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Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

nytimes.com

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Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#81

Post by jadedhacker »

closeparen wrote: post #65
jadedhacker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only somewhat true. It will smooth out living standards as it crushes working people down by exploiting the lowest wages anywhere in the globe. Simultaneously, the wealthy bourgeoisie will become richer and richer until the internal contradiction in capitalism, that profits come from consumers that must work for wages, tears the system asunder. The system that follows will likely be fascism, the seamless merge…

Years-long waiting lists for apartments shared with many strangers are the historical norm under socialist housing schemes and the only evidence-based expectation were we to implement one today. This despite central-planning allocation of graduates to work assignments and no freedom of internal movement. This alone would probably "solve" the housing crises in major cities today: just stop letting people move to them…

I really appreciate your perspective. I'm still learning about all of this. My understanding is that most often these setups were started in relatively poor countries that didn't have enough housing to start with. That is not the case in the US where many houses remain vacant in the face of homelessness so that speculators can speculate.

In China, they are building entire ghost cities and then filling them as fast as they can. In the Soviet Union, my understanding is that the economy was out of wack because of the need to build the military to defend against Western aggression. If those resources were diverted to the civilian sector, perhaps there would have been more and nicer housing?

EDIT: Even in a capitalist country I'm still living with roommates, and this is part of a trend for younger people. That kind of takes the bite out of the criticism that capitalism offers more freedom in that regard. Such freedom once existed, but it has been declining.

EDIT2: I like my roommates. Not dissing them at all. :)

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#82

Post by RestlessMind »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #38
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True story. I share a messy studio with my girlfriend in the Bay Area. We’ve both at times felt like it’s weird for us to live in a small cramped space, but any time I learn about life for poorer people the world over I realize that living in cramped messy places is the global norm. The fact that I grew up around clean single family homes is just an artifact of the wealth around me. I will say though that I hope robo…

The statistic that constantly rattles around in my head is that 70% of the world lives on less than $10/day. There's an awful long way down from here.

Without adjusting for purchasing power, that number is meaningless. What is the PPP number?

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#83

Post by atomical »

solotronics wrote: post #74
stale2002 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. The big X tech companies, and hot unicorns in the bay area pay crazy salaries for engineers. 3k a month doesn't seem too bad when you are making 200k+, which is close to ~triple what you'd make in some rando mid sized city. Working for the average SF startup though? Yeah, you'd be better off somewhere else.

Whenever I look at cost of living comparison it doesn't seem advantageous to me to be in SV unless you get lucky on equity ( how do you even measure that? ). $150k in Dallas is something like $265k in San Francisco. And I would think in SF your housing would be pitiful compared to the midwest at $3k/month mortgage. Engineers at my company can make upwards of $300k in Dallas and that gives a standard of living thats c…

What sort of company pays engineers $300k in Dallas?

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#84

Post by RestlessMind »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #29
whatshisface wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is so extroverted that they want to have other people peering in to their lives every moment of the day (unless they are walking so closely in lockstep with culture that there's literally nothing about them that could cause friction.) There's a reason why people born in compressed, shared living conditions tend to buy houses when they can. If you don't live in a "dorm" you can control your environment, for exa…

Globalism is going to lead to an averaging out of the standards of living across the globe. People from wealthy nations are in for a rude awakening.

I don't think masses in western societies will accept that. There was already revolt against TPP by both left (Sanders) and right (Trump) in 2016. So much so that even Hillary had to renounce the pact she once praised as "gold standard".

If globalization continues to decrease standard of living in the West, I will expect a massive political backlash (which I believe is already under way).

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#85

Post by twoodfin »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #61
Consultant32452 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't really go to shareholders. Maybe a little at first but a global market meant that prices of goods just dropped to compensate for the 'savings'.

> It didn't really go to shareholders. Data does not support your claim. Consumer excess was definitely realized due to cheaper labor in China and retailers like Walmart exerting influence on vendors, but shareholders most definitely have been receiving the majority of productivity gains. https://www.cbpp.org/research/top-1-percent-of-americans-rea... http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/07/news/economy/compensation-pr... ht…

To the extent your list of links address productivity gains at all, they miss the most important contribution: Inflation, or rather the historically impressive lack thereof over approaching three decades of net economic growth.

When firms produce more with less, supply goes up and prices go down. Compare the median American household in 1988 with today’s and you’ll see exactly where all those productivity gains have gone: More and better appliances, more and better cars, more and better communication technology, cheaper clothes, cheaper food—even at comparable inflation-adjusted income levels.

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#86

Post by kikki »

volgo wrote: post #42
briga wrote: post #2

Ah,the American dream. Go through four years of college and 100k of student loans so you can live in a $2400 dorm room while barely making ends meet. I'm moving to the Bay area in a few months and these sorts of stories make me question whether it's the right move.

Those are some extremely skewed numbers. I live in a $1.7k one bedroom. Rent is like 10% of my pay and I'm just 2 years out of college. No student debt because my family is poor. San Francisco is an amazing place for technies if you're not bad with money

Is this in San Fransisco proper or the outskirts? I've been looking around as I may potentially be moving and can't find anything reasonable under 2.3k that isn't roomsharing

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#87

Post by freejulian »

dokem wrote: post #64
freejulian wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What nonsense. Sure, the valley can teach you some new JavaScript frameworks and how to best invade your users privacy to sell ads, but real programming happens everywhere. There’s plenty of ways to launch your career without working for Zuckerberg or Bezos.

I never said SF was the only way to launch a career and tend to agree with you. Still, there is no denying the power of having a big name on your resume when looking for the next job.

I don’t know about you, but when I review resumes I look at what they’ve done, not what brand names I recognize. Frankly, when I see a name from the Valley such as Facebook, I assume it’s a script kiddie web developer who’s primary experience revolves around NodeJS.

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#88

Post by readhn »

djrobstep wrote: post #32

Last time I was in SF I stayed near the Tenderloin area: I've never seen anything like that level of homelessness, neglect and dysfunction in any other first world country. The existence of such conditions in a city of billionaires is shameful shit. The US economy generates over $100k per household, and people are living on the street, or crammed into dorm rooms? It's a cruel, obscene disgrace.

I was shocked as well. All these leading tech companies, some of the richest people on Earth and can't fix the house they live in?

It is such a bizarre contrast to see so much wealth and people living in card boxes on the streets.

No body cares enough to actually get it fixed.

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#89

Post by Judgmentality »

solotronics wrote: post #74
stale2002 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. The big X tech companies, and hot unicorns in the bay area pay crazy salaries for engineers. 3k a month doesn't seem too bad when you are making 200k+, which is close to ~triple what you'd make in some rando mid sized city. Working for the average SF startup though? Yeah, you'd be better off somewhere else.

Whenever I look at cost of living comparison it doesn't seem advantageous to me to be in SV unless you get lucky on equity ( how do you even measure that? ). $150k in Dallas is something like $265k in San Francisco. And I would think in SF your housing would be pitiful compared to the midwest at $3k/month mortgage. Engineers at my company can make upwards of $300k in Dallas and that gives a standard of living thats c…

What company in Dallas pays over $300k for engineers?

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#90

Post by toomuchtodo »

atomical wrote: post #83
solotronics wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I look at cost of living comparison it doesn't seem advantageous to me to be in SV unless you get lucky on equity ( how do you even measure that? ). $150k in Dallas is something like $265k in San Francisco. And I would think in SF your housing would be pitiful compared to the midwest at $3k/month mortgage. Engineers at my company can make upwards of $300k in Dallas and that gives a standard of living thats c…

What sort of company pays engineers $300k in Dallas?

Oil and gas, and finance, to name two I’m familiar with.
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