I think the counterintuitive thing about bringing up Brazilian cities here is that central Sao Paolo (where just the central part has about 3x the population of San Francisco) feels richer than San Francisco. And the favelas on the edges, which have a population larger than the whole Bay Area, feel poorer than almost anywhere in the world, with nowhere in the US that can hold a candle to such. And just the favelas of Sao Paolo have a population larger than most US states.

Cities wax and wane. SF boomed from the gold rush, 1880s-1906, 1920s, 1940s, 60s, and as you noted, dot com period. In between it’s varied from stasis (1870s, 50s) to quite grim (30s, 80s — the latter much worse than today).

The swings in Silicon Valley and other parts of the Bay Area have been much less extreme in these regards. Most of the wealth is in the Valley, just more diffuse and harder to see.

Yeah, it still sucks though. The US is going through a slump and it really shows in some of our major cities.

> The US is going through a slump

The US economy is growing gangbusters but 40+ years of "Reagan revolution" have really taken their toll. That ideology has infused many with the belief that if something is broken it should not be fixed; rather that its problems mean that further intervention will simply make things worse.

Even SF, that supposed "liberal" city (whatever that means), suffers from this sickness.

Yeah I guess that's what I mean. The US economy is doing well but not good. I feel like people have less these days. Business is great but the middle class is evaporating. For the average worker it seems pointless to engage with our great economy. Incentives are all out of whack.