San Francisco

The Importance of Fare Enforcement

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According to the New York City police department, subway crime is up 53 percent so far in 2022 compared with 2021. Since ridership grew by 64 percent in that time period, that means that crime rates per rider have actually fallen  read more »

Engineered California

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Nothing so illustrates the mindset of green politics, particularly in California, as the word “natural,” which is taken to mean unspoiled, pure, and better than the workings of man. Yet few places are as fundamentally artificial, if measured by its dependency on human intervention, as California.  read more »

Telecommuting Wins over Returning to Offices

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The most credible estimates say that at least 20 percent of workers will continue to work at home on any given day after the pandemic, up from less than 6 percent before the pandemic. The share of remote workers is likely to be much higher in Silicon Valley, where a lot of workers do jobs that don’t require daily office visits  read more »

California's Economy May Seem Healthy, But Just Wait for the Next Recession

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The California economy may seem healthy on the surface, with home prices soaring, Silicon Valley booming and the state government posting big multi-year state budget surpluses thanks to a massive surge in capital gains tax revenues and income tax revenues from tech stocks.  read more »

California's Vanished Dreams, By the Numbers

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Even today amid a mounting exodus among those who can afford it, and with its appeal diminished to businesses and newcomers, California, legendary state of American dreams, continues to inspire optimism among progressive boosters.  read more »

Huge Spike in Domestic Migration from Urban Cores

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Net domestic migration losses spiked perhaps as never before in the pandemic year of 2021 among urban core counties --- the counties that contain the urban cores  read more »

Americans Do Not Want to Return to Urban Living

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The Census Bureau recently released data on domestic migration that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, and their findings were heavily covered in the press with headlines such as “Cities Lost Population in 2021” and “The pandemic city exodus revealed: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago lost the most residents.”  read more »

Farmer Craig Hits an Oily Patch

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For years I’ve bought the majority of my meat and eggs from a farm family north of the city. Every two months Farmer Craig drives down in a refrigerated van and I fill my freezers with lamb, poultry, pork, and beef.  read more »

Does California Know What Time it Is?

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Has the California proposition changed fundamentally? And does it matter for real estate?

The answer to the first question is yes—the state had a net population decline in 2021, the first drop since it began annual counts more than a century ago.  read more »

The Tech Breakdown

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The record meltdown of Meta stock earlier this month suggests turbulence in the tech world and a difficult period ahead for the company formerly known as Facebook. But even as Meta’s stock has fallen, the record profits being posted by fellow oligarchical tech firms Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon indicates that Silicon Valley’s hegemony is far from over.  read more »