[ChuckMcM]

It is clear from the tone that you've got some emotional investment here, and I respect that, and with all due respect the facts stand in argument to your thesis.

Consider for that there are more millionaires and billionaires in the California than there are in New York ([1] [2]). The housing market that is the Bay Area exists not in a small number of neighborhoods, but from South San Jose to Novato in Marin. One has to appreciate the wealth building effect of the industry if it can raise the median price of a single family home over a thousand square miles by $500,000.

Yes, some acquisitions suck, and yes, even some IPOs suck, but no other industry puts as company value into the hands of the rank and file employees as startups do.

[1] http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p70-88.pdf

[2] http://www.netstate.com/states/tables/state_millionaires_air...

[mahyarm]

Do not look at the price of housing as an indicator of being wealthy! It's often an indicator of regulatory failure & NIMBYism more than anything. Otherwise my home area of Vancouver would be land of the wealthy, while it's actually became the 2nd most unaffordable city in the world. Unaffordable being housing price : annual income ratios. The bay area has started to attract mainland chinese cash too. Friends have been outbid by mainland chinese buyers with cash trying to buy a house in palo alto.

You don't even have the luxury of going over a bridge and housing prices dropping significantly. In Vancouver, the average house is $1.2mm - $800k+ and going 1 hour away from the city core just drops you $100k-$200k.

[michaelochurch]

Thank you for writing that. I'm at a conference and don't have time to correct all the wrongness on the Internet. High house prices are a combination of regulatory corruption ( NIMBY) and extreme price inelasticity.

Disasters that destroy housing actually increase the notional value of housing after the (very short) period of panic wears out, because the price spike more than cancels out the loss of supply. But wealth was destroyed, not created.

[ChuckMcM]

I wasn't going by the house prices specifically as an indicator, I was really trying to point out that Census data says that there are more millionaires per capita. In California. I used to be able to find it by county but the 9 bay area counties are well represented. All those millionaires are not "just the founders and a few MBAs"