The timing makes perfect sense to me if wages were dropping between the 70s and 80s and the place crashed in the 90s.
Think about it in terms of generations and generational wealth. If a middle-class family in the early 1980s already had a house and some established wealth (not a lot, necessarily), they can better weather changes in wages and front line economic conditions. Also, when an economy starts to hurt, it's usually the lowest paid and least skilled workers who take the initial hit. In this case, my guess would be that far fewer young people were hired, rather than large scale layoffs of existing workers.
Either way, those people already living there and doing okay continued to be mostly okay, but it drained the prospects of future generations. People at the top of their earning potential in the 1980s will be retiring in the 90s, but because of the change in economic conditions, fewer people are moving up to fill their places. This hurts the overall economy, as there is less money available to buy things from local stores or whatever. The chain effect becomes a spiral and will continue to get worse unless/until something big comes to the Valley to reverse the trend. With tough state regulations and very little incentive to pick the Valley over other parts of California, that seems pretty unlikely.
This is the same pattern that's played out in many parts of the Northeast and the Rust Belt. Old industries shut down, and as the existing money-holders die or move away, the economy sinks over time. Towns don't usually die right after a big manufacturing plant shuts down (unless it's the only major employer or something similar), but a plant shutting down can spell long term doom due to the knock-on effects later.
The timing makes perfect sense to me if wages were dropping between the 70s and 80s and the place crashed in the 90s.
Think about it in terms of generations and generational wealth. If a middle-class family in the early 1980s already had a house and some established wealth (not a lot, necessarily), they can better weather changes in wages and front line economic conditions. Also, when an economy starts to hurt, it's usually the lowest paid and least skilled workers who take the initial hit. In this case, my guess would be that far fewer young people were hired, rather than large scale layoffs of existing workers.
Either way, those people already living there and doing okay continued to be mostly okay, but it drained the prospects of future generations. People at the top of their earning potential in the 1980s will be retiring in the 90s, but because of the change in economic conditions, fewer people are moving up to fill their places. This hurts the overall economy, as there is less money available to buy things from local stores or whatever. The chain effect becomes a spiral and will continue to get worse unless/until something big comes to the Valley to reverse the trend. With tough state regulations and very little incentive to pick the Valley over other parts of California, that seems pretty unlikely.
This is the same pattern that's played out in many parts of the Northeast and the Rust Belt. Old industries shut down, and as the existing money-holders die or move away, the economy sinks over time. Towns don't usually die right after a big manufacturing plant shuts down (unless it's the only major employer or something similar), but a plant shutting down can spell long term doom due to the knock-on effects later.