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If nothing else, it could end up being a Hampton or Martha's Vineyard that only millionaires could afford to live in. As for closing immigration, I'm for it. The Bay Area should have thought of that before they tried to displace Americans with Indians to make a crooked buck.
Without immigrants, this place would be NOTHING like it is (and has been) - which in my opinion, would mostly be a bad thing. The diversity is one aspect I love about the Bay Area, and when I lived in Oregon, their homogeneity really bothered me. It's fun to learn about different cultures, languages, foods, etc, and part of what makes this area unique. When I walk around my neighborhood, I see women in Saris playing badminton on the lawns, children of different nationalities running around together, and smell foods and hear languages I don't even recognize... to me that's a wonderful environment, but I guess some folks prefer sticking to what they know.
Yes, there is a point where it becomes excessive, but CLOSING immigration would be disastrous to the Bay. Would this land ever have been developed, if not for the immigrants? Think about it.
For a while the Bay Area seemed to be doing fine. However, housing prices, or so I've heard, are outrageously high. Given what happened to Detroit and even East St. Louis when manufacturing declined, do you think if IT declines, or, rather, ends up going to India, China, etc, that the area's housing prices will doom the area as nobody will suddenly be able to afford the area, the jobs will dry up, and people will be stuck with houses that they can't sell and no jobs in the area to allure people into buying them?
Been waiting for that for last 18+ yrs and I doubt if we will see that or something similar in this century. The main question is that what can replace IT? Manufacturing was a different issue. It wasn't replaced, it just moved to China or other third world countries where it would prove to be a cheaper alternative. Offshoring for IT has been a cheaper alternative as well but it seems like at the end of the day it keeps coming back to the core or hub of IT in Bay area.... So not unless giants like Apple, Google, facebook etc decide to shut down operations up in Bay Area which I highly doubt.
Another earthquake would scare a lot of people into going home, as happened with Loma Preita in 1989.
That being said, Google just spent $500+ billion to buy up 23 properties on which to expand in Sunnyvale. Apple is everywhere; not just at its headquarters and the spaceship (soon), but there are at least 100 buildings housing Apple employees scattered in Sunnyvale and Cupertino. As for Facebook, all of its employees are located in Menlo Park at an ever-growing compound. Zuckerberg is not interested in expanding to other states. LinkedIn has several huge buildings in Sunnyvale and Mountain View since Microsoft purchased the company. Then there are dozens and dozens of other tech companies in the area.
With growth, housing is tight and scarce, hence the high demand and high cost (there are several streets in Mountain View that have RVs and campers parked as far as the eye can see due to lack of housing affordability). This is the second coming of the Gold Rush, and it looks like there is no end.
The bigger concern is where else can these companies expand and people live? Running out of room is very real.
Annie, there were (well and still is) dozens and dozens of huge companies investing in Detroit too. There was (and still is) world class engineering and science going on in Detroit too. The automobile arguably changed the world on the same tier with the Information Age. Hell, there used to be a saying that so as General Motors goes, so goes the country. Think of how dominant the automobile was and those companies fell as well. All power falls. Whether it's the romans, sears, gm, or the British empire it all comes down eventually. To think a "second gold rush" can go on indefinitely is pretty naive.
I think you should read the article that I posted.
"Detroit may be a few steps behind the rest of the country, but it's also a few steps ahead of it too. And what happened to us may happen to you"
Last edited by Thatsright19; 08-02-2017 at 04:19 AM..
The Bay Area like pretty much everyplace on the CA coast is always going to be desirable for people with money because of proximity to ocean, the weather, the culture etc. None of that is true with Detroit or St Louis so there isn't any real comparsion
For a while the Bay Area seemed to be doing fine. However, housing prices, or so I've heard, are outrageously high. Given what happened to Detroit and even East St. Louis when manufacturing declined, do you think if IT declines, or, rather, ends up going to India, China, etc, that the area's housing prices will doom the area as nobody will suddenly be able to afford the area, the jobs will dry up, and people will be stuck with houses that they can't sell and no jobs in the area to allure people into buying them?
So the tech economy isn't "IT jobs." The terminology of IT sector is quite misleading. The average tech employee does nothing at all related to IT.
If/when there is a bust, housing prices will decline. The number of jobs will decline. But most of the investment into new and existing software companies goes to the Bay Area. There will be less software companies, less outrageous perks, and yes some people will lose their jobs.
When the dotcom bust happened, housing got cheaper, people moved into service jobs, some people staying in tech and the next wave of tech innovation happened. That lead to the App and the SaaS economy driving growth now. There will be another idea, and the boom and bust will happen again. It has happened a myriad of times already - there was a Silicon boom and bust and then came the internet.
If nothing else, it could end up being a Hampton or Martha's Vineyard that only millionaires could afford to live in. As for closing immigration, I'm for it. The Bay Area should have thought of that before they tried to displace Americans with Indians to make a crooked buck.
It's pretty clear that this thread was made out of political grievances than any actual economic understanding. there's a lot of this going on on C-D. So tell me how will this tech bubble burst?
Well, the SF Bay Area is diversified enough, and with a solid foundation of people, capital, and ideas - such that as a certain industry declines, others will spring up.
We've seen evolution of agriculture, aerospace companies, computer hardware companies, to software companies come and go over several decades of economic development. Who knows what will come in store in the next couple of decades?
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