1. It's called the minimum wage. It's meant to be a wage for entry level work. It's never been about supporting a family or individual.
2. The Bay Area has burdensome restrictions on new housing developments. Look at the costs per sq. foot and time from initial plan submission to project completion and compare them with the rest of the US or world. CA fares poorly.

people are leaving: good! The market is speaking and people are looking for higher effective wages (income -tax - living expenses). Almost everyone here came here for work: we are all economic migrants. Some economic migrants make a good situation for themselves and put down roots, others move on. Having migrated here over 50 years ago and having been fortunate enough to prosper, it's fine for me. Many friends and co-workers have moved on either as part of their careers or upon retiring. We certainly are not generating these ever-increasing housing deficits based on organic growth as our birth rate is way below replacement. So we should discourage in-migration and accept that many younger people will want to move to more affordable and less crowded areas as they start their families. Remote work is good as it puts less pressure on infrastructure, while transit is less bad than single occupant cars, it isn't as good as people staying put and working where they are.

Just an Observation,

As I predicted, when the proof of concept showed that the TECH sector could function well enough without the Bay Area or the Valley, they would stop paying the costs for operating here.

It has nothing to do with government or taxation, it has to do with so many businesses here pushing price elasticity to the breaking point and surpassing it. Thus employees are telling their companies, no more working here.

These businesses are prices for Gasoline, Food, Services, and Housing, ESPECIALLY HOUSING. The fact that the realtors and appraisers are doing the same thing that happened in 2005 all over again is resulting in another 2007 point here in 2023. But much worse because the FED cannot lower interest rates, and the U.S. Government cannot replay the past solution, it proved to fail miserably as demonstrated in the PBS Frontline program you can watch here

Web Link

So there will be no bail out this time. And there will be a far worse impact coming in the next 2 years.

There will be a lot of vacated commercial and residential properties coming in the future. Intel already closed a campus in San Jose. The META San Antonio offices being vacated in the recent past is also evidence, other are all over the place. I noticed that 5150 office complex on El Camino Real is also closed, it is NOT an old office complex.

There is likely an irreversible force where the TECH RUSH cities are going to return to PRE TECH levels.