BLUE STATE BLUES: Swamped by Growth, Silicon Valley Weighs Taxing Big Employers.

It is unusual for cities to opt for a direct tax on employment to fund housing or services, said Jared Walczak, an analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation, a conservative-leaning research group that tracks U.S. tax policies. Cities usually try to incentive growth, keeping business taxes low or concocting tax incentives.

But up and down the West Coast, cities are struggling to manage multidimensional housing crises and growing wealth gaps, where pockets of prosperity displace others on the fringe.

In Silicon Valley, the problem is so severe that some are hoping for a limit—or at least a remedy—to growth while housing supply and public transit catch up.

It’s damn near illegal to build affordable housing in the Bay Area, and Sacramento has wasted tens of billions on a high-speed train to nowhere while the state’s streets and highways crumble — but more government is always the answer to failed governance.

“Get the hell out of my way!” the wise man once said.