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Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco

latimes.com

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Re: Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco

#251

Post by bogomipz »

Moodles wrote: post #6

I'm leaving San Francisco next month also. I just see no reason to continue living here. The weather is nice in California, but the city is so mismanaged it's a joke. The homelessness has been an issue for decades now and local politicians always talk about it, but what do they actually do to help? I genuinely have no clue where the high taxes go. I just find it so ironic that San Francisco is a bastion of liberalism…

The article states:

>"Most who left San Francisco stayed in the Bay Area economic region, according to the study, and some 80% remained in the stateMost who left San Francisco stayed in the Bay Area economic region, according to the study, and some 80% remained in the state"

I'm curious where you fall on the exodus spectrum? Are you leaving California or just SF? Where did you decide to relocate to?

Re: Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco

#252

Post by rayiner »

judge2020 wrote: post #198
rayiner wrote: post #171

I’ve thought about this quite carefully, and I’m convinced we need to kick California out of the union. There is too big of an impedance mismatch with the rest of the country, and it creates and exports too much economic inequality. The usual retort to this is “what will you do without California’s economic engine?” And that’s a fair point—America without California will be less wealthy. But that will be fine; and in…

So your solution is not to kick the wealthy out of the union, but to kick California out of the union, simply because it has a large population of wealthy people?

The problem isn’t the wealthy people per se. The problem is industries like tech that generate highly paid upper middle class jobs that most people aren’t qualified for (and realistically will never be qualified for), as opposed to a larger number of middle class jobs that most people can be qualified for.

There is a reason people pine for coal and oil jobs. Head out to east or west Texas sometime. Lots of prosperity for middle class people through skilled, but not college required, jobs that most people can learn. But few upper middle class knowledge workers to drive up prices. The result is much more palpable middle class prosperity than places that are much richer on paper, like the Bay Area. (Also far less racial segregation, for exactly the same reason.)

Re: Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco

#253

Post by neonological »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #45

I never understood why companies paid the living costs of SF instead of locating in the Midwest or smaller cities. Someone told me it’s because SF is where all the talent goes so it would be unwise to locate elsewhere. Maybe COVID has revealed that geography is not as important to success as people believed.

At around 2000 - 2010 San Francisco had the reputation of being an amazing city. It wasn't a tech hub back then but it was a very cultural city with a lot of diversity, art and amazing views. A lot of people just wanted to live there, including tech workers. One my friends worked at google and lived in SF because she told me she was so "enamored" by the city.

In fact that's why those google shuttles exist. Because back then tons and tons of people loved the city so much that they wanted to live in SF while working in Mountain View.

When tech started rising more and more, tech workers started moving into SF turning it into the tech hub that it is today. This upped property values which in turn drove a lot of junkies and homeless people out of the condemned properties as those properties were getting repurposed to take advantage of the growing market.

That's why you see shit on the streets and needles everywhere. Rising property values essentially took what was happening behind closed doors and put it in the middle of the street. Everybody applauds all the social programs offered to the needy by SF until it they see it up close and personal.

So really there's two main root causes for why SF is the shit hole it is today:

1. Excessive amount of tech workers. 2. Drug availability.

The Tech worker thing is new. The Drug problem is old, although I'm not sure how much the recent opioid epidemic contributes to that.

Anyway this seemed like a tangent but to address your point: Companies wanted to move to SF because the tech workers WANTED to live there. The companies relocated based off the location of talent.

The situation today is the end result of a feedback loop produced by Tech companies and Tech workers from 2010 to now. Tech workers move to SF, so companies follow. This causes more workers to follow the companies.

You'll see this correlation everywhere. If companies don't want to be in a certain city, for sure there's an amount of skilled workers who don't want to be there either.

Re: Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco

#254

Post by 0xy »

ajmurmann wrote: post #142
throwaway6734 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBYism is a scourge

It's puzzling to me that NIMBYism seems so common among people who identify as liberal. It's clearly just another way of kicking away the ladder and is inherently with the stated goals of liberalism. At least neo-liberals seems to have gotten this one 100% correct.

Why would this be puzzling? Liberals support diversity until the rubber meets the road and they have to live near diverse sets of people. That's why they vehemently vote in favor of NIMBY policies.

Re: Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco

#255

Post by throwaway3699 »

notacoward wrote: post #203
throwaway3699 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities are the root cause, imo. As a society we need to spread out towards the countryside more.

If not done very carefully, that's just sprawl and bad in its own way. What we need IMO is not to move to the country so much, but back to smaller towns and cities. Some centralization of infrastructure - schools, hospitals, police and fire departments, roads and sewers etc. to connect them - still makes sense economically and ecologically. Somewhere between 50-100K or so new scaling problems always seem to appear -…

Ah, I'm not from the US, so it might just me the phrasing. "Countryside" where I live is the small towns and vily.

My opinion has only been made stronger since having been to San Francisco.

Re: Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco

#256

Post by cjsplat »

First, the underlying report is at : https://www.capolicylab.org/calexodus-are-people-leaving-cal...

Interesting to notice the title for the report vs. the title the LA Times headline writers selected.

Second, much of the data is being reported as Year over year deltas and ratios of %, which is mathematically accurate but hard to interpret. A increase of over 900% in people leaving S.F. sounds pretty spectacular, but the same metric has Alameda at over 400%, and LA is over 130%

I got estimates of the populations from https://www.california-demographics.com/counties_by_populati..., and used that to normalize the exit rate by percent of population.

S.F definitely leads, with 2.3% net leaving, but only 19 of 57 California Counties in the report actually grew.

L.A., San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Orange Counties all shrunk, but the "Everyone hate on S.F." bandwagon gets more clicks.

Re: Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco

#257

Post by junon »

Ive left SF before as well.

Homelessness issue is a joke to the city. Transportation was horrible. The non-tourist parts of town were a toilet for people (way more than you'd even think, without seeing it). I am a younger white guy who doesn't necessarily look timid, and even then I've been threatened in the BART by drunk dudes on multiple occasions.

It's expensive. It's politics 24/7. It's crowded (not just bustling, but more as though you took a large city and squeezed it into a small city).

The local governments have failed everyone there.

Re: Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco

#258

Post by mikem170 »

dehrmann wrote: post #174
jb775 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I genuinely have no clue where the high taxes go. I just find it so ironic that San Francisco is a bastion of liberalism, yet... Have you ever stopped to seriously consider if this is the realistic end result of liberalism? This is a very common trend for major cities that have been under liberal control for decades (Philly, Baltimore, Chicago, etc). And yet somehow the politicians convince the population that this…

While I agree, the recent Texas power outage is the result of a free-market system for energy. California hasn't done well with energy either, but for different reasons. My point is that funny things happen when markets fail and when empathy-driven policy goes too far.

> the recent Texas power outage is the result of a free-market system for energy

Texas was not the only area that had problems. Louisiana is regulated and had outages, people with no potable water, etc [0] Nearby states did not have available power to send via the interconnects. It was really cold for a really long time. Everyone talks about how it snowed ten years ago in Austin. I know, I was there. But do they also mention that this cold spell was the worst cold spell in 100 years?

There are many bad things that can happen in this world, we can't afford to prevent all of them. As a society we do not have unlimited money to spend, decisions need to be made, sometimes we have to muddle through. Societies have to prioritize where to spend their limited resources.

I get the feeling that there's a lot of partisan politics involved in the dialogue around things like this, always in hindsight! I don't understand the urge people have to knock down others who are doing something different. Not everyone thinks the way you or I do. The Texas power system has its pros and cons. They've been enjoying cheap power for a long time. They, along with others, struggled during this record cold. I don't understand why this needs to be a partisan issue, or what business it is of anybody outside of Texas. I'm sure they'll make adjustments and improvements to their system. They get to decide, it's their system, right?

I wouldn't say that regulation is a failed model because the power went out in Louisiana. I also don't agree that markets are to blame for a 100-year cold snap in Texas. Disasters happen.

(Note that I don't necessarily agree with the parent you were replying to. I grew up in a city like the ones mentioned, and the problems were more due to corruption, I believe. Politicians are not our friends, none of them.)

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/02/17/te...

Re: Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco

#259

Post by leet_thow »

ra7 wrote: post #114

Those who left SF Bay Area, do you regret it? Why or why not? I'm currently thinking about moving to a different state as it makes sense financially, but I have an attachment with the Bay Area and what it offers (especially as an immigrant), so I'm hesitant to move. I'm interested to hear experiences of people who recently left.

I moved to Reno short term once covid hit and have zero regrets. Saving 1k a month in taxes alone. One thing I really appreciate is not having to wait in line for everything e.g. lunch, gas at Costco, post office, car service etc.

Re: Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco

#260

Post by notacoward »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #255
notacoward wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If not done very carefully, that's just sprawl and bad in its own way. What we need IMO is not to move to the country so much, but back to smaller towns and cities. Some centralization of infrastructure - schools, hospitals, police and fire departments, roads and sewers etc. to connect them - still makes sense economically and ecologically. Somewhere between 50-100K or so new scaling problems always seem to appear -…

Ah, I'm not from the US, so it might just me the phrasing. "Countryside" where I live is the small towns and vily. My opinion has only been made stronger since having been to San Francisco.

Well, if that's what you meant, then I guess we're in full agreement. :)
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