I guess I must be missing something obvious about the land of opportunity.

Here's how health insurance works, in a nutshell: I pay hundreds of dollars a month, either directly or through my employer. Then, when I go to the doctor, I may still need to still pay some money. If I get hit by a bus or have to have cancer treatment, I may still need to pay thousands of dollars. If I need an ongoing prescription, I may still need to pay. Etc, etc, etc. And this is considered normal. (If I am on a very low income, or elderly, or a few other special circumstances, these costs may be subsidized for me.)

Toast in San Francisco famously costs $4. A loaf of bread, if I don't want it pumped full of corn syrup, is somewhere between $4-6. A friend spent $8 on two heads of broccoli the other day.

Want to live in San Francisco? A one-bedroom apartment rents for somewhere between $2500-$4000 a month, depending on the area, excluding bills. To own, a one bedroom apartment costs around $600k; a 2-bedroom house in the Inner Richmond district is almost a million dollars; a 3-bedroom house is closer to $1.5m.

People talk about becoming going out on your own and starting your own business, but there's no meritocracy here. This is a market that's only open to the already-wealthy; people who come from affluent backgrounds or have significant cushions saved up. For everyone else, the only real viable solution is to work for a megacorp, which will pay you the six-figure salary you need to get by here. I believe that, for many people, Silicon Valley is a closed shop.

The culture of entitlement that comes with this is immense. People talk about having made it on their own, and the power of individual achievement. More and more, I hear anti-union, anti-working-class, sexist, racist bigotry in casual conversation. Even the prevalence of something as archaic as traditional gender roles is jarring to me; I've seen more cat-calling and casual misogyny since I've lived here than anywhere else I've ever been. And they talk about the efficiency of private business. Private business is efficient, but in part because it's also sociopathic. Talk about business efficiency to people who lose everything when they get sick; who are evicted from their homes because their landlords want higher rents; who are allowed to slip through the cracks because of poor luck.

I'm single with no children, but one day I would like a family. These are not the values I want to bring children up around. I believe that there is no such thing as individual accomplishment without society, and that we're all richer when we take care of each other. I also believe that San Francisco was once an oasis of this kind of thought, and it's deeply sad that such a progressive place has become so inhospitable.

There are many things to love here: the boundless ambition, the critical mass of talent, the historical culture of the city itself. I've met wonderful people, and have wonderful friends. But I do have to wonder what kind of place this is becoming.