You can only tax so much and let city services deteriorate to a certain point before your most productive citizens decide to pick up sticks and leave. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
As the exodus gathers momentum, all the reasons people clung so rabidly to urban meccas decay.
If there is any trend that’s viewed as permanent, it’s the enduring attraction of coastal urban meccas: despite the insane rents and housing costs, that’s where the jobs, the opportunities and the desirable urban culture are.
Nice, but like many other things the status quo considers permanent, this could reverse very quickly, and all those pricey urban meccas could become crime-ridden ghost towns. How could such a reversal occur?
1. Those in the top 10% who can leave reach an inflection point and decide to leave. The top 1% who live in enclaves filled with politicians, celebrities and the uber-wealthy see no reason to leave, as the police make sure no human feces land on their doorstep.
