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This article has some interesting things to say, and paints a useful picture of California's politics. But, I think one of its flaws is that it lumps Tech and
by HillaryBriss 11y ago
This article has some interesting things to say, and paints a useful picture of California's politics.
But, I think one of its flaws is that it lumps Tech and Entertainment/Media into the same category. These industries are somewhat different.
For example, tech employment can be relatively robust for people in San Francisco and the Valley at the same time as Southern California's entertainment production workers are losing their jobs to other US states which offer relatively large tax incentives to production companies and studios.
And, I think, as a point of comparison, it's interesting that, in recent years, the California legislature handed the entertainment industry a large boost in tax credits for productions it kept in state (as opposed to competitors like Louisiana and Georgia).
And that's an important difference. I haven't seen the legislature giving, say, Yahoo, a special tax holiday if it can just get its act together and stop laying off people. And the state government's reaction to Uber has not been particularly friendly either. I see some antagonism to Tech in state and local government. And the Tech industry is still viewed as a monstrously fat tax cow by the government.
Still, the article's portrait of California as a "bifurcated" economy has some truth. The state contains a huge number of poor and middle class people who do not directly benefit from "Software Valley's" jobs machine. (The main thing they receive from it is some government services paid for by taxes on that machine's workers.)
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago>And, I think, as a point of comparison, it's interesting that, in recent years, the California legislature handed the entertainment industry a large boost in tax credits for productions it kept in state (as opposed to competitors like Louisiana and Georgia). What I always wonder is how Silicon Valley can have such an utterly monstrous cost of living problem, exacerbated by public policies that explicitly favor landowners and incumbent residents over scrappy young arrivals with new ideas and small budgets, and the tech industry doesn't just move somewhere cheaper out of sheer self-interest.
- emgeee 11y agoThe land owners and incumbents are the ones that provide the funding and expertise
- trhway 11y agogeneration ago they were the "scrappy young arrivals with new ideas and small budgets". And the generation before them... My former manager who bought house in Los Altos in 1981 still remembers how tough it was back then even with 2 high-tech salaries... Generation after generation the thing is working - may be something in the air? :)