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Sorry but I disagree that affordable housing is the problem. Housing is a symptom of the problem, just like how inflation in the Bay Area is rampant over everyt

Sorry but I disagree that affordable housing is the problem. Housing is a symptom of the problem, just like how inflation in the Bay Area is rampant over everything. Day care costs are exorbitant. Groceries, gas prices, inflation is across the board because well paid tech workers are driving up the costs. Even costs to get work done on your house or property has doubled in 6 years. The real reason is that there are too many tech companies that refuse to build equivalent headquarters in other cities. It's concentrating the wealth of companies that gather money from around the world in a tiny area, and that by definition will create inflation. If Google, Facebook, etc, created equivalent headquarters in Kansas City, in Cleveland, etc (as in, they have equal say as the main HQ and just as good projects), then I believe the wealth could be spread over the entire country or globe, and everyone would benefit. People NEED to move away from Silicon Valley. Having so many rich, tech workers living in a small area is toxic, just like Wall Street and Manhattan is toxic. Once the pressure of adding thousands of 6 figure engineers coming to the Bay Area recedes, then housing will fall to a more rational level. I've been living the in Bay Area since the dot com boom. Housing prices were always high, but never this toxic, until frankly the FANG stocks started breaking out in around 2011/2012. You can see this in the stock market as well. When these global internet companies started consolidating their power and consequently their wealth, it created a mass migration to the Bay Area of tech workers who were paid well above the average, and caused massive inflation. You want to start a company? Go somewhere else. Be a part of the solution, not part of the problem.

harimau777 8y ago
I think the problem is that a lot of those cities are not ones people want to live in. On the other hand, SF has amazing weather, culture, decent public transportation (at least compared to many other cities), permissive drug laws, relatively open work culture (e.g. dress code, work from home, perks), a progressive culture, etc.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Which is precisely why it's expensive to live in the Bay Area. It's hugely in demand. And the YIMBY folks don't have the ability to claw back some of the property rights of existing property owners to upzone. pfarnsworth is spot on. Either pay the market rate, or move somewhere cheaper. This is primarily the fault of large tech employers who refuse to relocate jobs elsewhere. They are causing the housing inflation with their deep pockets for worker salaries.
  - harimau777 8y ago
    If I were going to take a job in, for example, the midwest, I would expect a higher salary in order to compensate for the lower quality of life during the winter. Wouldn't that then defeat the purpose of moving a company somewhere cheaper in order to pay people less? Edit: toomuchtodo brings up a good point. I was thinking more in terms of a higher pay after adjusting for cost of living (e.g. being payed the same amount as an engineer in SF while living in Cleveland). Otherwise it seems like I would be taking both a pay cut and a cost of living cut.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      You're making an assumption that there aren't others who would take the job without requiring a bump in pay to compensate for winters (quite a contingent of tech workers already in Chicago, for example). There are already large cohorts of tech professionals who take a pay cut (not saying they should, but they do) for the ability to work remote. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Google and Facebook are expanding rapidly in the downtown Chicago area. [1] Bay Area tech salaries are already the highest in the nation; you could make the pitch to an employer, but I think you'd be hard pressed to get a higher salary for living in the midwest (considering the much lower cost of living). Midwest workers (tech workers anywhere outside of the Bay Area really) would be thrilled to get SFBA salaries where they live. > Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook is negotiating to lease more than 200,000 square feet in a recently constructed office tower at 151 N. Franklin St. in the Loop, according to sources. > Meanwhile, sources said, Google plans to add more than 100,000 square feet of office space in the city’s Fulton Market district, where the company already has a large Midwest headquarters. > The new Facebook space alone would be large enough to accommodate more than 1,000 employees. [1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ori/ct-biz-facebook-google-chicago-expansion-ryan-ori-20180601-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ori/ct-biz...
      - justin66 8y ago
        > Bay Area tech salaries are already the highest in the nation; you could make the pitch to an employer, but I think you'd be hard pressed to get a higher salary for living in the midwest (considering the much lower cost of living). Not just the lower cost of living. Being compensated for living through winters is a novel idea, but if you're thinking about the soft factors that don't directly involve salary and cost of living, not having to deal with the bay area commutes is pretty strong compensation in and of itself. Having to take a pay cut and live through a season you get to ignore in CA could be kind of a bummer for some people. Getting as much as 20% of your waking life back in time spent not commuting can be a pretty strong compensation for it, though. edit: please do comment in addition to downvoting, if you see a problem with the logic here
- nitrogen 8y ago
  To some extent, a large enough diaspora from the bay area could bring that culture to other cities over time.
  - Fins 8y ago
    Thgat's not necessarily a good thing. Also, one would think it is pretty clear that there is a correlation between SF's "culture" (like permissiveness about drug use) and the amount of excrement and needles on the streets.
ummonk 8y ago
>Day care costs are exorbitant. Groceries, gas prices, inflation is across the board because well paid tech workers are driving up the costs. Even costs to get work done on your house or property has doubled in 6 years. That's cause wages of other workers go up, because the supply of workers dwindles if wages don't keep up with housing costs (people wouldn't work here if they weren't payed enough to afford to live within say an hour and a half of work).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
awucs 8y ago
I think you are correct to some degree. With the housing market being essentially an additional equity program I don't really see how anyone will be able to convince people to take a huge loss, or give up future gains, so there can be affordable housing.
poof131 8y ago
Housing in the Bay Area (and California) is going to continue to get worse due to Prop 13. It destroys liquidity in the housing market. Elderly people can’t downsize since their taxes would rise dramatically, thus the abundance of retired couples in multi-bedroom houses and young families in apartments. People with multiple homes are incentivized to rent and never sell since they are receiving a government subsidy through below market tax rates. Until Prop 13 is dealt with California will continue to be the leader in inequality with a landed gentry extracting more than their share from the state. The density of tech only exacerbates the problem in the Bay Area, but it is a California problem.
- justinzollars 8y ago
  I'm not familiar with the YIMBY stance on Prop 13, but as an advocacy group that endorses local measures, you could join and promote propositions that would eliminate 13 - and have a real effect as our voter guide is sent to tens of thousands of bay area residents.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - zapita 8y ago
    I generally approve of Yimbi, but eliminating prop 13 is not something they have the influence or the scale to accomplish on their own, or even to lead in a credible way - not even close. California is very large, and prop13 is very popular with a majority of the state’s population. It would take a landslide political change at the state level to revert it, and an alliance of diverse political interests unlike anything that exists in California today (to my knowledge).
    - justinzollars 8y ago
      True. But you could say exactly the same thing about any advocacy group. Its a big country. Its a big state.
justinzollars 8y ago
> You want to start a company? Go somewhere else. Be a part of the solution, not part of the problem. We can agree to disagree. I just hope that the people that really believe in the merits of San Francisco, believes in its future and does not want to leave will work with me to make it more affordable for everyone.
- pfarnsworth 8y ago
  You blame home owners and Prop 13 for causing skyrocketing house prices, meanwhile homeowners and Prop 13 have always been here for decades with not too much inflation. Meanwhile, tech in SF has been a recent phenomenon, and correlates perfectly to when housing prices started going crazy. In 2007/2008 I was renting a 1 bedroom apartment in SF for $1700/month. High, but not toxic. Now that same one has doubled. I've been here 20+ years and I've never seen the housing market like I have in the last 7 years. Look at the stock market of FANGs since Jan 2011. Google has gone up 8x including splits. Amazon is up 11x. Facebook is up 6x since IPO. Netflix is up 15x. Apple is up 28x (including 7:1 split). Even legacy companies like eBay are up 7x. Microsoft is up 6x. There are a lot of regular employees who are extremely wealthy of the last several years. They are driving up the prices everywhere for housing. There is an insatiable amount of inordinantly rich tech workers that are ruining it for everyone. I'm one of them as well. So are you. If you really want to do the right thing, go to the Midwest like Kansas City, with a good university and great fiber infrastructure. Or go to Detroit. But you won't because similar to NIMBYs, you're a "Not for my Startup" mentality thinks you need to be in SF to become a billionaire. Then you're part of the problem.
  - drdeadringer 8y ago
    I actually am curious on this: What would you do if you had "the start-up dream", move as you prescribe to the parent comment or stay and "be part of the problem"?
bradleyjg 8y ago
The Bay Area is 7 million people. That’s not even top ten in the US, never mind the world. It is no way, shape, or form full. Ya’ll need to start acting like a major city rather than stamping your collective feet while shouting “I won’t grow up!” And if you refuse either Sacramento or Washington DC should force the issue for the good of the state and country respectively. Almost the entire country is filled with places to live in detached houses on significant fractions of an acre (or more). The NIMBYs can sell to developers for huge amounts of money and move to any one of them.
- throwaway66666 8y ago
  I live in SF and face daily the eldritch horror abominations NIMBY's brought upon this world. It's getting increasingly hard trying to keep my sanity. Their nextdoor incantations against a 24 hour bus schedule because it will degrade road quality (true story). The little leaflets they put in my mail inviting me to join their cthonian ceremonies of opposing and punishing a neighbor's hybris. The heretic wanted to remodel his parking space, but construction will raise up dust which their kids will breath while playing outside (true story). Trying to reason with them is impossible, it only results in madness.. Ok now, joking aside (though the 2 examples I mentioned are 100% true, they opposed a late-night bus because it would cause noise + somehow degrade road quality. Who can reason with old-bitter people with too much time on their hands?). The issue I am seeing with them selling to developers for huge amounts of money, is that the developers will want to make that that amount of money++ back. Current zoning laws limit the height of buildings, so... their only option is to only build small insanely overpriced condos and grant permissions only to super-upscale businesses, that only rich or rich-young-tech people can afford and want. Perhaps the market will correct that in time, but powerful people as aways will fight for that to not happen. I feel we need more relaxed zoning laws, let people build bigger and higher.
  - bradleyjg 8y ago
    > I feel we need more relaxed zoning laws, let people build bigger and higher. Bingo. If there is currently a detached house of 1500 sq ft that can be torn down and in its place can be put up a six story building apartments totaling 8000 sq ft of livable space, there’s plenty of room for profit for the prior homeowner, the developer, and also for the new units to be more affordable than what was there before. Increasing the supply is a win-win-win. As I said, if necessary—-and it looks like it is—-higher levels of governments should step in to prevent local, narrow minded, parochial interests from killing the goose that lays golden eggs.
Eridrus 8y ago
I moved away from the bay area, because housing is the problem. Or at least housing + transit. The reason labor is expensive is because housing is expensive, which is totally unsurprising because everyone's cost to live there is high. Sure, if tech workers stopped living there then there would not be as significant a problem, because housing prices would have to fall. On one hand, spreading work around the country/world is good, on the other hand there are real productivity gains by having people in physical proximity, as we can see from the fact that cities are the most productive parts of the world.
xvedejas 8y ago
Groceries are actually one of the things which have not been getting more expensive over time. The national calculated inflation rate is such that $100 in 1983 is equivalent in purchasing power to $253.02 in 2018. In the bay area, "food at home" (in linked document) is found to cost 252% what it did in 1982-84. https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/2018/pdf/consumerpriceindex_sanfrancisco_20180510.pdf https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/2018/pdf/consu... This document interestingly shows that motor vehicles have been getting cheaper in the bay area, even before adjusting for inflation.
nickbauman 8y ago
An increasing number of devs are moving to places like Phoenix and air commute to work in SV housing costs have gotten that out of control.
bedhead 8y ago
Surprised this comment is getting downvoted, because it is dead-right. The core "problem" is that the Bay Area has experienced a gold rush unlike any other in human history, and it's happened so quickly that some things can't keep up. Yes, there are regulatory problems that have compounded this, but those problems are just tangential and I doubt fixing them would do a ton to completely alleviate housing affordability. The problem is that Silicon Valley is awash in money.
- kelp 8y ago
  I think the issues with the comment is the implication that the wealth creation is the problem. That framing leads to solutions that tend towards reducing the wealth creation. That seems a bit like cutting off our nose to spite our face. We want society to be more wealthy, and the tech industry has been a huge creator of wealth. The other thing about the tech industry is it's fairly unique in how widely it distributes that wealth. What other industry gives stock options to low-level employees? Sure tech founders get a disproportionate share, but look at a different industry, and it would be rare to see any ownership extended beyond higher level employees, but in tech, stock compensation is ubiquitous. (this may be due to a labor shortage, and yes you can point at things like Amazon's warehouse workers as a counter example) The trouble is now we have quickly raising housing costs, and a large portion of the population who's quite wealthy, living next to many who are not doing nearly as well. Crime and general unhappiness are not necessarily linked to poverty; it's highly linked to inequality. This is likely why we have so much property crime in San Francisco. Income inequality. When you see the person next to you is doing much better, you get mad. Frame this so it's not about limiting wealth creation, but about limiting income inequality.
  - pfarnsworth 8y ago
    Massive wealth creation in a very small geography creates inflation. I don't see how this is controversial in any way. Ask the citizens of Portland why they are so angry at Californians moving into the area. It's because a small number of Californians are moving into the area, and they are considerably richer than Portlandians, so they drive up the housing prices for everyone. The exact same phenomenon is happening right now there, and Seattle where rents and house prices are skyrocketing because of wealth.

harimau777 8y ago

I think the problem is that a lot of those cities are not ones people want to live in. On the other hand, SF has amazing weather, culture, decent public transportation (at least compared to many other cities), permissive drug laws, relatively open work culture (e.g. dress code, work from home, perks), a progressive culture, etc.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Which is precisely why it's expensive to live in the Bay Area. It's hugely in demand. And the YIMBY folks don't have the ability to claw back some of the property rights of existing property owners to upzone. pfarnsworth is spot on. Either pay the market rate, or move somewhere cheaper. This is primarily the fault of large tech employers who refuse to relocate jobs elsewhere. They are causing the housing inflation with their deep pockets for worker salaries.
- harimau777 8y ago
  If I were going to take a job in, for example, the midwest, I would expect a higher salary in order to compensate for the lower quality of life during the winter. Wouldn't that then defeat the purpose of moving a company somewhere cheaper in order to pay people less? Edit: toomuchtodo brings up a good point. I was thinking more in terms of a higher pay after adjusting for cost of living (e.g. being payed the same amount as an engineer in SF while living in Cleveland). Otherwise it seems like I would be taking both a pay cut and a cost of living cut.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    You're making an assumption that there aren't others who would take the job without requiring a bump in pay to compensate for winters (quite a contingent of tech workers already in Chicago, for example). There are already large cohorts of tech professionals who take a pay cut (not saying they should, but they do) for the ability to work remote. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Google and Facebook are expanding rapidly in the downtown Chicago area. [1] Bay Area tech salaries are already the highest in the nation; you could make the pitch to an employer, but I think you'd be hard pressed to get a higher salary for living in the midwest (considering the much lower cost of living). Midwest workers (tech workers anywhere outside of the Bay Area really) would be thrilled to get SFBA salaries where they live. > Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook is negotiating to lease more than 200,000 square feet in a recently constructed office tower at 151 N. Franklin St. in the Loop, according to sources. > Meanwhile, sources said, Google plans to add more than 100,000 square feet of office space in the city’s Fulton Market district, where the company already has a large Midwest headquarters. > The new Facebook space alone would be large enough to accommodate more than 1,000 employees. [1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ori/ct-biz-facebook-google-chicago-expansion-ryan-ori-20180601-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ori/ct-biz...
    - justin66 8y ago
      > Bay Area tech salaries are already the highest in the nation; you could make the pitch to an employer, but I think you'd be hard pressed to get a higher salary for living in the midwest (considering the much lower cost of living). Not just the lower cost of living. Being compensated for living through winters is a novel idea, but if you're thinking about the soft factors that don't directly involve salary and cost of living, not having to deal with the bay area commutes is pretty strong compensation in and of itself. Having to take a pay cut and live through a season you get to ignore in CA could be kind of a bummer for some people. Getting as much as 20% of your waking life back in time spent not commuting can be a pretty strong compensation for it, though. edit: please do comment in addition to downvoting, if you see a problem with the logic here
nitrogen 8y ago
To some extent, a large enough diaspora from the bay area could bring that culture to other cities over time.
- Fins 8y ago
  Thgat's not necessarily a good thing. Also, one would think it is pretty clear that there is a correlation between SF's "culture" (like permissiveness about drug use) and the amount of excrement and needles on the streets.

ummonk 8y ago

>Day care costs are exorbitant. Groceries, gas prices, inflation is across the board because well paid tech workers are driving up the costs. Even costs to get work done on your house or property has doubled in 6 years. That's cause wages of other workers go up, because the supply of workers dwindles if wages don't keep up with housing costs (people wouldn't work here if they weren't payed enough to afford to live within say an hour and a half of work).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

awucs 8y ago

I think you are correct to some degree. With the housing market being essentially an additional equity program I don't really see how anyone will be able to convince people to take a huge loss, or give up future gains, so there can be affordable housing.

poof131 8y ago

Housing in the Bay Area (and California) is going to continue to get worse due to Prop 13. It destroys liquidity in the housing market. Elderly people can’t downsize since their taxes would rise dramatically, thus the abundance of retired couples in multi-bedroom houses and young families in apartments. People with multiple homes are incentivized to rent and never sell since they are receiving a government subsidy through below market tax rates. Until Prop 13 is dealt with California will continue to be the leader in inequality with a landed gentry extracting more than their share from the state. The density of tech only exacerbates the problem in the Bay Area, but it is a California problem.

justinzollars 8y ago
I'm not familiar with the YIMBY stance on Prop 13, but as an advocacy group that endorses local measures, you could join and promote propositions that would eliminate 13 - and have a real effect as our voter guide is sent to tens of thousands of bay area residents.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- zapita 8y ago
  I generally approve of Yimbi, but eliminating prop 13 is not something they have the influence or the scale to accomplish on their own, or even to lead in a credible way - not even close. California is very large, and prop13 is very popular with a majority of the state’s population. It would take a landslide political change at the state level to revert it, and an alliance of diverse political interests unlike anything that exists in California today (to my knowledge).
  - justinzollars 8y ago
    True. But you could say exactly the same thing about any advocacy group. Its a big country. Its a big state.

justinzollars 8y ago

> You want to start a company? Go somewhere else. Be a part of the solution, not part of the problem. We can agree to disagree. I just hope that the people that really believe in the merits of San Francisco, believes in its future and does not want to leave will work with me to make it more affordable for everyone.

pfarnsworth 8y ago
You blame home owners and Prop 13 for causing skyrocketing house prices, meanwhile homeowners and Prop 13 have always been here for decades with not too much inflation. Meanwhile, tech in SF has been a recent phenomenon, and correlates perfectly to when housing prices started going crazy. In 2007/2008 I was renting a 1 bedroom apartment in SF for $1700/month. High, but not toxic. Now that same one has doubled. I've been here 20+ years and I've never seen the housing market like I have in the last 7 years. Look at the stock market of FANGs since Jan 2011. Google has gone up 8x including splits. Amazon is up 11x. Facebook is up 6x since IPO. Netflix is up 15x. Apple is up 28x (including 7:1 split). Even legacy companies like eBay are up 7x. Microsoft is up 6x. There are a lot of regular employees who are extremely wealthy of the last several years. They are driving up the prices everywhere for housing. There is an insatiable amount of inordinantly rich tech workers that are ruining it for everyone. I'm one of them as well. So are you. If you really want to do the right thing, go to the Midwest like Kansas City, with a good university and great fiber infrastructure. Or go to Detroit. But you won't because similar to NIMBYs, you're a "Not for my Startup" mentality thinks you need to be in SF to become a billionaire. Then you're part of the problem.
- drdeadringer 8y ago
  I actually am curious on this: What would you do if you had "the start-up dream", move as you prescribe to the parent comment or stay and "be part of the problem"?

bradleyjg 8y ago

The Bay Area is 7 million people. That’s not even top ten in the US, never mind the world. It is no way, shape, or form full. Ya’ll need to start acting like a major city rather than stamping your collective feet while shouting “I won’t grow up!” And if you refuse either Sacramento or Washington DC should force the issue for the good of the state and country respectively. Almost the entire country is filled with places to live in detached houses on significant fractions of an acre (or more). The NIMBYs can sell to developers for huge amounts of money and move to any one of them.

throwaway66666 8y ago
I live in SF and face daily the eldritch horror abominations NIMBY's brought upon this world. It's getting increasingly hard trying to keep my sanity. Their nextdoor incantations against a 24 hour bus schedule because it will degrade road quality (true story). The little leaflets they put in my mail inviting me to join their cthonian ceremonies of opposing and punishing a neighbor's hybris. The heretic wanted to remodel his parking space, but construction will raise up dust which their kids will breath while playing outside (true story). Trying to reason with them is impossible, it only results in madness.. Ok now, joking aside (though the 2 examples I mentioned are 100% true, they opposed a late-night bus because it would cause noise + somehow degrade road quality. Who can reason with old-bitter people with too much time on their hands?). The issue I am seeing with them selling to developers for huge amounts of money, is that the developers will want to make that that amount of money++ back. Current zoning laws limit the height of buildings, so... their only option is to only build small insanely overpriced condos and grant permissions only to super-upscale businesses, that only rich or rich-young-tech people can afford and want. Perhaps the market will correct that in time, but powerful people as aways will fight for that to not happen. I feel we need more relaxed zoning laws, let people build bigger and higher.
- bradleyjg 8y ago
  > I feel we need more relaxed zoning laws, let people build bigger and higher. Bingo. If there is currently a detached house of 1500 sq ft that can be torn down and in its place can be put up a six story building apartments totaling 8000 sq ft of livable space, there’s plenty of room for profit for the prior homeowner, the developer, and also for the new units to be more affordable than what was there before. Increasing the supply is a win-win-win. As I said, if necessary—-and it looks like it is—-higher levels of governments should step in to prevent local, narrow minded, parochial interests from killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

Eridrus 8y ago

I moved away from the bay area, because housing is the problem. Or at least housing + transit. The reason labor is expensive is because housing is expensive, which is totally unsurprising because everyone's cost to live there is high. Sure, if tech workers stopped living there then there would not be as significant a problem, because housing prices would have to fall. On one hand, spreading work around the country/world is good, on the other hand there are real productivity gains by having people in physical proximity, as we can see from the fact that cities are the most productive parts of the world.

xvedejas 8y ago

Groceries are actually one of the things which have not been getting more expensive over time. The national calculated inflation rate is such that $100 in 1983 is equivalent in purchasing power to $253.02 in 2018. In the bay area, "food at home" (in linked document) is found to cost 252% what it did in 1982-84. https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/2018/pdf/consumerpriceindex_sanfrancisco_20180510.pdf https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/2018/pdf/consu... This document interestingly shows that motor vehicles have been getting cheaper in the bay area, even before adjusting for inflation.

nickbauman 8y ago

An increasing number of devs are moving to places like Phoenix and air commute to work in SV housing costs have gotten that out of control.

bedhead 8y ago

Surprised this comment is getting downvoted, because it is dead-right. The core "problem" is that the Bay Area has experienced a gold rush unlike any other in human history, and it's happened so quickly that some things can't keep up. Yes, there are regulatory problems that have compounded this, but those problems are just tangential and I doubt fixing them would do a ton to completely alleviate housing affordability. The problem is that Silicon Valley is awash in money.

kelp 8y ago
I think the issues with the comment is the implication that the wealth creation is the problem. That framing leads to solutions that tend towards reducing the wealth creation. That seems a bit like cutting off our nose to spite our face. We want society to be more wealthy, and the tech industry has been a huge creator of wealth. The other thing about the tech industry is it's fairly unique in how widely it distributes that wealth. What other industry gives stock options to low-level employees? Sure tech founders get a disproportionate share, but look at a different industry, and it would be rare to see any ownership extended beyond higher level employees, but in tech, stock compensation is ubiquitous. (this may be due to a labor shortage, and yes you can point at things like Amazon's warehouse workers as a counter example) The trouble is now we have quickly raising housing costs, and a large portion of the population who's quite wealthy, living next to many who are not doing nearly as well. Crime and general unhappiness are not necessarily linked to poverty; it's highly linked to inequality. This is likely why we have so much property crime in San Francisco. Income inequality. When you see the person next to you is doing much better, you get mad. Frame this so it's not about limiting wealth creation, but about limiting income inequality.
- pfarnsworth 8y ago
  Massive wealth creation in a very small geography creates inflation. I don't see how this is controversial in any way. Ask the citizens of Portland why they are so angry at Californians moving into the area. It's because a small number of Californians are moving into the area, and they are considerably richer than Portlandians, so they drive up the housing prices for everyone. The exact same phenomenon is happening right now there, and Seattle where rents and house prices are skyrocketing because of wealth.