Comment Re:Perhaps the answer is taxes (Score 2) 161
Silicon Valley weathered the 2008 bubble better than most of the country and bounced back very quickly. Unemployment is quite low and there are a lot of new tech companies going in. Currently things are far more diverse than they were when the dot com bubble burst.
Part of it is the whole environment of Silicon Valley which is not easy to duplicate. Silicon Valley rewards failure. If your last two startup ventures failed, you're more likely to get support for a new one. People also hop from company to company if they're not happy, and the California making non-compete clauses irrelevant has helped a lot. The weather is quite nice though rain would be quite welcome after two years of severe drought. We may get a few hot days in the summer but it's usually a dry heat and it cools off after a few days. The winter rarely gets below freezing. And as a software engineer, it's an engineer's market. If I'm not happy I can just go across the street and work someplace else and the employers know it. Also, the social services here have not been cut nearly as much as in many red states. That isn't to say that there aren't problems, like bad traffic and high housing costs, much of which is due to the demand greatly exceeding supply. There's not much room to build more housing either since Silicon Valley is surrounded by hills.
The state's financial situation recovered much faster than many other states and has had a balanced budget the last few years. Once we got rid of all the gerrymandering the state has been balancing its budget with minimal fuss since the current voting laws promote moderate candidates.