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The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

theguardian.com

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Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#51

Post by Tomte »

stinky wrote: post #26
mjfl wrote: post #3

Why pay $2000 a month when you have the whole country you could live in for much less? Why should I have to pay increased taxes for your ignorance/provincialism? Is living in San Francisco a fundamental right? I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'd suggest that these people move there, for the low cost of living combined with the vibrant-enough economy. Unemployment was at 5% through the great recession . However, I fin…

There is a solution. At the moment successful EU countries such as Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark are struggling with aging population and not enough people to fill blue colar jobs. I think EU should make it easier for US citizens who get any job here to move over. Americans in general are super hard working. Europe needs hard working people, while we can provide them with free universal healthcare, free universit…

Would they want to move?

More importantly, would they be willing to learn the language?

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#52

Post by lucaspiller »

stinky wrote: post #26
mjfl wrote: post #3

Why pay $2000 a month when you have the whole country you could live in for much less? Why should I have to pay increased taxes for your ignorance/provincialism? Is living in San Francisco a fundamental right? I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'd suggest that these people move there, for the low cost of living combined with the vibrant-enough economy. Unemployment was at 5% through the great recession . However, I fin…

There is a solution. At the moment successful EU countries such as Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark are struggling with aging population and not enough people to fill blue colar jobs. I think EU should make it easier for US citizens who get any job here to move over. Americans in general are super hard working. Europe needs hard working people, while we can provide them with free universal healthcare, free universit…

One of the complicated parts about this for US citizens is taxes. If you are a US citizen you have to file taxes with the IRS for your worldwide income, even if you are living and paying taxes in another country. I assume most EU countries have a tax-treaty with the US, so you wouldn't have to pay taxes twice, but it definitely makes it more complicated.

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#53

Post by b6 »

d--b wrote: post #18
mjfl wrote: post #3

Why pay $2000 a month when you have the whole country you could live in for much less? Why should I have to pay increased taxes for your ignorance/provincialism? Is living in San Francisco a fundamental right? I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'd suggest that these people move there, for the low cost of living combined with the vibrant-enough economy. Unemployment was at 5% through the great recession . However, I fin…

How? How do you move to Nebraska when you have $100/week for food? How do you find a job, when you have literally 0-day you can spend without working? Are there really than many jobs for people who flip burgers in Lincoln, Nebraska? And are people who flip burgers in Nebraska so much better?

> How do you move to Nebraska when you have $100/week for food?

How could anyone here answer that question? It's not specific enough to answer. Could it be difficult to do? Yes. Are you trying to claim it's impossible, that people are actually truly trapped? It's not impossible, they are not truly trapped.

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#54

Post by dalbasal »

jhoechtl wrote: post #44

Why is this called a paradox? It's a greed and winner-takes-it-all culture. What are the mechanism in place which would guarantee at least a mild version of wealth redistribution?

This is a bit of a tangent but...

"Redistribution" is in itself a frame. Generally in modern discourse it means post earnings income redistribution. UBI, dole, income taxes, pensiins..

There is (just in terms of all options) also the distribution of earnings, the distribution/redistribution of wealth, and the distribution of wealth accumulation. All these affect the disparities and their trends. There are very few policies acting on these. Income taxes, not wealth taxes. Income support, not wealth building. There was some very controversial talk of pay caps or limits to ceo-janitor pay ratios... But this is outside of the main avenues of normal policies.

Most of what we (wealthy liberal democracies) "do" in this regard directly to affect disparities is post earnings redistribution and (substantially) distribution of consumption (public services like schools and health services).

..no concluding point... :)

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#55

Post by [deleted] »

IanCal wrote: post #50
mjfl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe it. Say you find a place in Lincoln for $500-$600 (which is possible in Lincoln), just by using the difference between old rent and new to cover debt from moving expenses, a mover could pay off $15,000 of debt within one year.

If you're struggling to make ends meet, it's probably not going to be that easy to get someone to lend you fifteen grand.

[deleted]

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#56

Post by mjfl »

foldr wrote: post #46
mjfl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe it. Say you find a place in Lincoln for $500-$600 (which is possible in Lincoln), just by using the difference between old rent and new to cover debt from moving expenses, a mover could pay off $15,000 of debt within one year.

Not everyone can borrow $15000. Wealthy people seem often not to realize that poor people don't have access to credit on the same terms that they do.

Nonsense. A person with a non-terrible credit rating can max-out around $16,000 using multiple credit cards. It's not a great idea, but I've seen it done, and confirmed that it's not a good idea. But if your alternative is a life of misery - escape!

Also, it's highly unlikely that moving will be as expensive as $16,000 anyways. Perhaps $6,000-$7,000 for a small family of two?

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#57

Post by alexanderdmitri »

sax0n wrote: post #33
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

This seems to explain at least some of the UBI-love tech founders have. They live as billionaires in a community, that despite all their money and highfalutin ideas doesn't actually take care of its own, unless you have millions if not billions of dollars. Of course to them the only solution is more money, that's the only solution they seem to know. They'd be more believable if they fixed their own literal and metaph…

I've never been to the US, so forgive me if I'm ignorant, but if the problem is poverty, surely the solution is more money? What's wrong with a UBI or some other mechanism to deliver that?

As a US citizen, I see just handing out cash as a terrible way to fix this poverty. With the way our society operates, I'd put my money that whatever UBI is distributed, most of it will be leveraged upwards in creative and manipulative ways without very many productive gains.

Poverty is a complex issue because there are so many different causes behind it and they are often intertwined. A few reasons off the top of my head: systemic oppression and social prejudices, mental health, desperation, poor self-perception, lack of opportunity, irresponsible handling of money, ineffective upbringing, bad set of cards, medical problems (and the often accompanying debt), terrible education, malnutrition, a system that largely blames the impoverished for being so, rich people who get to set their own definition of charity for financial gain, and the list goes on and on ...

It'll never happen, but I think a much better solution would be defining a set of basic needs where more money != better quality: healthcare, food, education, housing.

Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Especially that last one.

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#58

Post by martin_bech »

stinky wrote: post #26
mjfl wrote: post #3

Why pay $2000 a month when you have the whole country you could live in for much less? Why should I have to pay increased taxes for your ignorance/provincialism? Is living in San Francisco a fundamental right? I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'd suggest that these people move there, for the low cost of living combined with the vibrant-enough economy. Unemployment was at 5% through the great recession . However, I fin…

There is a solution. At the moment successful EU countries such as Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark are struggling with aging population and not enough people to fill blue colar jobs. I think EU should make it easier for US citizens who get any job here to move over. Americans in general are super hard working. Europe needs hard working people, while we can provide them with free universal healthcare, free universit…

Thats actually pretty easy to do, if you are from the US, and can get a job in say Denmark, where you can support yourself. And your kids will get free college, scholarships and affordable daycare. You will need privat insurance for healthcare initialy i believe.

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#59

Post by Kurtz79 »

throwaway31231 wrote: post #11
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

This seems to explain at least some of the UBI-love tech founders have. They live as billionaires in a community, that despite all their money and highfalutin ideas doesn't actually take care of its own, unless you have millions if not billions of dollars. Of course to them the only solution is more money, that's the only solution they seem to know. They'd be more believable if they fixed their own literal and metaph…

It's more than that. Money's value depends on everyone's collective attachment to it. The winners of a game remain so, only as long as a significant number of people are playing. Ditto with USD, ditto with BTC. UBI is one way to keep people playing; but I'm extremely wary of this idea. UBI without some sort of communal/anarchist/kibbutz-ian distributed structure binds society in yet another way. 'You're free as long…

I like the idea of UBI in theory, but I cannot imagine it won't have any impact on the cost of living.

At the very least, it would force companies contracting minimum/low wage workers to raise wages substantially (because why work on a shitty job if I can have the same money for free ?), which in turn would mean a substantial increase in prices, which in turn would make UBI money not enough to survive for most people relying exclusively on it, and we are back at square one.

UBI seems to me the classic "easy solution for a complex problem", that in practice would create even more problems than the actual system.

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#60

Post by nbtdev »

d--b wrote: post #42
mjfl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is economically illiterate. If it got to the point where there was not enough people to fill necessary jobs around the city the wages would rise to attract more people. Right now the opposite is happening: there are too many people.

Too many people? Are you serious? San Francisco + Silicon valley has 3 million people. That's less than half of New York City. The amount of money the region makes is more than enough to support that population over that area...

There are 7 million in the 9- county Bay Area, and having lived there for ten years, that is the stat that matters.

http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/

Cost of living on the peninsula has already pushed many people to the east and south and even then you don't get much of a break. Land use restrictions mean there is very little new land on which to build and having to jump through eleventy different legal hurdles to do so means that when built, it's already more expensive than many of those in need can afford.

I moved away after being there ten years as a software developer because the cost of living, level of congestion and crowding was obnoxious, and I have no intention of returning. But then, I had that option.

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