On Sunday, July 27, 2003, at 04:18 PM, James A. Donald wrote:

-- On 27 Jul 2003 at 14:22, Tim May wrote:

...

As for the standard of living issue, I _do_ think the standard of living has declined over the past 40 years, aside from some availability of high tech products and medical care. Most of my employed friends are working half again as many hours as my father worked, are spending twice as much time sitting in traffic, and are living in smaller houses than my parents and my family lived in. And they are paying several times the tax burden. If the wife works, which was rare in the 1950s and into the early 60s, and they have children, then they may be paying a further substantial hit on childcare and nannies.

When Palo Alto was developed, it was for the most part where the poor people lived, while the rich people in San Francisco could no longer afford their parents houses.

This is so untrue as to be ridiculously silly. I don't know for certain which decades you are referring to as "when Palo Alto was developed," as it was developed from the decades when Stanford was being established, then when Varian and H-P were being established, then when Lockheed and Fairchild were going strong, then when the chip companies of the 60s and 70s were operating, and so on. However, since Palo Alto was essentially "built out" by the late 1960s, when the last of the Eichlers (*) were finished, I'll address several of these periods: (Eichlers are a style of house laid on a slab, with relatively little insulation, lots of glass, etc. These typically sold for about $20K during most of the late 50s, early to mid 60s.) * during the build up of "Professorville" and the other professional-oriented parts of PA, the houses were built by well-paid (for the time) professors. Numerous mansions along University Ave., for example. With lesser houses near Colorado, California, Embarcadero, etc. Even at this time relatively few of the residents were "unable to afford San Francisco." * during the post-WWII employment by Varian, H-P, Fairchild, and others, a typical engineer made about $12K per year (varied over the years, of course) and the houses cost about $20K. Taxes were a very small fraction, maybe $1.5K per year, total, including federal, state, local, sales, energy, road, etc. * when I moved to the area in 1974, salaries were about $15K, averaged over educational status, and houses were about $30K. Taxes were dramatically higher, even for lowly-paid starting engineers. The welfare state was in full swing, with more and more people ("of color") simply not working at all, or claiming disability, or hacking the system to extract more handouts for having more children, etc. Interestingly, at this time, in 1974, San Francisco was a much less expensive place to live in than Palo Alto or Los Altos or even Sunnyvale were. While there were probably some engineers living in Palo Alto whose parents lived in Pacific Heights (a wealthy area of SF) and who thus could not afford to live as there parents had, I saw maybe only one of these folks during my years at Intel. Palo Alto, even though built out, was like a lot of towns that had been built out.

There is an appalling housing crisis here in Silicon valley, caused by the fact that most of the land is off limits to development.

This is simply not so. Most of the steep hillsides in watershed areas are not developed, but this is common in many cities, in many countries. And the "housing crisis" is roughly comparable in many places I have lived in or spent time or visited. Examples include Portland the areas west of it (plenty of land, but very similar problems), San Antonio, Albuquerque, Northern Virginia, most of southern Florida, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, and nearly all of LA. And from reading news reports and talking to friends, things are much the same in many other parts of the country. In almost no place even remotely near a large city or suburban area can one buy a house for about 1.5 times a typical local salary for an engineer or comparable college graduate. A more important problem than "all the land is off limits" is "every worker costs a lot" plus "every permit costs a lot." This is largely due to massive taxation at nearly every level. --Tim May