I'm reminded of Jane Jacob's statement about the economics of cities: "To seek 'causes' of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes." [0]

To find that a small city that used to have a manufacturing plant is now struggling shouldn't really be surprising―the city never really had a robust economy, and it's hard to say that it really has a future.

Getting a functioning economy that works is really a sort of black magic―when it happens, capture it! Our big cities are one of the surest places we see it, so maybe the real question isn't "why are people moving towards larger cosmopolitan cities," but "why are we making it so hard for our cities to accommodate them?"

[0] http://www.efficology.com/the-gift-of-relationships/apprecia...

There are no jobs there. If you're lucky enough to have job security in a low cost of living part of the country that might work out, but otherwise it's not such a great idea for most people due to high unemployment and lack of high paying jobs.

And that's aside from all of the other issues such as friends, culture, things to do, and, frankly, local politics.

That's the economically rational thing to do if things are all equal. However, the reason many people are moving to SF is because that's where the VC money is, and therefore that's where the tech jobs are (yes, I know there are other tech hubs out there, but none as big as SV). If the VC money was more willing to spread out, and not require everything to be in SV, then we'd have less of a housing issue there.