The Ultra-Rich Are Flourishing and Sticking Around in California

Its modern form of feudalism, those who secured low rate loans, pay low prop13 taxes and benefited from equity bubbles are allowed to live good life, others have to serve them for pennies and miserable life in exchange.

CA zoning is doing its work: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...

Same thing is happening in Austin. It's sad.

I’m in a similar boat and it is very frustrating.

My gf and I are fortunate to earn high incomes and it still difficult to find acceptable housing.

Like you, I knew many upper middle class kids when I was younger. The only ones who have purchased houses (so far) are the ones who received help from their parents.

Unfortunately essential workers who don’t make extremely high incomes typically face grueling commutes from far-flung areas or they live in cramped conditions. While living with tons of roommates is sometimes done by single people, for families with children roommate situations are quite undesirable, and so megacommuting is often the only option for those who can’t afford to rent or buy closer to work. I’ve heard of San Jose police officers who commute from Los Banos, a Central Valley town that’s roughly an 80 mile drive away. I believe Tesla’s Fremont factory has a bus for its workers that starts all the way from Modesto. When I lived in the Palmdale area 15 years ago for a summer to do an internship, I saw commuter buses that went all the way to Westside Los Angeles, which is 75 miles away.

Having to commute 3-6 hours per day round-trip is grueling, and it’s sadly the reality for many Californians who do it because they can’t afford to live closer to work.

Ya, that's 90% of the country. If anything, California is one of the biggest current densifiers, as the major metros have hit the natural borders and need to densify to accomodate new people. Lots of multistory and transit going up; not enough, but more than most places.

As I kid who lived outside the US a couple of times and would boomerang back, I feel that way about the whole country. We have something like 8.8% of our population as millionaires so like 22M people. And I never have to hire guards for routine travel trips.

It's a terrible luxury product though because 1) Prop 13 means that people from 50 years ago are still in the luxury neighborhoods 2) Crime is not sufficiently eradicated even from expensive areas

I refer to this idea as making our own inflation. We such stratified groups of spending so that if you want to spend $100 1980 dollars on a pair a jeans you can find that price range. If you never want to spend more than $20 on pants that is possible also.

For all but the most constrained the same product category(inherent quality differences may or maynot exist) is available at any price point.

It is 100% a luxury product for one reason alone: weather.

Having lived in areas with harsh winters and then moving back to CA, you’re basically paying to gain an extra 3 months of life every year.

They moved to CA in the 1840s to seek to get rich, not because they were already rich.

People moved to CA to try to make it big in movies or music, although most failed, they still lived a pretty good lifestyle throughout most of the 20th century. Not because they were already Brad Pitt or Madonna.

People moved to Silicon Valley, initially just to get jobs at a burgeoning semiconductor industry a few decades ago. Then later to start up companies in personal computing or internet businesses. Not because they were already Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos. Although most people never got that level of success, there was still a pretty good lifestyle available to young adults in the valley throughout most of the late 20th century.

Most people throughout California's history moved there for opportunity not as a luxury.

It reminds me of cost of a minor league baseball game ticket, which is several times cheaper than a major league game. Of course the major league game is "better", but is it really 500% better? The seats, the game, pitching speeds, the hot dogs, beer, etc. are all the same. California is better than most places in the US, but probably not worth the financial hardship that people need to suffer to live there.

A company that is on track to reach even remotely close to FANG status has already taken on significant investments. From, by necessity, many investors in the Bay Area.

That means the board wouldn't put requirements on investors, and they'd reign in any attempt by the CEO to do so. Even if the idea of restricting investors by location wasn't incredibly bad business in the first place.

You're also forgetting that money makes residence meaningless. If you are indeed in the "ultra wealthy" class, you have a residence in wherever is most advantageous to you, and other pads to hang in. Your investments will happen through companies located wherever is most advantageous to you as well. Need a new location, spin up an extra company.

It's an interesting thought experiment, but it seriously misjudges the balance of power between folks having money and those possibly generating money at a later point.

Just to be clear, you doubt a large federal entity that employs thousands of professionals because you see a lot of people who you think are rich?

> I have always been convinced that the general numbers on how many rich people (> 10M networth) there are is a total lie.

Not really a lie, but most of that wealth is on paper. Those people do not have $10M cash, they $10M in investments at today's fair market value.

Some amount of property appreciation is due to lower interest rates allowing home buyers to roll up their equity over time as they buy bigger, more expensive houses. That works when interest goes down, but the inverse...should be predictable.

It's like dark matter. It's out there, just hard to pin down. In NYC private schools, average income for parents (non-scholarship) is in the seven figures. average.

The ultra-rich go to different places, eat at private for pay clubs, you don't see the rich because the rest of us have not even heard the name of these places.

A significant fraction of wealth is difficult to track because asset value isn't "real" until there is a transaction that places a value on it, which the government does track. Until those transactions happen, any estimates of asset value are notional and may not be remotely realizable in a real market.

If you feel it's a "total lie" (this suggests both false, and exaggerated was that your meaning?) have you thought about ways to figure this out through primary sources? In my experience the numbers are reasonably accurate. The dynamics of interacting with people who recognize that wealth levels in the group vary dramatically are a pretty Silicon Valley thing AFAICT.

The numbers can't possible capture the circumstances. People can look both privileged and destitute at the same time depending on the metrics used. This can be made even more murky with financial market swings and carried interest.

Unfortunately debt for the individual is not as fungible as wealth.

No, there is a crime problem, specifically a property crime problem. On crimes that involve loss of life, the biggest Californian cities are doing Okay, if not better than expected per capita. On property crime California's cities have very elevated risk per capita, especially SF.

Being killed is a big deal, but no city has such a problem with murder that it can touch the scale of property crime. Thus property crime is the lens by which people will view the risk of crime.

Can I ask where you're living?

"I was disappointed, everyone seemed normal"

In a total plot twist, you can make a lot of money without constantly obsessing about it. You can even be "a bit Epicurean hedonist", enjoy your money, and still make more.

(Also, seriously, if you want people obsessed with "work hard, make lots of money" to the exclusion of anything else, there's no shortage of them. If you can't find any, may I gently suggest that the problem may lie with your search?)

The ideal californian is a combination of intensely ambitious (internally), while also seeming like an epicurean hedonist (externally). Like, you have to show how hard you are not trying, to be an unbelievable successful person.