Another question I have in general is does the big emphasis on Big Tech in the Bay Area really help or hurt it in the long run? I know that it has the concentration of the some of the most valuable companies in the world, but what good is that if the whole industry makes is so pricey for all who live that even with beyond generous salaries not being able to afford a house?
In more stable and sane economic times, it helps - It allows businesses to be awash in a pool of the specific kind of talent they want and need, and provides employees with competition and options for their labor without requiring them to balance it against uprooting their entire lives every few years - Which also provides some stability to housing markets, as churn tends to drive prices up as nobody wants to sell at a loss, which is entirely plausible over a 3 year period for no fault of anyone involved - but its far harder to sell at a loss after ten or twenty years. It also provides a very wealthy upper base for the lower services and labor economy to provide for, which is
generally of benefit for the people working services jobs - Even if you don't believe that business will pass on the higher earnings to them, it encourages a lot of businesses to pop up to provide those services, giving service workers opportunities and leverage as there's more competition for their work as well.
However, in the era of free money, infinite unskilled immigration, and highly restrictive housing policy that the Bay Area in particular loves to cultivate, it becomes a flawless breeding ground for hyperinflationary conditions on residential prices in particular - That very same talent pool becomes something you have to participate in if your skillset is in that space, requiring you to buy into the housing market, whatever the cost. Free money leads companies to compete with further and further inflation of wages, driving the tech workers to push prices higher and higher as leaving isn't really an option, and this completely destroys and uproots the bottom rungs of the economy and their own access to housing - Anyone making six figures in a sane world would be buying a house, but in San Fran you need three of those guys together as roommates to rent an apartment. The starbucks employee never stood a goddamn chance. The insane tax revenues that come from this lead to extremely generous (and completely ineffective by design) social programs for the 'bottom of the bottom', that attract the least productive of society like addicts, and of course immigrants chasing the promise of service jobs for the wealthy tech class (who can barely afford to live in the city much less get white glove services) and the opportunity to get all those lovely starting services and support nets. These people completely flood out any possible gains that service workers would have had, by ensuring there's always far more potential workers than desired employers, letting them exploit workers far harder with little recourse.
Any attempt to fix this comes straight into restrictive housing policy, backed by aggressive NIMBY from people who either got into the game early and stand to lose literally millions of dollars of assets to leverage into loans if housing prices go down even a smidge, and people who got into the game late and would be irrecoverably underwater in their mortgage if housing prices went down even a smidge, because they barely made it as is and had to lock in very unfavorable terms just to keep it from inflating even more next year. The bay area is also notorious for wanting to call every second building a historical property, and basically make any meaningful redevelopment and evolution near impossible. And the less said about the ability for any interested party to fix unskilled immigration at this time, the better.
So yea, if the rest of the economy wasn't retarded clown money, centralizing talent and business works - look at every nation in history that developed industrial heartlands known for certain products or services, who's business then imploded when the capital class started fucking with the systems. Detroit got exported, the Rust Belt got exported, and Silicon Valley is gonna export itself to the fucking moon when that bubble bursts and sends them flying.
