LookinforDirt
WKR
No one seems to be chalking this up, or at least attributing a large part of the blame, to simple population growth. More people, less space. That is where it all starts. Nearly everything else being talked about here is a spin-off of that.
More people require more jobs. The model had been for companies to setup shop in NY, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Houston. Populations exploded in those cities. The cost of running a city grows. Politicians end up taxing individuals and companies to fund the extra services needed to handle all these people and of course, being corrupt, pad their pockets along the way. All driving up cost of living and doing business there. Sheer incompetence of politicians makes it worse. Real estate costs within reasonable commute times skyrockets pushing people further out from the city centers driving up costs further and further out. More and more land is developed to accommodate all these people. As those major city populations grow, smaller satellite cities become bigger cities. Companies start looking for more affordable places to setup. NY and LA being the prime examples of cities that have hit their tipping point, now even rich companies can no longer afford to base corporate headquarters there. Attracting talent is increasingly difficult due to horrible commute times and unaffordable real estate forcing potential employees to look at having roommates and/or live in match box size apartments. With no prospect of ever owning their own home. Homelessness, crime, flourish. Quality of life has reached lows people are not willing to accept. Major companies look to other cities. Mayors of these attractive cites bend over backwards to bring these companies to their towns (remember, corrupt and padding their pockets?). Tax breaks, etc. Atlanta went through this decades ago. Now it is Austin, Nashville, and seemingly every city in Texas. It’s a lot of cities talked about in this thread. This trend has been taking place over the last 30-40 years. But we are seeing a major change even within that trend where companies, e.g. financial services, that never considered being based anywhere but a NY or lesser extent Chicago now realize, with the advances in technology (seamlessly working remotely, high quality video conferencing at you finger tips, cloud services, software as a service, phones and tablets capable of being computer workstations) they can move to Austin or Nashville. They can still attract talent and still do business at a greatly reduced cost. And they are doing it in mass. All of it is driven by population growth and aided by advances in technology.
People have always retired to smaller, more affordable places. That is nothing new. People with the cash have always bought up land in those places. There are just way more of those people now and the go to places in the past are full and not the affordable place anymore. New places are being sought out. None of this happens without population growth. There is a finite amount of space within our boarders and we are busting at the seams.
More people require more jobs. The model had been for companies to setup shop in NY, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Houston. Populations exploded in those cities. The cost of running a city grows. Politicians end up taxing individuals and companies to fund the extra services needed to handle all these people and of course, being corrupt, pad their pockets along the way. All driving up cost of living and doing business there. Sheer incompetence of politicians makes it worse. Real estate costs within reasonable commute times skyrockets pushing people further out from the city centers driving up costs further and further out. More and more land is developed to accommodate all these people. As those major city populations grow, smaller satellite cities become bigger cities. Companies start looking for more affordable places to setup. NY and LA being the prime examples of cities that have hit their tipping point, now even rich companies can no longer afford to base corporate headquarters there. Attracting talent is increasingly difficult due to horrible commute times and unaffordable real estate forcing potential employees to look at having roommates and/or live in match box size apartments. With no prospect of ever owning their own home. Homelessness, crime, flourish. Quality of life has reached lows people are not willing to accept. Major companies look to other cities. Mayors of these attractive cites bend over backwards to bring these companies to their towns (remember, corrupt and padding their pockets?). Tax breaks, etc. Atlanta went through this decades ago. Now it is Austin, Nashville, and seemingly every city in Texas. It’s a lot of cities talked about in this thread. This trend has been taking place over the last 30-40 years. But we are seeing a major change even within that trend where companies, e.g. financial services, that never considered being based anywhere but a NY or lesser extent Chicago now realize, with the advances in technology (seamlessly working remotely, high quality video conferencing at you finger tips, cloud services, software as a service, phones and tablets capable of being computer workstations) they can move to Austin or Nashville. They can still attract talent and still do business at a greatly reduced cost. And they are doing it in mass. All of it is driven by population growth and aided by advances in technology.
People have always retired to smaller, more affordable places. That is nothing new. People with the cash have always bought up land in those places. There are just way more of those people now and the go to places in the past are full and not the affordable place anymore. New places are being sought out. None of this happens without population growth. There is a finite amount of space within our boarders and we are busting at the seams.
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