I read the first 10 pages, skimmed the rest! Good info, but far too technical and hard to read for a guy like me.
A few things I noticed:
-Las Vegas gained poor and rich people, probably because of low wage tourism jobs, not because of this fancy theory.
-San Francisco gained rich, lost poor – but does his theory account for the simple fact that there is a different bar for being ‘rich’ there? Companies pay much higher wages there, thus there are more people who earn more, and less people who earn less. It wasn’t always that way there, so the numbers from 1950 would of course show more poor people.
-Does this study assume that rich people will migrate to these superstar cities, or that the growth of the rich in these cities will come from internal growth?
Interesting if applied locally over the long term. If we gain 300,000 more families here the next 20 years, and 10% are rich, that’s 30,000 more familes who will want to buy a high end home. Not to mention the 50-75,000 familes who will need mid level homes. Since we aren’t building single family homes here anymore, I would say that bodes well for long term appreciation for them. These buyers will not want an 1100 sqft. smart-growth condo/townhome with no yard and an alley driveway entrance.
Of course, if these folks are all illegal immigrants….
