So if you want to look at it this way, Think of a company.
President = CEO
State Officials = Division Heads
Cities/Munici
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OK, I'll look.
Here's a list [police1.com] of the 10 counties in the US with the highest crime rates.
It's about half urban areas and half rural or small towns.
The one thing they all have in common is low median household incomes.
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Blue cities play hell with red state statistics I'm afraid.
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And that's fair, because those problems are hard to solve.
But the idea that municipalities trump state authority is.... laughable.
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Red cities tend to fare worse than Blue cities
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Every. Single. One.
It would be easier, if it were possible, to list the blue-city/red state combinations where that ISN'T the case. But I can't think of a one.
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I'll just ignore what I see with my own eyes, hear with my own ears, and believe your bullshit.
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Ha, I see what you did there! Edit out major urban areas which are always a region's primary driver of crime and then claim victory over how low the regions crime rate is over those regions that you have not edited the major urban areas out of. How wonderfully dishonest.
Re:Priced out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom requires morality of some sort. Absent morality, a free society lurches towards chaos.
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Morality is simply the majority rule of what is right. By definition you can't have an absence of morality.
Ethics is a tad more complicated.
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Look, it's simple - people tend to crap more often on SF streets than any so-called 'red city'.
I believe SF alone has a team of workers whose some task is to shovel human feces off the street.
That alone merits notice.
Ohhhhh its a designated city?
Re:Priced out? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how you can call a complete refusal to build more housing "progressive".
Re:Priced out? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's progressive because they do it to fight "gentrification" and "greedy developers."
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Maybe some but a good number have also left because San Fran is a literal shithole. Companies are closing up and abandoning the shithole in droves. Whole Foods opened a flagship store and closed it a year later because they couldn't deal with the rampant theft and drug use. Every week another major retailer packs up and goes away. Progressive policies have ruined the town but progressives don't care, they are on a holy crusade. Consequences be damned.
This comment about San Francisco pops up so much. I wish I knew how to get independent corroboration. Like, how much is this personal experience? How much is it true reports that have been cherry-picked to tell a one-sided story? How much is an honest attempt to get a representative picture by taking into account the full context?
I never lived there myself, but work in tech and used to visit the Bay Area a bunch up until five years ago. I loathed Mountain View and Palo Alto for being so shallow. You'd go in
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Re:Priced out? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well a little common sense can help. Are people paying ridiculous sums of money to live in this place? Yes? Then you can be pretty sure said place is not a "literal shithole" and the person saying as such has other reasons to disparage the place and isnt being honest about them.
As someone who is born, raised, and still lives near SF I can tell you the city certainly has more problems than it used to. The chief problem is the high property values and rents have increased the city's homeless population significantly which has created increased problems with crime. It's definitely not the worst city in America I've ever been to though and that's easily supported by data where SF doesnt even come close to the country's most dangerous city https://www.populationu.com/ge... [populationu.com] (they dont even make the 75 city list here)
Between proper data and a little common sense it's pretty easy to see that those painting SF as some kind of hell scape are not being honest.
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While I agree with you in general, California is definitely losing population, and I do think that is mostly driven by the insane cost of housing. It's the same in a lot of other areas around the globe.
Seeing it through the eyes of a millennial I think we're just seeing a realisation that the economy has changed. It's not about working hard and focusing on your career to grow your earnings. I mean, that works for about the upper 5-10% of people. For everyone else, it's about getting onto the biggest asset r
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While I agree with you in general, California is definitely losing population, and I do think that is mostly driven by the insane cost of housing.
I'm not sure what you mean by "while I agree with you..." as nothing you're saying is contradicting me but yes, California is losing population due to high property values. The communities that have the highest demand and therefor should be adding the most housing (areas like Silicon Valley) basically refuse to add any more than any other community so their problems spill onto other communities who also dont want to expand their housing growth and the problem continues to expand out. Here in Northern Califo
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Yes and no. Both you and the GP are forming equally uninformed views. You said it yourself, born, raised and lived near. That is another way of saying "this is all I've ever known".
While you're correct that SF isn't as bad as people make it out, your reasoning isn't right. People spend money on something when they need something and are ignorant of alternatives. This isn't just about housing mind you, it's about everything in life. Your decisions are made based on the information you seek out. You'd be amaz
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Yes and no. Both you and the GP are forming equally uninformed views. You said it yourself, born, raised and lived near. That is another way of saying "this is all I've ever known".
Nonsense, A) I provided actual data to support my point which you're ignoring and B) You're assuming I dont travel extensively which I do.
While you're correct that SF isn't as bad as people make it out, your reasoning isn't right.
No, it is. Housing costs are driven by supply and demand. If prices have risen to crazy highs in a major urban area that means demand has risen higher than supply. A massive decline in quality of life should reduce demand however. The fact that housing values havent declined recently strongly suggests that SF has not seen a massive decline in quality of life.
Now this isnt
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And why are the progressives letting big business own everything? They could just as well pass a law that restricts what a single entity could own in the residential space. Progressives run the entire state minus a few localities. They certainly run LA/Sac/SF. Those places should be pure liberal utopias.
Those "progressives" are just as corrupt as the republican politicians. They just spout bullshit that sounds good to their base.
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I feel fairly certain people have shit on the side walk in most major American cities.
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I think you meant to reply to the post above mine.
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I lived in SF in the 90's and early 00's, and I used to visit quite frequently. Now it is down to about once every year or two; most of my friends have left the city so limited reasons to go back.
But: I still love it. Yes, there are shitty areas. They have been shitty and scary for 30 years. There have been homeless people on the streets for 30 years as well, although it is much worse today (just like almost every other city). The people don't do it for me in the same way anymore... but that is mostly
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That's not actually true (Score:2, Informative)
1. Glut of stores
2. Remote work
3. Online shoping
Article mentions crime, but crime rates are low [abc7news.com]. Close to the bottom. So it's really only mentioned for classic "both sides" nonsense the media has done for decades to keep people from shouting "da librul media!" at them.
Are crime rates higher in big cities? No actually, they're not. To get those numbers you have to play with statistics. I learned this from a YouTuber named Beau Of The Fifth Column [youtube.com].
Short a
Re:That's not actually true (Score:4, Interesting)
Crime stats should be given as per-capita numbers. Right now, I don't see much crime in Silicon Valley that affects me personally, and I'm relatively close to a dividing area between good and bad neighborhoods, and there are a lot of homeless on the street a dozen yards away (and police move them out every few months, so very very un-progressive). And a murder on the border of the condo complex. On the other hand, I see myself retiring to a small rural town inheriting a house, but where I see a lot more crime, with lots more obvious poverty.
Some is just perception I think. For a high density area there are not more cases of crime on the evening news here than there is in the low density evening news in the rural town.
Also, as an anecdote, a very rural tiny town near where I grew up, maybe 2000 people at the time, had the highest crime rate per-capita for America one year in the 1970s. Which as a kid kind of frightened me a bit.
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An example might be "tech executive killed on streets of San Francisco". Was major headlines on some conservative news outlets, more "proof" of what a hell hole liberal cities are. Truth was he was killed by someone he knew, not by a homeless guy, not by a crazy person running around on the street, but a dispute with an acquaintance. The updated story was not widely reported, because it didn't fit the narrative they wanted to tell. A similar story - a homeless guy hitting someone with a rod in S.F., tur
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The CNN article you linked to is an opinion piece, not a research study.
The ABC 7 story focuses only on murder and violent crime. Property crimes like theft and burglary are higher than average for large cities, a factor in stores like Whole Foods leaving. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Your YouTuber is the one feeding people lines.
Watch the video I linked to (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a false narrative being pushed to make Democrat run cities (e.g. most if not all large ones) seem more dangerous.
Whole foods says a lot of things. Walgreens did too. Both were lies. They'd planned the store closings in advance. Walgreens is especially hilarious because the reason for the store closings was they were short on cash
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So you are claiming that profitable stores are being shutdown because these companies don't like making money? Clearly the stores aren't making money or they wouldn't be closing. Businesses don't close stores that turn a net profit. That wouldn't make any sense.
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Starbucks did this shit, too.
Shut down stores trying to unionize for being in "high-crime areas" that had statistically tiny crime rates.
Is your thing just that you'll blindly believe anything that makes you feel like you picked the right team, or what?
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So it's really only mentioned for classic "both sides" nonsense the media has done for decades to keep people from shouting "da librul media!" at them.
What do you suggest as the alternative to both sides, Fox News of only saying their side. Having both sides, trying to see the other sides point of view is important.
But what the media do now is SO much better than the classic method, of just telling the side you believe and calling out the opposite side as lairs. And I love it when these people say we "need to have a conversation" while not entertaining the opposing point of view.
You don't need to agree with the opposing opinion but refusing to even listen
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The both-sides-ism isn't really "telling both sides", it's more of a "make sure you show everything in a morally relativistic way, so that nothing anywhere can be construed by anyone as being clearly wrong"
As for the alternative? No idea. Figure that out, and I bet you get a Nobel.
Re:Priced out? (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, around the same time Whole Foods opened up a new location in San Francisco in the Stonestown mall on the other side of the city. It's beautiful, clean, and PACKED full of people every day of the week and is a rousing success. This is because it's located where people are working from home now. How come there's no news story about the success of the SF Stonestown Whole Foods?
So, your right wing news sources might want to spin the Whole Foods story, but the truth is it just boils down to economics.
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rIGHT w1NG pROPAGANDA - like this: https://twitter.com/KPIXtv/sta... [twitter.com]
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The other stores closed a long time ago -- again, read your article..most of the retail/trendy brand closings happened du
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On the barely-related subject of Chesa, I was one of those people who voted to recall. The dude was simply
Re:Priced out? (Score:4, Interesting)
Guess what.. Every city has had and WILL have flows and ebbs in their lifespan.. in the in the 60's it was the Midwest, in the 50;s it was DC and Baltimore, 70's and 80's it was NYC and Miami, , in the 90's it was Portland and Metro Seattle, in the Early 2000's it was Texas. Right now its the high cost cities/areas (Honolulu, California, Seattle, NY, etc...). Cities expand and contract (due more with economic pressures than anything else which ties into just about everything which sometimes hastens that change or slows it down) and none of it overnight. Some will leave over climate, others politics, still others because they are not "wanted" (look at the "south" and Texas for the exodus of LBGTQ and others leaving for simply SAFER passage, let alone racial/gender reasons). Right now we have a big "post pandemic" cleanup that EVERYONE (globally) is facing.. (high inflation, job contraction, stifled wages relative to high cost of living, etc..) and so everyone is doing whatever they need to make adjustments.. (some are going back to the old "Multi-generational homes", some are leaving for lower costs (which also equals lower wages and a higher expense burden on other goods/services which they over time find is about the same).
Now one thing that IS different is remote work which is allowing this shift to take place regardless of work.. The upside to this is it COULD democratize where you live (since your living and working locations don't HAVE to be the same).. But that also means for many it allows them to be where they feel most comfortable regardless of income. Some people are predicting the "midwest" and "south" to have a boon because of this.. and sure, there will be some that will flock to those areas, but then it also means when people move into an area they will be looking less about "jobs" and more about the Quality of life, health/safety, education, weather, if THEY are accepted, etc.. (which means that boon they are predicting will just be the usual reshuffling.. with concentrations of people of similar mindsets in areas.. and while this COULD be good, I this could also be VERY VERY bad.. (think about a state like FL where instead of it being pretty conservative and moderately racist (compared to other locations).. the hard core haters move in and turn it into a state wide "white supremacy" zone.. and while this sounds like hyperbole.. in a world where your employment and living can be separate zones... its almost inevitable for like minded to coalesce together.
At the end of the day, as my father once quipped: There is someplace for EVERYONE.. your job is to find out where that is.
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Large American Democrat-run cities have far worse problems post-pandemic because they had the genius idea to stop prosecuting most crime. And what do you know, they have more crime now than they did in the past couple of decades.
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Shut up. If someone is experiencing wage theft they can go to their state department of labor, which will investigate and absolutely cornhole the employer if it's true. All at no cost to the employee, who will be paid back wages plus interest. Take your whataboutism and shove it up your ass where it belongs.
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I couldnt help but look up your other posts given your incredibly assertive yet completely ignorant comments about SF. Maybe try explaining to the above poster why you care so much about SF. Dont just use anecdotes now, list all the facts and figures that support what you're claiming. Really show them how right you are.
Oh that's right, you dont have any data and by your own word you dont care about data even when others show it to you. You know SF is the worst because you know SF is the worst.
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This matches data I've already shown you so I'm not really sure what you're trying to accomplish with this post. SF has high larceny rates and somehow you think that makes it the worst city ever when there are cities like St Louis with 11 times the homicide rate or New Orleans with 4 times the rapes.
There are few things more idiotic than someone who is utterly clueless on a topic but insists they know all about it because some talking head told them they should be upset about it.
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Maybe some but a good number have also left because San Fran is a literal shithole.
Translation, "I'm a conservative with low self esteem and thus desperately need the fiction that San Francisco is hell on earth so I can feel better about myself"
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If it keeps these people from visiting, good riddance.
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Ha, fair point.
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s/self esteem/quality of life/;
A few recommendations.
I lived in the midwest for a while (my family moved there from Seattle when I was 16)
We were well off (My dad had a theory- making 6 figures in the midwest would make him live like a king)
Living in buildings that would be condemned in anything but a third-world country looks super fun.
I eventually finished high school in Oregon and got my ass back to Seattle.
Yes, my cost of living is high. But my disposable income is measure
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How San Francisco Became a Failed City https://www.theatlantic.com/id [theatlantic.com]... [theatlantic.com]. Go ahead and give it a read.
Anecdotes! Gotta love them because you can find someone to say anything so you can literally prove anything you want with them. Reading this nonsense these are all events that could happen in any major city in the US. And I mean really, the title of the article alone even gave me a chuckle as there is not a single proper metric that would make SF out to be a "failed city". "Failed cities" dont have average rents of modest family homes averaging 5k https://www.zumper.com/rent-re... [zumper.com] for instance. "Failed cit
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And now you're putting words in my mouth? Pure class man.
The fact is that there are cities in America that have far more problems than SF. Yes it has problems and they have gotten worse this last decade but it's insane the way idiots among our country's conservatives lash out at the city and yet you'll never hear anything about any other city in the US from them.
If you'd like anyone who isnt an idiot ultra partisan to ever take you seriously try using some real data like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/. [wikipedia.org]
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Relativism doesn't interest me. Compare any city to Mogadishu and it will look better. Nevermind that St. Louis hasn't had a republican mayor since 1945.
Hahaha, what? I'm actually a bit shocked to see this level of ignorance on Slashdot as all you're really saying is that "I dont care about facts and data, all I care about is what my right wing spin doctors tell me".
You cant even support your opinion with data but you've been told SF is just the worst by your "ideological superiors" and so now you parrot said nonsense without having any understanding like a stupid fucking bird. The city doesnt even have the highest homeless population in the US by a long sh
Re:Priced out? (Score:4, Insightful)
"left because San Fran is a literal shithole"
What motivates a person to choose a location? Often it is 'lifestyle', which can be interpreted in various ways; partytown, beach bunnies, wealth opportunities, etc. Some of these are of temporary interest and pass as our interests evolve.
When I went to San Francisco it was populated with beatniks; yes, Ginsberg and the like. I got to know them in the dingy coffee houses and clubs of the day. I spent time at Cochran's Billiards where the world's best players duked it out every nite. A few years later SF became a haven for a new generation of artists, hippies, and the Berkeley, Oakland, East Bay revolution. Since the time of Mark Twain, SF has been a hotbed of culture.
I've lived in many cities and long ago found the key to a 'place of interest'. To be interesting, a city must have culture in its slums. My motivation was and is culture and I often find the ghetto is an inspiration.
Tips: you won't find it in Seattle, Denver, Dallas, Omaha, Sedona or Boise. Yes they all have music & art venues for the wealthy, but culture will be harder to find. You might still find it in NYC, SF, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, N'Orleans. Even smaller cities (like the former Sedona or Nashville) can sprout culture. Chicago's underclass was once celebrated by a journalist named Studs Terkel who spent much of his life in barrooms interviewing and immortalizing the LCD (lowest common denominator) people of the city. You could do worse. Culture can happen anywhere but some environments encourage them. When the poorest have culture, you can bet that it is widespread in the area.
-- Or you could choose a location with great beaches, parties, or wealth opportunities.
not a red-vs-blue thing (Score:2)
> Maybe some but a good number have also left because San Fran is a literal shithole.
There are just too many people who WANT to be in SF, rich and poor. You can only fit so many and then bad things start happening. It's not a red-vs-blue thing. Those who remain are self-filtered to be people who are willing to tolerate the downsides of over-crowding.
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It's not a red-vs-blue thing.
But is it a Red vs. Blue thing [youtube.com]?
There are way more "Coastal Cities" than those. (Score:2)
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Nature's way... (Score:1)
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Of breaking up and dispersing the liberal power blocks in those cities.
Yup. Those liberals are relocating to areas where fascists are entrenched and changing voting demographics. It's why those fascists keep making it more difficult for people to vote so they can keep their regimes in power.
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Yes, anyone who disagrees with any portion of your crazy woke agenda is obviously a fascist. Asshole.
Of course not.
But then again, if your solution to the demographic problem is restricting their ability to vote... well actually ya, you probably are a fucking fascist, and that you're against their "crazy woke agenda" is simply a slightly interesting footnote.
Great news! (Score:1)
This is awesome! Seriously ... it makes NO logical sense that the nation is somehow better off concentrating as many "tech-savvy" people as possible in a few major coastal cities. It's just an artifact left over from the early days of the personal computer, really. And even decades ago, there were companies who realized they could build and sell computers without a requirement of having a headquarters in Silicon Valley. (Gateway 2000 was a good example. It was a winning strategy to set up a corporate HQ in
Housing as a financial product (Score:1)
Stop the sardine-can shit, spread humans out (Score:1)
Sorry, but not everyone can fit in the good-weather places. There's plenty of land in the middle of the USA, and even empty houses in the rust-belt.
Many are just going to have to accept bad weather to get decent housing. Humans have been living in extreme environments for tens of thousands of years. And you'll have A/C and heat, unlike Grog in 20,000 bc.
Spread the fuck out!
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Ok, you move to BFE and tell us about it.
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Bye!
WFH? (Score:2)
If they can all work from home, then why should they stay in the most overpriced regions? Spread out and they'll be able to afford a house, car and pay back their student debt. Sounds like a win win to me.
I would love if it made things more affordable in those coastal cities but sadly it will probably just push up the "cheap" places to live and then only well paid people will be affording a house.
Sign of the times I suppose.
It's only part of the story (Score:2)
The story is not complete without mentioning that so many people could opt to move there but they don't.
Parasitic economics (Score:2)
The parasitic economy will follow them wherever they move it eventually. There will always be a segment of the population who have no practical, valuable skills but whose only ability is to convince everyone that a) they should be in charge and b) whatever they want to do will get done no matter the cost. Money is merely the tool. When coupled with impenetrable legalese, bureaucracy always grows and outgrows the food source.
Let's not forget though... (Score:2)
...that whenever over the last couple of years someone mentions the rather obvious fact of population flight from California, there are at least three posters who show up regularly angrily insisting such a thing isn't happening and is just 'fake news'.
CEOs (Score:2)
CEOs...tell me more about how you're going to retain top tier talent while forcing everyone to come to the office.
Still resisting remote work because something something office good?
The cost of living in these cities is ridiculous and what you get for those high prices is trash. This is true even for workers making good money.
I will look more in to the actual crime stats based on some comments in the thread but, subjectively, San Francisco around the convention center was really becoming a horror show. I
"College" graduates (Score:2)
Define "college"? Lately, this includes community "colleges" and vocational "colleges," whose graduates are not going to be among top earners. So, it is not clear whether this outflux is any different than things were before, except to prove that low quality degrees do not get you high pay.
Not really (Score:1, Interesting)
Getting underperforming people to head to areas where they can do second-string stuff is just fine.
The top quality people left even earlier, because they could see the coming decline earlier as well. For example, I stopped even travelling to SF regularly about six years ago and now only go if I must...
All of the stuff California does, someone will have to pay for. And so people leave to avoid the bill, and the horrific effects of income inequality NYC and SF have built up over time...
On a larger scale yo
Re:Not really (Score:4, Informative)
That step was made more daunting with our (relatively recent) implementation of an Expatriation tax. This tax applies if any of the following apply...
Peeling the onion, if you have a decent sized retirement account, make a million bucks a year in long term gains, or 500k in short term gains you're going to be on the hook with Uncle Sam for years after you leave.
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They concentrate wealth, which makes everything else higher cost, which attracts MORE high income/high net worth people because there is a supply of the goods/services THEY want, which eventually prices out the lowest of the low and slowly does the same with the middle. You see this now in CA where there are the "working homeless" (people that have good jobs) but are basically priced out of the market (now to be fair, Many if not most are not REALL
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California cities could solve their housing cost issues by letting developers build more housing, but the existing residents keep refusing for a variety of different reasons. So now they have massive homeless camps and all manner of other problems.
So... the existing residents are like "No! No low cost housing, not in my back yard!"
Then the homeless camps start going up and "No! No homeless camps, not in my back yard!"
And... then they all leave and the existing residents start wondering why all the cafes etc are closing down (because they can't find staff).
I guess the existing residents will have to make their own coffee. Maybe theres an opportunity for a "make it yourself" cafe?
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And the problem isn't developers building more houses, its that the developers building homes are not building it for "low income" they are building to make money... so inventory isn't REALLY the problem.. its INVENTORY at various price points that people can afford that's the issue. But the capitalistic model says if someone will pay 500
Re: Not really (Score:2)
This is normally called "getting old".
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is that a significant number of top notch universities are located in extremely expensive areas. Part of the reason these areas are expensive in the first place is due to the universities. It feeds itself. Students stick around after graduation, start up a new company, get rich, raise the cost of housing, send their kids to the same university, repeat... I'm pretty sure this is happening in some non-coastal areas too: Austin, Chicago, etc.
Many of these universities have on-campus housing, bu
Re:No loss to the coastal cities... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that a significant number of top notch universities are located in extremely expensive areas. Part of the reason these areas are expensive in the first place is due to the universities. It feeds itself. Students stick around after graduation, start up a new company, get rich, raise the cost of housing, send their kids to the same university, repeat... I'm pretty sure this is happening in some non-coastal areas too: Austin, Chicago, etc.
Many of these universities have on-campus housing, but also they may be building this housing at a slower rate than the student population is growing...
In the long term, maybe it's just re-asserting that high level universities are only for the elite, despite the brief period of time when they were more egalitarian in the 60s to 80s.
Universities had their highest enrollment both in terms of total numbers and percentage of the population just prior to the pandemic. Enrollment is down at most colleges since and honestly should be lowered because too many people were getting useless degrees while racking up a lot of debt they couldn't discharge through bankruptcy.
The top universities weren't really responsible for this. They might offer a few bullshit degrees to the wealthy, but those people aren't taking out loans and even if they aren't qualified, their parents were happy to grease a few palms or pay for a new building. The older ones have so much money that they can give full rides to qualified students who are dirt poor and couldn't afford even a state school.
It's the state schools that by and large kept chasing enrollment for more tuition dollars even if they knew that some of those students would just fail out. They didn't care, they squeezed a few semesters worth of tuition payments out of the kids at the least. If the degree in interpretive 17th century Persian underwater basket weaving didn't help a student get a job, no skin off the university's back.
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The best of the best have their choice of locations. And they are no longer willing to pay the most expensive rent in the nation to live in SF, where they'd be treated to a fresh dookie on their doorstep each morning, followed by a walk through a bunch of meth zombies. SF is over for the near future. Some day it will hit rock bottom, the progressive dingbats will be kicked out of office, and sanity restored. But before that happens, connected people will buy up all available real estate.
Re:Come on over to Texas, y'all! (Score:5, Interesting)
Coastal cities will always have an appeal and they will always be more expensive. Many have more favorable weather and most do not have room to continue growing. Supply and Demand.
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Houston *is* a coastal city. Sure, the actual name of the city on the coast is Galveston, but there is really no break between Houston and Galveston. And home prices in Galveston aren't that much higher.
Yes, real estate taxes are higher in Texas, typically about 3% of the home's value per year. But this is offset by zero state income tax. It all comes out in the wash.
Yes, certainly, supply and demand. But also Texas gives builders freedom to build pretty much wherever they want to. Much of Houston has no la
Texas isn't really cheaper (Score:2)
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If Houston was right on the gulf
Man, the Port of Houston [wikipedia.org] is already the second busiest port in the entire US. Just imagine how much busier it would be if Houston was actually on the coast! </s>
While real estate is cheaper, aren't real estate taxes in Texas among the highest in the country?
I've heard that said many times. I've even repeated it many times because it has the ring of truthiness to it. I stopped repeating it after a remote coworker and I compared housing costs a year or two back. We found that our homes were valued at nearly the same amount, but his home was smaller by several hundred square feet, his property was