6 ms·

Silicon Valley’s Vast Wealth Disparity Deepens as Poverty Increased

42 points by rmason 4y ago

dpatru 4y ago
This is like complaining of unequal vehicles at an airport: A relatively few can fly very fast and hold hundreds of passengers, but most are earthbound-bound and can carry only a few passengers. Of course Silicon Valley has inequality: it’s home to some of the most impactful people on earth. Hobbling these people will do nothing to help the poor, just like crippling airliners will not improve the cars in airports parking lots.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Hobbling these people What does that mean exactly?
  - shitpostbot 4y ago
    [dead]
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    Subjecting them to even the smallest, mildest mote of criticism.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- holografix 4y ago
  What a bizarre comparison.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    That's a very weak criticism. I think his analogy was fairly clear in what it was saying. "Bizarre" seems to mean "I don't like what it implied." But why bother to tell us that? Tell us why you don't like it. Better, give us a reason why you think it's wrong.
- otikik 4y ago
  I have seen poverty in a lot of places, and huge contrasts of wealth, but never the disparity I saw in SF. I’m talking about a Lamborghini parked next to a person lying on the floor, with no shoes, marred in their own excrements. It is crazy. > Hobbling these people will do nothing to help the poor There’s no one left to “hobble”.
  - refurb 4y ago
    Go to a developing country and its worse, way worse. Not to say it isnt worth trying to fix.
    - runnerup 4y ago
      I have spent a lot of time in GCC countries (Saudi, Qatar, UAE, Oman). It’s worse there in the sense that more people are dirt poor, but SF is worse in terms of more people being rich. What I mean is, in UAE/Saudi, the poor people are just as bad as the poor people in SF. But there are very, very few rich people. There’s also a lot of not dirt poor people (still poor). SF had so many many rich people and there or there are just as bad as the poor elsewhere.
      - refurb 4y ago
        Come to Asia. You'll see people far richer than those in Silicon Valley next to people who parasites and diseases the Western world eliminated 100 years ago.
        runnerup 4y ago
        Sure, but the rich won't be 15% of citizens of the city. It will be like 0.2-2%.
      - ddtaylor 4y ago
        I'm confused. How is there being more people with less a better thing?
    - otikik 4y ago
- P_I_Staker 4y ago
  This is one of the most disgusting things I've read in a long, long time. > it’s home to some of the most impactful people on earth. It's home to some of the most entitled jerkoffs on earth. This website needs to call out this rhetoric, because it's riddled with self-congratulatory garbage. Go ahead and flag me or downvote my comment, but I really can't believe what I'm reading here sometimes.
  - monero-xmr 4y ago
    You are on a website focused on tech startups. The people who succeed at tech startups become absurdly rich. I’m in agreement with the parent commenter that hobbling the superstars to give more to poor people is the wrong move. I’m disgusted that people disagree with me, but I also understand why most people remain poor.
    - reset8 4y ago
      [dead]
    - mstipetic 4y ago
      If only they had invested early into scam internet tokens like you did, they wouldn’t have these problems
      - jacooper 4y ago
        Saying monero is a scam token, shows how much you know about crypto.
        fzeroracer 4y ago
        This is what everyone says about their scam token.
        survirtual 4y ago
        Monero has proven at scale some cryptography that can be used to change everything. I recommend reading the codebases of projects before you write everything off as a scam. Monero is a legitimate project with enormous value, and active research on problems that matter; it is the primary private / anonymous digital cryptocurrency.
- freeone3000 4y ago
  Getting rid of homeless people will do nothing to techbros other than give them a fewer thing to complain about.
- trieste92 4y ago
  One person is an airline, another person is a car... Not a very good comparison considering the basic needs of all people are practically the same: food, water, and shelter It's like you're saying that "impactful people" "need" the Atherton mansions they live in to the same degree that the homeless need housing Or in vehicle terms you're saying that one car needs a hangar as much as another car needs a parking spot (because the first one is driven to "more important" places)
mc32 4y ago
I don't understand these arguments much. They sound more like sour grapes to some extent: If tech had not begun and become the powerhouse it did would the people who lived there have been better off in real terms? There is no reason that it couldn't have remained farmland like the Imperial valley. Ok, Oakland would still be a port and SF would be a financial hub. But most of the industry that thrived till the 70s, were slowly outcompeted by imports (bedding and furniture, is one example) and SF and SJ from the 80s were in decline before being girded by the burgeoning tech industry. It also would mean we would not have attracted the foreign talent that also helped to drive the growth. Admittedly housing would be cheaper, and the population much lower, but I'm not sure I'd trade SJ and SF for Modesto and Sacramento, but to each their own.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > If tech had not begun and become the powerhouse it did would the people who lived there have been better off in real terms? > Admittedly housing would be cheaper Housing is the largest expense for most people, so yes, they would have been better off, because housing would be affordable. Even software engineers consider housing there to be absurdly expensive.
  - mc32 4y ago
    Well, the Central valley and Imperial valley are there with cheap housing. But people want the benefits of both. Singapore is the same. It's expensive. Switzerland also, it's expensive.
  - umeshunni 4y ago
    If only there was a way to create new housing in California.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Or if only there was housing outside of California.
      - 4y ago
favflam 4y ago
I visited San Jose Diridon station. It was surrounded by parking lots. It was amazing to me that a train station with connections south and north to both San Francisco and Oakland is a desolate wasteland of parking lots devoid of people. If this happened in another country, the city planners would be voted out of office or disappeared. That place should be full of 5-10 story buildings bustling with offices, shopping, and apartments/condos. California is urinating away so much potential.
- favflam 4y ago
  Also, it is embarrassing that San Jose International airport does not even have a rail connection. Even second tier cities overseas make sure to have rail connections for foreign visitors who probably don't have a driver's license.
- porknubbins 4y ago
  The US is the wild west and always will be. We are fundamentally a country that loves big desolate places that require rugged individualism to navigate. You can argue that there are pockets where this isn’t true, but I lived in post 9/11 NYC to see the worst pathologies of suburbanism creeping into Manhattan. The few real human scale areas (downtown,fidi) become disneyfied and overwhelmed. I have found it easier to embrace this reality than deny it.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  It will be soon: https://realestate.withgoogle.com/sanjose/ https://realestate.withgoogle.com/sanjose/
- dehrmann 4y ago
  This is probably just because more people are working remotely than 3 years ago. Those lots would have been full in 2019.
  - marssaxman 4y ago
    The issue is not that the parking lots are empty, but that the rail station is surrounded by parking lots at all. This is a terrible waste of transit infrastructure! Rail stations should be located in densely developed areas close to destinations. If you put a station in a low-density area, that creates an opportunity to build a new efficient urban center. (In some countries, the land-value increment created through this kind of development is a large source of funding for transit infrastructure).
charlescearl 4y ago
Some references to the long history of class struggle in California include Ruth Wilson Gilmore, The Golden Gulag https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520242012/golden-gulag https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520242012/golden-gulag Huey P Newton (co-founder of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA October 1966) Revolutionary Suicide, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Suicide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Suicide Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo-alto/9780316592031/ https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo-alto/... Mike Davis, City of Quartz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Quartz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Quartz

42 points by rmason 4y ago

This is like complaining of unequal vehicles at an airport: A relatively few can fly very fast and hold hundreds of passengers, but most are earthbound-bound and can carry only a few passengers. Of course Silicon Valley has inequality: it’s home to some of the most impactful people on earth. Hobbling these people will do nothing to help the poor, just like crippling airliners will not improve the cars in airports parking lots.

lapcat 4y ago
> Hobbling these people What does that mean exactly?
- shitpostbot 4y ago
  [dead]
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Subjecting them to even the smallest, mildest mote of criticism.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
holografix 4y ago
What a bizarre comparison.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  That's a very weak criticism. I think his analogy was fairly clear in what it was saying. "Bizarre" seems to mean "I don't like what it implied." But why bother to tell us that? Tell us why you don't like it. Better, give us a reason why you think it's wrong.
otikik 4y ago
I have seen poverty in a lot of places, and huge contrasts of wealth, but never the disparity I saw in SF. I’m talking about a Lamborghini parked next to a person lying on the floor, with no shoes, marred in their own excrements. It is crazy. > Hobbling these people will do nothing to help the poor There’s no one left to “hobble”.
- refurb 4y ago
  Go to a developing country and its worse, way worse. Not to say it isnt worth trying to fix.
  - runnerup 4y ago
    I have spent a lot of time in GCC countries (Saudi, Qatar, UAE, Oman). It’s worse there in the sense that more people are dirt poor, but SF is worse in terms of more people being rich. What I mean is, in UAE/Saudi, the poor people are just as bad as the poor people in SF. But there are very, very few rich people. There’s also a lot of not dirt poor people (still poor). SF had so many many rich people and there or there are just as bad as the poor elsewhere.
    - refurb 4y ago
      Come to Asia. You'll see people far richer than those in Silicon Valley next to people who parasites and diseases the Western world eliminated 100 years ago.
      - runnerup 4y ago
        Sure, but the rich won't be 15% of citizens of the city. It will be like 0.2-2%.
    - ddtaylor 4y ago
      I'm confused. How is there being more people with less a better thing?
  - otikik 4y ago
P_I_Staker 4y ago
This is one of the most disgusting things I've read in a long, long time. > it’s home to some of the most impactful people on earth. It's home to some of the most entitled jerkoffs on earth. This website needs to call out this rhetoric, because it's riddled with self-congratulatory garbage. Go ahead and flag me or downvote my comment, but I really can't believe what I'm reading here sometimes.
- monero-xmr 4y ago
  You are on a website focused on tech startups. The people who succeed at tech startups become absurdly rich. I’m in agreement with the parent commenter that hobbling the superstars to give more to poor people is the wrong move. I’m disgusted that people disagree with me, but I also understand why most people remain poor.
  - reset8 4y ago
    [dead]
  - mstipetic 4y ago
    If only they had invested early into scam internet tokens like you did, they wouldn’t have these problems
    - jacooper 4y ago
      Saying monero is a scam token, shows how much you know about crypto.
      - fzeroracer 4y ago
        This is what everyone says about their scam token.
        survirtual 4y ago
        Monero has proven at scale some cryptography that can be used to change everything. I recommend reading the codebases of projects before you write everything off as a scam. Monero is a legitimate project with enormous value, and active research on problems that matter; it is the primary private / anonymous digital cryptocurrency.
freeone3000 4y ago
Getting rid of homeless people will do nothing to techbros other than give them a fewer thing to complain about.
trieste92 4y ago
One person is an airline, another person is a car... Not a very good comparison considering the basic needs of all people are practically the same: food, water, and shelter It's like you're saying that "impactful people" "need" the Atherton mansions they live in to the same degree that the homeless need housing Or in vehicle terms you're saying that one car needs a hangar as much as another car needs a parking spot (because the first one is driven to "more important" places)

mc32 4y ago

I don't understand these arguments much. They sound more like sour grapes to some extent: If tech had not begun and become the powerhouse it did would the people who lived there have been better off in real terms? There is no reason that it couldn't have remained farmland like the Imperial valley. Ok, Oakland would still be a port and SF would be a financial hub. But most of the industry that thrived till the 70s, were slowly outcompeted by imports (bedding and furniture, is one example) and SF and SJ from the 80s were in decline before being girded by the burgeoning tech industry. It also would mean we would not have attracted the foreign talent that also helped to drive the growth. Admittedly housing would be cheaper, and the population much lower, but I'm not sure I'd trade SJ and SF for Modesto and Sacramento, but to each their own.

lapcat 4y ago
> If tech had not begun and become the powerhouse it did would the people who lived there have been better off in real terms? > Admittedly housing would be cheaper Housing is the largest expense for most people, so yes, they would have been better off, because housing would be affordable. Even software engineers consider housing there to be absurdly expensive.
- mc32 4y ago
  Well, the Central valley and Imperial valley are there with cheap housing. But people want the benefits of both. Singapore is the same. It's expensive. Switzerland also, it's expensive.
- umeshunni 4y ago
  If only there was a way to create new housing in California.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Or if only there was housing outside of California.
    - 4y ago

favflam 4y ago

I visited San Jose Diridon station. It was surrounded by parking lots. It was amazing to me that a train station with connections south and north to both San Francisco and Oakland is a desolate wasteland of parking lots devoid of people. If this happened in another country, the city planners would be voted out of office or disappeared. That place should be full of 5-10 story buildings bustling with offices, shopping, and apartments/condos. California is urinating away so much potential.

favflam 4y ago
Also, it is embarrassing that San Jose International airport does not even have a rail connection. Even second tier cities overseas make sure to have rail connections for foreign visitors who probably don't have a driver's license.
porknubbins 4y ago
The US is the wild west and always will be. We are fundamentally a country that loves big desolate places that require rugged individualism to navigate. You can argue that there are pockets where this isn’t true, but I lived in post 9/11 NYC to see the worst pathologies of suburbanism creeping into Manhattan. The few real human scale areas (downtown,fidi) become disneyfied and overwhelmed. I have found it easier to embrace this reality than deny it.
nostrademons 4y ago
It will be soon: https://realestate.withgoogle.com/sanjose/ https://realestate.withgoogle.com/sanjose/
dehrmann 4y ago
This is probably just because more people are working remotely than 3 years ago. Those lots would have been full in 2019.
- marssaxman 4y ago
  The issue is not that the parking lots are empty, but that the rail station is surrounded by parking lots at all. This is a terrible waste of transit infrastructure! Rail stations should be located in densely developed areas close to destinations. If you put a station in a low-density area, that creates an opportunity to build a new efficient urban center. (In some countries, the land-value increment created through this kind of development is a large source of funding for transit infrastructure).

charlescearl 4y ago

Some references to the long history of class struggle in California include Ruth Wilson Gilmore, The Golden Gulag https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520242012/golden-gulag https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520242012/golden-gulag Huey P Newton (co-founder of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA October 1966) Revolutionary Suicide, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Suicide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Suicide Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo-alto/9780316592031/ https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo-alto/... Mike Davis, City of Quartz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Quartz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Quartz