Posted on 02/17/2014 7:20:42 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Detroit isn’t a monster — it’s just ahead of the curve. Or it is a monster, in the classical sense of that word: a warning of things to come. We should all be paying attention, but those Americans who should be paying the closest attention are those who are unfortunately least inclined to do so: the happy inhabitants of the gilded communities of Northern California.
I have written a great deal about Detroit as the inevitable endgame of progressive politics and economics, and those who are disinclined to be persuaded by such analysis as I have to offer respond as with one voice: “San Francisco!” The case bears some examination.
Though its charms are wasted on me, San Francisco obviously is enormously appealing to a great many people, as is the Bay Area in its entirety. There are some rough spots, to be sure, but the great swath of territory that runs from San Francisco to San Jose before taking a U-turn up to Berkeley contains a great deal to recommend itself: untold high-tech wealth, a stimulating intellectual climate, world-class educational and cultural institutions, beautiful waterfront properties, and municipal infrastructure that is much better than the American average. As one of my progressive correspondents put it, the high price of San Francisco real estate should communicate to a market-oriented critic such as myself that the city is doing something right. And there is something to that, but there is an important limitation to that analysis. California is a great place to live if you are rich.
And California is not very rich.
The median income for a three-member household is only $67,401 in California. That is not a terrible figure, but it is a bit less than the considerably less glamorous Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ($68,848), only about 30 venti frappuccinos per year ahead of Nebraska ($67,235). That figure is considerably lower than in, say, Wyoming, where the median three-member household takes in nearly 10 percent more each year, and it is far, far behind Alaska, where the median three-member household could buy a new Ford every year and still have as much left over as its California counterparts.
Of course, California has some very poor spots, and your typical Silicon Valley grandee does not spend very much time so much as downwind of one of them. But there is trouble in the happy valley, too. San Jose boasts one of the nation’s highest median household incomes at $81,000 a year — pretty heavy money for a midpoint. But the median price of a single-family house in San Jose is $775,000, or just over nine and a half times the median income. By way of comparison, in Austin, San Jose’s high-tech Texas cousin, the ratio is only 4 to 1 — even as the Texas capital sees record housing prices. In San Francisco, the ratio is 10.2 to 1; in Houston, it’s only 4.3 to 1.
That means that the median family in San Jose could never responsibly purchase the median house in San Jose: Saving ten years’ pre-tax wages and betting it all on a single investment — in California real estate, no less — would be enormously risky. No responsible mortgage lender (if there is such a thing) would approve that loan.
Similar ratios have held up for a long time in New York City, which is arguably a special case. But even if it isn’t, there is an important difference: Expanding the calculation into the greater metropolitan region, New York City still does not look great, but it looks a lot better. Compare the San Jose metro with the Austin metro, and the comparison looks even worse for California than it does on a city-to-city basis. When housing prices are nine or ten times family incomes, there are basically two ways that distance can be crossed — and, high as incomes are in Northern California, do not bet on seeing them multiplied in short order.
But what happens between now and then?
Places like San Francisco and San Jose have become the economic and cultural equivalent of the Southern California phenomenon most loathed by good progressives everywhere: the gated community. The cities of Silicon Valley are not organized around golf courses, tennis courts, and clubhouses on the traditional gated-community model, but that is merely a difference in taste and recreational interest. The barriers between them and the water-starved California inland — or the poor sections of Oakland — are not physical, but they are nonetheless ruthlessly patrolled, a fact not lost on Silicon Valley’s less-well-off, who recently have taken to breaking the windows of the hated “Google buses,” the private coaches that spare California’s tech royalty the indignity of a ride on the BART. The vandals’ manifesto reads: “You are not innocent victims. You live your comfortable lives surrounded by poverty, homelessness and death, seemingly oblivious to everything around you, lost in the big bucks and success.”
San Francisco, the world capital of progressive piety, has a population that is barely 6 percent black, but its population of persons arrested for drug felonies is 60 percent black. More than 40 percent of those arrested for homicide are black. In this bastion of well-heeled progressive governance, about half of the black households make less than $25,000 a year. And this isn’t in Laramie, Wyo., where you can rent a three-bedroom home for less than $800 a month. This is less than 25 grand a year in one of the most expensive places in the country.
In 1950, nobody thought Detroit — by many measures then the world’s most prosperous city — would end up a half-abandoned, bankrupt, violent basket case. Nobody thought that U.S. automakers would be so inept as to fail to keep up with Japanese and European competitors, that their unions would be so corrupt and rapacious, or that the city of Detroit would slide into Third World standards of municipal governance. But bear this in mind: The automakers had large, expensive factories in Detroit. Their capital was physical. Sure, Google and Apple have real estate and physical infrastructure in California, but high-tech firms are much less tied to the land than were their industrial-age competitors. California’s cities are falling to bankruptcy and fiscal crisis like water dripping in a sink. Meanwhile, the local radicals, driven by envy and ideology, have taken to accosting Silicon Valley engineers at their homes. The companies are responding with increased reliance upon private security forces. But there are other possible responses, such as relocating to where they are more welcome.
Is San Francisco the progressives’ best counterexample to the devastation in Detroit? Ask again in 20 years.
— Kevin D. Williamson is a roving correspondent for National Review.
Well, I guess we can agree that it’s a thing and it happens.
Our panhandlers don’t hang around for long. Asking for money in a town full of engineers is a good way to get advice on budgeting.
The author is presenting a comparison that doesn't exist. Detroit and Silicone Valley are not comparable. When I grew up in SF back in the 1950s, blacks were about 15 percent of the city. The blacks fled, and today they're less than 6 percent. They are largely confined to two areas of the city on the east industrial side, many in projects. That explains why their income is so low, and why much of the drug felonies and murderers are black; black on black crime. Those areas are becoming gentrified with incoming asians and latinos, and the black population continues to shrink. Other remaining blacks are retired middle class seniors who are relatively well to do.
SF is at the tip of a peninsula. The rest of the peninsula is largely devoid of blacks, except for East Palo Alto and that city is doing fairly well gaining commercial activity from proximity to Silicone Valley. There is no black problem as there is in Detroit.
I don’t get this.
The median income where I live(Boston suburb) is $110,000.00 per household. In San Jose it’s $81,000.00.
I always that these West Coast areas were much higher.
?
Yes, I remember my cousin saying that women usually wore dresses in downtown Seattle in the 60s. Now during certain events you’re lucky if they’re wearing clothes at all. Those events are usually in the neighborhoods, but still.
I heard on the news about another of those cases of somebody who got into a physical altercation after complaining about the language somebody was using around her you g daughter. I forget what the event was, maybe the Seahawks parade. But stuff like that is an example of the coarsening.
I wonder how different things would be if we nurtured everyone to be independent, not just men. Thing is, that women are being encouraged to be wives and mothers at a young age, while men are being pressured to get to work as soon as possible and support their wives and kids, even at the expense of the growth needed to make mature decisions.
Now men are in full blown rebellion against marrying early and then losing half of all they’ve worked for by their mid-thirties and yet, women are still looking for someone to take care of them. It’s the ‘someone has to take care of me’ mentality that is turning our nation into a sewer. I for one have always been against early marriage and a hue issue I have with these liberals is their never ending determination to be taken care of at the expense of someone else’s hard work.
A lot of soccer moms and their spud voted Obama. I wonder how different those votes might have been if those newt brained liberal housewives had had to go out and make a living. These are the nitwits that sometimes vote for higher taxes on their husband’s paychecks.
Doesn't matter. Prettiest is largely a title that reflects the natural geography of the city - the hills set against the water, grandeur of the bridges and sparkling lights of buildings and homes at night. Up close, there was always dirt.
I grew up in SF and there was always a contrast between "nice" tourist areas and the rest. The waterfront was busy with railroad tracks and freight trains moving goods from ships to warehouses and factories in the Mission District and to the east side of the city; now largely gone. It was dirty and grimy; now cleaned up and beautiful for tourists. I used to play around those railroad tracks and factories, including slaughterhouses; all gone. Much of the industrial sector is gone, replaced by clean industry. Mission District had many manufacturing sites, for example I would walk by a broom factory two blocks from my home on the way to school and would look in on the activity through open large doors.
SF was dirty in the 1950s, tourist areas were clean and pretty. Now, tourist areas are clean and pretty, and there are some dirty areas. One change is that homeless didn't urinate and defecate in public areas as they do now, yuck. That is one change I've seen. But for the most part, the city is cleaner now than it was back then.
Seattle was very similar to SF in many ways. Both are by large bodies of water, have a large Asian influence and came from rough and ready backgrounds. Seattle is beautiful too.
Apples and oranges comparison. That's your suburb. San Jose used to be a poor town of latinos working in surrounding fruit orchards. When the tech boom happened, it changed San Jose and it rapidly grew and expanded. Large areas are still full of poor latinos, and they pull down the income averages against high-paid tech workers.
Millennials have a reputation for being clueless but they aren't completely stupid. The guys in their 20's saw what happened to their fathers, grandfathers, uncles and older brothers. So when confronted with the choice of Xbox or a better than 50% chance of getting screwed over, it's not a hard math problem.
” Large areas are still full of poor latinos, and they pull down the income averages against high-paid tech workers. “
—
We’re talking “medians”,not”averages”.
Stockton is not far from Silicon Valley.
Its called “The Magic City”. There’s still lots of great places around Birmingham...just not a lot of nice places to live within the city limits.
Agreed, it is taxpayer flight to a degree. But you can’t discount the other factors - crime, terrible infrastructure, dilapidated private properties. And the kicker, the one that can really cause a family to pull up stakes - terrible schools.
The fact that you have to pay more taxes for all of this just adds insult to injury, for sure - but its a cumulative effect.
I guess it is which came first; here in NJ our infrastructure is crumbling as taxes go directly into public employees’ pockets (instead of any kind of improvements). I’ve seen textbooks used in public schools that are rags. Anyone living in NJ can be assured that (in a manner akin to the Quartering Act leading up to the Revolution) they will be forced to provide funding for a public employee, a welfare sow and bastard(s), and an illegal alien. Nothing is left for street repairs and such; it looks like Mogadishu here. Potholes that aren’t fixed when spring arrives, tree branches obstructing “Stop” signs (!), etc.
Man, what a bunch of losers. One or two posters are trying to explain supply and demand, while the rest are downright communist or Marxist in their replies.
It is a open lesson in the delusion of Marxist socialism. You can tell that they'd be happy to have armed thugs enforce wealth confiscation and if anyone objects, then they'd also be happy to pull the trigger. Either that or they're just so stupid as to think that if the government passes a law demanding that others give up all their wealth to be distributed, that none of them will go along with such thievery without a fight. One of the too few who were trying to reason with them said as much, and the others said he was crazy to say that anyone would dare oppose a government law confiscating their wealth, or that they would work less hard, or simply drop out...
On thing I do know, though, is that if any of these Che T-shirt wearers ever make a little cash, they'll be spitting mad if someone wants to take it and give to others not so fortunate...
I don’t know about NJ specifically, but many cities only fund their street maintenance with fuel taxes. And in a lot of states, the cities have to first surrender the fuel axes to the state, so the state can skim off the top and dole it back out as they see fit.
Often, not even registration fees and personal property taxes go towards road maintenance. And the mil levy on your house and land - it almost never goes towards street maintenance.
So many cities and counties do what mine did: propose an additional sales tax to maintain roads. I often wonder what other ‘essential’ services get funding in front of road maintenance.
I like this line:
“Anyone living in NJ can be assured that (in a manner akin to the Quartering Act leading up to the Revolution) they will be forced to provide funding for a public employee, a welfare sow and bastard(s), and an illegal alien.”
Too bad its too long to be a tagline. My stepson has recently entered the workforce. When we see a welfare sow and bastards, I tell him: “You’ve got to work hard....for them!”.
Yes, I know that's not politically correct. Here's another one...
White repopulation = Urgan gentrification
I believe our municipalities fix their own streets; main roads (state & county) are paid for by them.
Thanks; My oldest son now fits into my “Keep working; millions on welfare are depending on you!” T-shirt I wore in my younger days...
Yeah I know and I don’t blame them one bit; a lot of these guys have learned a hard lesson and I am in full agreement.
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