461–470 of 546 posts
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What area is that?
Kansas City, and it's nearly infinite suburbs, would be incredibly comfortable at 75k. Could easily afford a nice home in one of the bustling urban neighborhoods, or a 2,000+ sq ft. in the burbs, or something with a few acres out in the country but near an interstate for commuting.
I'm not saying Zuckerberg couldn't do more to include his cafeteria workers but let's face it, even doubling the pay rates of the workers at the bottom of the pile won't solve their problems because they lie elsewhere - with the free-for-all property and rental markets which have been tearing communities apart across the globe for decades. Nowhere is the brutal reality of capitalism and its failings more evident than…
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It isn't paranoia when the entire history of the "free market" demonstrates that... (not all, but a far to high proportion of) these entities pretty much will screw over everyone and everything they can, in exchange an extra buck or too -- unless very rigorously constrained from doing otherwise. Or that is to say, "regulated".
THAT'S why there are so few issues in the heavily government controlled sectors of the economy, like health care, public education and drug policy. /s
Which again, is why I referred to it as the "lesser of nightmares".
Everybody here is focusing on real estate. (because young wealthy programmers and older poorer workers have a shared interest in cheap real estate) But I'm really interested in how HN feels about this section: “I felt more secure at my other job. You didn’t have people looking down at you,” Nicole said. Now she works at cafeterias with names like “Epic” and “Living the Dream”, and the distance between the two classes…
It is the way it is today.
Yet..... There are tradeoffs where being "poor" can be better than "have just enough +" stable. Solving for financial and health concerns together adds a glue to a relationship that money can never buy
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So...make all of their employees choose between uprooting their lives to move to a low-cost area (which they they didn't get to pick), or leaving their job? Didn't Reddit catch some flak over that recently? (yes I'm aware it was the other way, into the Bay Area rather than out)
Please. Most (if not "basically all") of their employees already moved to work there.
The argument here should be don't have a kid when you work at chipotle, let alone three. Why is this ludicrously irresponsible behavior not called out? Why do we feel sorry for people who engage in such monstrously stupid and selfish behavior?
Quite right! There should be laws against the poor reproducing. Perhaps a tax on children? Or some sort of permit system? Maybe a one child policy, exceptions only for the rich? Or just take away the children of the poor if they're irresponsible enough to have them and not be able to afford them. Give them to rich families so they can be raised properly. I wonder if there are any examples in history that we could lea…
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After engineer pressure a few years ago Google opened their cafes and some other amenities to many of their contract staff; they used to be more restricted.
Why doesn't this happen more often?
Exactly that happened to Microsoft (https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...). Microsoft lost and, as part of preventing such lawsuits in the future, they limited things that are available to contractors.
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This is pretty standard, isn't it? The people who clean my company's office don't attend our town hall meetings, eat lunch with us, or take part in our 401k. They may be working at Facebook, but they work for their own company.
This is pretty standard, isn't it? Actually it's a fairly recent invention. It only seems "standard" if one has no recollection of a time and a place (not so far back) when outsourcing (and the systematic discounting of blue collar workers, generally) wasn't nearly as prevalent as it is today. They may be working at Facebook, but they work for their own company. We all acknowledge that that's the way things (technica…
They have been priced out of their own neighborhood and that is really unfortunate. Theoretically they should move to a place with a cheaper cost of living. People move all the time for wages and cost of living; I would guess its the number one reason people move. They don't work for Facebook they work for a contractor; I would say they need to find a better job or a less expensive place to live (cost of living).
Moving costs money. If you're scraping by as tightly as they are - how would one expect them to afford to move? You need money to rent a u-haul to haul your stuff, some cash to rent an apartment, and then enough cash to provide a runway to find a job (which in a service industry role shouldn't take more than 6-8 weeks) - that still adds up to about 10k to relocate to a cheaper part of the country.
So let's say you go more central. Estimate U-Haul at 2k, gas at 1k, rent of new place as $500/mo (so $1k first month). And let's say you eat out every day on the trip and actually use all 10 days. For 3 people that's $5(per meal)3(people)3(meals per day)*10(days)=$450. You're at ~$4.5k right there, under half your value. I can tell you I did 2/3 of the country in 3 days and closer to $2k (but I own a truck).
And with my experience this is a conservative value. I'd expect you could do it a lot cheaper than that. With $5k you CAN move most places in the country. For a few grand you can move most places within a half country radius.
I'm not trying to say that saving isn't hard, but I'm calling BS on your $10k number. A few grand is a number close to which you can save and borrow from friends/family. I think the reluctance to move is more a reluctance to move, not so much the financial burden. I know most of my friends won't do it for that reason. And I won't lie, that is a tough part, but you have to do what you have to do.
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When every city in the bay thinks that way we get a situation where only the lucky get to live here.
And that's a bad thing why? Why shouldn't there be nice, exclusive areas to live in, just like there are exclusive schools to attend and exclusive companies to work for?
And it creates an urban form that induces long, high-emission solo driver commutes and fewer residents in a part of the country that requires very little HVAC— both of which lead to a lot of climate change.
And it maintains a segregated society, racially and otherwise, where the wealthy may ignore social problems.
And it's likely a significant drag on American GDP.
So, for all these reasons— it is an abuse of the a local government's police power to make it illegal to build apartment buildings.