If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

Part of this is where the money comes from.

Poorer/lower-middle-class people (mostly) move into California, to work these jobs under varying amounts of duress. It's hard to complain about the kid who moved from Iowa/Wisconsin/Tennessee/etc, and is hoping their first real tech job at Uber or Facebook or Netflix justifies the move. That's why discussion moves to hating the companies, not the people.

But when Californians leave, they leave wealthy (in comparison). Even if they were poor-ish in California, just the act of selling their home (or condo, or any unit, anywhere in the state) instantly propels them straight to the upper-class or upper-middle-class when they move to places like Idaho or Nebraska or Michigan.

So, when they move here, and say things like "$200k for a beat up old house? That's nothing! A downpayment in California would be $200k!" -- it gets easy to hate the coastal person for their money. Because you sure as hell aren't earning that cash local -- Our hometown Gordon Foods corporate jobs aren't paying even 33% of the wages a corporate Uber Eats job does. Our local housing prices are no longer driven by local wages, they're driven largely by what percentage of coastal people are cashing out their wealth and dumping it into our hometowns (or what percent of coastal private equity funds are buying up our cities to rent back to us at inflated rates)

----

That's not to defend these actions, I am not saying this is right (no one should hate anyone over this). But it does at least help understand why the blame goes where it does. The blame follows the money. In California, that money comes from the companies. But in flyover-USA, that money is coming from the Californians (or NYC/Boston/DC/Seattle/Denver transplants), because you sure as hell aren't ever earning that much money from any local company here.

* Got a high paying job and stayed (not many)

* Tried to make it here, but ended up moving to NC or FL

* Work lower paying jobs dual income and struggle

* Got a job in the area they went to university

SF was not super expensive 10-15 years ago. I mean it was not like living in a Midwest city but you could still get by on a reasonable income.

Central Fl and many areas in NC have a large amount of New Yorkers. This trend is going to accelerate as top tier cities become more popular and affluent, and costs will spiral. Unfortunately cities like Orlando that take in a lot of fleeing New Yorkers do not build the same density and downtowns as older cities so it is less likely that they will become as desirable for higher paying jobs. They are more suburban in nature and are car dependent.

What needs to be done is to make high density cities from the start somewhere else. Make a high speed rail link from SF to some area outside and start new with affordable high density in mind. Then people will initially commute to SF but the new area can then flourish. Otherwise old high density cities will continue to explode in popularity with post 1950s sprawl cities taking in mid income people.