When my friends and I talk, we value things such as a family leave act or parental leave, assisted suicide, legal marijuana, and bans non competes. As well as weather (humidity isn’t popular), and natural features, such as oceans and mountains. No one considers going to a state that is still dealing with women’s rights.
The thing is, companies aren't moving to expensive places for the cheap land for office space, or the low salaries for cleaning and food service employees, They aren't moving to cities because of vast cheap and free parking. They are moving there, because the talent that can live anywhere it wants to is living in these cities. I'd love to work remote, but then I'd work in my basement with my legal weed and fast internet and still in the middle of the city I live in now.
There's a fundamental misunderstanding here thinking that the people who can move anywhere they want haven't already. So if they want to make a difference, the best way would be to encourage the arts, federally support human rights, and move the whole country forward, break internet monopolies, pay for education. I'm not moving my daughter to a state that's still challenging abortion rights or teaching creationism in schools, or still has their head in the sand about confederate statues. I don't want my kids growing up in a place where the war on drugs isn't just a failed experiment.
Why are the talent moving to those cities? Because they want to pay $4000/mo rent? Or because that's where the jobs are?
All of the other advantages you describe are side-effects. California has historically been a fairly conservative state (Remember Ronald Reagan?), and I suspect it still is if you get away from the coast.
"I don't want my kids growing up in a place where the war on drugs isn't just a failed experiment."
Didn't SF recently ban vaping?
Because even after paying $4,000 they have more left over than in other places
Also job security in numbers with their being more employers in the area
Come to the Midwest! Make half as much and live in a house that you can sell for half as much profit when you retire! Come for the flat outdoors with nothing to do, stay for the lack of ethnic and cultural diversity!
Half of the people in Seattle are Midwest refugees who came here despite not having a job lined up. It's laughable to think they'd move back for a salary cut despite cheaper housing. The financial incentive would have to be overwhelmingly positive so they could work in the Midwest for a few years then move somewhere better.
That wouldn't be what we want in life. So we have a little house in a big city with a little garden and the ability to bike with our kids anywhere that's worth going. There are music venues, and museums, and restaurants, and lakes, and ocean, and beaches. With a weekend drive there are mountains and forests. Week nights can get you an $8 dollar show with a good band just around the corner and most nights there is a choice of 6-8 bands within a mile.
Most of the people I know and live around could live in cheaper places as well, either apartments, or cities, but they live here because that's where they want to live.
I just moved from what was effectively a state capital/ college town to a largish town without much going on and man having a music venue that plays various local and touring underground artists from all sorts of genres is something I miss. I'm closer to two cities that get large headliner concerts now, but it's still to rare someone I enjoy enough to take the trip is coming.
Does that make you one of the NIMBYs?
I'd like to see everything in the city rezoned from single family to multifamily with the option for high density. I write/ speak up at every zoning city council meeting in favor of density, I back candidates that support dense zoning, I've supported city lots on my block being turned into low income, subsidized housing instead of a park. My neighborhood specifically is the one in my city with the highest density growth since I've moved here with the population tripping in the last couple years and outpacing the growth of the city by 1/2. I'd like to see more done to continue that trend.
I didn't buy a little house with a garden because I needed a little house with a garden, I bought it because that's what I could afford in the neighborhood that I wanted to live in. I'd have been just has happy in a townhome, or in a multi-family condo, but that wasn't available when we were looking for a place to live.
There's some things that are really fucked up with the way our city's have grown so fast. But I hope that we can make them places for all, to enjoy the same things that I've been privileged enough to enjoy.
The problem isn’t really just housing costs (though that is a huge pain) it’s the cost of everything, the commute, and the near requirement to have two incomes just to pay your bills every month. The benefit of higher coastal salaries only works if you can somehow contain the overall cost of living from eating it all.
For my situation personally, it's never been an issue, and it's not for the people in our social circles. We were never going to be a single income household, it's not something either of us have ever wanted. The thing with cities, is you can't move to a city and do things the same as you do when you didn't live in a city. You've got to find a way to drop commuting, live in smaller spaces, be closer to thing things that you love. I know a lot of people who have moved to the city but can't live in a small space, so they buy a house out on the edge then spend hundreds of dollars and countless hours commuting into the city and it just breaks them. I can understand how they'd want to live else where but even then, when I talk to them, they are turning down job offers in non-coastal cities.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/03/your-money/mi...
When I worked in NYC, I literally saved more, after taxes and all expenses, than I could make in total before taxes (or any expenses) where I live now.
Even a zero cost of living wouldn't begin to make up for that. People simply refuse to understand this, though. They just keep on repeating "but muh cost of living!" even though it's clearly not relevant.
It's their prerogative I suppose, but the thing that gets me is that these same people are constantly complaining about how they can't hire anyone!
Have you considered paying more, I ask?
We pay more than enough already!
No, you obviously don't.
Housing should not be an investment.
We didn't make this reality, we just live in it.
I used to think about going full-time with my consulting and moving back to where I'm from in (very rural) southeastern Ohio to raise my kids. It's incomprehensible to me that the state is moving backwards on women's rights. It's all so sordidly stupid.
The Federal government has played an outsized role in how our geography and economy have developed. They've favored urban coastal areas by explicitly allowing manufacturing centers in the rust belt to be dismantled and shipped overseas without penalty. They've flooded the heartland with millions of illegal and visa workers to do jobs Americans used to do, and would continue to do at acceptable wages. The House just approved millions more this past week.
They've encouraged housing in various areas to far outstrip supply via subsidized mortgages, bailing out lenders, tax deductions for high tax and high home price states.
Do you think Google and Amazon might consider building out smaller regional offices in St Louis, Omaha, Cleveland if they weren't able to scam off thousands of workers on of H1B, L1, etc. visas each year to come work in SV and Seattle, instead of being forced to search for talented citizens outside of their areas? How bout if they were severely punished for colluding to hold down wages in SV?
This isn't the 'Invisible Hand of the Free Market' at work. It's government policy which creates the system we have. And it can be government policy to change things.
https://www.numbersusa.com/news/house-approves-amnesty-inden...
https://insights.dice.com/2019/08/27/h-1b-visa-use-state/
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/mortgage-interest...
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo...
This doesn't make any sense. Google or Amazon could "scam thousands of workers on visas" to come work in St. Louis, Omaha or Cleveland too.
That's a little misleading. True, SF and Seattle have zoning laws which are a significant part of the reason for housing unaffordability (e.g. 75% of Seattle is zoned for single family dwellings, prohibiting even short townhouses), but it's likely that many of the smaller cities in the article either do have such zoning laws already or would adopt them once increasing density motivates local homeowners to "protect" their neighborhoods. (Heck, in many smaller towns it is illegal to grow veggies in your front garden or let your lawn grass go brown.) An overbearing notion of house-property-values and everything associated with that mindset is not the province of big metros alone.
Meanwhile, the recent efforts of cities like Seattle to enable smart urban planning, public transit, and bicycling, even though laughably puny by European standards, are still significantly ahead of the rest of the USA.
Most importantly, sprawl is devastating from an environmental point of view - it massively blows up per capita carbon footprint. Well-planned, dense cities can include parks, green space, and even urban wilderness while still accommodating density and drastically reducing car travel. It is a matter of political will, not technical feasibility.
For decades now, I've not understood why companies don't relocate to places like Des Moines or Kansas City. Labor was cheap, land was cheap, governments are willing to give you credits to move your business there, etc. The midwest is crawling with small colleges churning out educated people. After spending a decade in Seattle I moved inland for cheaper real estate (and this was back in 2010 because I thought Seattle housing had already gone insane back then). I've been a remote worker / road warrior type since 2005, and the opportunities for remote work or to work from where you want have only gotten easier. Why would I hire the $250K+ developer in the Bay Area, have to cover office costs, etc there, when I could encourage them to live in Boise or some other lower-cost area?
So, to my thinking - employers need to get more creative and drop the industrial era mindset of control. Certainly there are jobs that require people and equipment being in one physical location. Certainly the most profitable large companies - the Googles, Microsofts, Apples, etc of the world might choose to establish centralized corporate campuses. For everybody else though, the economics make far more sense in other parts of the country.
I can tell you exactly why: these cities aren't places senior management want to live. I know this because I've worked for three companies over the years that have moved technology centers from cities on that list, to places like NYC & SF. The labor cost increase didn't seem to bother them, nor the price of real estate.
What happened was the company hired a new CEO, the new CEO hates living in Smallville, USA, and creates an initiative to relocate the company back to where they want to be. Ostensibly, this move is part of plan to improve technical innovation. They all claimed that coastal workers were superior to those from the Mid-west. Whether because they are higher educated, have more exposure to cutting edge technology, or whatever ("[SF, NYC, Dallas, etc] is home to (famous university/tech company"). It's pretty obvious what the real reason is, as the new executives are the first people out the door.
The only way to keep these companies is to either force them, or make the region desirable to rich people.
1. Originally, the area was home to several very good universities. Today, these provide a ready source of workers with advanced job training. On the other hand, I'll bet they are a small minority of the workers in the area now.
2. That's where the money is. Much of the "capital"[1] comes from previously successful businesses and those people don't want to move (and don't have any problems with high rents).
3. Density promotes density. More workers there makes hiring new ones easier (and replacing old ones), and the availability of "attractive" jobs draws more workers.
The area hasn't (and probably can't) adapt as fast as money and immigrants, hence the infrastructure issues.
It's hard to fix that from the top down. Take Austin, which did it from the bottom up; a number of foresighted rich folks boosted UT's tech training, leading to it's success in recent decades, but it's now facing the same problems.
Options:
Hold your nose, go to CA and make your money and get the hell out.
Wait for the next cyclic bust, buy property when the prices collapse.
Organically start the process elsewhere, with the same results.
Choose to go elsewhere and accept the salary reduction.
Don't look at me, I'm not the one you need to convince. That'd be the hordes of newly-graduated who think they have to move to <dense coastal city> to get a good job (although how much of that money will stick to them, I can't say).
These tech hubs exist for very good reasons. Maybe you can make some more hubs, but you'll never spread these kind of jobs evenly all over.
I work for a tech company in North Carolina. Cost of living is very reasonable and there are plenty of tech companies here but in my experience getting someone to move here for work is hard. It's not just the employers you need to convince.
Furthermore, Charlotte is heavily banking and finance, and thus lean heavily on H1B visas for most of their enterprise jobs. I've had recruiters contact me for jobs in the area and the salaries were a joke. Honestly, I don't know if they were for real or just using it as 'proof' that they couldn't hire any Americans so they could forward off a few hundred more H1B petitions to USCIS...
I don't know what other places in the area pay but I only took a small pay cut when I moved here. Once you factor in the cost of living that pay cut works out to be a decent raise.
I get the impression that IBM will start using more Red Hat tech, but for the most part we are keeping the two companies pretty separate.
Median hourly wage, Computer and Mathematical Occupations, Durham-Chapel Hill: $42.77 ($85,540 ann.)
I just ran the numbers for a $100k salary in NC and $130k in California. The person in NC will pay $17203.92 in federal taxes and $5250 in state taxes for a total of $22453.92. The person in California pays $24403.92 and $9094.69 for a total of $33498.61. This brings their post tax income to $96501.39 for California and $77546.08 for NC. The person in California only makes about $1.5k extra a month.
There are plenty of non-monetary reasons why someone might choose to live in one state or the other but you do need a lot more money in California to cover the cost of basics like housing. Not properly accounting for that could give someone quite a shock if they relocate there.
Fewer hot (HOT! HOT! HOT!) tech jobs? Probably.
Here's an example from a recent client in Seattle. Two year old company, approx. ten employees, hiring at least one person a month. Couple hundred square feet of class-a office space, likely $42/square foot and increasing. Turned over nearly all of their staff on a yearly basis because they couldn't compete with comp at Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Had a number of entry-level type clerical jobs that they were outsourcing to India but doing so unsuccessfully (IE: the resources they had weren't particularly cheap but also didn't really have the necessary skills). Same entry-level jobs couldn't pay quite enough in Seattle to incentivize someone to either stick around or be willing to commute from the suburbs (unless they were really desperate).
My point to them time and time again was - they were a small company, undercapitalized like many small businesses, and they were spending stupid money every month on people and office space that made no sense given their business. They could have moved to Spokane, Yakima, the Tri-Cities or lots of other cheaper places even in the same state and been able to find the talent they need and cut their office costs in half. Given the nature of their business, sure, maybe they needed to keep a couple people (mostly sales / execs / bizdev) in Seattle - but even those could have worked from home.
Last I checked, the largest concentration of PhDs in the country is in... the Tri-Cities, Washington. The state with the greatest number of college graduates per capita is... Iowa. These are not exactly places on anyone's radar. Bend, Oregon has a growing number of people who "commute" to Silicon Valley. I live in the middle of nowhere, but there are a growing number of people from Seattle willing to move here (and occasionally take the 45 minute commuter flight) in order to escape the cost and crowding of living over there. Boise is growing entirely by people fleeing from coastal cities.
Someone in this thread posted Paul Graham's essay about startup hubs, which I recall reading and it gels exactly with my thinking as well - go to these micro hubs around the country and be part of growing them from within.
Even if this strategy did work (it doesn't), it's a terrible idea for the environment and quality of life. This is how Los Angeles got super-commutes from the never-ending sprawl of the Inland Empire.
> That's 30 hours a week
It's 15 hours per week, unless parent is a time traveller. (3 hours per day, not 3 hours one way.)
I also used to be in the Bay, and that's about right; 3-4 hours per day. It's fucked.
The trouble with small cities is that no one wants to see their character changed. In New York they built the subway ahead of development, making high density possible immediately, and regularly bulldozed existing properties as demand increased to make them even higher density later.
If you don't create new cities, the people still need to end up somewhere. You can move jobs to smaller cities or create new ones, whatever. the point is, you need to move jobs to areas that want to grow.
Have you seen the new neighborhoods that are being built in places like CA? Every single tree gets chopped down, ever last one. That's because developers are forced to build with density because the cost of land is so high. if you want to prevent the slaughtering of trees, you'll need specifically create minimum distance regs or reduce the # of trees that can be cut down legally. at the current rate, there's no nature for anyone to enjoy in the neighborhoods that are currently being built.
The poop in SF is from growing rates of homelessness, not from density. SF ranks low on density compared to NYC and Hong Kong, yet only SF has a poop problem.
NIMBYism crops up in every place where there is growth, and it seems to create a system that rewards luck of being born in the right time and place over contributions to society.
There's a lot of chickens unhappy about $1600/month 200sqft apartments. (a real example from SF - https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti... )
Because that's the dystopian nightmare in SF, and to move jobs out of silicon valley to elsewhere, would be to export that same dystopia to more places.
We already see this in Michigan of all places. You can make a SF salary and pay $1600/month for a micro-apartment. Or you can take a 50% pay cut, to pay $800/month for ~200sqft micro-apartment. They are equally ridiculous and equally unaffordable, once you account for the currency/wage differences, despite the fact that we have no zoning restrictions in this town.
We obviously need more housing, and need to build more housing, but housing is inherently pollution-heavy. You can not build your way into affordability alone, because the act of new construction inherently generates more unaffordability. It alone can never solve it.
> The only reason (cheap apartments) doesn't exist in CA is because of NIMBYs and their ridiculous zoning policies.
No, that's only a tiny part. Zoning is a small reason, but not the primary one. The biggest reason CA apartments are expensive, is the financial pollution generated by the companies there.
If you built a brand new city in an empty cornfield somewhere, with no laws or zoning of any kind, it would be somewhat cheaper than San Francisco, but every single apartment would still cost ~$1100-$1600/month. Because most of that price is due to the financial pollution from the companies, not the zoning.
They’re not equal. You almost certainly end up with significantly more disposable income in SF.
The whole idea that increasing supply will drop the price isn't 100% accurate. In Chicago we've had lots of new development in an area that wasn't that expensive to be in. Now we have 900sqft 2br places that are 3.2k a month and studios for 1800 in that same area.
That simply means there isn’t sufficient new supply proportional to the new demand. New supply may make an area more desirable, inducing more demand. But there is a limit to the total demand, so one just needs to keep adding supply.
That's a very tech focused idea. Chicago is currently having infrastructure issues due to demand. (the city wants to use that to show "see we need more money" the transit system is always busy.. yet isn't considering how to address that issue)
Anyways, new developers are only choosing to build "luxury" apartments.
Here's an example:
when I moved into logan square: I was paying 1350$+100$ for a garage 2br/1ba. That was about 200$ more than the places around it.
Now that 10+ high rise buildings have been built near by. A place similar to mine costs $3200, and studios are going for 1800. (Either limited parking [as in you are competing with others to rent a space] or no parking at all)
Has the area improved? Nope. Businesses are having an even harder time staying open.
Unfortunately, current regulations and voters make it impossible to create another Chicago/NYC/SF.
Moreover leaving a few trees up in a lower-density development isn't a way to respect nature; whatever trees are left are there to decorate human properties.
We need new cities designed to be high-density from the start, and we need higher density in most existing cities. When humans live in urban areas, nature can be left alone, and you don't have to go 100 miles outside the city to reach undeveloped land.
Extremely efficient high-density cities that combine car AND bike friendly streets with mass transit. Numerous green parks and public spaces as well.
The rest of the country is rapidly turning into wilderness as people move into the cities for jobs, and the elderly rural-dwellers die off. Fortunately, the government still keeps the roads well-maintained so people such as myself can drive into the countryside and get our Initial D on.
No one is doing any of that to anyone in SF.
People that find it acceptable move in, those that don’t move out
People use up remarkably little space to actually live. In dense cities, multiple stories mean you can fit 3-10 times as many people as in single stories in the same area. But even with single stories, not much land is used.
What IS important is area used for agriculture. It's vastly more than land used for roads and houses and other buildings. Cut down on that (without sacrificing amount of food produced--possible using technology and policy together) and footprint on nature is reduced. In fact, less land is now used for agriculture than was used in the late 1940s, even though population has more than doubled: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2012/march/data-feature...
That is due to vastly higher yields. We can go further and eliminate much farmland altogether by growing most of our calories from single-celled organisms. Given the processed food of the current industrial food system, the end-quality would be unchanged for the most part and may even improve. Even if not used for human consumption, it can displace animal feed (and already is used to some extent). Meat substitutes can also help.
> According to calculations of the United Nations Environment Programme, the calories that are lost by feeding cereals to animals, instead of using them directly as human food, could theoretically feed an extra 3.5 billion people.
> Feed conversion rates from plant-based calories into animal-based calories vary; in the ideal case it takes two kilograms of grain to produce one kilo of chicken, four kilos for one kilogram of pork and seven kilos for one kilogram of beef.
- Global Agriculture[1]
Your point re: human living space density in cities is totally spot on. Urbanism is much more efficient than suburban sprawl. Rigorous public transit makes having a car optional / disadvantageous if you live in a city. It's no wonder the automobile industry has always sought to stifle transit.
Look at the successes of the Houston light rail system METRORail. Opened in 2004 and has cut back traffic and lead to high-density apartments, shops, and offices near stations.
All that is evidence of why population growth isn't a real root issue. It could be problematic, depending on what other systems are at play to mitigate increasing resource needs of people. Even so, our current food production is enough to feed the projected 2050 population of 9.7 billion[2].
[1]https://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/meat-and-ani... [2]https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.310...
"World population projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100"
https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world...
Sorry to say this (as an outsider) but not all areas of the US are the same and are not as desirable to live in, also for those planning a family you may be limiting their career choices in 20 years.
One of my friends has move back near London from one of the cheaper (more depressed regions of the UK) because her v bright daughter through the only job for her was working on the tills.
The US government is one of the largest employers in the USA. And they are responsible for the expansion of major metropolitan areas around the US. Washington DC is an obvious example, but for one from that list, Dayton Ohio owes most of its technology sector to the US Air Force due to its proximity to Wright-Patterson Air Force base, the Air Force Institute of Technology and the glut of technology contractors in the area.
I'm sure Dayton is not a terribly desirable place for technology workers to emigrate to, but it does demonstrate the feasibility of special economic zones. The US is full of beautiful places that would be highly attractive to workers, if only jobs were available in sufficient numbers. The US government could even work with public-private partnerships to ensure that enough private investment occurs to bring culture to the area so that it doesn't sit around as some stagnant boomtown.
The challenger disaster was caused by this as for "political reasons" the plant that made the boosters was a long way away and thus required the design with the O rings.
Cool o-ring non-sequitur!
But that would require a complete rebalance of power from states to federal government.
My last job was on a deep learning team located in a university research park at UIUC in Central Illinois. The area was rich in local entrepreneurship and had a critical mass of skilled people.
I retired and moved back to my home in Sedona Arizona, but I can strongly recommend UIUC for both the great tech community, great tech meetups, and also good quality of life with a low cost of living.
I compare this to working as a contractor at Google, which was a really nice experience but my wife and I burned through $6500/month in living expenses in Mountain View and the traffic was so bad that I was dissuaded from driving to tech meetups.
Do you have time to actually take advantages of the cultural resources of a city or visit mountains during the work week? Or is that a weekend thing generally?
I suspect that for most tech workers, it is a weekend thing. I'd like to see more companies optimize for that.
For the Bay area that would mean putting tech offices away from San Francisco and SV in smaller cities, but close enough that driving in to SF for the weekend would not be too arduous a trip to do regularly.
Modesto, for example, is a 2 hour drive from SF if you avoid rush hour on the SF end, has much cheaper housing than SF, and is a lot closer to the mountains.
I say this having grown up with endless smooth moss-like rolling hills in every direction as far as the eye can see. Rain on an annoying unpredictable day-to-day schedule ruining plans got old very quickly.
Clear skies and beautiful mountainous skyline haven't gotten old so far for me. In fact, weather is the very first thing I'm reminded of when I travel anywhere else.
Also there is the caveat that things like a vehicle become a lot more important for day to day life.
Those caveats given, if someone were to find some land unsuitable for farming and build a tech center there.... It could go well.
I like doing outdoor things in the mountains and the queer culture on the "left coast" that is anathema to more conservative areas of the country.
So no thank you, I'll keep my high salary, access to mountains, and ability to retire anywhere I like after I sell my ridiculously overpriced house to someone else.
Living in most of the U.S. sucks if you're not a cookie-cutter copy of the socially acceptable suburban family with 2.5 kids and a dog. It's not all about money.
It's also a terrible idea for the Feds to be in charge of doing this in any meaningful capacity aside from tax incentives and banner waving, and it'd be up to the state/city to want to be selected.
edit: removed suggestion that the heartland was lacking bars and restaurants
As someone in a mid-sized heartland city, we've got nice bars and restaurants (no, seriously). Main pain points:
1) decent "ethnic" cuisine of certain types falls in the mid-range-and-up category, price-wise, for the most part, with few delicious but cheap options like larger coastal cities may have (Indian food, for example). I do not know why this is. Actually-good bread is also weirdly expensive. We do have surprisingly-good fine dining and good bars, and a ton more food variety than a coast-dweller might think, so there's that.
2) Really far from any decent "outdoorsy" stuff unless you like fishing on kinda-ugly lakes, or hunting in kinda-ugly woods. Hiking? Most of a day to reach mediocre mountains, a long day to reach real ones. Local "hiking" is largely indistinguishable from a neighborhood walking trail in terms of what you'll see (which is to say, not much). Beautiful desert vistas? 1.5 days or so. Any part of the ocean? Again, 1.5 days of driving, minimum. Great lakes? Not close enough to those either, 1.25 days to reach parts of those other than Chicago (1 long day for that). No such thing as a long-weekend getaway to anything outdoorsy that's much fun, let alone single-day trips of that sort.
New cities, we desperately need. The entire housing fiasco is caused by an imbalance between the number of jobs and the amount of housing. all the jobs are, ironically, in places that really don't want to grow. so the logical thing to do, is to move those jobs to new places that do want to grow.
This could really ignite the economy in a way that's not zero sum (like most other solutions). There's so much free wealth out there for the taking (land that's not being used for any productive capacity ~ you could literally create wealth out of thin air).