6 ms·

Liberal Hypocrisy Is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. – NYT Opinion

38 points by LopRabbit 5y ago

hellbannedguy 5y ago
Put it in writing.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
The only areas in California where housing is cheap are the Republican strongholds in the Central Valley...but lest you think that this implies it is because those Republican counties and districts are better at managing housing, I would remind you that almost no one wants to move to the hot, dry, San Joaquin Valley, they live there because they a) were born there, b) can afford to live there, c) etc. I say this as a native of those counties. This lack of demand, and the wide open spaces, keeps land and housing prices low without much effort. edit: This is why I am really hopeful about remote work. So that people don't HAVE to live in high density housing.
- LogonType10 5y ago
  Why are those areas Republican dominated? I thought the poor are supposed to be Democrats.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    The poor in dense, urban areas typically are Democrats. Out in the countryside, people have less exposure to information and less contact with a diverse community, making it easier for Republicans to instill false consciousness by whipping up fear of the other.
    - golemiprague 5y ago
      I could say the same thing about blacks in the cities, not very educated, no contact with white or hispanics or anything except from blacks and yet they vote democrats. Let's admit it, these days there is no correlation between rich vs poor and voting, the rich people in silicon valley mostly vote for democrats.
    - mionhe 5y ago
      Erm, these areas have internet and go to school like anyone else. They're plenty exposed. What does "instill false consciousness" mean to you? When I try to parse this sentence I get "make people incorrectly believe" maybe? I'm not clear on your meaning. All in all, if I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that people are being tricked by a political party, yes? That being the case, it's definitely possible that you're right. I would suggest, however, that it appears much more likely that both major parties are playing that game. I mean, I watched the last American president endure four years of accusations from his political rivals that he would start wars, persue extremist agendas, and be the destruction of his country. We were told that if he wasn't stopped, everything would go to hell in a handbasket. So he was stopped. Afterward, their candidate for presidency appears to be ushering his country to hell in a handbasket. Seems like everyone is playing fast and loose with the truth anymore. I believe that's a pretty typical politician game.
    - LogonType10 5y ago
      I know for a fact that the San Joaquin valley is more diverse than San Francisco.
      - hindsightbias 5y ago
        And San Joaquin County went overwhelming for the liberals in 2020: https://www.sjgov.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=33619 https://www.sjgov.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=33619 Perhaps you should look at demographics and voting patterns for your chosen sections of the valley.
    - cipher_system 5y ago
      Could it be that the people in dense urban areas have more exposure to propaganda and more contact with political commissars, making it easier for Democrats to instill false consciousness by whipping up fear of the other. Or should we maybe try to avoid this kind of toxic rhetoric all together.
    - hagbard_c 5y ago
      [flagged]
      - dang 5y ago
        Please don't post ideological flamewar comments to HN, or take HN threads further into flamewar generally. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html As for politics- there's no ban. The question of what's on topic vs. off topic is complex. I've posted many long explanations of this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Some links to start with, if you want to read more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 If anyone has a question that hasn't been answered there, I'd like to know what it is, and if you know a better way for HN to relate to political topics while fulfilling its mandate, I'd definitely like to know what it is. Just please familiarize yourself with the past explanations first, because if it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've answered many times already why it won't work.
        hagbard_c 5y ago
        The proposal has been done before: add a "show/hide politics" option to the preferences, similar to the "show dead" option. Allow users to mark posts for being political, set this flag on a post once a threshold has been passed. Hide posts with the "politics" flag by default but do not shadowban users for political reasons - this ends up showing personal political bias and only worsens the problem. Users who do not mind political banter enable "show politics" in their preferences which makes these posts visible to them. It is impossible to keep all politics out of the subject matter discussed on this site since there is a conscious effort to politicise everything, this is especially clear in "progressive" circles. Since it (for now) is also there where most tech development happens politics often come directly from the source. Add the flag, allow users to mark posts and the problem is mostly solved - or at least it is out of sight for those who don't like these discussions and for those who visit the site without logging in. Trying to ban them altogether is futile since it nigh impossible to do without showing personal political bias.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      It takes a record book worthy amount of tone deafness to suggest that the poorer parts of the republican base have been hoodwinked into spending generations voting for a party that promises to solve their problems but does nothing of the sort but the same part of the democratic base hasn't. The republicans have served poor rural voters no better or worse than the democrats have served poor inner city voters.
      - dariusj18 5y ago
        I don't think it's generations, just over the last 20 years. It was the inevitable long term effect of the Southern Strategy.
      - kcplate 5y ago
        For about the last 35 years (since Bush 41) I saw no discernible difference between the parties in terms of governance (lots of difference in rhetoric though). However, once the pandemic hit there tended to be a much greater amount of authoritarianism regarding pandemic policies coming from elected democrats. Interestingly it was across the board as well. Even down to the local community levels, it seemed to me that the democrats were interested in way more heavy handed approaches. This seems to have now expanded beyond pandemic management to other things as well. That is a concern for me.
    - kcplate 5y ago
      Interesting. I live in a very rural community in a neighborhood that is incredibly diverse, not only racially, but by age and religion too. We get along just fine. Perhaps this area tends towards republicans because folks around here aren’t overly hung up about their differences and seem more to focus on their similarities. They also seem to be more capable of self-sufficiency and less day to day reliance on the government…even those with modest incomes. That tends to be the GOP messaging (at least around here) and people are drawn to it. Their life perspective tends to run counter to the dem messaging of division and government reliance. We also have two different fiber optic ISPs willing to provide internet to our homes. I assure you there is definitely no lack of information around here.
    - dang 5y ago
      Please do not take HN threads into political flamewar hell. We're trying for something different on this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - barbacoa 5y ago
    Democrats have become a coalition party of the cultural and economic elites as well as the subsidized poor. Republicans tend to be the party of the working class.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    It's the rural-metropolitan divide. Often the poor in rural areas are also Democrats. But all those farmers (huge land wealth), car dealership owners, plumbing empire magnates, or trucking magnates, are incredibly Republican. But rural areas have far less opportunity than urban areas, and the wealthy often pass their empires down to their children, further hoarding opportunity. So even though there is a ton of wealth for a few at the top, there's extremely little opportunity. Urban metropolitans often offer much more opportunity, as well as greater amenities in the form of culture etc.
- linguae 5y ago
  And even then, home prices in the peripheral areas of the Central Valley that are within a 2-3 hour drive of the Bay Area have skyrocketed in price during the pandemic. For example, when the pandemic started I remember seeing large signs off Highway 152 through Los Baños for brand new single-family houses in the high $200,000s. Fast forward to today, and new development in Los Baños now starts in the mid-$400,000s, a dramatic leap in price. Tracy and Mountain House have also risen in price substantially, and I've seen places go from the mid-$400K range to the mid-$500K range in Lathrop and Manteca. There's also been considerable price increases in the Fresno area, too (though it's still possible to purchase brand new homes there under $400K), which is outside the normal Bay Area commute orbit, though now with WFH, an occasional trip from Fresno to Silicon Valley or San Jose isn't that bad. The only places I haven't seen dramatic appreciation in house prices are smaller, more isolated metro areas that haven't attracted those leaving the Bay Area or Los Angeles, such as Hanford and Visalia. Coming from a guy who grew up in Sacramento, yes the Central Valley is hot, but the best part about the Central Valley is its relative affordability and its proximity to many interesting places. Portions are close enough to the Bay Area to commute (though I wouldn't do it every day), and while it's farther away from the beach than the Bay Area, it's closer to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and SoCal is still within weekend-trip range. Living in the Central Valley allows people to take advantage of California amenities without having to get on a plane or take a very long road trip (though, admittedly, Reno and Las Vegas are also close enough to many of these same California amenities, sometimes even closer depending on your destination). EDIT: There are some other cheap parts of California. Many of the desert areas of the state are affordable. Lake County, north of Napa, is quite cheap.
  - LogonType10 5y ago
    Off topic, but I couldn't help but ask after checking out your site: do you have any advice for someone wanting to learn more about explainable graph artificial intelligence?
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    I'd like to mention that most people in the San Joaquin valley don't really consider Sacramento to be in the valley, and certainly the weather is different. More rain in sac, and no matter how hot it is in Sacramento, you can look forward to the evening's Delta Breeze. and yeah, I was specifically talking about Visalia, Hanford, Fresno,
jdkee 5y ago
Why would wealthy people seek to increase the numbers of poor or middle income people in their neighborhoods?
- LogonType10 5y ago
  Because your Chai tea latte with oat milk ain't gonna make itself.
- epistasis 5y ago
  It's one thing to "seek tk increase" and it's entirety another to "expend excessive amounts of effort to deny." Doing neither of these things would result in a more equitable and satisfactory outcome for all.
carabiner 5y ago
Most YIMBYs are actually NIMBYs who concern-troll every development project into oblivion. Even Robert Reich [0]. What the video (very good IMO) lacks is an examination that this is a liberal bastion. I think NIMBYism is bipartisan, and I doubt affluent right-wing Texans are exactly open to high-density development in their neighborhoods too. [0] https://freebeacon.com/satire/robert-reich-nimby/ https://freebeacon.com/satire/robert-reich-nimby/
epistasis 5y ago
This is an excellent point, but I would add that it's not just liberals. There are some older leftists, ans even some younger leftists, that have embraced housing austerity as a way to spite developers. Which unfortunately enriches landlords and homeowners far more than it's hurts developers. And whose money is doing the enriching? A lot of it comes from those who are barely scraping by, and those who can't scrape by are displaced from the state.
foogazi 5y ago
I’ve lived in apartments before but prefer SFH - don’t know what is wrong with that I dislike living in SF so I didn’t get a job there I can’t afford SFH in Palo Alto so I don’t live there - don’t know what is wrong with that either is it a human right to live in Palo Alto ? People have choices and if something is too expensive or inconvenient they can pick a better option
- linguae 5y ago
  There is no human right to live in Palo Alto, but something is amiss when housing in a metro area is so expensive that people making middle class salaries (we're talking around $60K-$100K) find themselves "driving until they qualify" 60+ miles away to places like Tracy, Manteca, and Los Baños to find an affordable place to life. For various reasons, Bay Area governments have decided not to densify to the degree necessary to accommodate all the people who work there, which means that development has sprawled out to the closest far-flung places that are willing to build homes. Sprawl is politically expedient compared to density, even if this sprawl means more traffic on our roads, more money needed to be spent on serving an ever-sprawling metro area, and more money individuals have to spend on transportation. (Admittedly, with more people working from home, the downsides of this sprawl could be mitigated, but not everybody can work from home.) I reiterate that there's no human right to live in Palo Alto, but companies based in Palo Alto and other Silicon Valley locations who demand that their workers work on-site may increasingly find it difficult to hire people if their housing options are limited to situations that require multiple roommates to bring the cost down to affordable levels, or commuting from far-away areas. If enough people refuse to work in Silicon Valley, then this decreases Silicon Valley's desirability as a place to work, which in turn may decrease the property values there since there will be less demand to live there. The Bay Area has to be very careful not to kill the goose that has been providing it golden eggs.
  - foogazi 5y ago
    > but something is amiss when housing in a metro area is so expensive that people making middle class salaries (we're talking around $60K-$100K) find themselves "driving until they qualify" 60+ miles away to places like Tracy, Manteca, and Los Baños to find an affordable place to life. Why is it Ok to live in Palo Alto, but it’s wrong to live in Manteca ? People are making a choice that best fits their needs, and they choose affordable housing over commute distance California is expensive because everyone wants to live there - you can’t make that affordable. How many condos do you have to build in the bay area to make it cheaper than Tracy ?
js8 5y ago
This is mostly an artifact of the two party system (or the left/right divide, which changed throughout history), in fact there are 3 independent ideologies: Conservative (concerned with values of authority and cultural preservation), liberal (concerned with values of individual freedom) and progressive/socialist (concerned with values of equality/inclusion and democracy). These ideologies are not opposites, they have different concerns, but they might contradict in practice. Sometimes they are also compatible, they accept same tools for different reasons. (For example, property ownership is a policy tool acccepted by liberals for reason of personal freedom, and by conservatives for reason of preserving value. Or basic income is accepted by progressives as means of including everybody in the society, and by liberals as way to promote personal freedom.) There's lot more to this but that's the gist of political philosophy, I think.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
beej71 5y ago
Is this really a Democrat/Republican/liberal/conservative issue? Because it sure seems to transcend that.
HNTA_1 5y ago
[dead]

38 points by LopRabbit 5y ago

Put it in writing.

The only areas in California where housing is cheap are the Republican strongholds in the Central Valley...but lest you think that this implies it is because those Republican counties and districts are better at managing housing, I would remind you that almost no one wants to move to the hot, dry, San Joaquin Valley, they live there because they a) were born there, b) can afford to live there, c) etc. I say this as a native of those counties. This lack of demand, and the wide open spaces, keeps land and housing prices low without much effort. edit: This is why I am really hopeful about remote work. So that people don't HAVE to live in high density housing.

LogonType10 5y ago
Why are those areas Republican dominated? I thought the poor are supposed to be Democrats.
- bitwize 5y ago
  The poor in dense, urban areas typically are Democrats. Out in the countryside, people have less exposure to information and less contact with a diverse community, making it easier for Republicans to instill false consciousness by whipping up fear of the other.
  - golemiprague 5y ago
    I could say the same thing about blacks in the cities, not very educated, no contact with white or hispanics or anything except from blacks and yet they vote democrats. Let's admit it, these days there is no correlation between rich vs poor and voting, the rich people in silicon valley mostly vote for democrats.
  - mionhe 5y ago
    Erm, these areas have internet and go to school like anyone else. They're plenty exposed. What does "instill false consciousness" mean to you? When I try to parse this sentence I get "make people incorrectly believe" maybe? I'm not clear on your meaning. All in all, if I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that people are being tricked by a political party, yes? That being the case, it's definitely possible that you're right. I would suggest, however, that it appears much more likely that both major parties are playing that game. I mean, I watched the last American president endure four years of accusations from his political rivals that he would start wars, persue extremist agendas, and be the destruction of his country. We were told that if he wasn't stopped, everything would go to hell in a handbasket. So he was stopped. Afterward, their candidate for presidency appears to be ushering his country to hell in a handbasket. Seems like everyone is playing fast and loose with the truth anymore. I believe that's a pretty typical politician game.
  - LogonType10 5y ago
    I know for a fact that the San Joaquin valley is more diverse than San Francisco.
    - hindsightbias 5y ago
      And San Joaquin County went overwhelming for the liberals in 2020: https://www.sjgov.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=33619 https://www.sjgov.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=33619 Perhaps you should look at demographics and voting patterns for your chosen sections of the valley.
  - cipher_system 5y ago
    Could it be that the people in dense urban areas have more exposure to propaganda and more contact with political commissars, making it easier for Democrats to instill false consciousness by whipping up fear of the other. Or should we maybe try to avoid this kind of toxic rhetoric all together.
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 5y ago
      Please don't post ideological flamewar comments to HN, or take HN threads further into flamewar generally. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html As for politics- there's no ban. The question of what's on topic vs. off topic is complex. I've posted many long explanations of this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Some links to start with, if you want to read more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 If anyone has a question that hasn't been answered there, I'd like to know what it is, and if you know a better way for HN to relate to political topics while fulfilling its mandate, I'd definitely like to know what it is. Just please familiarize yourself with the past explanations first, because if it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've answered many times already why it won't work.
      - hagbard_c 5y ago
        The proposal has been done before: add a "show/hide politics" option to the preferences, similar to the "show dead" option. Allow users to mark posts for being political, set this flag on a post once a threshold has been passed. Hide posts with the "politics" flag by default but do not shadowban users for political reasons - this ends up showing personal political bias and only worsens the problem. Users who do not mind political banter enable "show politics" in their preferences which makes these posts visible to them. It is impossible to keep all politics out of the subject matter discussed on this site since there is a conscious effort to politicise everything, this is especially clear in "progressive" circles. Since it (for now) is also there where most tech development happens politics often come directly from the source. Add the flag, allow users to mark posts and the problem is mostly solved - or at least it is out of sight for those who don't like these discussions and for those who visit the site without logging in. Trying to ban them altogether is futile since it nigh impossible to do without showing personal political bias.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    It takes a record book worthy amount of tone deafness to suggest that the poorer parts of the republican base have been hoodwinked into spending generations voting for a party that promises to solve their problems but does nothing of the sort but the same part of the democratic base hasn't. The republicans have served poor rural voters no better or worse than the democrats have served poor inner city voters.
    - dariusj18 5y ago
      I don't think it's generations, just over the last 20 years. It was the inevitable long term effect of the Southern Strategy.
    - kcplate 5y ago
      For about the last 35 years (since Bush 41) I saw no discernible difference between the parties in terms of governance (lots of difference in rhetoric though). However, once the pandemic hit there tended to be a much greater amount of authoritarianism regarding pandemic policies coming from elected democrats. Interestingly it was across the board as well. Even down to the local community levels, it seemed to me that the democrats were interested in way more heavy handed approaches. This seems to have now expanded beyond pandemic management to other things as well. That is a concern for me.
  - kcplate 5y ago
    Interesting. I live in a very rural community in a neighborhood that is incredibly diverse, not only racially, but by age and religion too. We get along just fine. Perhaps this area tends towards republicans because folks around here aren’t overly hung up about their differences and seem more to focus on their similarities. They also seem to be more capable of self-sufficiency and less day to day reliance on the government…even those with modest incomes. That tends to be the GOP messaging (at least around here) and people are drawn to it. Their life perspective tends to run counter to the dem messaging of division and government reliance. We also have two different fiber optic ISPs willing to provide internet to our homes. I assure you there is definitely no lack of information around here.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please do not take HN threads into political flamewar hell. We're trying for something different on this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- barbacoa 5y ago
  Democrats have become a coalition party of the cultural and economic elites as well as the subsidized poor. Republicans tend to be the party of the working class.
- epistasis 5y ago
  It's the rural-metropolitan divide. Often the poor in rural areas are also Democrats. But all those farmers (huge land wealth), car dealership owners, plumbing empire magnates, or trucking magnates, are incredibly Republican. But rural areas have far less opportunity than urban areas, and the wealthy often pass their empires down to their children, further hoarding opportunity. So even though there is a ton of wealth for a few at the top, there's extremely little opportunity. Urban metropolitans often offer much more opportunity, as well as greater amenities in the form of culture etc.
linguae 5y ago
And even then, home prices in the peripheral areas of the Central Valley that are within a 2-3 hour drive of the Bay Area have skyrocketed in price during the pandemic. For example, when the pandemic started I remember seeing large signs off Highway 152 through Los Baños for brand new single-family houses in the high $200,000s. Fast forward to today, and new development in Los Baños now starts in the mid-$400,000s, a dramatic leap in price. Tracy and Mountain House have also risen in price substantially, and I've seen places go from the mid-$400K range to the mid-$500K range in Lathrop and Manteca. There's also been considerable price increases in the Fresno area, too (though it's still possible to purchase brand new homes there under $400K), which is outside the normal Bay Area commute orbit, though now with WFH, an occasional trip from Fresno to Silicon Valley or San Jose isn't that bad. The only places I haven't seen dramatic appreciation in house prices are smaller, more isolated metro areas that haven't attracted those leaving the Bay Area or Los Angeles, such as Hanford and Visalia. Coming from a guy who grew up in Sacramento, yes the Central Valley is hot, but the best part about the Central Valley is its relative affordability and its proximity to many interesting places. Portions are close enough to the Bay Area to commute (though I wouldn't do it every day), and while it's farther away from the beach than the Bay Area, it's closer to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and SoCal is still within weekend-trip range. Living in the Central Valley allows people to take advantage of California amenities without having to get on a plane or take a very long road trip (though, admittedly, Reno and Las Vegas are also close enough to many of these same California amenities, sometimes even closer depending on your destination). EDIT: There are some other cheap parts of California. Many of the desert areas of the state are affordable. Lake County, north of Napa, is quite cheap.
- LogonType10 5y ago
  Off topic, but I couldn't help but ask after checking out your site: do you have any advice for someone wanting to learn more about explainable graph artificial intelligence?
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  I'd like to mention that most people in the San Joaquin valley don't really consider Sacramento to be in the valley, and certainly the weather is different. More rain in sac, and no matter how hot it is in Sacramento, you can look forward to the evening's Delta Breeze. and yeah, I was specifically talking about Visalia, Hanford, Fresno,

jdkee 5y ago

Why would wealthy people seek to increase the numbers of poor or middle income people in their neighborhoods?

LogonType10 5y ago
Because your Chai tea latte with oat milk ain't gonna make itself.
epistasis 5y ago
It's one thing to "seek tk increase" and it's entirety another to "expend excessive amounts of effort to deny." Doing neither of these things would result in a more equitable and satisfactory outcome for all.

carabiner 5y ago

Most YIMBYs are actually NIMBYs who concern-troll every development project into oblivion. Even Robert Reich [0]. What the video (very good IMO) lacks is an examination that this is a liberal bastion. I think NIMBYism is bipartisan, and I doubt affluent right-wing Texans are exactly open to high-density development in their neighborhoods too. [0] https://freebeacon.com/satire/robert-reich-nimby/ https://freebeacon.com/satire/robert-reich-nimby/

epistasis 5y ago

This is an excellent point, but I would add that it's not just liberals. There are some older leftists, ans even some younger leftists, that have embraced housing austerity as a way to spite developers. Which unfortunately enriches landlords and homeowners far more than it's hurts developers. And whose money is doing the enriching? A lot of it comes from those who are barely scraping by, and those who can't scrape by are displaced from the state.

foogazi 5y ago

I’ve lived in apartments before but prefer SFH - don’t know what is wrong with that I dislike living in SF so I didn’t get a job there I can’t afford SFH in Palo Alto so I don’t live there - don’t know what is wrong with that either is it a human right to live in Palo Alto ? People have choices and if something is too expensive or inconvenient they can pick a better option

linguae 5y ago
There is no human right to live in Palo Alto, but something is amiss when housing in a metro area is so expensive that people making middle class salaries (we're talking around $60K-$100K) find themselves "driving until they qualify" 60+ miles away to places like Tracy, Manteca, and Los Baños to find an affordable place to life. For various reasons, Bay Area governments have decided not to densify to the degree necessary to accommodate all the people who work there, which means that development has sprawled out to the closest far-flung places that are willing to build homes. Sprawl is politically expedient compared to density, even if this sprawl means more traffic on our roads, more money needed to be spent on serving an ever-sprawling metro area, and more money individuals have to spend on transportation. (Admittedly, with more people working from home, the downsides of this sprawl could be mitigated, but not everybody can work from home.) I reiterate that there's no human right to live in Palo Alto, but companies based in Palo Alto and other Silicon Valley locations who demand that their workers work on-site may increasingly find it difficult to hire people if their housing options are limited to situations that require multiple roommates to bring the cost down to affordable levels, or commuting from far-away areas. If enough people refuse to work in Silicon Valley, then this decreases Silicon Valley's desirability as a place to work, which in turn may decrease the property values there since there will be less demand to live there. The Bay Area has to be very careful not to kill the goose that has been providing it golden eggs.
- foogazi 5y ago
  > but something is amiss when housing in a metro area is so expensive that people making middle class salaries (we're talking around $60K-$100K) find themselves "driving until they qualify" 60+ miles away to places like Tracy, Manteca, and Los Baños to find an affordable place to life. Why is it Ok to live in Palo Alto, but it’s wrong to live in Manteca ? People are making a choice that best fits their needs, and they choose affordable housing over commute distance California is expensive because everyone wants to live there - you can’t make that affordable. How many condos do you have to build in the bay area to make it cheaper than Tracy ?

js8 5y ago

This is mostly an artifact of the two party system (or the left/right divide, which changed throughout history), in fact there are 3 independent ideologies: Conservative (concerned with values of authority and cultural preservation), liberal (concerned with values of individual freedom) and progressive/socialist (concerned with values of equality/inclusion and democracy). These ideologies are not opposites, they have different concerns, but they might contradict in practice. Sometimes they are also compatible, they accept same tools for different reasons. (For example, property ownership is a policy tool acccepted by liberals for reason of personal freedom, and by conservatives for reason of preserving value. Or basic income is accepted by progressives as means of including everybody in the society, and by liberals as way to promote personal freedom.) There's lot more to this but that's the gist of political philosophy, I think.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

beej71 5y ago

Is this really a Democrat/Republican/liberal/conservative issue? Because it sure seems to transcend that.

HNTA_1 5y ago

[dead]