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It’s not quite that simple. A teacher for a Silicon Valley school can’t yet easily commute from Buffalo. And the limited housing in Silicon Valley will be consu

It’s not quite that simple. A teacher for a Silicon Valley school can’t yet easily commute from Buffalo. And the limited housing in Silicon Valley will be consumed by techies. Yet I agree that more tech businesses being in places with lower costs of living would help a ton. And I’d be up for anything that - in addition to housing in places that need it - tried to draw the highest paying businesses to places like Buffalo. Yet, it’s not that simple still, given remote work. People still are going towards more attractive locations and buying up the housing. And that’s very hard to legislate against.

PaulHoule 3y ago
Lets put it this way. If "Big Tech" relocated 50,000 jobs into swing states it would be the end of the Trumpist Republican party. And it wouldn't cost billions of dollars, it would save billions of dollars. If Apple, Google and such weren't near-monopolies that can afford to burn billion dollar bills they might well be forced to move their operations to somewhere cost competitive.
- Projectiboga 3y ago
  But then their taxes would go up. They are happy to give to both political parties, but they ultimately don't want to pay much of anything to support any kind of social progress.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    If you really believe the story that there is something uniquely productive about SV then it is really the land and community that are valuable and that community would be justified in raising taxes drastically until “Big Tech” started to move away.
Gibbon1 3y ago
Maybe 35 years ago read an article about a study of the reasons corporations move their head quarters. The biggest reason was to be close to where the CEO and VP's want to live. That sticks with me more and more. Because if true we're spending an enormous amount of resources on that. My snide comment about unaffordable housing in San Francisco has been, maybe those VC's can point their fire hose of money somewhere else for a while.

PaulHoule 3y ago

Lets put it this way. If "Big Tech" relocated 50,000 jobs into swing states it would be the end of the Trumpist Republican party. And it wouldn't cost billions of dollars, it would save billions of dollars. If Apple, Google and such weren't near-monopolies that can afford to burn billion dollar bills they might well be forced to move their operations to somewhere cost competitive.

Projectiboga 3y ago
But then their taxes would go up. They are happy to give to both political parties, but they ultimately don't want to pay much of anything to support any kind of social progress.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  If you really believe the story that there is something uniquely productive about SV then it is really the land and community that are valuable and that community would be justified in raising taxes drastically until “Big Tech” started to move away.

Gibbon1 3y ago

Maybe 35 years ago read an article about a study of the reasons corporations move their head quarters. The biggest reason was to be close to where the CEO and VP's want to live. That sticks with me more and more. Because if true we're spending an enormous amount of resources on that. My snide comment about unaffordable housing in San Francisco has been, maybe those VC's can point their fire hose of money somewhere else for a while.