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Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

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Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#271

Post by mlmonkey »

bsder wrote: post #219
steven2012 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm usually against taxes in general, but I'm actually for increasing taxes and using that to have a completely free mass transit system across the entire Bay Area. This would provide a tremendous benefit for everyone. The problem is that unions will take advantage of all that money and increase wages and pension benefits for their workers instead of hiring more workers and increasing employment in general. This is w…

Note how BART has been expanding down the East Bay over time while Caltrain has made zero progress. The problem is that a lot of rich people live right along the Caltrain line and have been opposing its expansion for decades. But it's the unions' fault. Try not swallowing so much propaganda next time.

Caltrain already runs all the way to Gilroy. You can't really extend it much. But you can run it more frequently; and that's where you run into union issues. It's not propaganda that public employee unions are quite resistant to change; just look at MUNI's Union (in SF) for example.

But that's a topic for another day. :-)

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#272

Post by mlmonkey »

mgraczyk wrote: post #20

This may not be the most popular thing to say, but ... Just move? If you are the head of a large household living in an area where the cost of living is too high to support your dependents, you would do a whole lot of good for them and yourself by starting new in some other part of the country. At the very least it would be wise to relocate across the Bay. I realize that people have families, social networks, and sma…

> This may not be the most popular thing to say, but ... Just move?

Exactly. Millions of immigrants uproot themselves and move every year. Yeah, it sucks for the first few years, but then it becomes better. America had its share of mass migrations in the middle part of last century; but for some reason people don't want to move as much these days.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#273

Post by async7 »

I've become very concerned after seeing this. I'm about to move to the bay area on a $125K salary with my partner - not sure what kind of job my partner will find as he isn't an engineer. It looks like I might have made a mistake accepting that offer. What do you think? Could someone have a comfortable life with a $125K salary in Silicon Valley?

I've been poor in my life once, the kind where you don't have enough to eat and you go to bed hungry (dictatorship country), so I totally feel for these people. Poverty has a snow-ball effect as someone else noted here, and this effect could possibly be stopped or slowed down at early stages when you have the right opportunities, but once this effect has really taken off, it's very hard to stop it or come back from it.

In my experience, people will work hard to end their sufferings when you give them the right opportunities. Please remember that: "Whatever the conditions of people’s lives, wherever they live, however they live, we all share the same dreams." - Melinda Gates

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#274

Post by emodendroket »

scott_karana wrote: post #216
throwaway9324 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we cannot force the cost of living to drop" That's exactly what rent control does. I guess it's ok to not even try to make an argument on HN these days.

Rent control doesn't force the cost of living to drop: it just shifts it. The ROI on apartments drops substantially, so investors aren't incentivized to make new buildings, but instead maintain their current ones as cheaply as possible until they're unserviceable.

There is nothing about not having rent controls that prevents this from happening.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#275

Post by emodendroket »

RestlessMind wrote: post #267

How are children born into poverty in the first place? How many of them are "planned" by their parent, vs how many of them are unplanned consequences of relationships between parents who haven't yet "settled"? I believe child poverty can be reduced significantly if the society focuses on unwanted pregnancies. Some ideas: 1. Better sex education 2. Cheap / free access to contraceptives - it can be a joint effort with…

Oh, I've got it. Let's institute a policy whereby parents can only have one child. We could call it the "Single Kid Policy."

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#276

Post by emodendroket »

nsheth17 wrote: post #233

A lot of people here are saying maybe poor people should just move away to where it's cheaper. Supposedly, the economic arguments are in their favor. If you can't afford to live here, why don't you just move to where you can? Counter arguments say the expected "that's not fair to them." But I think that's missing the point. The real, honest truth is we (speaking as someone better off) need these people to stay here.…

> (1) Pay them more, so they can afford to live here. But that begs the question. Where is the money going to come from? Frankly, it's unlikely we'll just suddenly start paying construction workers and plumbers and teachers more.

Why not raise the minimum wage? As you've alluded to, it's not that easy to just fire all low-wage workers because wages have gone up.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#277

Post by emodendroket »

RIMR wrote: post #188
nsnick wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the "poor" people are asking the wrong question. They are asking, "why can't I afford to live where I grew up?" The question they should be asking is, "should I live where I grew up?"

Exactly! A lot of people feel that they are entitled to live in the city they grew up in. They feel that the rising cost of living is unjust, and that they are the victims. What needs to be understood is that we cannot force the cost of living to drop, and we cannot force the median income to rise. Either search for a job that pays more, or search for a home that costs less. If that means moving away from where you g…

> Is it fair? No - but life isn't fair. If you find yourself living in a place that you cannot afford, then you are the problem, not the world around you. Fix your own life, because nobody is going to do it for you.

Come on. It's not as though the circumstances that created "Silicon Valley" were natural and beyond the control of anyone; why should we turn around and pretend the side effects were (well, other than it being convenient)?

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#278

Post by relevantcomment »

mgraczyk wrote: post #20

This may not be the most popular thing to say, but ... Just move? If you are the head of a large household living in an area where the cost of living is too high to support your dependents, you would do a whole lot of good for them and yourself by starting new in some other part of the country. At the very least it would be wise to relocate across the Bay. I realize that people have families, social networks, and sma…

The question I have in all this: can someone name an entry level job in a high tech company that covers the full cost of attending Stanford or even Cal. I went to Santa Clara and graduated 2008. People were excited about getting 70k/year starting out as finance majors.

If you plug this salary into a loan calculator and assume ($50k/year for tution and living expenses) that's 200k in debt at graduation.

No one in the Silicon Valley makes enough to cover that.

The assumption then is that people will have parents who help them out through college. Ergo, there is no real social mobility because you need a certain type of parent to ensure you don't have student debt that leaves you in the red even with a high tech job.

The valley and SF just rich kids getting richer while screwing over everyone else.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#279

Post by dragonwriter »

reneherse wrote: post #265
dragonwriter wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lets not forget that these people would be middle class anywhere else. If they could magically keep their Bay Area income while being anywhere else, they might be. But since they can't actually do that, I'm not sure what relevance that has.

This assumes all levels of income are inflated equally, which they are not.

No, it doesn't. It just assumes that people can't magically take their income with them when they leave. Even if the 10th percentile income is the same as in the Bay Area in some place where the average income and cost of living is lower than the Bay Area, that doesn't mean that someone in the 10th percentile in the Bay Area can move to that location and keep their income (or any income at all.)

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#280

Post by doki_pen »

dvirsky wrote: post #59
doki_pen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have a family of four. They are usually young and single.

AFAIK the median/average age of founders is around 40.

Is that true for tech start ups in the bay area? I'd be interested to know if the investors have different founder salary expectations for older founders.
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