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Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

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Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#121

Post by zeroname »

tropdrop wrote: post #118
yjhoney wrote: post #34

I started a nonprofit 2 years ago (garagescript.org) that hires low income people in San Jose and their full time job is to learn how to code and teach new students. Our nonprofit started off with 20 students, most were making about 25k/year and had no coding experience. I paid each of them 2k / month to quit their jobs and focus on coding full time. From the original 20 students, 6 are left. The other 14 are all ful…

From article - > low and middle income jobs, such as teachers and firefighters or nannies and cooks, are key to the local economy. Someone else commented in this thread how all these jobs (meaning every non-tech, middle-class job) will begin to pay more once they're more in demand. The assumption is that programming/tech is highly paid because it's so in demand, and every other job isn't because vice versa. Let's jus…

> However, San Francisco is currently experiencing a teacher shortage of several years [1], so that vice versa I mentioned above is simply not true. The city is offering cash bonuses for teachers now, and it introduced some legislature to attempt to incrementally increase their wage, but it's simply not enough.

A "teacher shortage" isn't the same as an increase in (free market) demand for teachers (or education). Who says that people actually demand the education that the public system forces upon them? It's more like the government can't fill the poorly paid positions it decided it needs to educate people.

If a private company figured out that it could make more money by hiring workers at a higher price, they would do it. But if they just have a "shortage" of cheap-enough workers to make more money, that's not actually more demand. That's equilibrium. Everybody always has a "shortage" of getting something for nothing.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#122

Post by dredmorbius »

Reedx wrote: post #82
Barrin92 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the jobs that are mentioned in the article that are being hit the hardest are teachers, firefighters, caretakers and so forth. How many of those have been automated away? It seems that tech workers in the valley have found their own analog to blaming immigrants for downward wage pressure, their particular boogeyman seems to be the robots. No, the answer is much more trivial. As the article points out, the huge influx…

Not really. The money mostly goes to landlords. VC -> Startup -> Employee -> Landlord

Time to relearn the basic classes of economic goods, and their corresponding pricing behaviours: commodities, wages, rents, interest, public goods.

Land, monopolies, skills and talent endowments, capital, and power all return rents. Likely risk as we'll.

Most of books 1, 2, and 5 of Smith.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#123

Post by zaroth »

CydeWeys wrote: post #46

I have when the news writes an entire article around a single report, but then fails to link to that report. You had one job ... Anyway, here's the report in question: http://www.everettprogram.org/main/wp-content/uploads/TIGHTR... Reading the fine details of the report, you see that the top-line metric is real income, adjusted for inflation and local cost of living. And the #1 factor that's proved ruinous to local c…

Reading the article the whole time waiting to see the words “real” or “adjusted” — thank you for doing the leg work.

It is no surprise that all but the fastest growing wages cannot outpace all but the fastest growing real estate prices in the world.

If those wages were nationally adjusted for inflation instead of locally adjusted for housing costs, the story would be entirely different. The middle-wage jobs aren’t fully pricing in real estate I suppose because the people who hold those jobs don’t live in the “Real Bay Area” and must commute long distances to work.

It’s terrible for just about everyone for housing prices to raise faster than 2-3% annually, certainly any faster than national inflation rates will impact mobility.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#124

Post by flukus »

claydavisss wrote: post #22
flukus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not only can Californians no longer blame Republicans Assuming republicans are at fault (I know nothing of California state politics, so not taking a side here) it will take years to decades to move beyond any damage their policies caused. Politicians aren't free of blame they day they're voted out.

Well, you are right about one thing - you know nothing of the State politics Democrats have had a virtual lock on this State for at least five years. So much so that their primary nemesis was their own moderate Governor, Jerry Brown. Think about that - conservatives had been so utterly decimated that the only thing standing in the way of the State legislature was a Governor from their own party. They have a pliant Go…

> And astoundingly, outrageously, you actually think State Republicans, who have basically been an endangered species for years...are actually to blame.

I don't think that at all, I explicitly said that I have no thoughts on the issue. I was pointing out that policies outlast governments and the momentum of their decisions carries on well past the election date. You implied that everything that happens from now on will be 100% the democrats fault and that's simply not true.

If we want better politicians then we need better memories than goldfish.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#125

Post by dredmorbius »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #85

So much of economics (as it exists in reality, not in theory) is not about maximizing RoI or efficiency or revenue or supply vs. demand, it's about power. Exercising it, abusing it, using it to set up class distinctions, reveling in the feelings of superiority and control, etc. That's a big reason why workers end up underpaid. It's not because it's good for business (it rarely is), it's simply an exercise of power. I…

"Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power."

-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...

Or: Yes, I agree. And much of Smith's book concerns this.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#126

Post by dredmorbius »

malandrew wrote: post #102
Scipio_Afri wrote: post #7

Boost the wage floor. High skilled workers have more force to push against the wage supply price that employers set; they have a lot of power to set wages, including an entire department called HR dedicated to ensuring they get the best deal as they can. Low wage employees do not have that power.

Raising the wage floor just puts more upward pressure on housing.

So you need to attack both. Land tax and wage floor.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#127

Post by dredmorbius »

woolvalley wrote: post #31
dragonwriter wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a minimum wage of $15 in many of the cities “Many” may be an exaggeration: Berkeley, Emeryville, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and San Francisco.

They are offering jobs starting at $15 either way. I walked by a fast food shop that is not in those cities offering $15-$21/hour jobs recently.

Demonstrating that labour markets are regional.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#128

Post by CydeWeys »

rrcaptain wrote: post #100
woah wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that while your anecdote may infuriate you, the effect of investors who don’t rent out their homes is negligible on housing prices. The real fix is to build enough housing for everyone. Eliminating prop 13 could help with this, since it would cause homeowners to be penalized for high home values, building political will to build more housing and bring down the prices.

>My guess is that while your anecdote may infuriate you, the effect of investors who don’t rent out their homes is negligible on housing prices. No that's actually a large part of housing problems. Like a third of Manhattan real estate is empty. And Manhattan is already super dense but still has homeless people.

Please don't make up fake stats.

I live in Manhattan and the idea that a full third of the real estate here is empty is laughable. Have you ever visited??

As my sibling comment points out, the real rate (as determined by actual data) is less than 5%.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#129

Post by tropdrop »

zeroname wrote: post #121
tropdrop wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From article - > low and middle income jobs, such as teachers and firefighters or nannies and cooks, are key to the local economy. Someone else commented in this thread how all these jobs (meaning every non-tech, middle-class job) will begin to pay more once they're more in demand. The assumption is that programming/tech is highly paid because it's so in demand, and every other job isn't because vice versa. Let's jus…

> However, San Francisco is currently experiencing a teacher shortage of several years [1], so that vice versa I mentioned above is simply not true. The city is offering cash bonuses for teachers now, and it introduced some legislature to attempt to incrementally increase their wage, but it's simply not enough. A "teacher shortage" isn't the same as an increase in (free market) demand for teachers (or education). Who…

This is why I constrained my argument to only consider children ages 0-12.

Regardless of whether "people actually demand the education the public system forces upon them," people do demand a safe, stimulating place to put their very young kids while they go to work.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#130

Post by Ibethewalrus »

kokokokoko wrote: post #56
Barrin92 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the jobs that are mentioned in the article that are being hit the hardest are teachers, firefighters, caretakers and so forth. How many of those have been automated away? It seems that tech workers in the valley have found their own analog to blaming immigrants for downward wage pressure, their particular boogeyman seems to be the robots. No, the answer is much more trivial. As the article points out, the huge influx…

There was a study which I cannot locate right now which discussed that one of the substantial impacts of a Walmart moving into a town was that all the "community leadership" type jobs left. Things like accountants and office admins and other business professionals. This was because the small businesses Walmart replaced were the ones that used these services locally. Walmart did these things at it's corporate office f…

The Walmart study sounds quite interesting, and makes sense. Source?
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