Economy

Feudal Future Podcast — Crossroads: The Democratic Party in Transition

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 17:12:53 -0400

America stands at a political crossroads where old alliances are shifting and economic realities are reshaping party loyalties. The Democratic Party faces a profound identity crisis - pragmatic at the local level where mayors tackle real problems head-on, yet seemingly detached at the national level where ideology often trumps practicality.

Our fascinating conversation with David Gershwin, Democratic strategist, and Jim Wunderman, CEO of the Bay Area Council, explores this tension that could determine not just the Democratic Party's future but America's economic direction.

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More podcast episodes & show notes at JoelKotkin.com

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This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

Nvidia’s Boom is Not a Straightforward American Success Story

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 30 May 2023 11:38:29 -0400

In what has been a bleak year for Silicon Valley, the sudden surge in the value of tech company Nvidia, driven by its mastery of chips used for artificial intelligence, may seem like a ray of hope. Yet if this success may reward the firm’s owners and employees, as well as the tech-oriented financial speculators, the blessings may not rebound so well to the industry’s workforce overall, or to the broader interests of the West.

Nvidia’s rise as the first trillion-dollar semiconductor firm reinforces the de-industrialisation of the tech economy. Unlike the traditional market leaders, like Intel, Nvidia does not manufacture its own chips, choosing instead to rely largely on the expertise of Taiwanese semiconductors. It has limited blue-collar employment. Intel, a big manufacturer, has 120,000 employees — more than four times as many as the more highly valued Nvidia, which epitomises the increasingly non-material character of the Valley.

Read the rest of this piece at Unherd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

San Francisco Loses Another 39,000 Taxpayers

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 14:45:51 -0400

Since the days of the Gold Rush, California has been a magnet for those seeking wealth. A backwater barely a century ago, with just over 3 million residents compared to nearly 40 million today, the Golden State established dominance over everything from agriculture and film to space travel and the internet.

But new data suggests that the tide may be turning, and a rich hegira is afoot.

Researchers found that 39,000 San Franciscans who had filed federal tax returns for 2018 had moved out of the city before filing 2019 returns, taking away a net of $7 billion in income in one year. A soon-to-be released report from the San Francisco Business Times, sources tell me, will see a similar phenomenon in Silicon Valley.

Once able to hold onto its rich, the Golden State seems to be following the course of high-tax places like New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut. For years, these cities and states have been oozing billions in tax revenues as wealthy residents fled to the likes of Texas, Florida, Arizona, the Carolinas and Tennessee. While California still lags behind New York State in the money-losing sweepstakes, it is catching up: in 2020 the state lost $17.8 billion in tax revenue, with the loss spreading into the Bay Area, whose tech-rich economy historically kept the state solvent.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

What the New York Times Won't Admit About California

Joel Kotkin — Thu, 05 May 2022 11:26:50 -0400

Even the New York Times has to admit unpleasant realities, like the departure of people from California and other deep blue states. But one thing the paper, and other similarly-minded reporters based here, will never admit: the connection between the California economy and regulation and the rising out-migrations.

The Times accepts that people are leaving in part due to costs, but puts much emphasis on other factors, like the decline in immigration under the monstrous Trump, Covid deaths and falling birthrates. Yet these factors have occurred across the country, and other regions, notably in the sunbelt and the South, have experienced rapid population growth. It turns out that policy choices that California has made seems the likely prime cause for the state’s shocking demographic decline.

This net out-migration, as the Times admits, has been going on for decades. Some people, particularly in academia and the mainstream media, continue to label claims of an “exodus” as essentially false; the LA Times, a good barometer of political correctness on the West Coast, called it “a myth” reflective of the political bias of “haters.” But as we show in our recent Chapman University report, since 2000, California has lost 2.6 million net domestic migrants — more than the current combined population of San Diego, San Francisco, and Anaheim (the cities).

In 2020, California accounted for 28% of all net domestic out-migration in the nation — about 50% more than its share of the US population (19%).

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Bay Area Council: Can We Restore the California Dream?

New Geography — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 15:11:05 -0500

Joel Kotkin, Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Marshall Toplansky, Clinical Assistant Professor of Management Science at Chapman University, plus Holland & Knight Partner Jennifer Hernandez and Raley’s President and CEO Keith Knopf join a Bay Area Council webinar to discuss how we can restore the California dream. The webinar was moderated by Jim Wunderman, President and CEO, Bay Area Council.

Watch the video:

Restoring the California Dream

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 17:32:25 -0500

Join us for a webinar on January 21st, hosted by Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky to learn how we can restore the California Dream for middle and working class Californians. Following the presentation of the report, there will be an all-star panel led by Jeff Ball, new CEO of the Orange County Business Council.

Panel participants include Raul Anaya, Joe Hensley, and Karla Del Rio.

Meta (Facebook) Leases All Office Space in Austin's Tallest

Wendell Cox — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 19:13:58 -0500

The Austin Business Journal reports that Meta (former Facebook) has leased all 33 office floors of the under construction Sixth and Guadeloupe Tower, which is due to open in 2023. The building will be Austin’s tallest building, at 66 floors and a height of 873 feet and is located downtown.

This will make the building the fifth tallest in Texas, behind the Houston’s JP Morgan Chase Tower (former Texas Commerce Bank), the Wells Fargo Plaza, and the Williams Tower, the tallest building in the United States outside a central business district (located in the Houston Galleria). One downtown Dallas building is also taller, the Bank of America Tower, which ranks third in the state, following Wells Fargo Plaza.

The building is mixed use and will have 349 residential units. It will be interesting to see how many Facebook employees will be able to afford living in the building, which would eliminate physical commuting almost as much as remote work.

Downtown Austin is developing rapidly and now is indicated by Cushman and Wakefield to have about 13 million square feet of office space (before Sixth and Guadeloupe), about equal to Cincinnati’s strong central business district. In this regard, Austin is following earlier models of dense downtown development in Calgary and Charlotte.

Downtown Austin is experiencing a building boom, which as of 2022 will have opened 15 buildings 400 feet high or more since 2010, when there were only four. In addition to the Sixth and Guadeloupe Tower, there are a number of new residential buildings planned for the Rainey Street District, adjacent on the east to downtown.

Austin was the fastest growing among the 56 major metropolitan areas (more than 1,000,000 population) in each of the last two decades. From 2010 to 2020, Austin added 567,000 residents, a 33% increase. Austin attracted 337,000 net domestic migrants between 2010 and 2020. This is more than all major metropolitan areas except for Dallas-Fort Worth, which is three times as large, and Phoenix, which is twice as large. Most of the new Austin residents settled in the suburban counties, which accounted for about two-thirds of the metropolitan area’s net domestic migration.

For decades, Austin has been playing a larger information technology role. Meta lease, and the new downtown “Google Tower” (Block 185) add significantly to this development.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Jaw-Dropping News: Companies Investing $48.1 Billion in New Factories in Texas

Joe Vranich — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 16:21:56 -0500

Economic development professionals in Texas will remember this November for a long time as the month saw announcements for three record-breaking, colossal construction projects. It’s fair to call them “Texas-sized.”

First, Texas Instruments (TI) said it will build a $30 billion semiconductor fabrication plant in Sherman, which is about midway between Dallas and the Oklahoma border (an area often referred to as Texoma).

Next, Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., announced that it will construct a $17 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility in Taylor, which is near Austin.

Also, Tesla just revealed that its Gigafactory in Austin – where construction and interior finishing work is underway – revealed that its cost is estimated at $1.1 billion.

The announcements totaling $48.1 billion were announced in only an eight-day period, which may be a record in the world of economic development. I can speak only for myself, but I don’t recall anything of this magnitude occurring in such a short time span in any state.

Read the rest of this piece at Spectrum Location Solutions.

Joe Vranich helps businesses make location decisions driven by growth, consolidation, market changes, or a need to relocate to places with more favorable business climates.

125+ Years Savings for House Down Payment in L.A., S.F. and San Jose

Wendell Cox — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 11:44:49 -0400

A just published report by Knock.com (see note) estimates that, at current prices, the median income household could require between 115 and 167 years to save for a down payment on the median priced new home in some major metropolitan areas.

A just published report by Knock.com (see note) estimates that, at current prices, the median income household would require 12 years to save for a down payment on the median priced new house. This shortest down payment saving period is in the Houston, San Antonio, Oklahoma City and Atlanta metropolitan areas.

Among the markets in which new construction house transactions were eight percent or more of sales, Metro Miami and metro Sacramento had the longest down payment saving periods, at 30 and 21 years respectively. In both of these markets, only 20% of households could qualify for a mortgage on the median priced new house, according to Knock.com.

However, among the markets where new housing construction was less than the eight percent level, housing was far more expensive. Knock.com estimates that the median income household would need to save 115 years in metro New York to save for a down payment on the median priced new house. Three coastal California metros would require more than 125 years of savings for a down payment.

127 years in metro San Jose (includes Santa Clara and San Benito counties).
153 years in metro Los Angeles (includes both Los Angeles and Orange counties)
167 years in metro San Francisco (includes San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa and Marin counties.

The irony is that San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan area residents have been reported to be migrating to the Sacramento area for more affordable housing.

Each of the four metros with the longest down payment saving time were rated severely unaffordable in Demographia International Housing Affordability: 2021, published by the Urban Reform Institute (US) and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada). Among the markets in which new housing represented eight percent or more of housing transactions, Sacramento, Miami, Denver and Las Vegas were also severely unaffordable.

Note: Knock.com is a real estate firm established in 2015 by founding team members of Trulia.com Survey press release.

California High Speed Rail: More Cost Overruns & Delays? (Los Angeles Times)

Wendell Cox — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 11:21:33 -0400

According to Los Angeles Times reporter Ralph Vartabedian (see: Cost overruns hit California bullet train again amid a new financial crunch, October 8), the troubled California high speed rail system could face additional cost overruns. According to Vartabedian, “The California bullet train is facing at least another billion dollars of proposed cost increases from its contractors, following a history of sharp cost growth on construction work over the last eight years, The Times has learned.”

The already much delayed start of service could be delayed further: “The current plan would start train operations by 2030, but officials working on the project say privately that it appears difficult, if not impossible, to meet that timetable.” At the time of the 2008, when voters approved Proposition 1-A to authorize $10 billion in bonds, the Los Angeles (Anaheim) to San Francisco (Transbay Terminal) line was to have cost $33 billion and entire route was to have opened in 2020. Current cost estimates are in the area of $100 billion, though that is after scaling the project back significantly and sharing conventional commuter rail tracks in the Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas.

Joseph Vranich and I authored a report on the system in 2008 (see: The California High Speed Rail Project: A Due Diligence Report). In that report we projected cost overruns of 30% to 60% for the entire system, which was to have included spurs to Sacramento and San Diego. Our projections were embarrassingly low, with the much more modest system now likely to cost more than the full promised system with its Sacramento and San Diego branches, little of which appears likely to be opened even 10 years late.