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Poor Kids of Silicon Valley
- mdjdk 12y agoThat's a hard problem to tackle at a national level without the dreaded Socialism.
- whybroke 12y agoCorrect. There is a religious libertarian belief that somehow changing zoning laws will "fix" the problem. No numbers are ever given (maybe prices would stay level for a few years) And no one notices that the extremely dense housing of Manhattan did not make Manhattan cheap. If they want to fix the problem they'd need large tracts of very high grade housing rented non-profit, (never sold) on government land. The competition from this would drive prices through the floor.
- nsnick 12y agoYou have to ask yourself why Manhattan is now cheaper than San Francisco.
- whybroke 12y agoNo, we need to ask is Manhattan affordable? Are Manhattan prices dropping? Did they ever? A 10%-20% price difference is irrelevant and will just disappear in just a few years anyway.
- nsnick 12y agoThe price difference will increase if San Francisco continues to not build enough housing to meet demand.
- whybroke 12y agoThe price will increase no mater what you do so long as you rely on an uncontrolled free market in real-estate. At some point prices will make employing people there impracticable due to wages and commercial rental. In the current system, that is the price point the market will reach no mater how many units are built.
- throwaway9324 12y agoBuilding isn't the main difference between SF and NY. If everyone in Brooklyn want to live in Manhattan prices would be very different. If anything SF has become more centralized and companies keep paying high salaries and other perks playing in to the whole thing.
- nsnick 12y agoTrue, but middle class people not being able to afford rent in Silicon Valley is an easy problem to solve.
- doki_pen 12y agoFix the public education system so that living in a poorer area doesn't mean your kids have zero chance at real success. We are moving more and more towards a caste-system where your parents success is the most important factor in your own success, as a child. It hurts us all when we don't have the most qualified people possible performing the important professions.
- nsnick 12y agoYou could fix both issues by moving out of California. The children could get a good public education, and the parents could afford a house.
- pa5tabear 12y agoHow do you propose we fix the education system? The largest predictor of educational success, like you said, is money. You can try to equalize, but the rich will always find ways to spend more money on their children's education. I don't think there is a solution as long as America's rising inequality continues.
- cabalamat 12y agoDidn't read due to ridiculous web design. I don't think I should have to click between every sentence, nor should I be subjected to a non-standard user interface.
- TheHypnotist 12y agoI guess you aren't terribly familiar with slide shows.
- VLM 12y agoTheoretically this is a web browser not a slide projector. Its cutesy, but distracts from the message.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- pconner 12y agoThe slide show worked well for the visual content (of which there was a lot), but there was also a lot of content that would be better suited to a regular article.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- robotkilla 12y agowould work better with auto loading trigger content on scroll or something. anything is better than this though. i'd prefer a regular article with graphs actually.
- pyrrhotech 12y agothere's no way the median HH income in san mateo county is 88k
- ojbyrne 12y agoYou think it's low?
- pyrrhotech 12y agovery low. I think they forget how much small business owners cheat on their taxes. Teachers make more than 88k in San Mateo County
- mlmonkey 12y agoAccording to the Census Bureau, it is: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06081.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06081.html
- refurb 12y agoLots of people lived in San Mateo county before it was all +$1M homes. If you bought at $400K 10-15 years back, you're probably doing fine on $88K/yr.
- muzz 12y agoEven if you bought in 2011, when the $1M home was $600k, you'd be fine.
- kkshin 12y agoGood content, but seriously who signed off on actually presenting this content the way it is presented? Seems like a high school multimedia class project.
- Rainymood 12y agoI was almost going to bail on the site because I couldnt scroll through it, NOR use my arrow-keys, ugh, horrible UX.
- Squarel 12y agoArrow keys worked fine for me
- logicallee 12y agoMy guess is that the author, who is a journalist, wanted to distance himself or herself from the content and not be associated with it; making it multimedia puts him or her among the technocrats while allowing them to write whatever they want. It also has the (actual) effect of being more engaging for decision makers. (So much so that it leads with a note saying it's only the author's opinion, not cnn's.) probably many people here would not have read through a straight article with the same information. It's also more engaging and real - e.g. the video stories. Edit: also the whole article is about the contrast with silicon valley. so having a new app-y interface to play with every second of the reading puts that contrast especially starkly. it certainly worked on me. (if I had read the same article in sfgate in the usual article format I dont think it would have had the same effect.)
- nikhizzle 12y agoHow can people of moderate (Silicon Valley) means help?
- Kalium 12y agoPush for policy changes that allow for the addition of enough housing to bring down prices.
- nsnick 12y agoSurely, we need more government regulations and programs not less. Removing zoning laws can't possibly be the solution. Maybe we can have the government give housing to poor families, thereby taking housing stock off the market and reducing supply.
- serge2k 12y agoRevamping zoning laws probably is the solution. Make it easier to build more housing.
- tlrobinson 12y agoI think the parent commenter was being sarcastic and would agree with you.
- maerF0x0 12y agoIt skips some important points. The cost of living is high due to zoning laws and a lack of building. Subsidizing families' rent will just make existing landlords richer. It would just drive rents up further. What is needed to get fewer people bidding on the same unit. If landlords are finding <1 suitable tenants per vacancy then suddenly it becomes a renter's market.
- mlmonkey 12y agoOn top of more housing, we need better public transit. Start with running Caltrain every 10 minutes. Change local transit so that it becomes a feeder to/from Caltrain, BART, etc. And make it cheaper.
- johnny_utah 12y agoDefinitely. This is a pipe dream, but this proposed plan for BART (in 1956) would have been a-ma-zing. Source: http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transit-bay-area.html http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transi... Unfortunately, there is absolutely no chance of anything close to that being built in our lifetimes.
- steven2012 12y agoI'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 what happens when there's an influx of money, it causes inflation.
- bsder 12y agoNote 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. <sarcasm>But it's the unions' fault.</sarcasm> Try not swallowing so much propaganda next time.
- andy_boot 12y agoIsn't the simple obvious solution just to build a lot more housing? More supply means lower prices.
- cjensen 12y agoNo. The Valley is geographically constrained. The mountains enclosing it are too rugged to safely build on. The best you could do would be to permit high-rise housing which would provide some expensive housing to the high-end. A better idea would be to stop permitting any non-housing construction until the housing to job balance is restored.
- 1053r 12y agoThis is just empirically false. High rise construction is massively cheaper than the current property values. Per square foot, suburban Palo Alto is $1409 per square foot at the median [1]. Heck, even the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, and hardly a bastion of affordable housing, cost only 1.5B / 3,595,146 = $417 per square foot. [2] More reasonable construction of 10 - 20 stories could easily be put up for that cost, even once you factor in the high cost of labor in CA. 1 - http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Palo_Alto-California/ http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Palo_Alto-California/ 2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa
- muzz 12y agoMost of the value in the "per square foot suburban Palo Alto" number comes from the land, not the structure. If all those single-family houses were torn down and rebuilt as high-density, then surely the price per square foot would be cheaper. Property rights are pesky though.
- ForHackernews 12y ago> Property rights are pesky though. Let developers buy them out. Or theoretically, they could just eminent-domain a bunch of houses.[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
- nsnick 12y agoBuild more housing.
- mgraczyk 12y agoThis 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 small-scale culture that they don't want to separate from. It's a sad reality, but sometimes the economic forces that re-balance labor markets require people to physically relocate. If your labor is not as valuable in a particular geographic region, it's time to retrain or move. For most people retraining is not an option... My sentiment is not classist or elitist. The same argument applies to people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. I have personally relocated for financial reasons three times in my life. I moved away from home for college, I moved to a new location for my first job, then I recently relocated to the Bay Area because this was the optimal place for me to be economically. I did all this with very little money saved up and with no financial support outside my paycheck. It has been easier for me to keep in touch with my family than it would be for these people (I make enough to travel to visit family several times a year). However, I have made sacrifices and relocated for my personal financial well-being. If I had a family to look after, I would have (and arguably ought to have) sacrificed even more. EDIT: That being said, I fully support relaxing regulation on the construction of new housing. It would be better if people didn't have to move, but I believe that even with optimal housing growth there would not be enough real estate to comfortably house the current lower-middle class population of SV.
- kaonashi 12y agoThanks for illustrating the attitudes that make these kinds of situations possible.
- mawburn 12y agoI've moved plenty in my life, both as a child and as an adult. The most common reason people don't move is because they are afraid to leave the social circles. And what a lot of people don't realize is that their their social circles may not actually be that strong anymore now that they have become adults and had children... which then it just comes down to them being afraid or "just don't want to". Of course there are an infinite number of other factors involved, especially when money is thrown into it, but this has been my experience when talking with people.
- taco_emoji 12y ago> Use these arrows to advance through the story. Uh, no.
- ddispaltro 12y agoThe left and right arrow keys worked fine for me.
- dpedu 12y agoNo go on mobile
- taco_emoji 12y agoThe interface isn't the issue, it's the PowerPoint format.
- robotkilla 12y agoThis format is horrific - its like reading a power point presentation.
- ghrifter 12y agoMaybe this is an experiment of low attention span Twitter-like "tweet" article? Seriously at most there was like 3 whole sentences per slide... I felt like I was reading a highschooler's Power Point...
- benten10 12y agoI don't think the solution is as simple as 'building more housing'(aka giving permits). It would drive down the prices somewhat, but what's to stop more engineers from moving in/shortening their own commutes etc? I think the term we're looking for is 'build low-income housing'. That would make it more likely that people who need it get it.
- selectodude 12y agoMore people want to live there? Awesome, build even more. Demand is not infinite. Ever.
- benten10 12y agoRight. Now imagine you live in one of those cities. You're living comfortable as an engineer, etcetera. You have a community going on. Your city has its budget, its school system and so on. The city wants to allow permits to build as many houses as it can to drive the low enough to make them affordable for the homeless. Bear in mind you live in a very attractive part of the country, so homeless will be driven out of the market very quickly. That's a LOT of units. There are only limited public resources, and they can expand only so fast. If you care even a bit about community around the place you live, you know having tens/hundreds of thousands of people (who are likely not going to be long-time residents) moving straight in couple of years is not a good idea. You're going to vote against the city granting those permits. One would rather the city build low-income housing then let the swamped by new transplants.
- Lawtonfogle 12y agoIt may not be infinite, but it is often larger than supply.
- selectodude 12y agoIt's only larger than supply when you make it illegal to build enough housing to satiate demand.
- nsnick 12y ago
- redthrowaway 12y agoMaybe I'm missing the point here, but why is it reasonable to think that a single mother with a low income should be able to afford to live in San Mateo?
- jcdavis 12y agoBecause reality for the lower class is far more complicated than that. In theory, she should move elsewhere. In practice, its not nearly that easy - there's no certainty of a new job, no money to move, (well-placed) fear of losing what little safety net they have, etc.
- redthrowaway 12y agoThat's awful for her and others in her situation, but I don't think it supports an argument that anyone should be able to afford to live in any region regardless of their income. And really, that's the only solution to problems like hers: building subsidized low-income housing in very expensive areas. San Mateo is expensive. Very expensive. Outside of direct market distortions like subsidized low income housing, it will always be too expensive for many people to live there. As many challenges as she faces in moving, she'll face more trying to raise a child in a garage.
- slipjack 12y agoBuilding subsidized housing is only one way to subsidize housing expenses. There are vouchers, sliding scale housing, mixed income housing, set-asides, and more.
- mindfulgeek 12y agoIts very possible the father of the child lives in SM, and she is obligated to live in a certain area. Lawyers cost money even if one person is not paying child support. W/o a good lawyer, people can lose things, like kids. Also, if she had a technical career, her best way to find income again is to stay in the area -- shorter commute, more opportunities, higher income. Speaking as a once single mom with an extensive technical resume, finding a job can be next to impossible. Regardless, living in the city increases the chance.
- pearjuice 12y agoIs there any way to read the article in a Web 1.0 manner, with paragraphs and inline media? I like that CNN is trying to present content in a new manner but that felt like I was reading the slides of a conference presentation. At some point I even turned on the sound to make sure I wasn't missing the embedded speaker's audio.
- jkot 12y agoI dont get it. One person on video lives in nice bedsit (garage) and talks about homeless.
- tlrobinson 12y agoBut living in a garage is not part of the American Dream™.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- txru 12y agoThat woman was talking about how she had been homeless after her child was born, and how that status had affected her perceptions of security since. She seemed to have a mostly self-deprecating, while also grateful, air about the garage.
- clay_to_n 12y agoShe was homeless before she got the garage. I think they placed her there in the beginning so that your average white middle-class CNN viewer could relate a bit more to the stories of the homeless to come.
- dvirsky 12y agoAs someone from outside the US, how much do you need to earn in order to live well in this area? There was one slide stating a minimum of $100K for a family of four just to "escape poverty". Is that really the case? And if so, how do early stage founders who aren't already rich manage to get by?
- doki_pen 12y agoThey don't have a family of four. They are usually young and single.
- dvirsky 12y agoAFAIK the median/average age of founders is around 40.
- joedavison 12y ago$100k as a minimum to raise a family and have a reasonable (read: tolerable -- not luxurious) lifestyle in Silicon Valley is very accurate. If anything, it's low. On $100k, you wouldn't really be able to save very much, so the idea that you could somehow "escape poverty" while raising a family in Silicon Valley on that salary is somewhat of a stretch. In Silicon Valley, a "middle class" family typically means two highly educated adults each earning six figure incomes.
- Domenic_S 12y agoDepends on what you mean by "living well". On the Peninsula in a good neighborhood with a 2k+ sqft house and 2 kids in private school, yearly vacations, newish cars? $400k household income minimum imo. It's really a meaningless numbers game - no matter where you live, you have to trim your lifestyle to what your income supports.
- SoftwareMaven 12y agoThe "evidence" provided was pretty weak, IMO. I think the last option, a basic living allowance, is something we, as a country, are going to have to come to terms with. As manufacturing continues to automate, even the low skill jobs we offshore are at risk. It is unlikely everybody in the nation will be able to find employment as a knowledge worker or a service worker. That is the direction the world is heading, whether we want it to or not, and, even if they can all find employment, it's questionable what percentage of service workers can make sufficient to provide for their needs. I prefer a minimum living stipend for a few reasons: It doesn't treat the poor like they are too stupid or too criminal to manage their own lives and their own money. It allows people the ability to move to more fulfilling (and more lucrative) employment by providing time for training. It protects kids without trying to transition parenting responsibility to the state. In general, it keeps the state out of people's lives, increasing their dignity. Yes, there will still be homeless people. There will be people who squander the money. But there will be many who take advantage of it and build a better life for themselves and all of their posterity. And I prefer to bet on the general desire of people to better themselves. The problem is I don't know how to get there from here.
- paulhauggis 12y ago"The "evidence" provided was pretty weak, IMO. I think the last option, a basic living allowance, is something we, as a country, are going to have to come to terms with" The issue with this is that once you start giving a basic living allowance, more and more people will continue to rely on it over time and the system will eventually collapse. "I prefer a minimum living stipend for a few reasons: It doesn't treat the poor like they are too stupid or too criminal to manage their own lives and their own money." It's not their money, it's money given to them by the tax payers..and I don't agree with you reasoning. If you are getting free money from the government, it means you can't manage your own life. I don't really see how this will change the view on the disadvantaged. "It allows people the ability to move to more fulfilling (and more lucrative) employment by providing time for training." I don't think this would increase anyone's time for training. I know lots of people that are unemployed (and get unemployment). You would think with all of that extra free time, they could finish more projects, learn new skills, or even get training. Unless they are forced, most just think of it as free money and don't appreciate it as much as they would if they earned it themselves. It's the same reason most people can't run a business and why most lottery winners end up losing it all within 5 years. "It protects kids without trying to transition parenting responsibility to the state. In general, it keeps the state out of people's lives, increasing their dignity." It doesn't really keep the state out of your life. It will create entire generations dependent on it. In fact, they will be directly controlling your life since many will start relying on that money to live. "Yes, there will still be homeless people. There will be people who squander the money. But there will be many who take advantage of it and build a better life for themselves and all of their posterity. And I prefer to bet on the general desire of people to better themselves." My issue still is that these costs will only increase over time. The middle class worker will see tax increases and there will be no incentive to get a minimum wage job, because you can just get it from the government. This will also have the added side effect of inflation. The single worst thing you can do for someone disadvantaged is to give them a reason to stay exactly where they are in life (and no incentive to succeed at something more). A basic income does exactly this.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- hypnos1 12y agoThe lack of empathy on display here is astonishing. Is this quality a prerequisite to participating in the luckier side of the wealth-gap of silicon valley?
- Domenic_S 12y agoConsider the audience, who will overwhelmingly shift to problem-solving mode. Empathy feels nice but doesn't provide a roof or full bellies.
- rfrank 12y agoAnd most responses are something along the lines of, "just move." Top notch problem solving, that right there.
- Kalium 12y agoA few responses are to that tune, and they are greeted with long and careful explanations of why that is not a reasonable response.
- comatose_kid 12y agoEmpathy vs problem-solving is a false dichotomy. Having empathy helps to better understand the problem, and this understanding can lead to better solutions.
- jkot 12y agoWhy lack of empathy? Most people here share the pain. I know guy with "good job" who lives in van. I personally would love to come to SV, but simply can not effort it with family.
- lordnacho 12y agoIt's quite unfortunate for these folks. I don't have an immediate solution other than what has already been said about increasing the supply of housing. But the thing is there's this very valuable network in SV that's been built. Everywhere where some new innovation is happening, anywhere wealth is being created, you are going to get this sort of thing happening. People who are at the cutting edge will be moving ahead in income, but there's always going to be folks who aren't part of the party. So an income gap will pop up where there's all this wealth being generated. I lived in London for a long time, and you saw the same. Millionaires' apartments in the same neighbourhood as council flats. Kids with chauffeurs, kids with free school meals.
- Mz 12y agoFor people saying "Just move": I lived on the West Coast (Washington State and two places in California) for about ten years as a military wife. I had to leave California during my divorce because I could no longer afford it. I returned to California three years ago as a homeless person. I returned for my health. My medical condition is hellaciously debilitating and expensive to treat. Being not so sick to begin with both raises my quality of life and lowers my cost of living. I currently live in San Diego County. I have plans to move within the next few months to someplace cheaper, because (in a nutshell) I would like to get off the street and I can't afford housing in this county. But, I plan to remain in California -- because the climate here and the far lower than the national average levels of ragweed do good things for my serious health problems. So, I think it's an incredibly shitty position to take to say "just move." What you are saying is: Only rich people can live where they choose and the rest of y'all -- fuck you. I will suggest that is not good for the nation as a whole. Fucking over too many people is a good way to eventually get to a place where the nation just doesn't work at all. Not being rich should not be the same thing as being a prisoner of your problems, with no real options.
- jkot 12y agoHm, stockholm syndrome? We live in place with better climate than California, 100 meters from sea. Our total monthly expenses for 3 member family, are probably lower than most people in SV pay for rent. We rent nice house, insurances, school, etc...
- Mz 12y agoMaybe you sort of overlooked the detail that I was a military wife (stated early in my above comment). I have lived in Georgia, Texas, Kansas, Washinton state, California, and Germany. I have driven through most states in the continental U.S. I spent a month on the gulf coast in Port Aransas on my way back to California. I returned to California from Georgia on foot and accepting rides, which took roughly two months (actual travel time, not counting the month spent in Port Aransas). I am nearly 50 years old and I have been around the block a few times with my health issues, as well as all over the country. I am a LOT healthier in California than anywhere else. This is not some psychological issue and it is not some untested hypothesis. It is a pretty thoroughly tested understanding of what helps keep me healthy for less than the average $100,000 annually my medical condition typically costs.
- james1071 12y agoThis doesn't seem to be that difficult a problem. The solution is surely transitional payments to get people to relocate.
- andymcsherry 12y agoIt's a shame they used a national statistic for income mobility of bottom 20%. While still not perfect, the area has the highest in the nation among large populations. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-income-ladder-location-matters.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-incom...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- codeshaman 12y agoTLDR: Had an offer to relocate to Sillicon Valley, refused because of the poor/homeless people all around. Full version: A couple of years ago I had this offer to relocate to Sillicon Valley to work at my company's new office there. H1B visa, great salary, incredible project, a dream come true. I live in Barcelona and there are few cities in the world which can compete with the Barcelona package, even during times of 'crisis' - great climate, beautiful architecture, laid back lifestyle and great cuisine. San Francisco was one of those cities and I didn't want to miss the opportunity now that I had it. And Sillicon Valley - it's like coming to the centre of the tech world where history is being forged. So I came over to explore and see if it makes sense to relocate. It was my first time visiting the United States and I was so excited ! I had Scott McKenzie playing in my headphones when my train arrived in San Francisco. It was an emotional moment and I almost felt bad that I didn't have a flower in my hair :). It felt incredible to be there. People were smiling and saying 'Hello', there were techies everywhere and the city looked very nice indeed. I went to Haight Ashbury and then the Golden Gate park, some guy offered me a joint and I just sat there listening to drummers and looking at the great, powerful oak (? pine ?) trees surrounding me. The air, the drums, the joint put me in a state of trance and I felt as if the city started speaking to me - "Come here, in here there is power, this is the place to be if you want to change the world'. I've felt it's power, I felt it's might, I've felt that it's now or never. But there was something else in it's tone. A kind of strange arrogance and slight bullying, a kind of 'either you're with me or get the fuck out of here' kind of vibe. At first I didn't give it much thought when I saw the homeless people - drunks, addicts, ex cons, whatever... But then I started to notice that there's lots of them in the city and as it started to get dark, the streets became filled with these people - fucked up, strange and scary, outcasts, abandoned, ignored, useless... I almost ran back to the train station. The next days that I stayed there I couldn't help but see homeless and the poor people everywhere and I just couldn't comprehend it. How is it possible that the place were the greatest fortunes are made is filled with so many poor people ? I mean, I know it's their lives and they're responsible for that... but still ? Why did they get to this state ? Is the society there so 'cruel' that you either make it or fuck off ? How come there are no homeless (or at least bum-looking) people in Barcelona ? This contradiction was one of the reasons that I refused the offer to relocate. I can't explain it rationally - rational people don't base their decisions on such ridiculous details - but nevertheless it's been a big factor in my decision. But there is food for thought there. That said, I still want to come back to San Francisco and Sillicon Valley, seems like there's so much to explore there. And I know I will, probably soon and maybe then I will be able to understand it better. But for now, it's in my list of mysteries.
- RIMR 12y agoIs there an actual article I can read, or I am stuck with this third-grade picture-book format?
- nsheth17 12y agoA 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. If they move away, who will drive our buses? Who will teach our children? Who will build our homes? Who will do all the jobs that don't pay well enough for the richer ones among us to do? (Please don't say machines. We're not there yet.) Two solutions: (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. (2) Subsidize their cost of living. There's probably a case to be made that if we need people to work these jobs, they should be entitled to some cost of living subsidies. Maybe create a group of "endangered" jobs that we need but whose average wages are lower than the cost of living. Anyone who works those jobs has access to affordable housing, gas credits, etc. It's a run around the wage market, but maybe it could work.
- emodendroket 12y ago> (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.
- RestlessMind 12y agoHow 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 some charitable organizations 3. Easy access to abortions - there will be political opposition in certain parts of the country, but I don't see who opposes it in places like Silicon Valley.
- emodendroket 12y agoOh, I've got it. Let's institute a policy whereby parents can only have one child. We could call it the "Single Kid Policy."
- async7 12y agoI'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