Netcraft confirms: SF is dead! jwz on suicide watch. IMHO SF will survive forever. The geography of the region is just too damned good for the density. I'm in LA for some time because it's nicer this time of year but I have enjoyed my time in SF and all the things I can do there.

SF is in a resource curse situation right now. The coming winter will kill the parasitic insects in government off. Few elected governments have the incentives to set up a 'sovereign wealth fund' equivalent because the ones who use it will be seen as heroes and the ones who fund it as villains. So just as the winter helps temperate climate countries survive insect hordes, shocks like this help societies survive their bureaucrats.

A good argument could be made that it makes sense to leave people's money to them, but for gold rush states the right thing to do is to extract some rent from transient visitors into a longer term program so that it can weather shocks. If they have the incentives to protect the wealth fund.

No CA or SF program can do that, however, since there is a hedonic sink in the shape of CalPERS. Any money you save, CalPERS will eat. And CalPERS will grow whether you feed it or not. And now that CalPERS is big enough, you don't get to choose whether to feed it. CalPERS will feed.