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UCLA professor says he's homeless due to low pay

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Re: UCLA professor says he's homeless due to low pay

#111

Post by cxr »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #110
cxr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fantastically-popular city center is just absolutely mind-blowing I used to think this way—that is, just like you—in my 20s. From my experience growing up, I was used to not having nice or even merely adequate things, and it was the norm to go without. I'm less cavalier about declaring it entitlement now. Why shouldn't an adult, eve…

I don’t know man, it’s not like I said the peasants should be content with their gruel. A private apartment in the center of one of the most desirable ZIP codes on the planet is an inherently limited good. Believing you deserve it (over, say, a family with kids who truly do need the space and privacy) is kind of the definition of entitlement. And it’s not like it was a barely tolerable existence — I wouldn’t trade my…

> Believing you deserve it (over, say, a family with kids who truly do need the space and privacy)

k. So you're not against strawmanning.

> And it’s not like it was a barely tolerable existence — I wouldn’t trade my five years living in a glorified flophouse for anything

That's good for you, I guess. Are you acquainted with Rob K. Henderson and what he calls "luxury beliefs"? Or abfan1127[1]? It's easy to discount having "a quiet place to study"[2] if you've never been harmed by not having it and your response to your roommates' youthfully stupid hijinx involves grins and not grief.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25468799>

2. https://pudding.cool/2024/03/teenagers/>

Re: UCLA professor says he's homeless due to low pay

#112

Post by [deleted] »

zrobotics wrote: post #37
cute_boi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to think it is easy to have roommates. My roommates were horrible, they wouldn't clean anything, blast music and always a privacy risks.

OK, I also live with roommates while I'm saving up a downpayment and waiting for mortgage rates to drop. But c'mon, there's a huge difference between being homeless and having roommates. I've been close to being homeless before, and at that point I would have been happy to have even the shittiesy roommates if it meant not sleeping on the streets. I'm disgusted at the implication that 70k isn't enough to live in LA. Y…

[deleted]

Re: UCLA professor says he's homeless due to low pay

#113

Post by softsound »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #28
delichon wrote: post #7

This is a physicist who could likely make much more in the private sector. That's a compromise I've had to make too. I spend my weekdays doing work that I have little interest in and has less chance of improving the human condition, but it let me buy a house and pay the taxes and fees. If I instead choose to do what I'm interested in I'd be lucky to afford renting a room in someone else's house. I admire the guy for…

> I admire the guy for choosing to do more important work and making sacrifices to do it. But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is. Students at public universities deserve good instructors. Stop applying a capitalist market rationale to public services. Are you one of those people who thinks that whatever price the market offers for labor is ax…

Public services? Isn't that exactly why he is paid less.

Just imagine if he worked somewhere private.

Deserve is an interesting phrase, who really does deserve more? The more you go down that rabbit hole the less you'll think people deserve in general.

That said. I only have an associate degree and even I made $70k at a regular tech job working with someone with a PhD. I got lucky though before, too bad he didn't.

Re: UCLA professor says he's homeless due to low pay

#114

Post by analognoise »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #64
cute_boi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to think it is easy to have roommates. My roommates were horrible, they wouldn't clean anything, blast music and always a privacy risks.

When I was living in Cambridge (MA) in the early 2010s, it was unthinkable to not have a flatmate or four. By far the most economical situation was to rent a 4 or 5 bedroom house. Doing this, you could easily have a sub-1k rent within a 10 minute walk of the Harvard or Central T stops. Not to “kids these days” it or anything, but the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fant…

Any job should be able to afford a single one bedroom apartment - this is part of the calculus of why people stay in bad and abusive relationships/situations.

Any job, no matter how meager, should be able to sustain you, the individual, by yourself, should you choose to leave your situation.

Any other structure is a failure somewhere (policy, incentives, housing, structurally).

Fantastically popular city centers still require a huge number of people; what’s implied by having them waste their time on a commute and being unable to live near their job is that they’re “not worth” their presence - which, again, is required in the city center.

Re: UCLA professor says he's homeless due to low pay

#115

Post by robertlagrant »

MiguelX413 wrote: post #86
nordsieck wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The extreme here is underpaying the professors and researchers so much The problem is not that those people are underpaid. The problem is the morass of regulation that prevents people building enough housing where they want to live, which keeps the cost of housing high. And look - I get it - most of that regulation is there for a reason: it's popular. People like it. People like having rent control, or limited incr…

All forms of structuring society are "regulation". Capitalism doesn't exist without private property law.

That's law, not regulation.

Re: UCLA professor says he's homeless due to low pay

#116

Post by Have7878forever »

delichon wrote: post #7

This is a physicist who could likely make much more in the private sector. That's a compromise I've had to make too. I spend my weekdays doing work that I have little interest in and has less chance of improving the human condition, but it let me buy a house and pay the taxes and fees. If I instead choose to do what I'm interested in I'd be lucky to afford renting a room in someone else's house. I admire the guy for…

Move to China and Russia. He will be way more appreciated there with significantly lower cost of living. Furthermore he will produce many more important students there in astrophysics than in USA even if he can extend his life by 6x time more. East is the future. Dont waste it in the sunset west. If he truly loves teaching move to China. Humanity future lies in the east in the next 100 years.

Re: UCLA professor says he's homeless due to low pay

#117

Post by karmajunkie »

thierrydamiba wrote: post #41
wesselbindt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is. Ok, but he is owed a decent salary for performing an important job. Without guys like this, we don't have a next generation of physicists (most of whom will move into the private sector).

I’m not exactly sure that’s how the world works…

it’s definitely not how the US works, but it should be.

Re: UCLA professor says he's homeless due to low pay

#118

Post by WkndTriathlete »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #102
poincaredisk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is. Of course. On the other hand, one has to wonder which of this two occupations helps humanity more, and it's this the one that's paid better. And if not, should we rethink the way we reward work to prioritize things that help society instead.

Sounds like there is an excess supply of physicists and physics professors, so on the margin they are no help at all.

Scientific discovery is not driven by economics 101.

Your dismissal of "excess supply" based on "margins" eliminates breakthrough contributions by profs that work for 20-30 years producing marginal research until one day they make the connection that transforms the world.

It's true that most professors never come up with breakthroughs. You cannot predict in advance which ones will. The best we can do is put many of them to work on research, connect them with their peers, and wait.

Re: UCLA professor says he's homeless due to low pay

#119

Post by s1artibartfast »

WkndTriathlete wrote: post #118
s1artibartfast wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like there is an excess supply of physicists and physics professors, so on the margin they are no help at all.

Scientific discovery is not driven by economics 101. Your dismissal of "excess supply" based on "margins" eliminates breakthrough contributions by profs that work for 20-30 years producing marginal research until one day they make the connection that transforms the world. It's true that most professors never come up with breakthroughs. You cannot predict in advance which ones will. The best we can do is put many of t…

no thanks for me. I wont stop you from paying them out of your own pocket.

This is all besides the point because lecturers aren't even a research position.

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