4 ms·

If that were true I'd expect to see something of a continuous spectrum of suck extending from the 1970's to today. But instead it's not like that at all - the b

by 1_2__3 10y ago

If that were true I'd expect to see something of a continuous spectrum of suck extending from the 1970's to today. But instead it's not like that at all - the bay area is hugely prosperous and happy until the late 2000s when a confluence of factors led incredibly rapidly to where we are today. There is some truth to what you're claiming, but I'm tired of this "California just wanted to freeze itself in the 1960s and look how wrong they were." In truth everything was going pretty good for everyone until the last decade or two.

pjlegato 10y ago
The various land regulations such as Prop 13 and rent control were overtly billed as "ways to stave off all the social change that's been happening" when they were debated and passed in the 70s and 80s. It's not a guess or some sort of conspiracy theory. Review the newspaper polemics of the time. It was quite openly the goal. You can see exactly that continuous spectrum of decay in California in many places. The state has become ever more polarized into rich and poor, with less and less middle, during that entire time. This is partially a process that was going on everywhere in the US, but all the extra regulation in California that was designed to halt that process actually made it worse. The California middle class has been massively eroding since the '70s. Before that, you could drop out of high school and still get a job that would lead to you owning a house within a few years. Now, owning a house is impossible for almost everyone. The land regulations that restricted supply have made long term housing prices grow far faster than the national average: http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/US-San-Francisco-California-median-home-sales-prices-1971-2015-05.png http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/0... Huge tracts of formerly middle class suburbs near San Francisco and LA have become massive ghettoes -- where you still have to pay half a million dollars or more to buy a house next to thugs who openly sell crack 24 hours a day, where people are shot a couple of times a month. Where else in the US do you pay half a million dollars for a house in the ghetto? The middle class jobs have mostly evaporated -- other than sinecures in California's vast bureaucratic and public employee apparatus, in which case you get a job for life with a powerful, politically-connected union to keep you from ever being fired for any reason. Good luck getting one of those unless you have a friend or relative who's already there. Yes, things are great if you happen to be a high skilled tech worker in San Francisco during the late 90s or from circa 2010 to present, but this is a very small fraction of the population. Most Californians who don't have advanced computer programming skills only got squeezed harder by that influx of new money pushing up real estate prices still further. And we haven't seen anything yet. Just wait till the "smart farm" trend really kicks in: http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-06-09/factory-fresh http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-06-09/fac... Soon, very soon, robots will be picking all the produce in the Central Valley, and there will be millions of newly unemployed low-skilled workers flooding into San Francisco and LA looking for work.
deleted 10y ago
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by 1_2__3 10y ago

pjlegato 10y ago

The various land regulations such as Prop 13 and rent control were overtly billed as "ways to stave off all the social change that's been happening" when they were debated and passed in the 70s and 80s. It's not a guess or some sort of conspiracy theory. Review the newspaper polemics of the time. It was quite openly the goal. You can see exactly that continuous spectrum of decay in California in many places. The state has become ever more polarized into rich and poor, with less and less middle, during that entire time. This is partially a process that was going on everywhere in the US, but all the extra regulation in California that was designed to halt that process actually made it worse. The California middle class has been massively eroding since the '70s. Before that, you could drop out of high school and still get a job that would lead to you owning a house within a few years. Now, owning a house is impossible for almost everyone. The land regulations that restricted supply have made long term housing prices grow far faster than the national average: http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/US-San-Francisco-California-median-home-sales-prices-1971-2015-05.png http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/0... Huge tracts of formerly middle class suburbs near San Francisco and LA have become massive ghettoes -- where you still have to pay half a million dollars or more to buy a house next to thugs who openly sell crack 24 hours a day, where people are shot a couple of times a month. Where else in the US do you pay half a million dollars for a house in the ghetto? The middle class jobs have mostly evaporated -- other than sinecures in California's vast bureaucratic and public employee apparatus, in which case you get a job for life with a powerful, politically-connected union to keep you from ever being fired for any reason. Good luck getting one of those unless you have a friend or relative who's already there. Yes, things are great if you happen to be a high skilled tech worker in San Francisco during the late 90s or from circa 2010 to present, but this is a very small fraction of the population. Most Californians who don't have advanced computer programming skills only got squeezed harder by that influx of new money pushing up real estate prices still further. And we haven't seen anything yet. Just wait till the "smart farm" trend really kicks in: http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-06-09/factory-fresh http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-06-09/fac... Soon, very soon, robots will be picking all the produce in the Central Valley, and there will be millions of newly unemployed low-skilled workers flooding into San Francisco and LA looking for work.

deleted 10y ago

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