K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Fortune Asks 'Why Does America Hate Silicon Valley?'

Tom Foremski:

I've lived here since the mid-1980s and self-awareness is a very rare quality among the tech companies and techno-elite. They don't see much and they fantasize about doing great things on a grand scale but achieve nothing locally. Hypocrisy runs rampant.

For example, Twitter execs a couple of years ago were making public comments about how they were changing the world and how Twitter was empowering individuals and communities and how the Arab Spring was a great example. Yet at the same time they were willing to hold San Francisco hostage, threatening to move hundreds of jobs unless they received special tax relief on payroll taxes and on profits from an IPO. The city government gave in and Twitter got what it wanted and it agreed to move into the mid-Market/Tenderloin area, one of the poorest neighborhoods, that the city has been trying to gentrify for decades.

But there's not much gentrification going on, since Twitter keeps hundreds of staff inside, with free gourmet meals, plus a slew of free services, dry cleaning, even cleaning staff apartments. It is competing with local businesses rather than helping support them -- it's the opposite of gentrification.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 7, 2013 12:27 AM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas