Read the history. Flint used to get its water from Detroit. There were zero issues with it. Flint switched to its own water supply to save money. That’s when the issues started. The Flint water was more acidic and broke down the old lead plumbing. Every old city has some lead plumbing. It’s not an issue as long as the water doesn’t cause breakdown.
“The Flint water crisis began in 2014 when the drinking water source for the city of Flint, Michigan was changed to the Flint River. Due to insufficient water treatment, over 100,000 residents were potentially exposed to high levels of lead in the drinking water. After a pair of scientific studies proved lead contamination was present in the water supply, a federal state of emergency was declared in January 2016 and Flint residents were instructed to use only bottled or filtered water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and bathing. As of early 2017, the water quality had returned to acceptable levels; however, residents were instructed to continue to use bottled or filtered water until all the lead pipes have been replaced, which is expected to be completed no sooner than 2020.”
According to this article, Dallas ranks very low in urban mobility. But, which city did rank high??? Yes, Fab 7x7, baby!!! Dallas, you’re out!!!
While it is true that American cities ranked poorly they were not the worst in this study, despite having three out of the bottom 10 cities. Baghdad came bottom, followed by Hanoi, then Atlanta, Teheran, Lahore, Delhi, Dallas, Houston, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.
The more I read about this issue, the less keen for Amazon to setup HQ2 in Austin. Seem worse to me as an AAPL investor (since HQ2 looks like would be needing the same kind of tech workers as Apple Austin HQ, raise cost for AAPL and disrupt Apple operation) and as a landlord (higher property tax).
Finding workers is an issue in every tech city. They all import 69% or more of them from other states or other countries. It’s in the SV report I posted.
It goes foreign born, in-state born, and out-of-state born. Every city gets a majority of it’s STEM workers from relocation. Foreign born is 29-57% with SV being the highest. In-state born ranges from 18-31%. SV is actually the lowest. Out-of-state is 25-45% with Seattle being the highest. You can see SV is heavily dependent on foreign born talent to fill roles. It appears Americans prefer moving to Seattle over SV. SV is the least preferred for Americans which isn’t a surprise giving the cost-of-living.
Silicon Valley 57% 18% 25%
New York City 43% 29% 28%
Boston 33% 30% 37%
Southern California 42% 31% 27%
Austin 29% 28% 43%
Seattle 36% 19% 45%
My initial thought when I first heard of this is that Austin refuses to yield to Amazon’s demand so Amazon is pressurizing Austin through this open RFP. Would be disappointed if Austin would give Amazon a ridiculously good tax deal and a below market rate land/ construction cost of the new buildings. Is only 3,000 personnel per year and there is unlikely a legal contract that if it won’t eventually go up to 50,000, there would be crawl back of incentives… quite often, the promise is not met and the residents have to shoulder the burden through increased property tax and other government charges/ fees. My initial euphoria has faded, rather not have HQ2 in Austin.
That’s exactly what SV makes unique.
SV became dreamland for global tech resources.
Countries in Asia educating more STEM workforce (at least until undergraduate) than US.
The city Asian engineers prefer the most is SV.
As one of those foreign born engineers, I strongly prefer SV over any other place in US.
Some of my american born friends (who are engineer and live in other states) don’t understand why I really want to stay in SV working overtime and paying high living cost.
For them, they have a confidence that they can fit in anywhere in US.
For me, I want to be with people who came from other countries to pursue their dream as engineers/researchers/scientist just like me.
That makes me feel included, secure and confident.
What about the risk of those people deciding to stay in their home country and start companies there? I think the risk increases as there’s more wealthy Chinese people that’ll be looking for investments. People will look at Jack Ma and others and realize you can stay in China and do it. If foreigners aren’t moving to SV, it’s done.
For China, that already happened at least 10 years ago. There are hardly any mainland Chinese coming to SV over the last 10 years, in fact, many had went back. Don’t let those ex-mainland Chinese and ex-Hong Kongers who choose to stay in SV influence your opinion about the truth. These fellow bloggers choose to stay here for whatever reasons and have to rationalize why China and Hong Kong under China are bad for them, otherwise it makes no sense to stay here. All my tenants are Indians. Strolling along the streets, I see increasingly more Indians; going to schools, I see increasingly more Indians; and new neighbors are all Indians. So, my anecdotes pointing towards only Indians come to SV, Chinese are leaving.
Chinese are not leaving. Just fewer of them coming from China. China is becoming more and more like Japan. You don’t see any Japanese people coming to America. For what??? Learning a new language and adapting to a new culture is a pain in the neck.
Yes, more and more Indians will come. They are escaping a much more impoverished society and have less of a language barrier.
