You go to SF to launch your career then GTFO ASAP to a less 'enlightened' part of the US where you don't have to worry about hyper sensitivity and your dollar actually counts for something.
How does SF compare to LA? I've only been to LA within the last few years and it was a shithole. The whole city smelled like pot 24/7. There were more homeless/destitute people there than some 3rd world countries I've visited. I don't think I'll be visiting California again any time soon, no matter what Schwarzenegger says in the commercials.
I might be jaded but this sort've depends on your point of view. I grew up in San Diego, would weekend with friends in LA, and I've got family across the country. Most large cities that don't have overly deadly weather seem to have a visible homeless population.
What nonsense. Sure, the valley can teach you some new JavaScript frameworks and how to best invade your users privacy to sell ads, but real programming happens everywhere. There’s plenty of ways to launch your career without working for Zuckerberg or Bezos.
I ask for one (1) example, that does not include any software hubs that mimic the valley (this includes Austin, New York, Boston, and Seattle, but is not limited to), that has an equal, or close to equal, impact on your career in comparison to the Bay Area.
The only thing the valley has going for it is the saturation of talent and people who hire talent. The bad, is that without it it's got nothing to really show for itself (save a few niche items). The good, is the lack of any other notable qualities is overshadowed by the overcompensation of the only ones it has.
The topic was tech careers. I don't believe Citadel does any algo/prop work that could fall under the umbrella of tech. Off-topic: I'm from the East and #FreeMadix
You’re just in denial now, you’ve clearly had plenty of the Valley’s koolaid. It’s hilarious that you don’t think the worlds largest market maker isn’t doing “algo/prop work that could fall under the umbrella of tech.” Don’t be afraid to leave your bubble.
What a twist of fate. I find myself holding your exact same thoughts, but yet I try to mimic the community and "fit in."
All I'm saying is that Citadel is no Rennaisance. It's not LTCM or Medallion. Maybe it's like Boston, but sure it ain't as beneficial as the valley. If there were spoiler tags, I would tell you what I really think, but I don't want to be a Pats fan at a Steelers game.
I mean, Citadel is far more secretive than any of the companies in the valley. Just because you don't see the innovation doesn't mean it isn't happening. Citadel pays salaries on par with the valley and is widely respected in the hft space -- it's a very good place to start a tech career.
Then the next question is, how are you supposed to start your career if you don't know about it? I half kid, but it's neat to hear. I haven't been a part of the buyside for a while, so it's more than likely Citadel's gotten some internal clout in the quant scene since them.
I never said SF was the only way to launch a career and tend to agree with you. Still, there is no denying the power of having a big name on your resume when looking for the next job.
I don’t know about you, but when I review resumes I look at what they’ve done, not what brand names I recognize. Frankly, when I see a name from the Valley such as Facebook, I assume it’s a script kiddie web developer who’s primary experience revolves around NodeJS.
Pretty sure that not too many. Some do, but again, most are capped at about 180k (that if with 7+ years of experience)
For some stock options make a difference, but again, that is if you're lucky
Whenever I look at cost of living comparison it doesn't seem advantageous to me to be in SV unless you get lucky on equity ( how do you even measure that? ).
$150k in Dallas is something like $265k in San Francisco. And I would think in SF your housing would be pitiful compared to the midwest at $3k/month mortgage.
Engineers at my company can make upwards of $300k in Dallas and that gives a standard of living thats comparable to making $1m in the valley which is probably pretty rare.
Not to make you question it further, but after living in the Bay for a long time, I can't wait to leave. I seriously don't think it's a place worth living.
I spent a couple weeks in the bay area recently, touring around, seeing what it's all about. I left feeling quite underwhelmed and pretty happy I don't live there.
Eh, compare relative costs/relative income and cultural factors. Most of the people I know here in the south bay, if they rent, get some place reasonably nice all to themselves for around that kind of money, and the south bay is better for tech jobs, and at least for me, a much better 'culture fit' - That's the thing; I feel at home here in ways I've never felt at home anywhere else, and I'll pay extra for that.
Things are expensive, but wages are also really high, (I don't know a lot of people in the computer industry for whom $2400 in rent would cause pain.) and I have a great deal of freedom because there are so many nearby employers. there's got to be at least 50 places that might hire me as a programmer or sysadmin within reasonable walking distance. I have to go further than that to get a decent burger! (which is my big complaint about this place; so little nightlife, so little food. But most of the employers feed you, and for weekends there are good delivery services, so it's not that bad.)
San Francisco (and California, to a lessor extent) is setup to charge newcomers way more than long time residents. The density of employers in the bay area means that you can find your place... and just stay there, through many job changes.
Those are some extremely skewed numbers. I live in a $1.7k one bedroom. Rent is like 10% of my pay and I'm just 2 years out of college. No student debt because my family is poor. San Francisco is an amazing place for technies if you're not bad with money
Don't believe it! maybe salary + stock options + benifits - that's a possibility (even though a pretty rare one). But 200k cash, BS, no employer would pay that to someone with 2 years of experience...
One exception is if that guy possesses some unique skills of some hype industry (blockchain, AI, VR), but that really a very unique situation. Most of people here make around $130k/year + some stock options/rsu's
No, it's $210k cash. Additional RSUs and bonuses up to $70+ depending on company and individual performance.
No hype. I work harder than anyone else and complete projects at least twice as fast. I constantly push for promotion and raises and hop jobs to get the raise.
Is this in San Fransisco proper or the outskirts? I've been looking around as I may potentially be moving and can't find anything reasonable under 2.3k that isn't roomsharing
> “If you think about the most private things that you do, a lot of them are related to the bathroom,” said Mr. Dishotsky, 34. “So that’s probably the hardest part.”
Is he referring to masturbation? I kinda doubt people masturbate in the bathroom.
“I feel like I’m in a relationship with everyone I live with,” Ms. Ndrepepaj said. “If their day is bad, your day is bad.”
Hardly a selling point. As an introvert it's just within my capabilities living with my wife and playful cat; living in such an environment would be a nightmare for me. The article fails to address the 'bad roommate' situation, which always happens sooner or later with these shared-living environments.
For the first 6 years or so after I moved to California I rented a room in a house where the owner lived (once in La Habra and once in Irvine). There were usually 4 to 5 total people living there. We were all professionals and there was pretty close to no drama.
We were friendly but not best friends. Everyone had their own circle of friends, interests, etc. At least once we had a guy we called the ghost because we almost never saw him. But no one minded that he was introverted and kept to himself.
Once I had a girlfriend privacy became more important to me but I enjoyed having some friendly interactions with others on my terms.
Nobody is so extroverted that they want to have other people peering in to their lives every moment of the day (unless they are walking so closely in lockstep with culture that there's literally nothing about them that could cause friction.)
There's a reason why people born in compressed, shared living conditions tend to buy houses when they can. If you don't live in a "dorm" you can control your environment, for example not seeing friends while you're sick with the flu and highly contagious (and no fun to be around).
To me this looks like a slide back in to 1800s non-rich living conditions sold as a step forwards.
True story. I share a messy studio with my girlfriend in the Bay Area. We’ve both at times felt like it’s weird for us to live in a small cramped space, but any time I learn about life for poorer people the world over I realize that living in cramped messy places is the global norm. The fact that I grew up around clean single family homes is just an artifact of the wealth around me.
I will say though that I hope robotics can increase global wealth dramatically enough for everyone that no one has to see their quality of life go down.
Per capita world GDP is about $16K/year. That's significantly more than $10/day, but it's also significantly less than anyone in the Western world is accustomed to living on.
If cities were only productive enough to hit GDP per capita of $16k/year, construction workers only expected to make $16k/year, and other potential buyers made close to $16k/year, housing would be dirt cheap.
If American urban planning were in line with global norms (i.e. not built around ubiquitous car ownership), transportation would be dirt cheap or free.
And outside of housing and transportation, $16k/year is a ton of money. I maintain a pretty bougie standard of living on half that.
> Globalism is going to lead to an averaging out of the standards of living across the globe. People from wealthy nations are in for a rude awakening.
In another couple decades, most definitely. Soon? Nah. China is rapidly aging, their economy is overheating, they're about to go through their own debt unwinding. Africa is just a mess. Maybe? I'll believe it when I see it. The United States, regardless of current events, is remarkably stable compared to the rest of the world. That has value.
SF and NYC are a microcosm of the first world. You would have a much higher quality of living in any number of cities or smaller communities in the US or Europe. I'm partial to Berlin, Barcelona, Prague, and most of Portugal, but YMMV.
I bang out comments on Hacker News while overlooking my backyard pool in Florida in a 4 bed/2.5 bath house for ~$1400/month. Why would I trade that for a dorm with shared bathrooms in the most expensive city in the world?
I agree, but for different reasons. Jobs went to third world workers, while the majority of the productivity went into shareholder pockets. That's an internal policy issue in the US, not a globalization issue (or rather, it's an unchecked capitalism issue). You can use policy to prevent unfettered blood letting of jobs to the cheapest labor sinks in the world. Globalization is not some foregone conclusion we have no control over.
EDIT: First world workers aren't competing against third world workers; they're competing against first world owners/shareholders/capitalists cramming down wages, working conditions, and living standards.
It didn't really go to shareholders. Maybe a little at first but a global market meant that prices of goods just dropped to compensate for the 'savings'.
Data does not support your claim. Consumer excess was definitely realized due to cheaper labor in China and retailers like Walmart exerting influence on vendors, but shareholders most definitely have been receiving the majority of productivity gains.
To the extent your list of links address productivity gains at all, they miss the most important contribution: Inflation, or rather the historically impressive lack thereof over approaching three decades of net economic growth.
When firms produce more with less, supply goes up and prices go down. Compare the median American household in 1988 with today’s and you’ll see exactly where all those productivity gains have gone: More and better appliances, more and better cars, more and better communication technology, cheaper clothes, cheaper food—even at comparable inflation-adjusted income levels.
Inflation was low due to lack of consumer demand....because of wage stagnation (and I concede, offshoring). The Fed can’t “push the string” with QE, and here we are 10 years later from the GFC, finally with an economy hot enough to push wages up (thereby increasing inflation).
Why? You might if you really really really liked mild year round weather, a variety of food options, great mountain/road biking, diversity, and a couple of other things. But only some people are into these things.
That's only somewhat true. It will smooth out living standards as it crushes working people down by exploiting the lowest wages anywhere in the globe. Simultaneously, the wealthy bourgeoisie will become richer and richer until the internal contradiction in capitalism, that profits come from consumers that must work for wages, tears the system asunder.
The system that follows will likely be fascism, the seamless merger of corporations with the state to force exploited workers to work, or socialism, the people taking control of the government and using it to expropriate the rich in favor of workers. EDIT: Note that this doesn't require central planning, the rad idea these days are socialisms based on co-ops where employees own the organization they are a part of.
If the system is fascist, living standards will sharply drop for everyone subjected to that system. If the system is a form of socialism, then yes differences will even out. The GDP of the United States divided by its population is roughly 55k in today's dollars, though certain services like medicine and housing will have their profits expropriated so 55k will go much further. If we look at world GDP, the income of all people will be closer to 11k USD, which might be barely livable, but will eradicate extreme poverty across the globe.
We have a lot of work to do to treat humanity well and in a way the planet can survive.
The old idea that occurred in the Soviet Union was not the only possible outcome. That idea was for a vanguard party to take control of the country and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. Unfortunately, this dictatorship was exactly that... it concentrated power in the hands of a small minority and lead to tremendous abuses. However, it also lead to obscenely rapid industrialization in one of the poorest most besieged countries in the world. Russia, post WW1 and WW2 was not a happy place having lost millions of soldiers to invasions by Germany, Japan, the US, and others. It is an open question what would have happened had they not been besieged. However, that is counterfactual, and there were large abuses, especially in the Ukraine.
Other countries, like China, have produced significant abuses, but notably they are also rising economic powers. They are no longer strictly communist, but nor are they totally capitalist. China recently announced a plan to eliminate poverty within its borders (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/world/asia/xi-jinping-pov...). While you might say that they won't be able to do it, that would fly in the face of their 6+% (!) GDP growth. Can you imagine a US politician ever making a statement like that? Not since FDR have we seen anything like it. The closest we had was MLK's Poor People's Campaign in the late 60s.
The new hip idea is for power to remain mostly decentralized to prevent this outcome. Hence, worker coops. If more stakeholders participate in decisions, hopefully fewer truly awful ones will occur.
I could go on, but there is a lively debate going on right now that much of the US public is asleep to having been lulled into a zombie like state by Carter, Regan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump. It's acceptable to think about the shape of the new world that is coming and have a hand in shaping it. Otherwise the same old, frankly evil, behaviors will continue until something unimaginably terrible happens like a nuclear war or the seas and changing weather sweep our civilization away.
Years-long waiting lists for apartments shared with many strangers are the historical norm under socialist housing schemes and the only evidence-based expectation were we to implement one today.
This despite central-planning allocation of graduates to work assignments and no freedom of internal movement. This alone would probably "solve" the housing crises in major cities today: just stop letting people move to them in such massive numbers.
A coworker who grew up in Soviet-era Moscow remarked that it wasn't all bad - homelessness basically didn't exist - but each nuclear family (let alone individual) getting their own home is a development of the contemporary West's uniquely hyper-capitalist and hyper-atomized society. Embracing collectivization is not going to make it easier to get your own home.
I really appreciate your perspective. I'm still learning about all of this. My understanding is that most often these setups were started in relatively poor countries that didn't have enough housing to start with. That is not the case in the US where many houses remain vacant in the face of homelessness so that speculators can speculate.
In China, they are building entire ghost cities and then filling them as fast as they can. In the Soviet Union, my understanding is that the economy was out of wack because of the need to build the military to defend against Western aggression. If those resources were diverted to the civilian sector, perhaps there would have been more and nicer housing?
EDIT: Even in a capitalist country I'm still living with roommates, and this is part of a trend for younger people. That kind of takes the bite out of the criticism that capitalism offers more freedom in that regard. Such freedom once existed, but it has been declining.
EDIT2: I like my roommates. Not dissing them at all. :)
The problem in both cases is urbanization. Soviet central planners explicitly set out to industrialize their agrarian society; market forces are moving America's center of gravity from the Midwestern factory to the coastal R&D office. As populations move (or are ordered to move) to follow these changes, it creates blight and abandonment in the places they leave and a housing crunch in the places they head to.
The empty houses are in the places that are no longer economically relevant; the housing crises are in the places everyone is moving to.
The Soviets responded by building space-efficient housing in cities as fast as they could, which was just not fast enough. American cities are actively refusing to let this happen at any significant scale.
We would first need these cities to decide to want enough housing for their ballooning populations. Then we could argue over whether the state or private developers should build it.
What you say makes a lot of sense. My understanding of why people moved out of the urban core in the first place was "white flight". People are moving back now, and the people living in the cities, typically the wealthier inhabitants, resist building any tall residential buildings, though they are happy to build upscale homes and businesses that kick out the poor.
Differences are sure evening out in Venezuela. Good thing we have options other than "facism" and the ultimately indistinguishable "socialism", which is called "fascism" once it gets poor enough.
Fwiw, any society that becomes suddenly poor will not look very good. My understanding is that Venezuela invested too much in oil and didn't diversify the economy. When oil crashed, it took everything with it. This is the resource curse at work. I'm skeptical that other economic systems would have not been tempted to make a similar choice.
I don't think masses in western societies will accept that. There was already revolt against TPP by both left (Sanders) and right (Trump) in 2016. So much so that even Hillary had to renounce the pact she once praised as "gold standard".
If globalization continues to decrease standard of living in the West, I will expect a massive political backlash (which I believe is already under way).
Tons of young adults live in "family" housing with friends or Craigslist strangers. It's standard in SF to convert the living room to an additional bedroom when doing that, so there's really no common space.
Although having my own studio is ideal, I'd vastly prefer a relatively impersonal dorm with generous common areas to a traditional 2-3 roommate situation.
Also this article fails to point out the insanity of the housing market where a sane person living for $2000 a month would be living in a fairly comfortable space even in New York (okay maybe not middle of the city) but out there you get a room and a shared bathroom, with a private sink as a selling point?
And they wonder why smart people don't have kids. Imagine even thinking about having a family.
Agreed. Middle class shouldn't be defined by what sounds like a lot of money. It should be defined by what sort of spending power you have in the area where you actually live.
Great point. I'm using it to compare the standard of living in one area against another. But there are lots of other valid questions to ask, like what constitutes the middle band of wealth in the microcosm that is the Bay Area.
This is a useless semantic game: do you define middle-class as however median-income earners live locally, or do you define middle-class as an objective standard of living (based on national norms) and then check what income is necessary to obtain it?
Housing is also sticky. Many (not all) $78k earners locked in mortgages or rent control back when that was a lot of money, and live much better than any newcomer could on 2x that today.
Lower/middle/upper class is not equally populated, so a median income is useless when trying to define a "middle class" income; going by that would put folks in poverty in the "middle class" in a lot of the world.
According to Pew, 67% to 200% of the median income defines middle class. For a $78k median income, middle class is $52k to $156k. For a family with both parents working for identical salaries, middle class starts at $104k.
Description from this article of the "experiment": "Shared bathrooms at the end of the hall and having no individual kitchen or living room".
Description from the SRO web site link above: "A typical S.R.O. is a single eight (8) x ten (10) foot room with shared toilets and showers down the hallway."
As the SRO web site points out, these have been around in San Francisco "throughout the city’s history".
Nothing wrong with them in principle (assuming they're well kept / safe). If you're single, it might be a better option than renting a random place with roommates.
It's not materially different from how I've always lived -- sharing a house or condo with 1 or 2 roommates. I currently share a bathroom, kitchen, and living room with one other person, and I have my own bedroom. We're both well-paid professionals in our late twenties who are friends and happen to be single right now. It's way cheaper and less lonely than living alone.
I don't think there's anything unusual about this. I guess the difference is this company will pick your roommates for you, which sounds worse to me but I guess it's easier for some people.
Why can't the vast majority of these people work remotely yet? For a group of people who often praise the concept of meritocracy, regionally locking down your employee pool seems insane.
Most of the members of Starcity are local employees that work in service professions. We have nurses, teachers, flight attendants, baristas, writers, bartenders and many of these trades require proximity to work so they can't work remote. Unfortunately the cost of an average studio in San Francisco is $3,000 a month and forget about buying a house where the average price is around $1.3M. For median income earners making between $40-90k a year, the options are really bad. Many of them are forced to live with 4 people in a three bedroom, pay 50-60% of their income in rent or commute 2 hours. Those are bad options, so we set out to build something that allows more people to live comfortably.
Last time I was in SF I stayed near the Tenderloin area: I've never seen anything like that level of homelessness, neglect and dysfunction in any other first world country.
The existence of such conditions in a city of billionaires is shameful shit.
The US economy generates over $100k per household, and people are living on the street, or crammed into dorm rooms? It's a cruel, obscene disgrace.
Same here. I grew up in Seattle and thought that was bad, but the number of downcast and desperate characters I saw in downtown SF and how closely they were pressed up against areas of impressive wealth (like at Mission & 16th) was extremely depressing.
The problem is that you'd have to resort to involuntary commitment and/or lifetime arrest of some form to get them off, and no one likes opening that can of worms. You can build all the apartments you like, and run all the job programs you can; if the person wont take his meds, or can't stay off drugs of his own volition, he will end up back on the street.
this is absolutely fascinating. why cant these people just commute from pleasant hill or even lafayette? i had the same accommodations as these people and paid only 400 in pleasant hill.
Seems like this could be avoided if they just change the zoning laws to allow more vertical development. People talk about earthquakes but Japan has managed.
I agree. Moving is a big decision, and it's hard to gauge what a person is like after only one meeting. Also, as I've learned the hard way, many people have different understandings of what it means to be "quiet."
While this somewhat smells as "submarine" for Starcity, I welcome these kind of innovations (or reinventions of wheels, if you prefer). For introverts or families or elderly, we should of course have other types of housing. But variety of options is the key for a diverse society. Not everyone needs a single family of a giant townhome straight out of college. Having this kind of housing is a great option for new grads who don't have to waste tons of money on living spaces they don't really need. It also opens up socializing avenues, which is good for normal people.
I do feel like this is the future trend of things for urban workers, either gradually work remote from a faraway affordable location, commute all day or live in an affordable dorm-like room with a community.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadI'm moving to the Bay area in a few months and these sorts of stories make me question whether it's the right move.
The only thing the valley has going for it is the saturation of talent and people who hire talent. The bad, is that without it it's got nothing to really show for itself (save a few niche items). The good, is the lack of any other notable qualities is overshadowed by the overcompensation of the only ones it has.
All I'm saying is that Citadel is no Rennaisance. It's not LTCM or Medallion. Maybe it's like Boston, but sure it ain't as beneficial as the valley. If there were spoiler tags, I would tell you what I really think, but I don't want to be a Pats fan at a Steelers game.
3k a month doesn't seem too bad when you are making 200k+, which is close to ~triple what you'd make in some rando mid sized city.
Working for the average SF startup though? Yeah, you'd be better off somewhere else.
The ones at your rando tech startup are not.
$150k in Dallas is something like $265k in San Francisco. And I would think in SF your housing would be pitiful compared to the midwest at $3k/month mortgage.
Engineers at my company can make upwards of $300k in Dallas and that gives a standard of living thats comparable to making $1m in the valley which is probably pretty rare.
Join an org doing something cool, then immediately start pushing to work remote. Or make sure that you'll see a good payout and cash out & gtfo.
The "American Dream" isn't follow an exploitive option just because it's possible.
Things are expensive, but wages are also really high, (I don't know a lot of people in the computer industry for whom $2400 in rent would cause pain.) and I have a great deal of freedom because there are so many nearby employers. there's got to be at least 50 places that might hire me as a programmer or sysadmin within reasonable walking distance. I have to go further than that to get a decent burger! (which is my big complaint about this place; so little nightlife, so little food. But most of the employers feed you, and for weekends there are good delivery services, so it's not that bad.)
San Francisco (and California, to a lessor extent) is setup to charge newcomers way more than long time residents. The density of employers in the bay area means that you can find your place... and just stay there, through many job changes.
No hype. I work harder than anyone else and complete projects at least twice as fast. I constantly push for promotion and raises and hop jobs to get the raise.
Is he referring to masturbation? I kinda doubt people masturbate in the bathroom.
Hardly a selling point. As an introvert it's just within my capabilities living with my wife and playful cat; living in such an environment would be a nightmare for me. The article fails to address the 'bad roommate' situation, which always happens sooner or later with these shared-living environments.
We were friendly but not best friends. Everyone had their own circle of friends, interests, etc. At least once we had a guy we called the ghost because we almost never saw him. But no one minded that he was introverted and kept to himself.
Once I had a girlfriend privacy became more important to me but I enjoyed having some friendly interactions with others on my terms.
There's a reason why people born in compressed, shared living conditions tend to buy houses when they can. If you don't live in a "dorm" you can control your environment, for example not seeing friends while you're sick with the flu and highly contagious (and no fun to be around).
To me this looks like a slide back in to 1800s non-rich living conditions sold as a step forwards.
I will say though that I hope robotics can increase global wealth dramatically enough for everyone that no one has to see their quality of life go down.
[1] citation needed
That number can only be said to be strictly higher than average daily wage. But probably at the very least 50% higher than average wages.
If American urban planning were in line with global norms (i.e. not built around ubiquitous car ownership), transportation would be dirt cheap or free.
And outside of housing and transportation, $16k/year is a ton of money. I maintain a pretty bougie standard of living on half that.
In another couple decades, most definitely. Soon? Nah. China is rapidly aging, their economy is overheating, they're about to go through their own debt unwinding. Africa is just a mess. Maybe? I'll believe it when I see it. The United States, regardless of current events, is remarkably stable compared to the rest of the world. That has value.
SF and NYC are a microcosm of the first world. You would have a much higher quality of living in any number of cities or smaller communities in the US or Europe. I'm partial to Berlin, Barcelona, Prague, and most of Portugal, but YMMV.
I bang out comments on Hacker News while overlooking my backyard pool in Florida in a 4 bed/2.5 bath house for ~$1400/month. Why would I trade that for a dorm with shared bathrooms in the most expensive city in the world?
EDIT: First world workers aren't competing against third world workers; they're competing against first world owners/shareholders/capitalists cramming down wages, working conditions, and living standards.
Data does not support your claim. Consumer excess was definitely realized due to cheaper labor in China and retailers like Walmart exerting influence on vendors, but shareholders most definitely have been receiving the majority of productivity gains.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/top-1-percent-of-americans-rea...
http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/07/news/economy/compensation-pr...
http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1021787.shtm...
https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/22/...
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/apr/...
When firms produce more with less, supply goes up and prices go down. Compare the median American household in 1988 with today’s and you’ll see exactly where all those productivity gains have gone: More and better appliances, more and better cars, more and better communication technology, cheaper clothes, cheaper food—even at comparable inflation-adjusted income levels.
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-06-29/hollowing-ou...
The system that follows will likely be fascism, the seamless merger of corporations with the state to force exploited workers to work, or socialism, the people taking control of the government and using it to expropriate the rich in favor of workers. EDIT: Note that this doesn't require central planning, the rad idea these days are socialisms based on co-ops where employees own the organization they are a part of.
If the system is fascist, living standards will sharply drop for everyone subjected to that system. If the system is a form of socialism, then yes differences will even out. The GDP of the United States divided by its population is roughly 55k in today's dollars, though certain services like medicine and housing will have their profits expropriated so 55k will go much further. If we look at world GDP, the income of all people will be closer to 11k USD, which might be barely livable, but will eradicate extreme poverty across the globe.
We have a lot of work to do to treat humanity well and in a way the planet can survive.
Other countries, like China, have produced significant abuses, but notably they are also rising economic powers. They are no longer strictly communist, but nor are they totally capitalist. China recently announced a plan to eliminate poverty within its borders (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/world/asia/xi-jinping-pov...). While you might say that they won't be able to do it, that would fly in the face of their 6+% (!) GDP growth. Can you imagine a US politician ever making a statement like that? Not since FDR have we seen anything like it. The closest we had was MLK's Poor People's Campaign in the late 60s.
The new hip idea is for power to remain mostly decentralized to prevent this outcome. Hence, worker coops. If more stakeholders participate in decisions, hopefully fewer truly awful ones will occur.
I could go on, but there is a lively debate going on right now that much of the US public is asleep to having been lulled into a zombie like state by Carter, Regan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump. It's acceptable to think about the shape of the new world that is coming and have a hand in shaping it. Otherwise the same old, frankly evil, behaviors will continue until something unimaginably terrible happens like a nuclear war or the seas and changing weather sweep our civilization away.
This despite central-planning allocation of graduates to work assignments and no freedom of internal movement. This alone would probably "solve" the housing crises in major cities today: just stop letting people move to them in such massive numbers.
A coworker who grew up in Soviet-era Moscow remarked that it wasn't all bad - homelessness basically didn't exist - but each nuclear family (let alone individual) getting their own home is a development of the contemporary West's uniquely hyper-capitalist and hyper-atomized society. Embracing collectivization is not going to make it easier to get your own home.
In China, they are building entire ghost cities and then filling them as fast as they can. In the Soviet Union, my understanding is that the economy was out of wack because of the need to build the military to defend against Western aggression. If those resources were diverted to the civilian sector, perhaps there would have been more and nicer housing?
EDIT: Even in a capitalist country I'm still living with roommates, and this is part of a trend for younger people. That kind of takes the bite out of the criticism that capitalism offers more freedom in that regard. Such freedom once existed, but it has been declining.
EDIT2: I like my roommates. Not dissing them at all. :)
The empty houses are in the places that are no longer economically relevant; the housing crises are in the places everyone is moving to.
The Soviets responded by building space-efficient housing in cities as fast as they could, which was just not fast enough. American cities are actively refusing to let this happen at any significant scale.
We would first need these cities to decide to want enough housing for their ballooning populations. Then we could argue over whether the state or private developers should build it.
That said, I am not a Venezuela expert.
If globalization continues to decrease standard of living in the West, I will expect a massive political backlash (which I believe is already under way).
Although having my own studio is ideal, I'd vastly prefer a relatively impersonal dorm with generous common areas to a traditional 2-3 roommate situation.
And they wonder why smart people don't have kids. Imagine even thinking about having a family.
let's be real here, the middle class in the bay area/SF makes $250k+ per household.
there's nothing wrong with living in dorms, but there is something disturbing about calling this the 'middle class' in SF.
on wikipedia- it says $78k, but that data is apparently from 2010-2014.
https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_...
newer data suggests it is at least $87k, with some sources suggesting $92k+
>California Association of Realtors also estimates that the minimum qualifying income to buy in San Francisco is $254,000 annually.
i think being in the 'middle class' should mean you have some hope of escaping rent and actually own something reasonable.
We need more housing.
Housing is also sticky. Many (not all) $78k earners locked in mortgages or rent control back when that was a lot of money, and live much better than any newcomer could on 2x that today.
http://www.ccsroc.net/s-r-o-hotels-in-san-francisco/
Description from this article of the "experiment": "Shared bathrooms at the end of the hall and having no individual kitchen or living room".
Description from the SRO web site link above: "A typical S.R.O. is a single eight (8) x ten (10) foot room with shared toilets and showers down the hallway."
As the SRO web site points out, these have been around in San Francisco "throughout the city’s history".
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-sro...
Nothing wrong with them in principle (assuming they're well kept / safe). If you're single, it might be a better option than renting a random place with roommates.
I don't think there's anything unusual about this. I guess the difference is this company will pick your roommates for you, which sounds worse to me but I guess it's easier for some people.
The existence of such conditions in a city of billionaires is shameful shit.
The US economy generates over $100k per household, and people are living on the street, or crammed into dorm rooms? It's a cruel, obscene disgrace.
It is such a bizarre contrast to see so much wealth and people living in card boxes on the streets.
No body cares enough to actually get it fixed.
Yeah, the length of the commute sucks, but taking AmTrak+BART gives you some downtime instead of sitting in traffic.
Maybe something like Ok Cupid for roommates.
Doesn't sound very appealing.