Silicon Valley's prosperity paradox: 76000 millionaires can't fix local poverty

>"The large rooms of which you are so proud are in fact your shame. They are big enough to hold crowds--and also big enough to shut out the voices of the poor....There is your sister or brother, naked, crying! And you stand confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering."

Ambrose 4th Century

I understand the libertarian ideal of being free to choose how to give away your own money, but how do they reconcile that with the ignorance of the elite as to the social problems they never encounter? Even given the inefficiencies of government, it's hard for me to imagine that the same amount of social spending could do more good from the hands of individuals than collective agencies.

My friend serves on a local educational non-profit.

He's encountered a lot of problems during his tenure there, that explain why they don't play nicely with many silicon valley folks.

First, the non-profit's goal is to continue to exist, and that means to appease donors, not to serve the needs of the community.

Second, a lot of the employees are volunteers, which means they don't act quite professionally sometimes and push their own agendas to the detriment to the non-profit's overall goals.

Finally, and sadly enough, many of the volunteers lack professionalism. They routinely disclose information they were asked not to reveal, and they forget to document possible conflicts of interest

The "76000 millionaires" number might be a little misleading. I've lived in Silicon Valley since I was 3. I bet that a lot of those millionaires are home owners on the Peninsula who have nothing to do with "Silicon Valley" as we commonly refer to it (the tech industry). My Grandpa, for example, was a high school teacher all his life. He bought a home up in the Burlingame hills back in the 60s or 70s, and that thing is probably worth multi-millions now.

Silicon Valley and San Francisco need to learn from NYC about how to address homelessness and and poverty. The state of the Tenderloin is comparable to Times Square in the 1970s.

It boggles my mind why we cannot divert that valuable land towards productive use and use the tax revenue generated towards providing homeless services closer to the outer edges of the city and away from civil society.

I urge people to read this article: http://www.city-journal.org/html/how-new-york-became-safe-fu...

I have to admit, I have become a bit disillusioned with charity. After contributing many hours with Glide church, serving homeless people in SF, participating in many events and fundraising, I feel like we rarely move the needle. Charity seems to be designed to just maintain the status quo. Last month, I spent a week in a French village near Lyon and I was surprised to see the quality of life in a small village in France - supposedly a socialist country with stagnant economy and high unemployment. That made me wonder whether persistent poverty is simply an outcome of a dynamic capitalist system and the only way to address it is some form of socialism or universal basic income.

I don't think "empathy gap" is a good way to describe the disconnect described. The gap isn't a lack of empathy. Nobody involved lacks empathy. It's a fundamental question of framing and measurements.

One group of people wants cares about how happy they make people and how moral their mission is. The other cares about the efficiency of how many people can be made that happy per unit of cash.

This is why CharityNavigator and similar have become popular.

Somewhere in my brain is floating the figure of 40,000 for the entire homeless population of the entire greater Bay Area. There are twice as many millionaires in Silicon Valley as there are homeless in a greatly expanded "local area." There are about an order of magnitude more millionaires as there are homeless in Silicon Valley proper.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/06/22/silicon-valley-homeles...

Is this really a matter of donating? Shouldn't it be a matter of changing economies? Donating helps but it also keeps the status quo, where wealthy still have access to opportunities and the poorest still don't.

For trickle down to work the rich need to buy sufficient amount of services. Unfortunately there is an oversupply of low skilled labor and thus not enough of these jobs (how much can 76000 people consume) and no bargaining power.

The middle class as a broad wealth transmission belt has been shrinking and is under pressure from low interest on retirement accounts, high educational cost and home financing costs.

As the money is pumped into the economy from the banking/financial side the gap is increasing continuously.

It's no mystery. 76000 millionaires who care about their own interests and money instead of poverty aren't fixing local poverty. They could do a lot to address causes and symptoms to point of a great transformation. They just don't want to. End of story.

Now, knowing they don't want to or put in little effort, what's the next plan for people wanting to end poverty over there that factors this in as a base assumption?

The homeless problem is SF is so minuscle and the talent and funds available so extensive that the only reasonable conclusion is there is no desire to fix it. Contrast this with the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted by the government on the severely bloated security state and trillions on the banks bailout and one has to question the priorities and loyalties of the american state. There is no lack of money, it seems a lack of will.

I think few other countries if any display nearly the same visceral hatred of poor people or perpetuate a naive black white view of poverty as the US tends to do.

This binary view leaves little room for adversity, bad luck or downturns with commentators in an unholy rush to tar them all as criminals, addicts or mentally unstable. It seems the expectation is the homeless should be at their best behavior while in abject poverty.

Trying to 'help' these folks get back on their feet is 'unearned' and strikes at the identity of individualized americans for whom a bare decent life is a privilege to be earned. And resentment for 'freeloaders' reflexive and immediate. You can't have 'winners' without losers.

The problem is the 'losers' are now in plain sight and making things unpleasant for the winners, and the urgency is not to address their suffering for they must suffer, but to dehumanize and get them out of sight so the 'winners' can carry on uninterrupted.

Could anyone else find where the stat came from on number of millionaires? I opened the linked PDF report the link ultimately led to, read the whole thing and couldn't find it.

I'm curious because the devil may be in the details and the headline may not be what it sounds.

Specifically...

- What form does this wealth take? Are they only paper rich? If so, they probably can't access much of those funds. Same if they are tied up in retirement accounts.

- What is the distribution of money in this sample? If it is closer to $1M for the majority vs much higher amounts, that isn't as much money as most people think it is out here when a crappy small house in a decent neighborhood costs more than that. Certainly not "divert your funds to solve poverty" levels of cash. If you have $1M and have a decently large mortgage out here, that money is likely not even enough to cover your retirement if you keep living here.

This sort of headline and math drives impressions and revenue for Business Insider but this is likely a non story.

Don't get me wrong... This is a big problem that we should absolutely be trying to solve. But this seems to point the finger at a group of people who may not really be worth pointing the finger at because they actually aren't that wealthy in reality if you factor in the form of that wealth, cost of living, mortgage, and saving for retirement. They may in fact look more similar to the upper middle class of 20 years ago, albeit with smaller, crappier homes.

If only we had an central organization that collected taxes to solve issues of public concern.

Why would they want to "fix local poverty"? What does that even mean, writing checks in perpetuity? Why would they want to give their resources to other people? How culturally compatible are these "millionaires" with the people they would supposedly be helping? What does a Chinese expat engineer have in common with a schizophrenic black hobo that he would want to write them a check, their presence in the same zip code? Why would he do so when he's already taxed, heavily, to provide things like "homeless services" in SF to the tune of $250 million / year (IE, approximately $20K / homeless person) with apparently no effect? How much of a cut do these "nonprofits" take along the way?

Lots of unasked questions here.

Off topic: I noticed the article cited Zillow as a "real estate database". That is troubling given how inaccurate the service has proven to be.

It is easy to blame individuals, but let's face facts, everyone is busy dealing with their own issues no matter how poor or rich. Further, wealthy people aren't going to start shopping at second hand stores any sooner than the impoverished are going to start shopping Louis Vuitton to learn how other people live. Don't know, don't care. Besides government, we have these silly associations called corporations that are both tiny and enormous. There are tax incentives and brand awareness that all motivate them to get involved with these issues. Further, they have armies of people and other resources.

To owners, board members and shareholders: Is your company engaged with local community issues? Are employees and management encouraged and supported to do so? Awareness campaigns?

For employees and contractors: Have you bothered to see what your company is doing to assist with these programs? Have you signed up to learn more? Volunteer or donate money?

My 2c: It sounds like a much better approach to work with than trying to chase after 76000 individuals. More likely to herd cats.

Every year our local office adopts a family and donates household goods, food, gifts, and computers. Last year we worked at the local food bank, the community kitchen and last year repainted a community centre. It is a great opportunity for team building that doesn't involve stupid posters with lions and whales.

Contra the article, the rich in Silicon Valley very much know those poorer people exist. They're the maids, cooks, landscapers, restaurant workers, car detailers, construction crews, etc. They're not invisible. They exist, just not - to their clients or customers - as people. Replace them with robots, and the millionaires will only notice a difference in cost or service levels. The idea that somebody's livelihood just went poof is of no consequence to them.

The number of people in the area is greater than the number of homes. No amount of income redistribution can possibly fix this. If you rent a room for a homeless person, you are just going to price out the poorest person who can currently afford a room. The only way to fix this is remove people or build homes. The first option is better for the landed gentry, the second option is better for the nation as a whole.

Every time I read something like this I think about all my rich friends in Silicon Valley who engage in armchair socialism. Gives me a good chuckle. ^.^

From the article:

"For both sides to work together effectively, each has to recognize the challenges of the other."

Why? In order for both sides to work together effectively, the business (non-profit) has to anticipate and fulfill the need of the consumers (donors).

They're basically saying that not only aren't the donors giving enough, they need to be educated into changing their reasons and motivations for giving.

It seems like some of the charities need to spend money on marketing to get their message out and attract/convince new donors. It's hard to raise money and get donations if people do not know what you do. Unfortunately, many people get angry when charities spend money on marketing because they say it's wasteful and doesn't go directly to helping people. But, sometimes you have to spend some money in order to make more money in order to help more people...

If large numbers of poor people choose to live in silicon valley, that implies silicon valley is actually one of the best places for the poor.

"can't fix" implies they're trying

How about 760,000 millionaires? If we are going to invent a random statistic without any data to back it up. Pretty document by the way.

You misspelled won't.

You'll likely get downvoted for mentioning you expect downvotes. Please don't do this. It adds nothing to the conversation.

Crikey, speak the truth on here, get a downvote. Like clockwork!

Been working on this problem for awhile. We're currently in Alpha. Not saying a word about how we're fixing the problem on a public board, because peoples envy and jealousy leads to violence (imitative competition) Girard would postulate.

All I'll say, is it's really good and Gamified and will emancipate human people from suffering.

Article chooses the slant that its a bad thing that there is disparity. One could claim that in a true dystopia the rich would just make it so insufferable that the poor leave as economic refugees.

While I would love for everyone to be "rich" today, it seems that eventual wealth is a good deal, if kind of harsh emotionally. Many of the "poor" (i know there are extreme cases) are richer than kings 1000 yrs ago. I would guess that in 1000 yrs the "poor" of then will be richer than our 1% today.