San Francisco

West Coast Blues

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Few regions have been more consistently Democratic than the West Coast. Even compared with the Northeast, where Republicans occasionally win governors’ offices, the appropriately named “left coast” has been adamantine in its progressivism. Republicans haven’t won statewide office in California in years; in Oregon, it’s decades. Washington has elected a Republican secretary of state, but she now serves in the Biden administration. And the region’s major cities are overwhelmingly blue.  read more »

Housing Affordability in California: Part 2 — Urban Land Markets

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Harvard’s William Alonso showed that the value of residential land tends to increase from the rural uses on the urban fringe1 to centers of economic activity, such as central business districts.2  read more »

The California Headquarters Exodus Continues

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A new Hoover Institution (Stanford University) report indicates that California continues to shed corporate headquarters locations to other states.  read more »

Housing Affordability in California: Part 1 — The Situation

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There is probably no issue more requiring resolution in California than poor housing affordability. It is a threat to the preservation of the middle-class and the competitiveness of the state.  read more »

Gavin Newsom's Presidential Prospects

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Conservatives often see prospective presidential contender Gavin Newsom as a tool of the far Left—and, as such, politically doomed by the seemingly endless crises afflicting California.  read more »

Total Fertility Rate: Metros — San Francisco (Lowest) to Jacksonville (Highest)

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As we previously reported, US total fertility rates have dropped markedly since 2010. The total fertility rate (TFR) is “the expected number of lifetime births per woman women given current birth rates by age.”  read more »

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 »