Maybe instead of complaining about how facebook and google have the made the area popular, you should take aim at the entrenched owners who refuse to allow higher density housing to actually relieve the pressure on the market.
Zucktown, USA
131–140 of 152 posts
Re: Zucktown, USA
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Making money is not evil, but social class increases likelihood of utilitarianism. Being a tech elite in the valley arguably makes one more likely to be more of a utilitarian. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psyched/201304/the-rich... . Large scale usage does not increase likelihood of profit, either. There aren't any hard disk drive billionaires, for example. Also they aren't in the same town; those who are try…
This argument seems a little surreal. Is the take here seriously "utilitarianism is so intrinsically bad that wealth is evil because it causes utilitarianism?" Utilitarianism is an exceedingly broad category; hedonistic, rule, preference, and negative utilitarianism all recommend different behaviors. But none of them equate to selfishness or abuse of others. I mean, the article does give us "Piff’s earlier work sugge…
You are biased against social psych research, as I think we all should be, but I'm not sure singling it out is the best strategy. The issues of reproducibility and 'p-hacking' among others are a big problem in a variety of disciplines right now, and there is a good synopsis of just one aspect of the problem in hard sciences here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis. For a non-paywall link to the original research this is better: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.short
Re: Zucktown, USA
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you had a baby due to circumstances beyond your control? And you had an injury, again through no fault of your own? And the sum of those are over $350K. Who is responsible for your health? I'd argue that the baby is entirely on you, and $100K for a delivery is insane unless you had incredible complications. And if the back injury wasn't your fault, you could seek redress from whom is responsible. If it's work rela…
How do you feel about people with debilitating genetic diseases/disorders? Through no fault of their own other than being born into this world, and no health care provider wants to anything to do with them. They are guaranteed money losers, and if insurance companies didn’t have to deal with pesky regulations, they would happily find and drop these patients. I make no judgements on your moral character, but to follow…
I have no issue with society picking up after people who truly have catastrophic illnesses (though that's really what health insurance SHOULD be, not the way it is currently.) My issue is with people expecting society to pay for health care that's not catastrophic nor "accidental." If I choose to have a child, I should expect to pay for it. My partner and I had to have IVF, and we paid for it.
Re: Zucktown, USA
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
COBRA was cheaper than a comparable ACA plan for me. It was also WAY cheaper than what a comparable plan pre-ACA would’ve cost. If you just need “emergency” coverage, sure there’s cheaper options. But if you have a chronic health condition, COBRA will more often than not be a lot cheaper and offer better coverage with lower out of pocket costs.
If $600/mo for a single young person is cheap to you...
1) The $600/month depends on how expensive the plan you had before. I've seen COBRA be as low as $350 to as high as $800, depending on the plan you had before.
2) Everything is relative. $600/month is certainly FAR FAR cheaper than the $10k/month the medicine I critically take costs. Comparable ACA plan w/o outrageous deductible is usually $700-900.
Lesson to be learned is, just because it isn't cost effective in your eyes, doesn't mean that many can't benefit from it! Feel lucky that your health needs are so basic, it almost certainly won't stay that way forever.
Re: Zucktown, USA
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone with work provided insurance who can also afford the group rate the company pays.
Which is basically saying that when you lose your job they stop paying you.
It's a bit different because it's a hidden expense when it comes to budgeting. Six months expenses looks different if sometimes you emergency fund needs to cover CORBA that changes over time in a way that is transparent to you. If it all came out of your accounts, you could literally measure expenses and judicially tweak from there.
Re: Zucktown, USA
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone with work provided insurance who can also afford the group rate the company pays.
Which is basically saying that when you lose your job they stop paying you.
And that COBRA is not as free as people make it sound. In fact it's more expensive.
I pay $3.00/month for the group policy at work, but when I get fired I will also lose the company's payments to the plan on my behalf. So my expenses actually go up as a result of trying to take advantage of COBRA. Whereas if I were paying for my own policy, I would be aware of what it costs and would be paying the same price for insurance regardless of my employment status.
Re: Zucktown, USA
#137This article's main topic is just "tech companies are building big offices", dressed up in some purple prose. And they're also to blame for high rents. But if they build apartments to help ease the housing shortage, that's a "company town" and we can't have that either. And Amazon is a "commandeering leech" which "suck[s] up our resources and refus[es] to participate in daily upkeep", but when Google offers Mountain…
Funny how progressivism is cannibalized by progressives.It's almost like a disease or a mental disorder.
Would you please stop violating the guidelines, which ask you to post civilly and substantively?
Re: Zucktown, USA
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is basically saying that when you lose your job they stop paying you.
It's a bit different because it's a hidden expense when it comes to budgeting. Six months expenses looks different if sometimes you emergency fund needs to cover CORBA that changes over time in a way that is transparent to you. If it all came out of your accounts, you could literally measure expenses and judicially tweak from there.
> you could literally measure expenses
I haven't worked for a company, Fortune 50 to small startup, in the past 20 years that provided medical insurance and didn't provide the employer covered cost data in an easy place for access on demand.
Re: Zucktown, USA
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
These people only know how to tear things down. I don't like FB or even Mark personally. But this is ridiculous and would not unfairly be characterized as sour grapes or simply not wanting progress at all to spite some good careers. Society never moves at the pace of life. It always lags --even in command economies like China's or to a degree S Korea and Singapore. Adjustment takes time. At the same time as you point…
Why don't FB/Google/Apple/etc expand to Auburn, CA? Or Lincoln, CA? or Lincoln, NE? I really don't think that putting the next 5000 employees next to the last 10000 employees improves productivity. Spread out. Spread the wealth and the pain. Make yourself less vulnerable to a single point of failure.
It's not just about productivity from the employer's side, but also about the negotiating power from employees. When FB/Google/Apple are all in the SF Bay Area, one of their elite employees can more easily get competitive offers from the others.
Re: Zucktown, USA
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK but that doesn't make it positive or neutral to move even further in that direction.
Agreed. I was lamenting that it is seen as an essential part of the employer/employee relationship when the employer-as-landlord proposition seems so foreign and troubling. I thought drawing the connection would make people rethink the normal feelings we have about the American healthcare system.
Well, sure, I would like to see healthcare decoupled from jobs as well -- and frankly I'd think the startup lovers here would support it too, given that healthcare is actually a big barrier to entrepreneurship.