How many of those apps are simply re-branded versions of some core you wrote?
All of them. The company couldn't exist if we had to code up a unique app for every customer. My point is that the fact of there being "lots of apps in the store" doesn't mean the number of app "producers" is correspondingly large. I thought I made that clear when I said, "it's not quite a 1-1 from app to company".
That's assuming an ability to move in either direction. Companies will not pay for relocation costs. If you don't have the money to move, you're so out of luck.
That's why you budget money for a future move and/or rent instead of buy. A 20ft U-Haul truck from Austin to SanFran is $850, plus gas. Loaded it gets 8mpg, and the trip is 1750 miles. So figure $450 for gas, for a total of $1300. Say your buddy gets an offer for $100k/year back in California. He could counter with "$95k/year + $1500 to relocate." The employer would recoup its cost within 4 months. Most would accept that counter-offer. Sucks to give up base salary, but if the alternative is "no job at all and you're stuck in Texas when you don't want to be" then it starts to look more attractive.
1. Hedge funds/billionaires being able to borrow at the Fed rate and at much higher margins than us peons (95% vs 50% for the rest of us) pumped the money into the stock markets.
Which I'm not sad about, since my savings is mainly in U.S. equities.
2. All the money floating around was used by corporations to do stock buybacks - not because their businesses were worth investing in (contrary to the myth taught in Finance classes and spewed by corporate PR departments) but because it allowed the CEOs and billionaires to get even richer.
And anyone else who owns stock in those companies. Like me. And I'm not even a millionaire.
3. 1 & 2 were all done at our expense because it weakened the dollar - making consumer goods more expensive; while our wages haven't gone up.
The dollar isn't especially weak. Here is a graph of its value vs. a basket of trade-weighted currencies. You'll notice it actually got significantly stronger during the recession. Here is a graph of CPI. Post-recession is has increased at about the same rate as pre-recession. I can't speak for everyone else, but my wages have gone up.
In the meantime, we are working longer and longer hours because in order to keep profits up, companies have been laying people off and making their current workforce work harder and longer.
Not working longer hours here. Here is a graph of average hours worked per week for employed persons. Seems like the current level is roughly the same as the level prior to the recession.
A plan that was supposed to help us out and get employment back to 2007 levels has horribly failed.
In 2007 U-3 unemployment ranged from 4.4% (March) to 5.0% (December). Current unemployment (November 2014) is 5.8%. The rate of decrease since peak unemployment (10.0% in October 2009) has been fairly linear at about 0.069% per month. At that rate we should once again be at "2007 levels" (i.e. 5.0%) in October 2015.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce