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'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

theguardian.com

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Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#71

Post by jtbayly »

majewsky wrote: post #24
mschuster91 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not just send your kids to the schools your taxes are paying for? Because thanks to massive underfunding US public education is ... not exactly what one can expect from a first world country. In some areas children actually only have four days of school because of underfunding ( http://www.ladbible.com/news/news-school-switches-to-four-da... ).

> US public education is ... not exactly what one can expect from a first world country. As a European, I slowly wonder if there's any public service in the US that meets the "first-world country" standard. Not education. Certainly not healthcare. Infrastructure is also crumbling from what I hear.

If you just read people complaining on HN, then yeah, I’m sure you’d get that impression.

The only OECD country to spend more per student than the US is Norway.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

San Francisco is not on the high end in the US, but it is suffering largely because of increasing pension and salary requirements. I assume the latter (and likely both) is itself caused by the extreme cost of living in the area.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sfusd-expects-budget-cuts-de...

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#72

Post by pogden »

kieckerjan wrote: post #43

European here. My girlfriend and I are excited to do a tour of the West Coast later this year. As a tech I feel it would be silly to skip San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but I must say the stories I have been hearing have dampened my initial enthusiasm considerably. I now wonder if it is worth our while. If "avocado toast and class warfare" are the main attractions nowadays, we can probably spend our time more wise…

The Bay Area is absolutely worth visiting. The Computer History Museum alone is a must see if you're into that sort of thing.

The wealth inequality and housing crises don't make it a bad place to visit any more than New York, London, or any of the great cities.

People wouldn't complain about the changes in their home regions if they didn't love those places. There are many things about SF and the South Bay that make them really wonderful places: climate, natural attractions, cultural attractions, etc. And those things are very much available to tourists. The dystopia only starts when you try to find an apartment.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#74

Post by BoiledCabbage »

jtbayly wrote: post #71
majewsky wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US public education is ... not exactly what one can expect from a first world country. As a European, I slowly wonder if there's any public service in the US that meets the "first-world country" standard. Not education. Certainly not healthcare. Infrastructure is also crumbling from what I hear.

If you just read people complaining on HN, then yeah, I’m sure you’d get that impression. The only OECD country to spend more per student than the US is Norway. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp San Francisco is not on the high end in the US, but it is suffering largely because of increasing pension and salary requirements. I assume the latter (and likely both) is itself caused by the extreme cost of…

You're somewhat arguing his point for him. We spend significantly more per student than almost anywhere, and our education is comparatively poor. We spend significantly more per patient, and our healthcare is comparatively poor.

How much we spend isn't a metric of it being good. It's demonstration of failure.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#75

Post by mschuster91 »

majewsky wrote: post #24
mschuster91 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not just send your kids to the schools your taxes are paying for? Because thanks to massive underfunding US public education is ... not exactly what one can expect from a first world country. In some areas children actually only have four days of school because of underfunding ( http://www.ladbible.com/news/news-school-switches-to-four-da... ).

> US public education is ... not exactly what one can expect from a first world country. As a European, I slowly wonder if there's any public service in the US that meets the "first-world country" standard. Not education. Certainly not healthcare. Infrastructure is also crumbling from what I hear.

> Infrastructure is also crumbling from what I hear.

To be honest this also plagues Europe - all the way from Romania (https://www.romania-insider.com/romanian-entrepreneur-one-me...) over Italy (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/17/italys-crumbli...) to Germany (https://www.dw.com/en/germany-tries-to-close-infrastructure-...).

The root cause here is that "thanks" to decades of neoliberalism and privatizations tax revenue and thus the financial base for investments has eroded.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#76

Post by nettdata »

jtbayly wrote: post #71
majewsky wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US public education is ... not exactly what one can expect from a first world country. As a European, I slowly wonder if there's any public service in the US that meets the "first-world country" standard. Not education. Certainly not healthcare. Infrastructure is also crumbling from what I hear.

If you just read people complaining on HN, then yeah, I’m sure you’d get that impression. The only OECD country to spend more per student than the US is Norway. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp San Francisco is not on the high end in the US, but it is suffering largely because of increasing pension and salary requirements. I assume the latter (and likely both) is itself caused by the extreme cost of…

Unfortunately, just because you spend more doesn’t mean you get what you pay for.

I spent 3 years in an education startup and I never saw such a correlation.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#77

Post by peterwwillis »

When I first visited 7 years ago, it was already an insufferable combination of homeless detritus and Java talk at dive bars. I was finally able to find the alternative scenes the city was [previously] famous for, but all around was an encroaching sense of 'other' smothering the unique identity of the city. And the rent was already too damn high. Soon after, Oakland was being inundated by its escapees. I felt badly for the locals, but more than anything I wanted never to live there. I would work as a high school network admin in Ohio before I would join the tech gold rush.

I've been mostly happy on the east coast, but gentrification's steady gears are erasing local culture here too. I'm pretty sick of cities now - the noise, crime, filth, expense, lack of green space and clean air. But terrible public transportation outside of cities requires paying the ecological, monetary, and in-convenience costs of cars. Suburbia has its own negative effect on society, by drawing away tax revenue from cities and abandoning small businesses. 'Escaping' would come with its own costs, and only help myself.

I don't see a clear solution, but it has to start with a focus on improving society as a whole. More and better public transportation, housing, food, and education will greatly help things, but it needs to be integrated everywhere; not doled out like alms, or in whatever the highest taxed county is. We need a balance between the selfish act of consumption and the hard work of improving society for other people, which will actually benefit us more in the long run.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#78

Post by 0815test »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #54
majewsky wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US public education is ... not exactly what one can expect from a first world country. As a European, I slowly wonder if there's any public service in the US that meets the "first-world country" standard. Not education. Certainly not healthcare. Infrastructure is also crumbling from what I hear.

Plenty of places in the US have excellent public schools. This is unique to SF.

Plenty of places in the U.S. have terrible public schools by developed-country standards. To the point where U.S. tertiary-education institutions are essentially required to compensate for the terribleness with ubiquitous remedial and GED-like courses that are essentially unknown elsewhere, where secondary education does the job properly.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#79

Post by cutler »

mcv wrote: post #32
chvid wrote: post #7

I find it amazing that "locals" can get away with blaming "tech workers" for rising rents and homelessness. The rents and the house prices only rise because the wealth that the workers generate is blocked from being used to build new houses.

But why? Why isn't all that wealth being used to make the city more livable? More affordable for the poor? More diverse?

It's called capitalism. So long as property is a free market instead of a public asset this trend will continue. It's not just SF. We're seeing it all over the West.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#80

Post by [deleted] »

CalRobert wrote: post #36
mcv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? Why isn't all that wealth being used to make the city more livable? More affordable for the poor? More diverse?

Because making it more affordable to the poor means increasing the housing supply, which means reducing the price of homes, which existing homeowners hate.

[deleted]
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