Thanks for taking the time to write a thoughtful, serious reply! Sorry to offend you on the finance culture assessment. But, unlike SF, I’ll choose to be kind

Thanks for taking the time to write a thoughtful, serious reply! Sorry to offend you on the finance culture assessment. But, unlike SF, I’ll choose to be kind here rather than be nice. You may choose to talk about the family man in finance that works toward a career vs getting rich. And I’m not going to say that doesn’t exist: of course it does! Being able to talk about patterns doesn’t mean that individual exceptions aren’t possible. However, you have to admit that your ”hard working career builder” statement was designed to somehow liken this character to someone who actually labors for their money. I have to ask…why not work hard building a different career? The draw of money is the entire point. It’s not like you or I actually provide real, substantial, critical economic value. We work in jobs that can only exist because other folks are taking care of the essentials. So my point is: at some point, it’s not about any sort of perceived attitude working in the industry.(1) Having a city that only caters to eg finance or tech is what is problematic. It drives wealth inequality, it drives prices upwards, it makes homes and rents unaffordable. Ultimately leading to everyone else being forced out of their homes, desperately trying to find someone cheap enough to live while enduring ever longer commutes. This process is what destroyed the SF bay. Even pre pandemic, it was common for working class folks to have 90m commutes into SF to work. It’s why things close at 9, 10p in SF: if you’re closing, you’re getting home at midnight. It didn’t destroy NYC because NYC has a superior functioning government. NYCHA and actually enforced rent control does wonders as a counter force to gentrification. Building in NYC is lightning fast compared to SF, where it takes more than half a decade to build what NYC does in less than a year. And we see this result in the culture. To my first point, NYC came back from the pandemic while SF did not because it’s multiple cultures is robust, resilient, and adaptable. SF’s tech scene scattered in 2020 and the majority isn’t coming back. (1) it’s a little subtle, because I think it’s 2 things. The cultural / attitude mindset helps. But that’s not enough on its own. If the city embraces the rich folks and ignores the poor folks, it’s going to look exactly like SF when the good times go away.