Viewpoint: Beware, San Francisco, this tech exodus is not just another bust

[Ptarmigan]

Viewpoint: Beware, San Francisco, this tech exodus is not just another bust
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2020/10/06/san-francisco-tech-exodus-not-just-another-bust.html

Earlier this month, Twitter listed over 100,000 square feet of its San Francisco headquarters for sublease. This follows Pinterest’s decision to pay $89.5 million to terminate a 460,000-square-foot office lease in the city. While these are the latest indications that a mass migration of tech companies and tech workers is well underway in San Francisco, the signs of a tech exodus have been building for months. Sure, Covid-19 is, in part, to blame. But San Francisco has also made it easy for tech companies to leave.

San Francisco policymakers have spent the last near-decade mounting a battle against the tech industry. In 2013, the nation watched as San Franciscans famously protested private commuter shuttles by chaining themselves to busses. Then came the scooter ban in 2018. And in 2019, we saw the most bizarre San Francisco attack yet: an attempt to ban corporate cafeterias.

Against this backdrop, San Francisco tech companies have endured nine tax proposals within the last 10 years. Rising year by year, the city now boasts a budget of nearly $14 billion and is outspending more than 25 percent of states in this country. It comes as little surprise that San Francisco’s leadership has turned to tax hikes for the latest crisis.

Heading into the November 2020 election, the San Francisco tech industry faces a CEO tax and business tax increase that, if passed, could raise San Francisco’s tech tax rate to nearly double that of its West Coast rival, Seattle. One of these tax measures would raise taxes on the tech industry by 30 percent alone.

COVID-19 is just part of the problem. San Francisco's taxation and regulations are causing the tech exodus.

Even if the current tech exodus is something of a sequel to the dot-com bust of 2001, have San Francisco policymakers lost their memories? In the summer of 2001, San Francisco faced an exodus of over 30,000 tech workers, resulting in a 20 percent increase in commercial vacancies and a 30 percent drop in rent prices. What first appeared as a “welcome relief” for locals quickly turned into one of San Francisco’s worst eras: a decade filled with double-digit unemployment rates, yearly budget deficits amounting to billions, and rampant city cutbacks and layoffs.

Cities around the country, take heed: San Francisco’s loss could be your gain. With the average tech job contributing well over $650,000 annually to the local economy, even a small portion of remote work “refugees” promises remarkable change.

As for San Francisco, the famed tech capital of the world may be no more. When the dust of Covid-19 settles, the same legislators who pushed tech away will have to answer to the many San Franciscans who came to rely on tech’s employment — and tax dollars — to survive.

San Francisco is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

[Ausonius]

Viewpoint: Beware, San Francisco, this tech exodus is not just another bust


COVID-19 is just part of the problem. San Francisco's taxation and regulations are causing the tech exodus.

San Francisco is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Communists do not want a capitalist economy, even if they benefit from it!

This has been the great contradiction: the "Big Tech" capitalists swing to the Far Left in the hope that they can play with the Cool Kids there, who in reality will take their money, but still hold them in the deepest contempt, and will use Big Tech's money to destroy them!

The End Game: Big Tech capitalists either lose their heads, or they start taking orders from the Neo-Communist government of  The United Soviet Socialist States of Southern Canada.  A combination of both possibilities has been typical.

[thundley4]

San Francisco is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Democratic Socialists always do that.

[DLR Pyro]

In the 1990s I lived in the east bay in Richmond Marina which is across the bay from SF.  My apartment on the bay had a beautiful view of the city and golden gate bridge,  but it was one of those "good from far but far from good " things as the city was a shithole even 25 years ago. 

The only reason I would venture into the city was for the epic windsurfing at Crissy Field underneath the Golden Gate.

It's a shame a city with such perceived beauty has been neutered by decades of liberal policy.

[Old n Grumpy]

Wow, you mean they want to give up all the diversity and multiculturism, like the homeless, the crime, panhandling and the shit on the sidewalks?

With all that and paying the high fair share of taxes it sounds like a liberal utopia!

Now they will move to some better place and f**k it up like in san fran. The influx will bring their liberal ways and turn another nice place int oa liberal shit hole.
 

[Ptarmigan]

Communists do not want a capitalist economy, even if they benefit from it!

This has been the great contradiction: the "Big Tech" capitalists swing to the Far Left in the hope that they can play with the Cool Kids there, who in reality will take their money, but still hold them in the deepest contempt, and will use Big Tech's money to destroy them!

The End Game: Big Tech capitalists either lose their heads, or they start taking orders from the Neo-Communist government of  The United Soviet Socialist States of Southern Canada.  A combination of both possibilities has been typical.

For some, high school never ended.

[Ausonius]

For some, high school never ended.

For too many residents of America, that is too true!

[Ptarmigan]

For too many residents of America, that is too true!

When I go to Twitter, it feels like one giant high school.

[FesteringWound]

Just going to point out that the midwest has plenty of well educated folks that can fit roles that these tech companies need. Not to mention the space, lower taxes, lower costs, and lower wage requirements....