There are CS graduates with a masters degree working 12-hour shifts at Sweetgreen to afford rent on a 300 square-foot apartment.
You are not living in a period of relative prosperity, it's not the 1990s anymore. You are living in a unique, post-gentrified nightmare that does not exist anywhere else in the United States.
Proclaiming that everything is great only works politically if for at least a large block of people, they agree.
The problem is a lot of these folks are cowards too. They keep praising Elon Musk even as he posts (almost daily) things about the greatness of white culture, or creepy AI-generated videos of “sexy” white women in traditional or historical settings. They have said a lot about how important immigration is to Silicon Valley’s talent density but are staying quiet when the DHS openly talks about deporting one third of America (AKA all non whites). They value America’s robust capital and financial systems but stay quiet when the Fed’s independence is openly threatened.
I can agree that California needs to moderate (as does Oregon, Washington, and a number of very progressive states). These states need moderation and balance to fix their budgets, but also to appeal to a broader public politically, so that we don’t keep electing Trumps. But at the same time, I see a major problem arising from concentration of wealth and power. The few that use this power for their own goals or just to get richer, are letting all the other bad things happen. They may not be victims of those bad things, so maybe they don’t care. B ut the rest of us will be victims. I am for free markets but also see a need to talk about reducing the wealth of these ultra rich Silicon Valley overlords, instead of having them be kings at the state level instead of just nationally.
Now the spend is going to go even higher, driving out Silicon Valley in the process, but it will not achieve any of the objectives. In fact, it may be destructive to California on a whole.
