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'Root Cause' of high housing costs is in the success of the tech companies that are rooted in Silicon Valley. Specifically tech because of their: 1. Penchant f
by 11thEarlOfMar 8y ago
'Root Cause' of high housing costs is in the success of the tech companies that are rooted in Silicon Valley. Specifically tech because of their:
1. Penchant for offering stock options as a form of compensation.
2. Extraordinary growth in scope and profits.
3. Leverage of virtually free computing and network power, which makes the output of a single engineer distributable to billions of consumers. This justifies 'whatever it takes' salary structures.
4. Very high density of these companies in Silicon Valley.
Among the current top 100 US tech companies by Market Cap, 14 are in Silicon Valley, representing > $4 Trillion in 'new money' market cap, combined:
Apple: $929 Billion
Google: $830 Billion
Facebook: $557 Billion
Intel: $256 Billion
Cisco: $207 Billion
Oracle: $187 Billion
Netflix: $171 Billion
Nvidia: etc.
Comcast: etc.
Adobe: etc.
Broadcom:
Paypal:
Qualcomm:
Tesla: (#100 as of this writing)
The housing costs what it costs because supply is highly constrained and the companies that are headquartered here can afford to pay the salaries that enable their workers to pay these astonishing prices.