Why Top Talent Must Flee Silicon Valley

In order for tech workers to cash out on home equity, Proposition 13 forces them to move to another state.

Theme: Real estate refugees

Subject Article: "Silicon Valley is Going to Retrench in 2016."

Other Links: 1. "Are High Housing Costs Forcing Talent to Flee Silicon Valley?"
2. "The Lock-in Effect of California's Proposition 13."
3. "Tesla says Nevada battery plant on track despite report of delay."

Postscript: Expensive Bay Area real estate does much more to deter talent from moving there than it does to push it out. In fact, the tech industry might have converged faster nationally if Proposition 13 didn't discourage relocation. Supply isn't distorted as much as demand is. As out of state tech markets become more attractive to talent, the Prop 13 effect will flip from an agent of retention to one of exodus.

Exploiting Puerto Rico's Fuzzy Sovereignty

With the homeland as neither nation nor state, Puerto Ricans twist in the wind of political whimsy.

Theme: Human rights geography

Subject Article: "The problem with Puerto Rico's debt."

Other Links: 1. "Murder at Sea: Captured on Video, but Killers Go Free."
2. "American Experience: The Pill."
3. "The Insular Cases: Constitutional experts assess the status of territories acquired in the Spanish–American War."

Postscript: "Reconsidering the Insular Cases: The Past and Future of the American Empire."

Over a century has passed since the United States Supreme Court decided a series of cases, known as the “Insular Cases,” that limited the applicability of constitutional rights in Puerto Rico and other overseas territories and allowed the United States to hold them indefinitely as subordinated possessions without the promise of representation or statehood. Essays in this volume, which originated in a Harvard Law School conference, reconsider the Insular Cases. Leading legal authorities examine the history and legacy of the cases, which are tinged with outdated notions of race and empire, and explore possible solutions for the dilemmas they created. Reconsidering the Insular Cases is particularly timely in light of the latest referendum in Puerto Rico expressing widespread dissatisfaction with its current form of governance, and litigation by American Samoans challenging their unequal citizenship status. This book gives voice to a neglected aspect of U.S. history and constitutional law and provides a rich context for rethinking notions of sovereignty, citizenship, race, and place, as well as the roles of law and politics in shaping them.

Thinking about the Insular Cases in a generic sense, citizenship in any space at any scale is not a binary. In terms of territory or turf, citizenship is experience on a continuum. In a neighborhood, newcomers do not enjoy the full benefits of citizenship that the most tenured residents enjoy. Newcomers are expected to conform and labor to fit in, prove they belong. For example, Spike Lee's rant about the gentrification of Brooklyn:

Then comes the motherfuckin’ Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can’t discover this! We been here. You just can’t come and bogart. There were brothers playing motherfuckin’ African drums in Mount Morris Park for 40 years and now they can’t do it anymore because the new inhabitants said the drums are loud. My father’s a great jazz musician. He bought a house in nineteen-motherfuckin’-sixty-eight, and the motherfuckin’ people moved in last year and called the cops on my father. He’s not — he doesn’t even play electric bass! It’s acoustic! We bought the motherfuckin’ house in nineteen-sixty-motherfuckin’-eight and now you call the cops? In 2013? Get the fuck outta here!

Nah. You can’t do that. You can’t just come in the neighborhood and start bogarting and say, like you’re motherfuckin’ Columbus and kill off the Native Americans. Or what they do in Brazil, what they did to the indigenous people. You have to come with respect. There’s a code. There’s people.

In this passage, Spike Lee is anti-newcomer. He isn't anti-gentrification. He invokes tenure as the measure for the right to define cultural space. Hey Spike Lee, get the fuck outta here with your xenophobic bullshit.

Atlanta's Talent Attraction Problem

From 2000–2013, Atlanta has fallen further behind other large metros in growing its population of college-educated young adults.

Theme: Higher education and economic development

Subject Article: "Best and Worst Cities for Educating Blacks: Instead of educating their own, some cities are importing college graduates."

Other Links: 1. "The Talent Migration Paradox."
2. "Debunking Texas Exceptionalism."
3. "Globalization and Atlanta's Gated Urban Core."
4. "Trolling for millennials with the Atlanta Streetcar."

Postscript: "We're now at a point in Georgia where you can't sustain those high attainment rates just by importing more people," says McGuire. "The challenges in Georgia, and in metro Atlanta for sure, have a lot more to do with doing a better job with the kids who are here than simply counting on lots of middle class families to move here and solve the demands of employers that way."

How Can Rust Belt Cities Attract More Immigrants?

Communities might roll out the red carpet for the foreign-born, but the more welcoming disposition doesn't do the trick.

Theme: Immigration and economic development

Subject Article: "Why newcomers are beginning to bypass Canada’s big cities."

Other Links: 1. "WE Global – Leading Rust Belt Immigrant Innovation."
2. "Population And Prosperity."
3. "Reading, Pa., Knew It Was Poor. Now It Knows Just How Poor."
4. "'The Handmaid's Tale' Is Economic Development."
5. "UNH study: Mexican migration plummets — as immigrant income rises."

Postscript: As the era of rural-to-urban international migration comes to an end, immigration to the United States will matter more in terms of quality than quantity. Immigrants won't boost the population. They will boost the regional economy.

Re-Location Is an Entrepreneurial Act

Correction: A reader of the post at Pacific Standard sent to me an email message pointing out an error I made. I reversed the characteristics of System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 is "fast" and System 2 is "slow".

Out of necessity, old habits die easily for migrants.

Theme: Innovation and migration

Subject Article: "Easing the Pain of Relocation."

Other Links: 1. "The Economic Case for Welcoming Immigrant Entrepreneurs."
2. "German Pork Butchers in Britain."
3. "Voting With Your Feet."
4. "The White Flight Myth."

Postscript: The psychology of migrants and the geography of migration are closely linked. While most migration appears to be economically rational, the precise location decisions are irrational. I live in Northern Virginia, a tight real estate market. I take advantage of the irrational location decision of well-educated mothers, who are willing to pay a large premium to reside in the neighborhoods associated with the "best" schools. I get more house in a better location thanks to the perception of school quality, which I know from graduate level data analysis courses in the social science to be off the mark in terms of outcomes. The movement between regions looks (and is) rational. But dig deeper into the destination region and stereotypes trump careful analysis.

Economic Growth in an Era of Demographic Decline

A shrinking population isn't the end of economic expansion.

Theme: Ironic economic indicators

Subject Article: "Obamacare’s Big Gamble on Hospital Productivity."

Other Links: 1. "Japan’s population slide set to accelerate."
2. "The Depopulation Bomb."
3. "Advanced industries drive down prices, making income more valuable."
4. "Era of Dying Places."

Postscript: Economist Tyler Cowen musing about China's demographic decline problem:

The Chinese employment rate has been increasing steadily, as has Chinese productivity.  In other words, improvements in both labor quantity and labor quality can help offset the aging problem.

Worth noting that Cowen isn't as optimistic about the same demographic pressures welling up in already wealthy countries. I disagree. But that's a larger debate for another time.