Poor Kids of Silicon Valley
cnn.com
cnn.com
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.
I can see how one might feel 'just move' is a good argument, but really NO! In chinatowns all over the country, whenever low-income residents are being priced out, the argument is always 'you can just find another place to stay'. They've lived there for decades, if not more. That's where all the people they know are. They are poor but they do have a support system, that lives with them. When they move away, not only are they economically helpless, but also socially helpless.
To tell people to just 'move away' is very dense, IMHO. You might not feel the same way about places you live in, but some people feel VERY STRONGLY emotionally about where they live. Consider the fact that when there's natural disasters/flood/earthquake/radiation leaks, there's not insignificant percentage of people who would rather stay where they are and suffer the consequences rather than move away. Which is why evacuations often have to be FORCED! People would rather die than move away from their homes. You cannot just say 'they can just move away': the concerns are valid.
Those feelings are a luxury. Taxpayers should not be forced to bear the cost of someone's emotional attachments.
I would prefer tax dollars be spent on relocation assistance + job placement to help get people on a sustainable path.
In short, it is cheaper to build them houses and put them there, than to put them in prisons. Whether people get happy in places they like, or they get pissed at the system and live in prison, it's your tax dollars either way.
This solution makes me really uncomfortable.
You're completely disregarding the individual and saying that we are responsible for creating an environment for them and ultimately, we are responsible for their behavior.
These are independent, adult people who are perfectly capable of making their own decisions, good or bad, and living with the consequences of those decisions.
It shouldn't be the public's responsibility to remove them from neighborhoods or 'build them houses and put them there' as you said.
If low income people want to live in one of the most expensive areas in the world, they can. But they shouldn't expect to live well.
Yes, some people do have the story of "got laid off after 35 years, company stole my pension, now I'm homeless", or "had a long, expensive medical emergency, now am homeless". You can pinpoint the external force. But this piece showed one thing in particular that was striking: it seems it's rarely one major event that plunges someone into a bad situation like these (consider that none of these videos had one "this is what happened" sound bite). It seems like it's the snowball effect of bad decision after bad decision.
What do we do with people who are in really tough spots because of the compounding behavior of bad decisions? "We invest in the educational system so kids learn how to avoid these spots" -- ok, great, but what do we do with THESE people, today?
Accepting the "external forces" thing is a slippery slope, because now somebody is the arbiter of You Did It To Yourself vs. It's Not Your Fault. Who can we trust with that position? Is it even moral to make that judgement? Was this whole comment satire on being the arbiter of justice?
edit - it seems strange that many well paid technocrats will happily hold sway on the possibilities of sea-steading, or building fusion reactors, or anything involving a giant laser, or suchlike, but throw up their hands and declare the problem of houses for the poor people they or their workforce are displacing to be an insurmountable fact of the economy that can only be solved by the poor people moving to somewhere that hasn't yet become cool. And to be utterly cynical about the whole thing, if rich folk really want to build a city on a hill, they probably shouldn't price out all the trades if they want it to function in the long run.
If enough of us decide that emotions are worth supporting, why shouldn't taxpayers make that a priority?
I do not understand this insistence that money spent on building more housing here is bad whereas spending the same amount of money on having 'those people' move out of sight to somewhere else is somehow good.
Where does this housing get built? Why would you build it on some of the most expensive land (SV) in the lower 48?
I think the gap in your understanding is because you're just not listening to everyone telling you that the government's limited money will go further if it doesn't have to render/compensate landowners in the most expensive real estate market in the country.
It's ludicrous to suggest that the government spend money buying land to build co-op housing in SV.
A family on the edge doesn't always have the luxury to move.
You just think poor people should have to move out of their homes because rich people decided they want to live there. Got it.
> The same argument applies to people of all socioeconomic background.
Yeah, rich people get forced out of their homes because they can't afford them all the time. /s
The advice makes sense for the rich as well as the poor.
There are many houses on the market that fail or pass "rent vs buy" calculators - savings can go into diverse sources instead of a property if you so choose.
I'm of the opinion that the overall package is "worth it" here, but each person should consider their own evaluation metrics - and yes, move if you don't think it's worth it.
Note: this is certainly off-topic from the troubles of extremely poor people in this area.
Until your first layoff. Then it's an absolute blessing to live somewhere where your next job is one more exit up 101.
This is the thing that everybody who works in tech forgets. If you live in Pittsburgh, Tulsa, or Lubbock, you are in for a many month job search--or you are leaving the city--when (not if) you get laid off.
Seagate had this problem a couple years ago. They wanted VLSI layout people in Pittsburgh and were offering comparable to Silicon Valley money--and nobody from the tech cities would bite. Why? Everybody knew that they were going to be the most highly paid people in the office and subject to getting axed first. And would then have to move back to Silicon Valley.
The Bay Area is not the only place with a high amount of tech jobs. Sure it may have the most but there's many other cities with plenty of openings.
Searching "software engineer" job listings on LinkedIn[1] shows:
San Francisco (12,676)
New York City (6,619)
Washington D.C. Metro (5,613)
Seattle (4,584)
Boston (4,452)
Chicago (3,933)
Los Angeles (3,135)
I'm hoping to be able to save ~$240k and buy a modest house on the outskirts of Portland or Tacoma and have a little left over.
I'm just wondering if there's anywhere else where I could save money like this?
So if we want to outlaw rent control, we should outlaw fixed rate mortgages too, and eliminate the artificial cap on property taxes (something that corporations exploit by using shell companies to 'own' commercial real estate, and then transferring ownership or voting control of the shell company while shielding themselves from property tax on the current value of the real estate). But we both know that that's not likely to happen.
No. It began in SF as a very-specific response to Prop 13, which is essentially property-tax-control
Both are bad policies in terms of market distortion and are often the overlooked elephants in the room in discussion of housing supply and affordability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rent_control_in_Engl...
That isn't how this works, at all. When the number of people who want to live in an area > the area's capacity, prices increase. See: every metro area in the world.
> Yeah, rich people get forced out of their homes because they can't afford them all the time. /s
Rich people move to optimize their finances all the time.
http://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/State-leader...
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2014/February/Frances-Recko...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dalebuss/2014/04/27/it-makes-sen...
http://www.aei.org/publication/companies-are-leaving-califor...
If rich people living around you only affected house prices then you'd be right, but they tend to push the cost of everything up. That's what drives poor people out.
It's like people think this situation is new, and poor people are the "real" natives of SV. If those damn facebooks and googles had left the valley alone everything would be great!
Actually, in some places (certain NYC or London neighborhoods), the rich are getting pushed out by the ultrarich. What chance does a mere millionaire have against billionaires?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/19/h...
I'm not poor by any means, but if SF rents keep going up, I'm going to be leaving if I can't find affordable housing (even on a relatively high salary).
My point is that it might not be fair that low-income folks have to move when housing gets more expensive, but it doesn't stop with low-income. I'm sure plenty of middle-income folks have been forced out of the Bay area as well.
If you're hand-to-mouth poor, you cannot afford a rental truck, let alone time off work and still feed your children. You will probably lose your job if you move, and not find another one where you land, especially if you're in the service industry. Good luck with that East bay -> peninsula commute on your minimum wage. The reason many cannot get jobs other places is due to felonies or other legal issues related to being poor.
If your children are in school a lot of parents would actually rather struggle than put their family through the trauma of a move, even if in the end it may be better.
American society is more mobile than others, but poverty (outside of vagrancy) is extremely restricting.
I do think your main thesis is correct (this is unmaintainable, gtfo), but moving is a multi-year struggle of planning and saving at these low levels of income.
This is at it's core class struggle, not individual unawareness.
If they could magically keep their Bay Area income while being anywhere else, they might be.
But since they can't actually do that, I'm not sure what relevance that has.
I've seen a few commenters here suggesting using government money to ship 'em out, or retrain or job-place them, but I wonder: what do the poor in Silicon Valley want for their lives? Do they want to be shipped out? To be retrained? Better wages? Cheaper housing?
These are people, after all, and are worthy of being involved in any discussion concerning their fate.
You've said, ship 'em out! Retrain them! If they don't want to do those things, do nothing. What I'm going for is: ask them, too.
It makes very little sense to try to have a conversation about solving a community's problem without listening to members of that community.
It seems you have misunderstood my point. I'm not saying to load them up and ship them out. I'm saying that if they want help, the best utilization of limited resources will be in helping them move somewhere more affordable. But they don't have to accept help; it isn't being forced on them.
I'm saying offer options, not enforce demands.
Our conversation is now going something like this:
You: If they want to move, move them, otherwise do nothing
Me: Ask them what they want
You: I'm not saying they have to move, just that that's what we can do
Me: Ask them what they want
You: You misunderstand, they don't have to move, but that's their option if they want help
Me: Ask them what they want
Are we going to keep going back and forth like this all day?
So sure, have a conversation and find out where they want to be in their life, but it's madness to think they'll give you insight into how to fix what got them there.
Many of the other fixes talk about changing laws, and my suggestion was basically in the scenario that those don't work. (I do grant that a law change would cost the government some money to implement, new permits, ect.; I just consider such costs when broken down per person help to be effectively zero and to, in large part, already be paid for by all the already hired staff.)
So I guess the question to you is... what about all the poor people in every other state. Have you asked them what they want to be done, so we can fairly allocate money? We could give those in need in SV ($TheirPoor * $BudgeToHelpThePoor)/$TotalPoor and let them spend it on what they want and if they run out, tell them tough luck.
On a side note, what happens to the average individual who wins big in the lottery?
A subsidised construction boom tied to population growth, for instance, would tend to help those on median to low incomes twice over. Once by keeping a lid on the cost of housing and secondly by providing a greater availability of reasonably well paid employment. It also helps those on higher incomes (as long as they are not those whose income is merely dependent on continually soaring house prices), both directly in lower rental costs and indirectly by reducing the cost of local services.
What needs to be understood is that we cannot force the cost of living to drop, and we cannot force the median income to rise.
Either search for a job that pays more, or search for a home that costs less. If that means moving away from where you grew up, then sorry, but that's literally your best option.
Is it fair? No - but life isn't fair. If you find yourself living in a place that you cannot afford, then you are the problem, not the world around you. Fix your own life, because nobody is going to do it for you.
That's exactly what rent control does. I guess it's ok to not even try to make an argument on HN these days.
The ROI on apartments drops substantially, so investors aren't incentivized to make new buildings, but instead maintain their current ones as cheaply as possible until they're unserviceable.
What you're really describing is a lower standard of living, not merely a lower cost of living.
Come on. It's not as though the circumstances that created "Silicon Valley" were natural and beyond the control of anyone; why should we turn around and pretend the side effects were (well, other than it being convenient)?
I know not everybody can divorce themselves from all of their belongings, especially large families. Additionally, I didn't have to worry about schools (no children) or work (my industry has ~0 unemployment). I did, however, have to worry about saving enough to survive between jobs and finding an affordable place to stay.
> This is at it's core class struggle, not individual unawareness. I agree, but I think part of the solution has to involve helping people relocate. We should also strive to encourage a more distributed social life. If we had inexpensive, high quality video telecommunications I believe that people would be more okay with moving away from their families.
We should also strive to encourage a more distributed social life.
Why? I'm not the most gregarious person and I am OK with telephones and video, but it's a far cry from meeting people you care about in person. The problem with helping people relocate rather than deal with these issues at their source is that you wind up with economic cleansing, large enclaves and entire cities where only the wealthy can live and others where only the poor can afford to reside. Naturally there are few economic opportunities in communities of poor people, so people who live in them have to travel ever farther to get to their jobs, with increased cost in fuel/transit fares and diminishing marginal utility of labor due to the extra commute time.
The thing is, the same dynamic is at work to varying degrees all over the country so it's far from obvious where people who are economically dislocated should move to.
Households on minimum wage are often paycheck to paycheck, and thus have no buffer with which to even find a roof in a new city, much less hunt for a job in a less-reliable industry.
Also, familial connections are not just purely for joy - they may provide some amount of free childcare that would become a financial burden after moving away.
Places like the Puget Sound and the Bay Area are going to keep getting populated with tech workers, and they are going to keep rising in cost.
Moving isn't hard. It sucks to feel kicked out of the city you live in, but there isn't much that can be done. If you can't afford it, move somewhere that you can.
I hate gentrification, but what can we do to avoid it? Ban high-paying jobs? Maybe one day all of this will bite us in the ass, but if you find yourself on the receiving end right now, do the best thing you can for yourself and get out!
You think scraping together five fucking grand "isn't hard" for someone who's hand-to-mouth poor?
> If you can't afford it, move somewhere that you can.
"What if you can't afford TO MOVE" is the entire point of the post you responded to.
Charity idea: provide moving & job placement help to get homeless or nearly homeless families into lower cost of living areas.
I always have mixed feelings about stories like this. Like the woman from the first video: homeless, just got a garage for her and her 18-month-old. Pregnant again. Kids do not make your financial situation better or life less stressful.
The kids didn't ask for poverty and it's not their fault -- all true. But what do we do, enforce reproduction strategy at gunpoint?
That said, I really lost a lot of sympathy for the woman in the garage though, kids are hugely expensive (about a quarter million dollars to raise them to 18) and I just can't understand how she thought having a second kid would improve her situation. Obviously it could have been an accident or similar, but damn, maybe now isn't the right time for a second kid!
I'm probably just a first world asshole with no sense of what it must be like in her position.
It would be a very different calculus if any of us were in that woman's situation. Maybe she made a bad decision. Maybe someone told her she'd be much more likely to get public assistance with two children than one, and she's ashamed to admit it. Maybe she was coerced into sex in exchange for money or because her personal safety was threatened. I very much doubt that she just decided it was a Friday, and a good time to get her sexy on.
No need for gunpoint. Making access to reproductive options legal, safe, widely available, and well-publicized is probably good enough.
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.
The word optimal is doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting here.
The other question is (don't know the answer) how many people who owned homes (instead of renting) were able to cash in in some way on rising property values?
My guess is that at least some of the people renting made the decision to not purchase and some of the people owning made the decision to not rent. Of the people who could choose an option.
As far as people saying "it costs money to move" what about one family member moving and the other staying until a life is established elsewhere? [1]
Maybe what is needed instead of handouts is some kind of social service that makes people aware of their options. Edit: And pushes them to take those options even if they are painful. And also to make them realize that "even though you don't want to move because your friends and family are here" you might have to move if you can't afford this place anymore.
Note: I don't live in California and have no skin in this game.
[1] And lastly, has the "problem" even been properly quantified? I watch stories similar to this on TV news reports. They always pick the right people that you seem to be able to relate to and a situation that always seems unjust. But they never show exactly how many people actually are like that person (or even not like that person). They pull at your emotional heartstrings because their job is to make the story attractive, not necessarily balanced. And when they do they always add the "to be sure" that gets them off the hook. As in "to be sure not everyone who is homeless is XYZ" etc.
I am guessing that some people think that there is so much money sloshing around the Valley that taxes should be higher to take care of those in need. The potential problem there is that you simply encourage more people to stay or actually even more people to move to the area to take advantage of that benefit.
Finding a food service or house cleaning or landscaping job in a depressed, but affordable, city like Redding or its ilk is going to be way, way harder than in a more expensive place.
Add to this that once you lose your car, you can't live or work outside of a city with functional public transportation. None of those are cities are going to be dirt cheap.
The fact you fail to recognise it as elitist doesn't mean it isn't. You are elitist because you fail to understand that life can be a great deal harder for other people. "I did it so they can too" assumes that other people don't live in circumstances that prevent them doing things. That is plain wrong.
If I had a family to look after, I would have (and arguably ought to have) sacrificed even more.
One of the things you might have had to sacrifice is having enough money to relocate.
One family in the article has two parents both with full time jobs. And they're living in a homeless shelter. I understand that they can't afford $3,000 per month rent in the city. But how is it that they don't have enough money to relocate? Even a few miles away to something more affordable?
If the father works in construction, that's skill that is in high demand and easily transferable. You can walk into a construction office tomorrow and be swinging a hammer by Monday right?
There must be more going on. Some important piece of the puzzle is being withheld from their story.
The notion of re-balancing forces is a nice simple story but the price of housing relative to income has risen nationwide for decades. There is a similar story for medical care and even food.
So yes it's fun to believe in the invisible hand and Adam Smith's 200 year old thesis. But the reality is that the value of all labor is simply being driven downward.
Smith was keenly aware of the dangers of mercantilism and WoN is anything but an argument for unrestrained capitalism. Indeed, the second most observation in the book, after the one about the fact that butchers and bakers are motivated by self-interest rather than generosity, is that “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
The forces of the market are not the forces of nature, and we make the rules (or, at least, shape them greatly).
> I make enough to travel to visit family several times a year
are you serious, dude? leave the advice giving for people who have actually been poor and understand the logistic difficulties of poverty. "just move"? you have the freedom to move to the most economically optimal place for you, and you think THAT is equivalent to the situation of a family living hand to mouth in transitional housing or section 8?
YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.
Together with my cofounders over two years we have built an amazing company and product (and we still have a ways to go). This would not be possible outside of Silicon Valley, and our trajectory would look much different (worse) if we lived in, say, Montana.
On the other hand, some sub areas are bound geographically and can't expand horizontally, so the only way is upwards, which faces even more resistance.
On top of this, no one has a natural right to live in a specific area. At the same time society has a responsibility to provide reasonably affordable living space for lower income residents. However, it doesn't necessarily mean it has to be in the posh areas of town.
Still as land prices increase, is it even possible to build in areas of high land prices? Where does that money come from? Do we divert taxes to that effort rather than building that same housing in areas where that money would go further?
With regard to people not being able to move away due to cost, there are lots of people who move to the US with nothing but a few dollars and an address. It's possible. I guess the question is do we want to put our own citizens in this kind of predicament?
For every software engineer in the Bay Area there is an army of waiters, cooks, janitors, sanitation workers, retail workers, office workers, school teachers, nurses, and unskilled laborers that supports him. And if you move them all out, well, I don't think that I have to explain the consequences of that action.
People build up support structures - extended family, close friends, church and hobby/interest ares. The cost of moving once you have a family is a often a whole lot higher than easily quantifiable dollar values.
I am struggling to find the name of the program in the article in order to see if it has "worked" in any way to reduce homelessness. Not sure if it is even still around.
EDIT: It's called Project Reconnect[2] and it is still around even though De Blasio apparently was against it[3]
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/nyregion/29oneway.html [2] http://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/service/3601/project-recon... [3] http://nypost.com/2014/09/06/de-blasio-has-sent-1412-homeles...
Exactly. Millions of immigrants uproot themselves and move every year. Yeah, it sucks for the first few years, but then it becomes better. America had its share of mass migrations in the middle part of last century; but for some reason people don't want to move as much these days.
If you plug this salary into a loan calculator and assume ($50k/year for tution and living expenses) that's 200k in debt at graduation.
No one in the Silicon Valley makes enough to cover that.
The assumption then is that people will have parents who help them out through college. Ergo, there is no real social mobility because you need a certain type of parent to ensure you don't have student debt that leaves you in the red even with a high tech job.
The valley and SF just rich kids getting richer while screwing over everyone else.
Source: http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transi...
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no chance of anything close to that being built in our lifetimes.
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.
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.
But that's a topic for another day. :-)
They're also planning on extending caltrain to downtown and connect with BART there
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.
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.
No particular offense to you, specifically, but this sentiment is something that makes me rage.
There are not enough jobs for everybody.
We have MORE than doubled productivity since 1970. That means that HALF the jobs since then have vaporized. Gone. Kaput. Never to be replaced.
If you were not "talented" enough to be born into a family that was college educated prior to 1980, you were in for a very hard time in the future--through no fault of your own. The biggest predictor of whether you will be poor is whether you were born to poor parents.
And, while everybody always mentions immigrants, I would like to point out that we have survivor bias. The immigrants that you know SUCCEEDED. Lots of them got lost along the way. Many of them are still poor--there is a reason they tend to congregate together in specific city sections.
There are lots of jobs that can't even be filled right now. Many jobs have vaporized, but there are also plenty of new positions.
With all of the support here for open source, do people even care that jobs have been lost as a result? As an example, my last company probably should have hired 5 developers. Instead, they just hired me and used a free open source product.
So you push for open source and new technology, which reduces jobs, and now expect a bailout from the middle class? Maybe we should have a tax paid for by technology and open source companies that have reduced jobs.
"If you were not "talented" enough to be born into a family that was college educated prior to 1980, you were in for a very hard time in the future--through no fault of your own"
People can still get into a trade..and make good money without going to college..yet all of the stats I've seen show this is not happening. Why?
"The biggest predictor of whether you will be poor is whether you were born to poor parents."
It really is a parenting problem. My parents never taught me about saving, compound interest, and long-term investments (not just thinking about what I am emotionally feeling now).
This doesn't mean I can't learn about these things later in life.
I would rather invest in more education (which can teach someone the skills to be successful in many aspects of life) than a basic income, which will potentially make a person dependent on it for their entire life.
Sure. But mostly it's like this, the Natrona Heights, PA steel mill just got a very expensive reinvestment and retooling. It now employs about 600 when it used to employ 4,000.
And of those 600, most of those now require fairly technical training while the vast majority of the previous 4,000 jobs could be filled with a basic level of training.
So, you need at least 3,400 jobs to materialize out of thin air.
Even if I assume that you could magically turn all those people into engineers, until you show me where those 3,400 jobs are, the rest of your arguments are moot.
The only retort I ever get is: "Well, they should move." Move where? I can repeat that job-loss ratio for cites all over the US from big to small--Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Allentown, Poughkeepsie, Burlington, etc. So, you can't just move ALL of those city's population to Silicon Valley, Boston, and Austin (although the tech folks are trying very hard to disprove that statement with their actions by flooding those areas with people).
NOBODY has been able to tell me where those jobs that people should move to are. That's because they don't exist.
> People can still get into a trade..and make good money without going to college..yet all of the stats I've seen show this is not happening. Why?
Companies say they want more tradesmen. What they really want are cheaper tradesmen. I don't see salaries rising in the US, at least, so the job rate is at rough balance.
> So you push for open source and new technology, which reduces jobs, and now expect a bailout from the middle class?
I certainly don't wish to reverse automation--especially in things like steel mills where it replaces very dangerous jobs.
However, you can't just hang people out to dry either. Education doesn't magically make a job appear (just ask the non-technical PhD's about that).
There is a mythos that everybody can just create and run their own startup, and the world can be fed on startups of O(1) size. I don't believe it (though I believe it can go a long way towards solving the problem), and, even if I did, startups still fail and people still need food, housing and warmth.
Governments don't have to take money from anyone to make this happen. They can just print it. Of course it amounts to the same thing, but everybody's money is dependent on the underlying financial system that is backed by governments (crypto-currencies are, slowly, making this less true).
I wonder how it would turn out if there was a single fund created to provide this living arrangement. Everybody is allowed to donate whatever they want to it (with no benefit other than knowing that they donated), then, any shortfall is met by printing the money, devaluing the currency in use equally for all.
I don't know that it's a good idea; it should be tested first, and, if it fails, we throw it out (unlike so many "big" ideas where, if and when it fails, the reason is always that "we didn't do it big enough, so we have to throw more at it"). The success criteria need to be well defined, but not politically motivated like so many ideas for providing for the poor. Like I said, I don't know how to get there from here.
My issue still is that these costs will only increase over time.
My argument is predicated on the idea that the cost of living will steadily decrease over time. If the cost of shipping approaches zero because everything can be JIT manufactured locally and the social interaction values of living in a city dwindle due to continually improved online interaction, the cost of living becomes food and shelter which don't need to be centralized in expensive cities.
Localized JIT manufacturing is going to massively upset the global economy. I don't see a way out short of massive government efforts to prevent technological progress (which I expect to see), but technology will march forward anyway. Is it better to move towards a new economic model that accounts for it or just deal with the revolution when 75% of people are unemployed?
The biggest risk factor, IMO, is cost of energy. We need it to be going down significantly, because it will take cheap energy to drive the JIT manufacturing that enables a very inexpensive minimum cost of living. I really do think we are in a race between a social collapse due to unemployment, hunger, and social disparity and copious free energy. And I think social collapse is currently winning, so if we could hold that off for a bit, both through reducing social unease and increasing funding in energy research, I'd really be OK with that.
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.
No, the single worst thing you can do is let them starve or freeze to death, because then their one and only life is over. And that literally happens to poor people. I consider this argument the "the poor are only poor because they are lazy, so anything that makes them more lazy will only make them worse" argument. And I believe it is a lazy argument in itself.
I've scrounged through cupboards hoping there was anything in them while my parents drank away whatever money they got. I get the potential negatives better than most people around here. But I also know that there are a lot of people who were just not fortunate to be born in the right place to the right parents with the right opportunities right in front of them.
I went to school and to college, paid for by the tax payer mostly, because I worked hard (actually, most people in the US went to college mostly paid for by the tax payer, regardless of how hard they worked). Should I have been told to piss off because my parents couldn't pay for me to go to college? I had a high school diploma, so I had "enough", right?
Where do you draw the line? How do you determine who is good enough and who isn't? All I'm saying is the answer to the first question is no, I shouldn't have (I've provided far more value than I cost) and the answer to the rest is it is a waste of time to even try to answer them.
I usually refuse to have discussions with people that use straw-man arguments and try to guilt me into siding with their opinion, but I will make this exception today.
If we had a basic income, how would you handle a growing amount of dependence on the system? In the beginning, we would still have people that were used to working..and they would be able to support everyone. But, as more and more people were born into the system (and used to the free money), there would be less and less money to pull from as a whole..and either the system would collapse completely or the government would pretty much have to take over private industry.
"I don't know that it's a good idea; it should be tested first, and, if it fails, we throw it out (unlike so many "big" ideas where, if and when it fails, the reason is always that "we didn't do it big enough, so we have to throw more at it"). The success criteria need to be well defined, but not politically motivated like so many ideas for providing for the poor. Like I said, I don't know how to get there from here."
Government programs don't really work this way. I don't think we could just "try it out" without wasting lots of taxpayer dollars.
"Is it better to move towards a new economic model that accounts for it or just deal with the revolution when 75% of people are unemployed?"
Again, you keep making these outlandish claims. How can I take you seriously?
JIT manufacturing isn't even close to taking out 75% of the jobs and it might not be close in our lifetimes. We might as well be discussing the potential of quantum teleportation technology putting the automotive industry out of business.
"No, the single worst thing you can do is let them starve or freeze to death, because then their one and only life is over."
Our poor are better than most countries in the world. Want to see real poverty? Go to India, Vietnam, Cambodia, or many countries in Africa.
"I consider this argument the "the poor are only poor because they are lazy, so anything that makes them more lazy will only make them worse" argument. And I believe it is a lazy argument in itself."
It's not laziness, it's just human nature. Any system needs to take into account human nature or it won't last..with painful results.
"I've scrounged through cupboards hoping there was anything in them while my parents drank away whatever money they got."
With freedom comes the freedom to destroy you or your kids lives. A basic income won't put a stop to this. What makes you think those same people won't take the money and continue to squander it?
One of my family members has always been poor. He finally got a job last year and makes 6 figures. We all thought that this would be a life-changing event. The result? He declared bankruptcy this year and can barely afford his mortgage.
Education is the key. Throwing more money at the problem without some sort of education won't solve the issue.
"Should I have been told to piss off because my parents couldn't pay for me to go to college? I had a high school diploma, so I had "enough", right?"
No, but if the tax payer does pay for your school (and you don't need to pay it back), you should be required to pick a major that has some chance of actually making you enough money to pay for the major.
"Where do you draw the line? How do you determine who is good enough and who isn't?"
We have many systems that already help the disadvantaged, but it never seems to be good enough. My taxes right now are close to 50% of my pay check, but it's never enough.
With great freedom comes great responsibility. If you are going to blame parenting and the way you are brought up on the inability to find a good job and succeed in life, maybe we should have less freedoms in regards to how a child is raised?
It just seems silly to not want to put any responsibility on the person having the children or the person that is poor yet continue to demand more and more money from society when it obviously isn't working.
On top of all this, we now have lots of free information available to us online. There are entire college courses, video tutorials, blogs, and other forms of free education available to all. You can even go to pretty much any library in any city and get high-speed Internet for free (many homeless people go to the public libraries in my city). Yet, we still have a problem with a lack of education and many people not able to get jobs.
I also don't like this notion that because a person is poor..that must be the reason why they aren't succeeding. We need to put more responsibility on the individual if you really want anything to change. Your place in life many times has to do with your poor decision making and planning.
With economics. If you set the level of basic income too high for sustainability given current productivity and people's willingness to work given the support available, such that there is, in the short term, excessive dependency on it, then you'll be giving out lots of money and it will be chasing very few goods because there won't be much production -- which will very quickly drive inflation sky high, which will reduce the level of living standards provided by the basic income, which will increase the need to work and cure the problem of excessive dependency before it becomes a long-term problem with substantial durable cultural impact.
Of course, you don't want to hit that unstable point because of the short-term disruptions it causes, so you'd do best to start BI low, and gradually ramp it up while retiring other support programs. But, ultimately, basic economics limits BI well short of the point where any durable culture of dependency that relies on unsustainable levels of support sets in.
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.
Consider, if you will, that people have responded by looking for solutions. A true lack of empathy would be a response characterized by people professing apathy or ignoring this submission entirely.
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.
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...
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.
Just try Greece for couple of months. Doctors are great here, speak english and are much cheaper.
Thinking you have a superior answer for my life after reading a couple of comments by me on the Internet and saying I should move to another country because you don't understand my choices is beyond insulting.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHelpingMe
But thank you for the apology. It's a step in the right direction.
Stating my objections to people saying "well, just move" is not remotely the same thing as advocating for any particular solution. I imagine the solutions I would propose would be things most people here would say wasn't what is under discussion. I generally frame problems differently from most other people.
We might respect it, but you haven't made a convincing case that we need to craft policy around financially supporting it.
My genetic disorder costs on average $100,000 annually to keep me alive in a torturous fashion. My oldest son has the same condition. That's $200,000 annually that we "should" be spending on medical care. I am a former military wife. I am entitled to get that care through the military medical system -- which means at tax payer expense. Though, in reality, most people with my condition get a lot of that care covered by some kind of state aid and/or charitable program and the like (as well as often qualifying for disability in their 30s). Being sick all the damn time means you not only have high medical bills, you are also can't work.
We have gotten ourselves well and my productivity is rising. I no longer receive food stamps and I am now well enough to do freelance work to help support us.
Going someplace where the climate is good for my expensive medical condition is a financial win/win scenario, good not only for me but also for other people who would otherwise be getting stuck with the bill.
If you read much about homelessness, helping solve the problems of the homeless is typically cheaper than trying to "take care" of them while controlling their lives and so on.
If the climate in San Francisco helps a person stay healthy, there are likely dramatically cheaper places that would have the same beneficial effect.
Assuming, of course, the goal being to produce the required effect for a minimum of cost.
Not that it is actually any of your business, but I don't currently get any kind of government "assistance."
I'm somewhat baffled as to what you are arguing with me about.
FWIW: Before my life got derailed, I planned to be an urban planner and took college classes with an eye towards understanding how best to make policy that serves the human population in that regard, not targeted at "helping poor people" but also not skewing things in a fashion that causes them unnecessary hardship, which is basically what we currently do.
In other words, the best way to help someone might not be handing them whatever addresses their most immediate problem. Controlling their lives to do things like administer medical treatment might produce better, cheaper, more reliable long-term outcomes. Is that "unnecessary hardship"?
Consider that SF's record of attempting to deliver services in-place to the homeless population has not made much of a dent in the size of the population.
Sigh.
I am not sure if we are on the same page here with what we are trying to communicate. In some sense, you have to put money behind it in order to respect it, but perhaps not in any manner that you are meaning by that comment.
The current state of the U.S. housing situation grows out of the history of the past many decades, going back to at least WWII. During WWII, men went off the war and women got factory jobs, consumer items were rationed and car factories got converted to making military vehicles. You had a lot of de facto two income households with no kids and no means to have a child due to the man being on a different continent from the woman. During WWII, savings rates were as high as 50% during some years, just because there was no means to spend it all. Luxury items simply weren't available and people in the U.S. were being encouraged to grow Victory Gardens so that food grown on farms could be used to supply the military overseas.
The men came back home after WWII and they were entitled to VA benefits, including help buying a home. Practically overnight, the federal government put together the financial infrastructure to help large numbers of returning soldiers buy a house. There weren't enough houses to go around, in part because WWII was preceded by The Great Depression. So America also had to create the housing infrastructure overnight. This resulted in Levittowns going up all over the place, introducing suburbs to the nation.
At that point in time, the average new home was less than 1200 square feet, two bedrooms, one bath and housed a family with two adults and two to three children. By 2000, the average new house was over 2000 square feet and housed a family with two adults and only one child. We have diversified demographically and we now have a lot more elderly retired couples with no kids at home, single parents, and other non-nuclear families while at the same time having a lot fewer housing alternatives in real terms. During The Great Depression, things like SRO's and boarding houses were a lot more common. These days, if you are a single young person with not much of a paycheck, in most parts of the U.S., you wind up renting an apartment designed for a nuclear family and sharing it with roommates because there basically are no other viable alternatives.
This is all rooted in housing policy, which is very tied up in things like tax breaks and financing instruments. If you do not change policy in a way that makes money/financing instruments more accessible to people currently getting ugly labels because of their low income or lack of housing or what not -- because, in short, they fail to be what America wants to believe is some picture of success, as if that were context-neutral, which it very much is not -- then, no, you aren't ACTUALLY respecting people who are currently being screwed over royally by our current system.
Fixing it doesn't mean more government dole programs that control the lives of the recipients. It means altering national policy such that we genuinely need less of that because market solutions are more available to more people. Right now, housing policy and financing instruments tie the hands of a lot of people.
Anyway, I have work to do. I no longer get food stamps and I kind of would like to eat every day this month. So I need to excuse myself from further participating here, at least until I get some paid writing done.
Thank you.
I'm all for programs to actually help people move, and get them support in their new location and etc. But that's not what most people here are talking about.
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.
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.
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.
A better idea would be to stop permitting any non-housing construction until the housing to job balance is restored.
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/ 2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa
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.
Let developers buy them out. Or theoretically, they could just eminent-domain a bunch of houses.[0]
Which makes the 40-foot height limit insane. http://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-density-thought... You could trivially build more housing by removing that limit. Some background: http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Height_Limit_Revolt_Saves...
I agree with increasing building density, but there is a large group already employed in SV/SF that will move into that housing from a 4hr radius around the area. Still would be interested to see a projection that would model this possibility.
Good modeling of the possible outcomes is the first step on the rocky road to getting Bay Area zoning changed. Not holding my breath.
Build enough, and there is affordable housing for everyone. Engineers need places to live too.
Politically speaking, "left leaning" and "liberal" are both terms of 18th century origin, referring to the same kind of opponents of the centralized monarchic/oligarchic authority in favor of distribution of power to the people at large based on a conception of inherent rights; they certainly aren't opposite terms.
And the modern US liberal/conservative divide is a lot more about the purpose of government intervention than for/against it. (Both liberals and conservatives attack each other over different policies for supporting government control over individual freedom.)
The solution is simple. Set aside a square mile in each city on the peninsula and zone it such that it is illegal to build a building of less than 10 stories. At the same time, and more importantly, repeal both proposition 13 and rent control statutes.
For step 3, sit back and watch the California economy go into turbo drive as there is a massive construction boom, which funnels money away from rich landlords and into the pockets of ordinary construction workers and the service workers that support both them and the engineers the region's wealth is built on.
1 - http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-... 2 - https://medium.com/@Scott_Wiener/yes-supply-demand-apply-to-...
There are also many areas zoned for a maximum height of zero feet.
As for how to be involved, start by looking up who your city councilperson is. Talking to them would be a good start.
The smartass in me wants to say, "then build subterranean homes/buildings" :)
Would suck in terms of natural lighting but it would be nice to see the faces of people who want those zones to be like that.
Though there is legislation in the works to limit maximum depth as well as height[2].
1 - http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/nov/09/billiona...
2 - http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873238935045785595...
And if so, how do early stage founders who aren't already rich manage to get by?
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.
It's really a meaningless numbers game - no matter where you live, you have to trim your lifestyle to what your income supports.
Part of the trouble is that income taxes are not based on local economies, so they'd be taxed as if they were quite well off even though they're struggling.
A startup founder is not likely to have dependents so can divide by 4, and then not worry about things like how good the school district is. Although they may not be "rich" in the conventional sense, they likely have an education and connections that the guys who are stocking the grocery shelves can only dream of, and parents or someone else they can always fall back on if worst comes to worst.
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.
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.
B) She says in the video that she makes good money.
C) Our communities do better with more income/etc diversity (http://www.urban.org/publications/411955.html).
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.
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.
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
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-incom...
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.
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.
A 10%-20% price difference is irrelevant and will just disappear in just a few years anyway.
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.
If anything SF has become more centralized and companies keep paying high salaries and other perks playing in to the whole thing.
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.
SF has a per captia homeless population well above average for the US.
Oddly enough this is very common in bigger US cities, and not just a SV thing
> 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
aside from the whole mental hospital dump [1], warmer climates tend to attract homeless for a variety of reasons (e.g., on the street + cold weather = gona have a bad time)
> How come there are no homeless (or at least bum-looking) people in Barcelona ?
that's a very good question
[1]: http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_lega...
The solution is surely transitional payments to get people to relocate.
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.)
Uh, no.
I felt like I was reading a highschooler's Power Point...
Its cutesy, but distracts from the message.