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It is so crazy that people continue to blame tech for public policy issues. No one can say what tech did besides make money and spend it that led to the crisis

• amelim 7y ago
  Tech spends money on lobbying local politicians to write favorable public policy. This should be obvious.
  • jdminhbg 7y ago
    If they're spending money lobbying local politicians to write favorable housing policy, they should all be fired for incompetence, because none of it is working.
  • thecosas 7y ago
    More often than not, companies lobby for public policy which is favorable to the company, not necessarily favorable to the employees, neighbors, and communities which they are present in. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2019&id=D000021754 https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...
  • pembrook 7y ago
    It's in their interest to make housing as cheap as possible so they can pay their employees less to live in the Bay Area. While your statement is true, it makes no sense in the context of this topic.
• andrewxdiamond 7y ago
  The complaints about tech raising costs aren't totally unfounded. Most people will point to the rather absurd salaries that employees of these companies get. These large salaries are affecting inflation in the areas the employees live, driving up the demand for large homes that the typical non-techie could never hope to afford. It's indirect, and it's not fair to lay everything at the feet of the companies, but there are consequences to them growing so quickly. That said, this is a systemic issue that needs to be solved at a higher level, not at the level of individual companies or people.
  • xxpor 7y ago
    >Most people will point to the rather absurd salaries that employees of these companies get. Labor is finally being compensated (somewhat) fairly is what you mean, I think.
    • ryanobjc 7y ago
      Yeah I am going to go ahead and agree with the 'compensated (somewhat) fairly'. Tech employees offer unprecedented leveraged effort -> work put in affects so many people, and has huge effects. In terms of return to capital, right now employees, especially for startups, are getting shafted beyond belief. Thanks for attending my TED talk on "why I will never work for another startup again".
      • andrewxdiamond 7y ago
        With the birth of the modern IT centric world, the individual has the ability to create unprecedented amounts of value for a company. A good team of 5 developers can easily out value an entire department of 50 or 60 people. Developers might be compensated fairly, or at least somewhat fairly, but that value isn't pulled from nowhere. Too often people who critique the economy are focused on the individual view. Economies are large systems, and any good developer knows that a system with weak spots quickly turns into a sinking ship.
    • megablast 7y ago
      A few people are. Most people are not. I guess you could describe that as fair.
• cylinder 7y ago
  Insane that Americans continue to look to the private sector to donate to solve public problems. Literally any country in the world would accept Apple's headquarters and not demand a cent in donations for anything. I wish American companies would put more pressure on the government to solve public problems, this would include threatening to leave to other jurisdictions if necessary.
  • bllguo 7y ago
    unfortunately it's woven into the fabric of the country. american culture simply has a fundamentally broken relationship with government
  • qaq 7y ago
    They do that too. Apple is doubling the size of their Cork office in Ireland I think. They are also significantly expanding in Austin and other locations with sane cost of living.
  • thecosas 7y ago
    Living in California, although not in the Bay area, I don't know that the public expectation was to have Apple or other tech companies do this. I'm happy for it, but would be happier still to see Apple paying taxes to fund similar programs rather than privatizing something that I agree should be done through the government.
    • Bud 7y ago
      But Apple does pay taxes. Apple paid $10B in taxes last year.
• thecosas 7y ago
  Is it better to have companies pay taxes that can go toward programs like this OR have them "give" money to help form/direct programs like the example here? I guess they could do both, but what should the standard be?
  • austhrow743 7y ago
    If this is a government created and continuously maintained issue then it would seem that they should be as far away from any relief effort as possible. They don't want affordable housing. If they do start wanting it then relief funding won't be necessary.
  • munificent 7y ago
    It's better to have them pay taxes. Taxes and their distribution are controlled by elected representatives who are ultimately beholden to democratic voters. Companies and philanthropists are beholden to nothing but their personal whims.
    • DSingularity 7y ago
      While I hate how subversive tech has gotten — I don’t know if I agree. You are ignoring key factors: incompetence and corruption. I would bet that Apples plan is better than whatever plan some local/state politicians will put together. In fact maybe the CA laws should simply compel companies to offset the negative impact of their employees on the surrounding housing market.
      • akiselev 7y ago
        Who gets to decide what constitutes incompetence and corruption? Billionaires and controlling shareholders? The purpose of democracy is to place that decision squarely in the hands of the populace, as imperfect as that process is.
        • rayiner 7y ago
          > Who gets to decide what constitutes incompetence and corruption? Can we at least have Swedes decide “what constitutes incompetence and corruption?” Like democracy, except only Swedes in Sweden get to vote in US local elections. Once a year, a committee of Swedes will have to come over here and ride BART/the NYC Subway/Metro and report back before voting.
• gamblor956 7y ago
  They don’t write tax laws or run housing associations. Policymakers and older Californians have managed to shift blame to a younger generation of working people. Apple is also one of the most notorious tax avoiders in world history. They've taken extreme efforts to avoid paying taxes in every jurisdiction in which they do business, to the extent that a number of their tax structurings have been deemed illegal. On the one hand, it's good that Apple is finally putting its money where its marketing is. On the other hand, if they hadn't spent 40 years avoiding taxes, they wouldn't have driven the development of an entire cottage industry of multinationals avoiding taxes.
  • notyourwork 7y ago
    Would more tax money from Apple result in a larger supply of housing or a more affordable housing situation? I'm not clear on how it would.
    • wesammikhail 7y ago
      It Wouldn´t. Tax revenue is not the cause of the housing shortage. If you give more money to a bad manager, he won´t suddenly become a better manager. Same with politicians and their public policy.
      • droithomme 7y ago
        > If you give more money to a bad manager, he won´t suddenly become a better manager. If we increase teacher pay will the bad teachers become good teachers?
        • Gibbon1 7y ago
          My old long dead relatives liked to say, you get what you pay for.
        • mcbutterbunz 7y ago
          Potentially. If the teacher is working a second job just to make rent instead of preparing a lesson plan or possibly working on their mental health. It won't help every bad teacher but it could help some.
• KoenDG 7y ago
  The thing with tech companies is their desire for most of their employees to be in-house. Causing a mass of people to arrive at a location that previously did not have that. Over time, of course. People who, due to the nature of their job and their employer, earn way more money than the average working person. And when 10 people like this go for the 1 available house on the market, guess what happens? The price of the house goes up. Up to a point where only 1 of the bidder is willing to pay that price. Or rent. Notice that I said "willing to pay" as opposed to "what that person can afford". Supply and Demand is nice in theory, but really, pricing is more a game of "ask the maximum amount you can get away with". And of course, owners of property in the same region can't let their property sit at a value much lower than the property around them. If the property around them can go for a certain amount, then so can they. And this process repeats unendingly. Making it impossible for people with non-tech jobs to get affordable housing. And if not for the big tech company, it never would have happened. So yeah, it is 100% correct to put the blame on tech companies. If not for them, this would not have occured in the first place.
  • lkbm 7y ago
    > The thing with tech companies is their desire for most of their employees to be in-house. > Causing a mass of people to arrive at a location that previously did not have that. Do you think this is more true of tech than other industries?
    • snarkypixel 7y ago
      Aren't software engineers in the Bay Area paid much more than other industries?
      • kyshoc 7y ago
        Are software engineers in the Bay Area required to be onsite much more than other industries?
  • bdcravens 7y ago
    > The thing with tech companies is their desire for most of their employees to be in-house. This is true of almost every company. I would say that tech companies have a higher % of remote employees than most; our frustration is only that it can be higher.
• smhinsey 7y ago
  Their contribution to this problem doesn't necessarily have to be a negative thing. Saying they made a contribution isn't an accusation. No one is saying that they should stop doing business in California or that they should try and succeed less, whatever that might mean. However, they do contribute to the runaway social inequality in the state. Every high paying employer does, including mine. This doesn't mean they necessarily have an obligation to do anything about it and again, it also doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's an inevitable side effect of their success. They did business, made a ton of money, spread it around, and one of the myriad indirect consequences is social inequality which contributes to the housing problem. Again, it's not a bad thing per se, but it's a real thing. The fact that it wasn't a bad thing doesn't mean there is no moral responsibility attached. It's nice to see a company trying to deal with the consequences of their actions without being forced to.
  • solidsnack9000 7y ago
    Great disparity and unaffordable housing are not an inevitable consequence of some people’s high wages, because they will engage in more consumption, buying better haircuts and so forth in a way that raises other people’s wages. Even the phrasing “consequences of their actions” carried with it a connotation of wrong doing; but the failure of California housing policy to accommodate more people — a legitimate goal, because in the US we have freedom of movement — is simply not Apple’s problem. Because it isn’t really a consequence of their actions, what Apple is doing here is not really the kind of action that we want to see. It’s not like a company coming and cleaning up an oil spill that they made — it’s like a company coming in and cleaning up the government’s oil spill, and it represents an extension of corporate involvement in public life that dealing with the consequences of their actions wouldn’t. They are dealing with the government’s consequences.
• deleted 7y ago
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