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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

#131

Post by rgscg »

taway20171214 wrote: post #108
dragonwriter wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why pay $2000 a month when you have the whole country you could live in for much less? Because people who are food insecure don't have savings to relocate, or the ability to take the income they have with them, generally. > I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'd suggest that these people move there Lincoln has a population of 250,000; there are, per the article, 720,000 food-insecure people in Silicon Valley (and with…

> their worst experiences of in-your-face, constant racial/ethnic discrimination and tension in the US are almost always in the Midwest i'm asian american. here's what life is like somewhere other than maybe 3 or 4 cities in the US: 1. constantly explaining to people why i am not white (where i'm from, where my parents are from, why my last name is what it is [it's anglo]) 2. children are constantly getting the 'eyes…

I am also Asian American. I spent the first 20 years of my life in an area of the US where I was the only Asian in the entire school.

2. I can count the times this happened in 20 years on one hand. 3. Same as #2. 5. Never experienced this at all.

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

#132

Post by rblatz »

jorgemf wrote: post #111
verroq wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly not enough are leaving because otherwise the pay will naturally rise.

If the pay rises more will come. Things are not that simple

It’s almost like that’s how the market is supposed to work! The price moves around until demand and supply match.

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

#133

Post by [deleted] »

rorykoehler wrote: post #123
Alex3917 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#134

Post by dragonwriter »

mjfl wrote: post #10
OfficialJoeGG wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes that rent trap is to high. You pay three quarters of your paycheck to just living (even house hunting you still need a place to live). You then have one quarter to spend on food (for 2 people) & electricity, water, and heat (if your rent doesn't cover utilities)& maybe some extra things like hygiene products, bills such as car payments, etc... You have almost no left over to put in for moving. So I don't di…

I don't believe it. Say you find a place in Lincoln for $500-$600 (which is possible in Lincoln), just by using the difference between old rent and new to cover debt from moving expenses, a mover could pay off $15,000 of debt within one year.

Yeah, but people who are food insecure can't usually borrow $15,000 in unsecured debt.

Plus, this presumes the ability to also maintain income (in absolute terms, not just relative to.local costs) in a relocation. I guess if the food insecure people are also working jobs they can do remotely, that's reasonable, but if they are doing low-wage in-persom work, even if they can find comparable work in Lincoln, the wages are likely to be lower (clearly so at the lowest end of legal work, since the minimum wage is lower.)

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

#135

Post by Helmet »

julesqs wrote: post #97
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 not addressing the people in article at all. It literally references a single mother that works in kitchens and you're complaining about upper middle class people that sneer at Nebraska? what's wrong with you? People live where jobs are, and a lot of them have reasons to stay in the Bay. She has children and a life. She's not a fucking software engineer that can just pick and move.

Yes, she can move. If she cannot afford to live there, she can move. It sucks, but life sucks and sometimes it means you can't live exactly where or how you want to.

My parents worked as "pickers" for the Home Shopping Network near DC, making minimum wage. It became financially untenable, so they moved to southern Virginia to a place with good schools and where you can live and get by on low income salaries.

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

#136

Post by Spooky23 »

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 Lord wouldn’t have allowed some lazy Irish wretch eat his horse’s clover.

During the famine, Ireland was exporting bumper crops of oats and wheat and other things. It was a completely avoidable tragedy.

Starving people would eat whatever they could to survive. There was limited aid that was privately funded and slowest to a trickle as tenants were unable to pay rents. 40% of the population died or emigrated, which reduced demand.

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

#137

Post by zzzzzzzza »

taway20171214 wrote: post #108
dragonwriter wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why pay $2000 a month when you have the whole country you could live in for much less? Because people who are food insecure don't have savings to relocate, or the ability to take the income they have with them, generally. > I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'd suggest that these people move there Lincoln has a population of 250,000; there are, per the article, 720,000 food-insecure people in Silicon Valley (and with…

> their worst experiences of in-your-face, constant racial/ethnic discrimination and tension in the US are almost always in the Midwest i'm asian american. here's what life is like somewhere other than maybe 3 or 4 cities in the US: 1. constantly explaining to people why i am not white (where i'm from, where my parents are from, why my last name is what it is [it's anglo]) 2. children are constantly getting the 'eyes…

"no offense" doesn't mean that they think you're not american, even though it could mean that, similar to "where are you from". I'll grant you tv/movies, though that is undeniably getting better. I grew up in a town literally called "white settlement", conservative suburban but semi rural texas, most of my friends were asian and while I don't think they NEVER heard the word chink, it was never in a threatening or even (as far as I observed) bullying (i.e. directed at them) way - alot of the kids in public school have an EXTREMELY rough way of speaking (they're barely able to communicate without expletives). All that said, there's some things you didn't mention - a lot (but not all) of my asian dude friends had a bad time with dating for instance, and sometimes some of the teachers would be unable to tell them apart, etc..

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

#138

Post by dragonwriter »

mjfl wrote: post #56
foldr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone can borrow $15000. Wealthy people seem often not to realize that poor people don't have access to credit on the same terms that they do.

Nonsense. A person with a non-terrible credit rating can max-out around $16,000 using multiple credit cards. It's not a great idea, but I've seen it done, and confirmed that it's not a good idea. But if your alternative is a life of misery - escape! Also, it's highly unlikely that moving will be as expensive as $16,000 anyways. Perhaps $6,000-$7,000 for a small family of two?

> A person with a non-terrible credit rating can max-out around $16,000 using multiple credit cards

Even with non-terrible credit, you aren't going to get multiple credit cards with a total of $15,000 in credit line if you are food insecure; you might have gotten them first, maintained zero balance so that that money is all available for relocation, and then become food insecure, but that's a rather exceptional set of circumstances, not the norm.

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

#139

Post by Spooky23 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #115
tclancy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've read a myth: grass isn't particularly nutritious for humans[0] and I doubt the Celts were regularly eating clover. It's an interesting example you raise though, given the famine was caused by rich people ignoring the needs of the poor. [0] http://www.health24.com/Natural/News/Can-humans-eat-grass-20...

Ignoring the fact that Americans get most of their calories from grass, clover is a legume, not a grass. It has a lot of protein, which makes it different than most other wild vegetables.

Tenant farmers were subsisting on potatoes almost exclusively. They were 19th century serfs. They didn’t have access to expensive grains or meat.

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

#140

Post by [deleted] »

mseebach wrote: post #64
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…

> way more upward mobility than they could ever dream of It's worth keeping in mind that it's relative upwards mobility - upwards mobility in the US conjures up some slightly different mental images. Top 10% in Denmark is absolutely unremarkable middle class in the US. If you enjoy being relatively equal to your neighbours, then it's great, if you enjoy objective material wealth, less so.

[deleted]
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