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.
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.