This guy is eminently quotable too:
> “Revolt” sounds too noble to me, even “populist.” I prefer to call it feudalism.
And on the popular anti-tech sentiment:
> New, young computer programmers with six-figure salaries may easy to scapegoat as the emblem of the Bay Area’s 21st Century inequality, but even if they can afford real estate, their privilege is chump change compared to that of pre-1979 homebuyers and their descendants.
A few key observations in there:
* The power imbalance between buyers and renters in the country is already bad due to the interest rate deductions, but Prop 13 adds insult to injury. While rent control (for renters) is not widespread, owners in California (who are often the upper class stratas, especially in the Bay Area) have built-in rent control everywhere, forever. You can even pass it down to your kids!
* He uses the term BMR (Below Market Rate) instead of "affordable housing". There's been a concerted attempt by politicians to conflate these terms to buy more populist votes. As noted in the article, an important aspect of BMR is that its cost is passed on to new buyers; the perfect political tool: a tax that's not called a tax!
* Many of the local anti-development politicians are riding off the aforementioned "feudal" privilege. Kudos to the author for pulling information on a few of them. Of course the data is anecdotal, but it's amazing how many of these high-income people inherited their primary residence from their parents during their working lifetimes. That's very hard to imagine in most of North America.