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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

#121

Post by samnwa »

eloisant wrote: post #84
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…

The funny thing is that if they all did that, you wouldn't have anyone left to cook your food and clean your office. Then maybe the tech sector would realize they need to pay living wages for all the workers supporting their daily life. And a living wage in SV is much higher than the rest of the world.

That's what the coming robot force is for.

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

#122

Post by xamuel »

valisystem wrote: post #89
stinky wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I think EU should make it easier for US citizens who get any job here to move over. I'm pretty sure that any employable american can achieve that without hard efforts, and AFAIK most welfare is granted to salaried people, except for unemployment allowance. Same with education, some countries are equal (very low) tuitions no-question-asked. For hardly employable 'hard worker' american, I'm pretty sure that are plent…

I did my postdoc work in the UK, as a US Citizen.

After getting the job offer and being sponsored by UCL, it took months for them to grant me a visa, and it cost thousands of dollars just to apply for one. (That's just what I had to pay out of pocket, and doesn't include whatever UCL had to pay to sponsor me.)

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

#123

Post by rorykoehler »

Alex3917 wrote: post #87
nostrademons wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You're more likely to die of boredom, but isn't that better than food stamps, and isn't boredom good if you want to raise a family?" That's pretty much it. The Bay Area gives you the chance to be on the cutting edge of change, which - for a certain personality type that tends to be overrepresented in the Bay Area - is often reason enough to live there. Most of the people who want a stable & boring environment to rai…

> There's also the issue where history has basically never been kind to groups of people who felt they could live a stable, boring existence while clinging to old ways and enjoying a high standard of living. As an interesting counter example, iirc one of the main groups of people who survived the Irish potato famine were the Celts, because they refused to give up the old ways of eating wild Clover and switch to growi…

Who are the Celts? I'm Irish and I have never heard of this or heard of the Celts as a separate group of people from Irish people.

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

#124

Post by wavefunction »

Alex3917 wrote: post #87
nostrademons wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You're more likely to die of boredom, but isn't that better than food stamps, and isn't boredom good if you want to raise a family?" That's pretty much it. The Bay Area gives you the chance to be on the cutting edge of change, which - for a certain personality type that tends to be overrepresented in the Bay Area - is often reason enough to live there. Most of the people who want a stable & boring environment to rai…

> There's also the issue where history has basically never been kind to groups of people who felt they could live a stable, boring existence while clinging to old ways and enjoying a high standard of living. As an interesting counter example, iirc one of the main groups of people who survived the Irish potato famine were the Celts, because they refused to give up the old ways of eating wild Clover and switch to growi…

The English forced the Irish to grow potatoes and then withheld grain shipments during the famine from their abundant surplussed stores.

It's a situation the English have repeated in numerous countries and eras and one of the reasons I think England has a lot to answer for.

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

#125

Post by optimuspaul »

nostrademons wrote: post #27
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…

"You're more likely to die of boredom, but isn't that better than food stamps, and isn't boredom good if you want to raise a family?" That's pretty much it. The Bay Area gives you the chance to be on the cutting edge of change, which - for a certain personality type that tends to be overrepresented in the Bay Area - is often reason enough to live there. Most of the people who want a stable & boring environment to rai…

> The Bay Area gives you the chance to be on the cutting edge of change

can we stop perpetuating this myth!? Sure a lot of innovation has happened that area in the past but so much innovation happens elsewhere in the world. It's not the only tech Mecca and definitely not the best.

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

#126

Post by dragonwriter »

lr4444lr wrote: post #78
d--b wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Oh please: how do the homeless streaming into NYC find their way over in the first place? But let's be charitable: we can fund a one-way ticket back, first class, to their state of residence at a vastly cheaper cost than for housing them on expensive land they will never be productive enough to work their way out of. EDIT: (Because the preceding was hatsher than it had to be without explicit statement of the upside)…

> Oh please: how do the homeless streaming into NYC find their way over in the first place?

If it's anything like the mentally ill streaming into SF in some parts of recent history, they are shipped there by outside localities (lots of that's happened with one-way bus tickets for homeless in various directions on the west coast, too, aside from Nevada shipping mentally ill to SF.)

> But let's be charitable: we can fund a one-way ticket back, first class, to their state of residence at a vastly cheaper cost than for housing them on expensive land they will never be productive enough to work their way out of

Which is a good way to collapse wages and overwhelm infrastructure, both physical and social, in the place they get shipped (which won't be their “state of residence” in most cases, since that's where they are now), but I don't see how that solves any problem.

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

#127

Post by theoh »

There's a book from 2002 called "The Silicon Valley of Dreams" that seems never to have been mentioned on HN. https://nyupress.org/books/9780814767092/

It's about the environmental conditions around electronics manufacturing, and their disproportionate impact on immigrants and minorities. Maybe a bit too hardcore for the optimists here (I'd include myself), but it covers similar issues to this Guardian article and is worth being aware of.

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

#128

Post by skookumchuck »

knightofmars wrote: post #92
elgenie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you move? A train or bus from the Bay Area to Nebraska will run around $100. That’s around the same amount as Bay Area rent costs for just the time spent on the train/bus during the trip. > How do you find a job? To start, “Help Wanted” signs and odd jobs in the usual places (e.g. Home Depot). Then, network or use free internet at public libraries to search for something better. > Are there really many jobs…

TL;DR: "They should just move." is a naive response to the issue presented. Children and family/friends who are around to support you and also sometimes watch your children are often a reason. Could someone move themselves and their two children? Yes, it would cost $300 (to start). Then you'd need to find a place where all three of you could live before you've actually even found a job. This short-term place to live…

Sure, but the US was populated by people moving around who had essentially nothing. California's huge population did not spontaneously appear. Millions come to America by walking across the borders.

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

#129

Post by gaius »

epistasis wrote: post #112

Housing problem. There's not enough of it, and the people that moved here in the 1960s have fought tooth and nail from more people being able to move here. It's a completely artificial construct that drives up the cost of living and robs the poor with rent seeking. All of California's inequality problems go back to that. High salaries for some people help make it stronger, but the greed of the NIMBY homeowners is a f…

people that moved here in the 1960s have fought tooth and nail from more people being able to move here

Well that cuts to the very heart of democracy doesn't it? Why would the government of territory X not answer to the taxpayer-voter of X, over people who merely want to live there?

There are reasons why they might of course, enumerate those reasons and the real dynamic will come to light.

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

#130

Post by Helmet »

Joe-Z wrote: post #70
nostrademons wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you're saying. I think it's an appeal to personal responsibility, which I don't disagree with but misses the point. Correct me if I'm wrong on that interpretation. The root of Silicon Valley's successes and its problems are the same thing, and they both stem from how markets operate. New technologies in automation allow companies to successfully compete with incumbents but use drastically less…

>What do you do with the people left behind? What do you do with the engineers once they've written all the software to automate our daily lives? But haven't you read what the very empathetic and kind poster before suggested as an answer?: These fucking losers should move to whatever hill cave's still vacant, because they are to blame for not having gotten rich fast enough. I really like your writing, very precise an…

There is no such thing as "fair redistribution" - it's theft through political means and it will just further obscure the market. You will end up exacerbating the problem.

The solution is to build more housing and stop subsidizing one-another, so that those that can afford to live there do and those that cannot move.

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