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Comment by whyenot | Hacker News Reader

> The plan is a among a series of proposals being mulled by the Palo Alto City Council to provide affordable housing to those considered middle class in the area - families making between $150,000 to $250,000 annually.

As a point of reference, starting salary for a teacher in the Palo Alto Unified School District is $57.5k. Someone who has taught in the district for 30 years with significant post-credential grad school makes double that.

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To build on that - the point of these proposals isn't to cover the teacher who has been in the district for 30 years though. It's to cover the young teacher they have to hire when the older one retires. They are likely having issues hiring anyone that can actually afford to live in Palo Alto. Because of housing costs, it's next to impossible for anyone to move there and establish roots in the area (read: buy a house). This means that you're going to see more volatility in the labor market for traditionally middle class government jobs (teachers, police, etc). That will be important to try and balance in the future.

And someone likely teaching in the district for 30 years, likely already owns a home there. They are also very lucky for Prop 13.

There's an implied assumption that a "family" will have two incomes.

And because of the way the free market works despite the average family working twice as many hours as one in the fifties they're no better off, and in a lot of cases worse off, in terms of what they can actually afford. And kids never get to see their parents.

I don't know what the solution is long term but I have a feeling someday this experiment in free market capitalism is going to be considered in similar ways to the USSR's experiment in communism a few decades from now.

Do you have any data supporting those claims?

> And because of the way the free market works despite the average family working twice as many hours as one in the fifties they're no better off

IMO the fifties in the US were a total anomaly and they're not coming back ever. It was a time where (more than?) half of the world was taken out of competition due to idiotic economic system of communism, and Europe, the only potential competitor to the US, was still in shambles after the war. The US were a sole economic superpower, no wonder people had it great back then.

When people have the opportunity to earn more, they do, no matter how hard it is for them. Then they find things to spend that extra money on that they wouldn't otherwise have spent it on, like a house in a more expensive neighborhood and they end up still not having much money. It's just a personal choice. Ask if your wife is willing to not work, buy a house in a cheap town, buy a used Japanese import car and carry on living a comfortable 50's lifestyle if you want. But you won't want because you'll see all that money waiting for you.

When people have the opportunity to earn more, they do, no matter how hard it is for them.

Citation needed.

It really depends on how you view the world. If that view is all about money and consumption, then, yeah, you probably won't leave money on the table. There are, however, competing worldviews that offer different versions of the good life, and in my experience, there are plenty of willing to leave money on the table because of it.

Free-market capitalism ? On the contrary, its absurd regulations for new housing that raised prices. If free market was reigning, many more apartments would have been built, lowering housing prices.

> I don't know what the solution is long term but I have a feeling someday this experiment in free market capitalism

The skyrocketing housing prices are caused by strict zoning regulations, and there is absolutely nothing about free market capitalism in strict zoning regulations.

I once went drinking with a couple very smart women in Mountain View. Both went to a very well known school, got good grades, and had degrees in math heavy STEM fields.

One worked for Google, and lived in a shared house in Sunnyvale because it was the only way to save towards something

The other was a teacher at a fancy school up in SF that will remain un-named. She literally lived in a kitchen pantry in the tenderloin. (Deep pantry - deep enough to fit a bed).

The tricky thing about Google compensation is they tend to weight total comp toward RSUs. So it's totally conceivable that woman may only be making $90-110k per year in hard salary. I lived in MV for a year and the rental prices are high enough (2.3k for a two bed in the burbs) that living in shared housing might be advisable at that salary level.

For completeness (though either way your point stands), is that /12 months of /10 ?

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