Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet | Hacker News Reader

Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

theguardian.com

299 pointspmcpinto520 comments

> A spokeswoman for Facebook said none of the company’s contingent or contract workers have access to facilities such as clinics, gyms, or bring-your-child-to-work days

One thing I liked about AirBnB was their entire staff including cafeteria workers and security guards were full-time employees who ate the same food, had access to the same facilities and events, and went through the first week 'bootcamp' alongside developers, HR, and upper management.

That doesn't solve the wage gap, but it does make a huge difference in developing empathy to see people you've had common experiences with at all levels of the organization.

Thanks for mentioning this example. Every time I see complaints of how FB (or any big company) should not be using contractors, I'm at a loss to think of companies that employ this kind of support staff. I think most of the companies I've worked have generally outsourced cafeteria and janitorial work, albeit these companies were in much more affordable metros.

It's a lost opportunity that companies who view themselves as socially progressive and invest heavily in marketing and PR around inclusivity then continue inadvertently maintaining an internal class system of knowledge vs service workers.

It's almost like they value the image of being progressive more than actually being progressive.

It's almost like market demands them to be seen as progressive.

you say that as if it's a bad thing?

I want to second this, as a former Airbnb employee -- it really did make a visible difference in enthusiasm, sense of community, and just overall work satisfaction.

athenahealth did something similar. New hires all came in waves and every two weeks there was a new class at Point Lookout on the coast of Maine. Whether you were the new CTO or a call center rep working out of Atlanta, they would fly you up there for a week to get properly indoctrinated. It was a wholly positive experience and it really set the tone for the rest of my time working there.

See also senior and older FB engineers being discouraged from participating in perks and events intended for younger and junior employees because FB can multitask at sucking.

> See also senior and older FB engineers being discouraged from participating in perks and events intended for younger and junior employees because FB can multitask at sucking.

Can you elaborate? I don't recall ever seeing anything of the sort while I worked there.

There are all sorts of wonderful shop classes and related perks at FB. Older and senior talent in my experience is discouraged from attending these classes. Maybe they weren't always that way or maybe someone smacked them with a clue bat over that behavior, don't know...

"shop classes"? like... woodworking?

...and silkscreening - https://www.facebook.com/analoglab/

I'm over 40 and haven't noticed this at all. If anything the median age in the woodshop classes I took was well above the company's.

Interesting, either times have changed, or, much like Google, you're in a big company and your experience all comes down to the team you join. Either way, great info, thanks!

are you just making this stuff up? it's totally wrong. and if it did happen, there would be a public discussion about it very quickly.

Why don't you ask about this at an all-hands if you're so sure it's never happened or if you're so sure that everything stupid and wrong at large companies like Facebook gets addressed quickly?

I'm actually encouraged to hear others have had a different experience there. But there's plenty of stupid crap I've seen go down as well, much like other large companies. For not everything rises to the level of public discussion rather it becomes yet another papercut leading to the decision to depart.

[citation needed]

I've been at FB for almost a decade and have never seen anything that even remotely looked like what you are describing.

i'm old af @ fb and have no idea what you're talking about.

When I was at FB, I did several improv classes. I noticed a number of older engineers at them (40+). That was 2 years ago so maybe things have changed but I doubt it..

I don't know if this was a special circumstance, but I shared a table with a security guard during my noogler orientation. That made a similar impact on me (and we stay in touch even now, actually). But, at Google, there is also a strong differentiation between full time employees and everybody else (temps, vendors, contractors), with clear and consistently impressed rules about what non-FTEs are allowed to see and do.

After engineer pressure a few years ago Google opened their cafes and some other amenities to many of their contract staff; they used to be more restricted.

Why doesn't this happen more often?

If you give too many benefits to contractors, they become de-facto full time employees, and you have to pay for benefits and health insurance and all that stuff.

That happened back in the day with engineers at Google also. They hired a lot of contractors, but you could really only work 6 months out of the year, or else they'd have to classify you as full time with all the attendant benefits.

The food and fitness center costs are really a rounding error. Contractors also have to pay to use the shuttle, because again with the benefits/full-time or contractor designation.

I've been a full-time consultant/contractor since 2005 and felt like I was pretty familiar with the IRS classification rules, and this is new to me. Can you cite where you read this?

Sure.

If you take a look at https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/x-26-07.pdf, points 6, 13 and 14 are the most important.

If you give too many benefits to contractors, they could make a plausible case that they're full time employees and will be able to sue for back pay, benefits, and punitive damages. For instance, for point 13, you could argue that a free shuttle would be paying for your travel expenses.

It's definitely a gray area, but large companies have very deep pockets and a very public lawsuit would harm them in ways that would not harm a startup without much money, and policies get made. Google I think is erring on the side of caution, hence selective caps on benefits and employment duration. "He only works for us 50% of the time, there is no way he's an employee."

EDIT:

And free shuttles could also run afoul of point 9 and point 7, which is doing work on the employer's premises and an expectation of certain hours to be kept. A case could be made that if you're providing transportation to a location, and it's only available for a few hours, there's a certain expectation that you're expected to be in a certain place at a certain time.

I'm familiar with this list but unfamiliar with the mapping you're making to contractors getting access to facilities and amenities. The specific items you're pointing out apply far more to the normal course of the work contractors do than they do to cafeteria access.

I'm going to push a little further back on this point, because the contractors we're talking about don't work for Facebook. They work for body shop firms, at arms length remove from Facebook.

Another problem I'm having with this logic is that I've done long-term staff aug gigs for companies, direct 1099, and been given access to facilities and amenities.

I think we're talking at cross purposes here.

Microsoft got burned badly in a comment on this thread, because some contractors effectively wanted to upgrade their contractual status after working there for a while. That led them to update their HR policies to make sure there was no such confusion.

For what it's worth, I am pretty sure that Google still provides cafeteria access for food to the cafeteria work, obviously after service hours.

Another thing to bear in mind is that this is an HR policy for Facebook (I can't speak to Facebook and the actual policy).

They don't really have to make sense, HR policies are there to shield the company from any possible liability and/or the possibility of the body shop's company getting their contract terminated. The spectre of the Microsoft lawsuit is probably likely to forbid certain practices for contractors, direct or through a hiring agency.

Also, for most restaurants, you're not allowed to take food home from the serving line after your shift. If you can take food home from the serving line, that (in the company's perspective) tends to create a perverse incentive for making more food and driving up supply costs for no benefit to the company.

There are many different perspectives for different companies. Simply saying that you've not encountered anything like this is not an indicative of general industry practices. Also, you were contracting directly with the company. You were probably paid better than the food service workers. If you're making under 20 an hour, the incentives for you to sue are far greater than if you were extremely well paid and should not rock the boat.

Finally, if you're spending all your time onsite working for just one employer for extended hours and periods of times, even if you have a contracting company between you and the company, if you do it for long enough and get enough benefits, you can claim that you were actually an employee of the parent company. Sort of like a common law wife. It makes sense that you would want to put up an even higher wall between you and third party contractors.

I was at Microsoft years ago and there was a transition away from providing similar perks to contractors due to a lawsuit.

https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...

Microsoft got burned badly on misclassification, but amenities had nothing to do with it: their contractors effectively were employees, with no material difference between FTEs and contractors in terms of how was work delivered and what expectations were. (I've done a very little bit of contracting work for MSFT, FWIW).

I'm not surprised if MSFT overcorrected after that shitstorm.

But for what it's worth, my understanding is that v-badges at MSFT still get access to facilities!

For more background on this (dating back to the halycon years of 1986), see 'grellas's comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1137930

Though the notion that an IRS reclassification caused an employment practices lawsuit demanding access to e.g. retirement benefits for a reclassified independent contractor is a bit amusing, if terrifying when considered from an employer's perspective.

Because the more you treat contractors as employees (including giving them the same benefits), the more likely it is that they'll sue you claiming they really are full-time employees and therefore deserve more.

Exactly that happened to Microsoft (https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...). Microsoft lost and, as part of preventing such lawsuits in the future, they limited things that are available to contractors.

Ianal, but I thought that contractors normally get paid more than FTE, for the risk contacting implies.

Seems to me that a company is justified in treating them differently.

They do normally if they are skilled "consultant" type gigs. In recent years though, using contractors instead of FTEs has been popular as a trick to get cheap labor - it's largely one of the foundations of the so-called "gig economy". As an example, this is most likely one reason why Uber spends such large amounts of money fighting any attempt to re-classify their drivers as FTEs in several different countries.

Many countries have some kind of legal framework that tries to prevent exploitation of unskilled employees by classifying them as self-employed contractors instead. Claiming your employees are contractors is sometimes abused as a way to avoid a bunch of expensive things employees might have a statutory entitlement to, like sick pay, holiday allowances etc.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/28/uber-uk-t...

The market pays some contractors more than full-time employees, but no regulation forces it to, and there are classes of contractors that make less, especially when taxes and benefits are accounted for, than FTEs.

Exactly --the whole Microsoft lawsuit in the early 2000s? Contractors were being treated too nicely such they legally could look like employees.

Also, food can be considered part of compensation for tax purposes --which is why some companies only allow x-number of per-employee "guests" per month.

Security personnel are somewhat special. They need to keep temps/vendors/contractors away from sensitive information covered by NDAs for full time employees. This necessitates those security guards being exposed to the sensitive information in question. Therefore, security folks are full time employees while cafeteria and gbus staff are not.

All the security folks in Kirkland have red TVC badges. They also get their lunch at the cafes (But may be billed for it? Don't know how that works out for TVCs.)

100% true.

I was a FTE there a few years ago. If you were a TVC (temp, vendor or contractor), you got no access to ANYTHING. Security guards were always nearby the cafes checking people's badges and clearing them through.

Being allowed to access a health care clinic would provide much more than empathy, that would be a massive economic benefit when insurance costs are so high in the US.

Everybody here is focusing on real estate. (because young wealthy programmers and older poorer workers have a shared interest in cheap real estate) But I'm really interested in how HN feels about this section:

“I felt more secure at my other job. You didn’t have people looking down at you,” Nicole said. Now she works at cafeterias with names like “Epic” and “Living the Dream”, and the distance between the two classes of Facebook workers can feel immense.

“They look at us like we’re lower, like we don’t matter,” said Nicole of the Facebook employees. “We don’t live the dream. The techies are living the dream. It’s for them.”

The smaller indignities are numerous. At the end of every shift, Nicole watches large amounts of leftover food go into the compost – food that she’s not allowed to take home. Cafeteria workers only enter Facebook’s medical clinics if they’ve been selected for a mandatory drug test. Facebook recently held a “Bring your kids to work” day, but cafeteria workers’ children were not allowed.

A spokeswoman for Facebook said that none of the company’s contingent or contract workers have access to facilities such as clinics, gyms, or bring your kid to work days, but that other policies were a matter between the contractor and the workers.

You must be new here. You'll get 20 comments on how government and real estate and the market not being free enough are the problem before someone goes into this aspect of the article.

I think employers should be more accountable for how the people that work for them (directly or indirectly) are paid and treated. I also think making them legally accountable is the wrong way to go about fixing the problem.

I don't think you can legislate individuals and groups enough to make them decent. You have to go about it another way.

I also don't think it's reasonable to imply that people who think free markets are more efficient and humane are also somehow less compassionate.

This is the real problem.

That's how capitalism and meritocracy work unfortunately.

Sure - you deserve more money by virtue of merit if you work for a company that sells people's data to advertisers. I think Adam Smith and Milton Friedman were pretty clear about that.

Do you believe we live in a meritocracy?

EDIT: I guess this is a bad question since it's really a matter of degrees. Perhaps a better question is: How meritocratic do you feel that our society is?

Meritocratic enough for unequal income between skilled and unskilled labour?

The funniest part of this is that Facebook provides almost no value to society, while the food service workers do.

On the contrary, how we want to use our free time is the most important outcome of society, everything else is work.

Facebook is providing value. They aren't providing it for free here, which is to say, they are extracting the price for said value.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, is providing value, and isn't extracting the price. Therefore they rely on donations. If Wikipedia extracted their price for the amount of value they provide, I'd say they'll be one of the biggest companies in the world.

Meritocracy is more about how we sort people into skilled and unskilled labor positions. Which is to say that a pay difference between skilled and unskilled labor is the outcome of a capitalist system but a system which gives everyone an equal shot at being skilled labor is a meritocratic one. Which is why I'm curious about your opinion of how meritocratic our society is today.

Nope.

There are many forms of capitalism...

Humanistic capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanistic_capitalism

Anarcho-capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Democratic capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_capitalism

Eco-capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-capitalism

Inclusive capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_capitalism

Neo-capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Capitalism

...just to name a few.

Then there's, you know, "capitalism in actual practice".

Which is what the Dude above was referring to.

As long as we don't confuse what we have right now (corrupt cronyism, corporatism, blatant vertical monopolies, blatant government-backed monopsonies, etc.) with an actual free market.

Yep, it's best not to confuse reality with pipe dreams, generally.

I'm not sure what way that sarcasm is cutting. I'll say the "design the problem away" impulse is partly what causes corporatism and monopolies. For example, regulatory capture in which the regulated industries more or less control the regulators.

So I'll say the regulate-the-problem-away impulse is a pipe dream in the long run.

So I'll say the regulate-the-problem-away impulse is a pipe dream in the long run.

I'll call it "the lesser of nightmares".

Being as we've seen where "just let property owners do whatever they want" has lead us to in the past.

Where's that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood

And so now we have strict liability law.

Considering that, I don't believe this case, really justifies your (apparent) paranoia against the free market.

It isn't paranoia when the entire history of the "free market" demonstrates that... (not all, but a far to high proportion of) these entities pretty much will screw over everyone and everything they can, in exchange an extra buck or too -- unless very rigorously constrained from doing otherwise.

Or that is to say, "regulated".

THAT'S why there are so few issues in the heavily government controlled sectors of the economy, like health care, public education and drug policy. /s

There's plenty of issues, of course.

Which again, is why I referred to it as the "lesser of nightmares".

However "look the other way" isn't a very viable strategy either, it can also easily end up with corporate abuse. So what to do?

Aren't those the natural consequences and evolutions of a truly free market?

...because non-capitalist systems like totalitarianism and communism are known for their humanity?

Totalitarianism and capitalism aren't at all mutually exclusive. Likewise, there exist other isms. Democratic socialism, for one. (Although it can be argued that it's capitalism in sheep's clothing.)

> totalitarianism and capitalism aren't at all mutually exclusive

Well, too much further discussion along these lines will turn into a semantic quagmire. However, you can draw a spectrum where "individuals decide for themselves" is on one end and "a central power decides for everyone" is at the other. In that viewpoint, capitalism and totalitarianism are at odds, regardless of whether the central authority is an officer of a government bureau or a corporate one.

> capitalism and meritocracy

No, this is how the market works, but the market is hardly meritocratic. On which merit do you propose we judge workers in order to determine fair compensation for their work?

It is meritocratic, the problem is with the score system.

That's how human morality works unfortunately.

capitalism: "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."

meritocracy: "government or the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability."

morality: "principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior."

Here's how I think about "us looking down on them":

Assume both capitalism and meritocracy. Then the question becomes: How should superiors (in profit and ability) treat inferiors? That's the morality question. Try putting yourself in the cafeteria worker's shoes (i.e., you do not have ability and profit). How should you be treated? Surely things other than ability and profit should matter. We think "good" people deserve "good" things. What makes a person "good"? Is someone good if they were born with and then cultivated ability? Doesn't the low wage worker also work hard? Then the differences for ability are determined at birth. Does something determined at birth concern one's morality in the present? How about profit? Does someone's wealth factor into their morality?

I do not think morality is concentrated in the powerful. I think there are immoral powerful people and moral powerless people. I think it is fair to treat a moral person with respect regardless of their power position. I cannot tell whether a person is moral by their ability and profit so, a priori any other evidence, I believe in being respectful to everyone.

tldr: I judge people based on their morality and power isn't a signal. Therefore, I believe it is wrong to look down upon a person based on their power position.

Your definition for capitalism is correct, but might be missing the key point:

> Capitalism is the use of markets as the primary method of resource allocation within a society.

http://www.americanteeth.org/2015/06/21/why-i-m-a-capitalist...

I lost a game of Go to the guy who wrote this. He's a total socialist, but he _gets it_. Capitalism is just using markets, and when he and I use that word we just mean that. But when many progessive-types use that word, they mean all of the perceived evils and unjustice that coming along with that system.

The issue is that there will always be injustices and evil (born of greed). Until the day humans transcend bring humans (i.e., acquire unlimited resource and immortality).

That's how capitalism and meritocracy work unfortunately.

The Dude is absolutely right and spot on with this of course -- and in any case shouldn't have been downvoted for pointing it out.

Systematic social segregation and pervasive, manufactured feelings of inadequacy and inferiority aren't merely "bugs" in modern capitalism; they're among its core features.

That's the "real" problem here (as other commenters have identified in this thread).

The argument for capitalism is that feelings and inadequacy are inherent to the human condition. With that in mind, people should:

1. have property rights so they have some say (even on the vote-with-your-feet level) in how things play out

2. the human condition can be leveraged against itself for general societal improvement

The counterargument is that a small group of humans can somehow design (and maintain!) a system that is somehow less susceptible to humanity.

Capitalism - yes.

"meritocracy" is a myth. Too many people forget that they started the 10-lap race with a 9-lap headstart.

I am personally very thankful for the headstart that my family gave me. Lots of others I grew up with didn't get the headstart.

...And it had nothing to do with me personally, it was an accident of lucky birth.

They are excluded from events because they are working not for Facebook, but a food service company that contracts for Facebook. Works the other way around too. I've done contract programming, on site, for a blue collar heavy business. I didn't get invited to their functions either. I made more than the the average worker there, because our jobs were not the same.

They are excluded from events because they are working not for Facebook, but a food service company that contracts for Facebook.

This may be technically true, but ultimately it's just window dressing. And for FB (and many other companies that play the same game with its more expendable workers), a convenient dodge in terms of both expenses and liabilities.

If you show up at Facebook's building every morning, work in their cafeteria, mop their floors and scrub their toilets -- then for all practical purposes, you're working for Facebook.

I've done contract programming, on site, for a blue collar heavy business. I didn't get invited to their functions either.

Let's please not try to compare the "plight" of contract tech workers to to the situation that bottom-tier contract service workers are in.

>Let's please not try to compare the "plight" of contract tech workers

I don't personally see a difference other than the average wage for what I do. Companies contract other companies for many things. Janitorial, security guards, software work, etc. They shouldn't be involved in the salary of some other company's workers. If there's a wage issue in this case, it's not Facebook's issue to sort it out.

I don't personally see a difference other than the average wage for what I do.

There's this "respect" part, which is one of the major points of the article. And the fact that you apparently don't even see it as an issue -- while those on the other side of the coin insist that it is, in fact, quite a huge issue -- is a great part of what makes it such a huge issue.

If there's a wage issue in this case, it's not Facebook's issue to sort it out.

Right -- it's a matter for the legislators and the courts.

And if Facebook can't, or won't do the right thing for their workers, on this front -- they'll be made to do it.

>There's this "respect" part

My experiences as an on site contract worker don't always line up with that.

I do get your point in cases where companies are misclassifying actual workers as contract help. I think we just disagree that this is the case here. It seems obvious to me that they are employees of the food service company, and should be.

Fwiw, I have been a low paid factory worker in the past. It's not a matter where I don't empathize.

Are there notable companies that staff their in house cafeteria with actual employees?

My experiences as an on site contract worker don't always line up with that.

You keep getting back to your experience as an on-site, and highly paid (compared to most folks) tech worker.

The whole point of the original article is the experience of low-paid, contract service workers is vastly different.

It seems obvious to me that they are employees of the food service company, and should be.

Whether they should or should not be is something one can have various points of view on.

I just don't think that just because they, currently, technically, "are" has any bearing on the "should be" part.

>You keep getting back to your experience as an on-site highly paid (compared to most folks) tech worker.

Yes, because you implied it came with respect. It doesn't always.

You really seem set on missing kafkaesq's point, take this specific line from the article, and this specific line from you:

the distance between the two classes of Facebook workers can feel immense.

>I don't personally see a difference other than the average wage for what I do.

As a highly-paid tech contractor it is obvious on which side of that class divide you fall. Even though you were a contractor. So when you say that you were a contractor and were still respected that's not really the point. Of course you were respected, you're on the correct side of the class divide. That is the difference in respect here, not contract work per se, but the experience of being a poorly paid service worker who lives in a garage yet spends every day working at a company employing legions of young and wealthy programmers who live in fancy apartments. That's why she says: “We don’t live the dream. The techies are living the dream. It’s for them.” You're that techie, you're living that dream.

No I'm not missing this point I just don't agree with it. Companies contract with other companies for all kinds of services. When I call someone to fix my air conditioner I'm not suddenly responsible for the person fixing the air conditioners wages or social status or class. If Food Service workers are underpaid that's a fair point but it's not something for Facebook to fix.

If the idea is just that Facebook employees should be polite and well-mannered two other types of workers in the building that makes sense.

Edit: I just don't get where the line is. If FB uses ChemLawn to fertilize the grounds, are they also responsible for those workers wage rates? What about the HVAC crew, building maintenance (assuming they work for, say, Smith Building Maintenance) ? If ADP does their payroll is FB responsible for those employees wage rate? Security guards? These food service employees work for a company that provides food for more than one company. I just don't get it. Why isn't their actual employer responsible for their wage rate?

If Food Service workers are underpaid that's a fair point but it's not something for Facebook to fix.

Well, we'll see about that.

Being as, you know, it's not like companies such as Facebook have some inalienable right to exist, or anything like that.

Both the contractor and Facebook share blame, there's plenty to go around. The contractor obviously doesn't pay their workers enough for the area. Facebook is also the one hiring contracted labor to work in the same building as their employees without all sorts of benefits. AKA Facebook is the one who brought that class divide that already exists into their space so that's obviously on them. Facebook has plenty of power here, they could push FFS to pay FB cafeteria workers more or to allow for take your child to work day but they don't because they don't care, that makes them complicit in perpetuating the divide. I'd say what makes this situation bad enough to get its own article is the proximity. Not that the class divide isn't bad when it's hidden but it's situations like this, with rich right next to poor that bring up all those questions about our current bifurcated society that we don't like to talk about. The class divide in America is a problem and in Silicon Valley it's an even bigger problem. The lunch line at Facebook is just an amazingly salient illustration of that.

EDIT: And I would go even further to say that your comments here are an amazing illustration of the justification that happens by those on the upper end. First through a hackneyed attempt at saying "I've been there. It's not that bad." Then through indifference or this sort of broad appeal to "that's just how the market works" or "it's not Facebooks's responsibility" as if poor people just pop out of the aether and it's not our society which creates and allows for poor people to even exist in the first place!

I would say your edit is unfair in how you're portraying me. I didn't say "It's not that bad". I noted I had been there. As in, I was there, felt it, but had a very different idea of what entities should fix it.

You're putting words in my mouth I never said. In quotes even. I feel like some kind of stand in Boogeyman for someone else that you are mad at.

I'm not arguing whether it is a problem. I'm arguing that FB isn't the right place to solve it.

I'm arguing that FB isn't the right place to solve it.

But in practical terms -- this is basically saying it will never be solved at all.

I suppose there's some path where they might exert some negative PR and get a temporary win.

But any "victory" with a corporate customer of their employer wouldn't help the guy down the street behind the counter at a BBQ restaurant, making less for similar work.

I would put more energy into the union mentioned in the article. Which could grow to have leverage beyond one situation.

I wish it didn't have to be a matter for the legislators and the courts, but it seems like capitalism means that facebook has to not do the right thing for the workers if it's more profitable not to - obligation to the shareholders and all that.

If we only had capitalism and no legislation, the invisible hand would've made slaves of all of us for the few rich.

This is pretty standard, isn't it?

The people who clean my company's office don't attend our town hall meetings, eat lunch with us, or take part in our 401k.

They may be working at Facebook, but they work for their own company.

This is pretty standard, isn't it?

Actually it's a fairly recent invention. It only seems "standard" if one has no recollection of a time and a place (not so far back) when outsourcing (and the systematic discounting of blue collar workers, generally) wasn't nearly as prevalent as it is today.

They may be working at Facebook, but they work for their own company.

We all acknowledge that that's the way things (technically) are. What's at issue is whether that's the way they ought to be.

And the extent to which, while it may be technically correct that these people are working for different companies... on a deeper, more fundamental level -- it's just a big gimmick.

I worked for an office cleaning company in 1983. Contracting things like on site food facilities, security, building maintenance, and janitorial isn't new. Maybe the spread of how popular it is vs in house has changed, but it isn't new.

It isn't "new" of course, but it's been greatly, greatly expanded. Back around that time, if you considered, say a school district... it'd be nearly a given that most of those people were employees of the school district. Nowadays? Practically the opposite.

So I guess what I was trying to say was, while it isn't new, it's become so common that one could say that things have basically "tipped".

And it's the idea that this state of affairs is somehow "standard" -- is what's the invention.

I've done staff aug work for plenty of large companies and definitely had access to facilities and amenities.

I work for a large company, and it frustrates me that they rely so heavily on contractors for campus support positions. At the same time, the incentives are pointed that way. It's easier to hire vendors to manage non-core services (food, massage, etc.) than to develop those processes in-house. At the same time, it's cheaper to not have to provide equal benefits to vendor employees.

The lack of access to on-site medical or to cultural events like Take Your Kid To Work Day is presumably to draw a clear line between Vendor and Employee. If a group of vendor workers file a class action suit to be reclassified as employees (with backpay/benefits), a company wants to be able to say "Nope, they were vendors. Look at all the ways we made the distinction clear." If they're treated as employees in every way except the payer of their checks, it's a lot harder to justify why they were classified as vendors and received lesser benefits because of it.

I was a temp at another large company before moving to a full-time role at my current one. My contract was capped at 1 year, because without the cap, there was a perceived risk that I could seek to be retroactively classified as an employee and entitled to the benefits I didn't receive as a vendor.

Yeah, this happened at Microsoft. Back in the day there wasn't such a clear line between contractors and FTEs. The lawsuit did a lot of damage in both directions. It's not clear who benefitted other than the attorneys.

Also, if you make these roles direct employees, then you can get into an awkward position wrt 401K contributions, if the delta between your highest and lowest payed employees is too great. My understanding is that this is why Amazon caps salary at 160/185k

>The lawsuit did a lot of damage in both directions. It's not clear who benefitted other than the attorneys.

That lawsuit single-handedly created an additional layer of intermediaries (whole industry, really), which eats up ~30% of consulting revenue and provides close to zero value.

At the large company I contracted for, I negotiated my rate directly with the company. Then, they had their vendor manager hire me, and agreed to pay them my rate + their markup as an hourly wage for my services. I worked directly for the large company, but was an employee of a vendor whose sole purpose was to manage that company's contractors. It was quite bizarre.

Think how much regulatory red tape there must be for that to be a better way to do things! There is the point at which laws designed to protect people end up hurting them. The Seattle minimum wage experiment is a good example: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/06/sea... (https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/NBER%20Working%20Pa...)

> – The numbers of hours worked by low-wage workers fell by 3.5 million hours per quarter. This was reflected both in thousands of job losses and reductions in hours worked by those who retained their jobs. > > – The losses were so dramatic that this increase “reduced income paid to low-wage employees of single-location Seattle businesses by roughly $120 million on an annual basis.” On average, low-wage workers lost $125 per month. The minimum wage has always been a lousy income transfer program, but at this level you’d come out ahead just setting a hundred million dollars a year on fire. And that’s before we get into who kept vs lost their jobs.

When laws with one goal achieve the exact opposite, we need to rethink the laws. Unfortunately, pyrrhic victories are rather common in politics.

How does this hner feel?

It is the way it is today.

Yet..... There are tradeoffs where being "poor" can be better than "have just enough +" stable. Solving for financial and health concerns together adds a glue to a relationship that money can never buy

When I'm most cynical I believe that the tech community's preoccupation with diversity is to avoid thinking about social class and lack of social mobility.

It's understandable. We're culpable to some degree and that doesn't feel good.

>>said Nicole of the Facebook employees. “We don’t live the dream. The techies are living the dream. It’s for them.”

Im afraid this is no longer about perks at Facebook. To me this looks release of frustration about making bad life and career choices.

There are no easy solutions to these peoples problems.

The only ray of hope for this people is the modern day economic ecosystem and overall internet place has made it easy to retrain yourself for better paying jobs. Its going to be hard, time consuming and brutal. But that is the only way out.

The real story here is how the political conditions of the SFBA have prevented growth of the housing supply. The sad reality is that housing here is now a zero sum game, and any broad based increase in wages would pretty quickly be captured by landlords. The real solution to this issue is not higher wages, but targeted efforts to decrease the cost of living through building a ton of of "missing middle" housing like 4-plexes near office space in the sea of land populated by single family home zoning as well as renters protections (rent control and eviction protection) ADUs ("accessory dwelling unit": stand alone units in peoples garages or back yards) and likely some for of social housing subsidy for the worst off among us.

Why is the real estate market "the real story"? Seems like the real story is that facebook ought to pay its cafeteria workers more.

Don't be so susceptible.

The literal story is about food workers who can't afford to raise a family in Palo Alto. The intended message seems to be that Facebook should pay food workers more than $20/hr.

I think it's acceptable for people to ponder outside of that claim.

I think people are pondering outside of that claim because young programmers in Palo Alto also want cheap real estate so there's a shared interest. But things this article brings up that are more uncomfortable for the members of this board to think about like paying service workers more or pondering this:

“They look at us like we’re lower, like we don’t matter,” said Nicole of the Facebook employees. “We don’t live the dream. The techies are living the dream. It’s for them.”

are going to go untalked about. And what's the problem with saying that Facebook should pay it's workers more than $20/hr? If it's not enough to live on, that's kind of all there is to it isn't there?

The fact that its not enough to live on combines two things, to varying amounts

- The prices of their needs are high enough that they can't afford them (given the amount they make)

- The amount they make is low enough that they can't afford their needs

Its reasonable to attack both issues, not just the one.

> At the end of every shift, Nicole watches large amounts of leftover food go into the compost – food that she’s not allowed to take home.

On that one in particular - is there a law against that? I know rules on food service workers taking things home vary quite a bit.

I've heard that restaurants will spoil food at the end of the day rather than give it to employees to prevent employees from deliberately over-making or mis-making food so they can take it home.

I knew someone who worked at a supermarket many years ago when they were in college. Apparently staff were allowed to take home products that were damaged (crumpled/torn packaging, etc.), rather than just throwing them in the trash.

Apparently chocolate cookies had an unfortunate and inexplicable habit of being crushed under other products and being deemed unfit for sale.

Once the policy changed and staff had to throw damaged products in the garbage compactor, apparently a lot less chocolate cookies were getting damaged.

People using policies in abusive unintended ways, this, is why we cant have nice things.

In a low-margin business, it make sense to pay attention to "loss control" but one of the main benefits of keeping food workers on campus is the productivity gains by the "core business" staff.

That is to say, a take-home box of food a day shouldn't be a problem on financial grounds, so rules like this are more of a power of ethics issue. In abstract.

However, in most cases (I don't know about facebook in particular) food service workers are contractors, and I'm sure the economics don't sort themselves out that way.

Anyway, facebook leadership could discourage this sort of nitpicky loss control.

Throwing things away is still wasteful. Clearly the right thing to do here is to allow taking some merchandise home, but tie it to following rules and minimizing gratuitous loss in other ways.

One of the remarkable innovations introduced by the Patrician was to make the Thieves’ Guild responsible for theft, with annual budgets, forward planning and, above all, rigid job protection. Thus, in return for an agreed average level of crime per annum, the thieves themselves saw to it that unauthorised crime was met with the full force of Injustice, which was generally a stick with nails in it.

There's a lack of law to protect companies from legal liability in case someone gets food poisoning. Once the food leaves campus, the company has no control over packaging, storage, temperature, allergy labeling, etc.

Incorrect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Emerson_Good_Samaritan_Ac...

At some point we have to recognize that service workers must be paid a living wage, or be automated. We cannot, morally or economically, have an entire class of worker that we utterly depend on that lives permanently below the poverty line and we just step on them because "they didn't work hard in school" or whichever narrative you prefer to go with for why people who don't have a degree do work that is essential to our civilization.

The reality is that the fair market isn't perfect, and even jobs that are low on the totem pole but essential must be compensated in such a way where people don't need to work 60 hour weeks to barely afford a shithole home and car.

> or be automated

That's an extreme opposite from living wage.

Well if you follow the popular theories, this means better jobs are created elsewhere and improve life etc. etc. Historically this is true, this time is a lot different, in general it's just a different discussion I didn't feel like broaching in this thread.

If that solution ends up being cheaper, it's likely to be the solution that gets implemented.

(That might be OK, provided the now displaced workers choose to move someplace with a lower cost of living where they are able to make ends meet being paid an amount commensurate with the value they create.)

You need to seriously think through every level of what you are suggesting. You want us to revamp the way we handle the complex interactions of individual autonomous groups from one in which your worth is tied to the value you contribute to society (The rapper 50 cent has a lot more money than a brain surgeon because like it or not the value he created for society was much greater than that one surgeons contribution) to one in which you are rewarded simply for existing. Do you truly believe that is a sustainable system without fully automated existence from resource extraction all the way to finished goods ( which we are not even remotely close to achieving)?

It's called a social welfare system.

Firstly, 50-Cent versus Brain Surgeons is actually a very simple one: there are many brain surgeons (not a ton, but many) and only one 50-Cent. Also one is a performer, which is something inherently unique. Despite the KPop industry's assertions, you cannot "train" a performer. Brain Surgeon on the other hand is a job you train for; it's a lot of training, at great expense, but it is still training and there are many: 33,000 worldwide according to Google. So that's just simple scarcity.

Secondly, there is a massive flaw here that I can't quite put into words, so I'll attempt to show my reasoning for what I'm getting at:

* Workers are paid for (in a perfect world) by the profits of a business that generates revenue providing a service. Therefore, whatever that service generates in revenue is passed to employees in whatever structure. By extension of the above, the rarer a service is by whatever measure be it difficulty, hazard, required equipment, regulation, training, etc. the more expensive that service is and therefore the higher paying that job should be. This is why neurosurgeons make more than McDonalds cooks.

* Cafeteria chefs, short order cooks, waitstaff, baristas, etc. are all examples of jobs that are almost universally terrible, universally poorly paid, and absolutely essential to many people's daily lives. They may not generate very much value individually, but if tomorrow they all decided to fuck off and not come to work, society as a whole would notice and be definitely worse off for it. In addition, to large groups of the population such jobs are their only source of income. We therefore have a situation where many entire sectors of the economy are composed of jobs that do not pay their workers enough to live, yet we absolutely need them. This doesn't make sense and is not sustainable.

What I'm saying is: you cannot have a situation where someone's still essential job does not pay them enough to live. Eventually, something has to give: we have to accept that just because someone lives a life of simple labor that they are not ours to then condemn to a life of check-to-check stress, lack of healthcare, and poor living conditions, especially when the majority of those in that life did not choose it, because who the fuck would choose that, but were forced into it by circumstance, fortune, poor decisions early in life, or some combination of the three.

Now, how we solve this problem I'm not remotely qualified to say. Basic Income is one idea, raising minimum wage is another, both of which will have far reaching implications that I can't even get into right now. What I'm saying is: the current scenario is not morally right, and not economically sustainable. We need something different.

They are one of many lower wage workers you might see at a place like Facebook that aren't Facebook employees. They probably contract out for janitorial services, landscaping, security guards, etc. All at probably similar wages.

I'm not sure what your point is? I was saying this was a perfect example, it's far from the only one.

Sometimes replies aren't argumentative, but rather, additive. Thought it worth pointing out that a typical corporate campus has many types of workers that don't work directly for the company.

They're subcontracted from Flagship Facility Services, not actual Facebook employees

At the very least, I'm a little surprised Facebook isn't offering more subsidized healthcare.

>>The literal story is about food workers who can't afford to raise a family in Palo Alto.

Even well paid programmers, managers and other well paid people can't raise a family in Palo Alto.

You can't pick the most expensive and costly neighborhood in all of US and use that as a benchmarks for what people should expect from the economy.

If they were to do that, what do you think would happen to the price of the finite/scarce housing supply?

The workers are employed by Flagship Facility Services. I assume it's fairly common to contract out the operation of your cafeteria, versus managing that in-house. Their wages are mentioned in the article...$19.85/hr and $17.85/hr. It that unusually low for someone working at, say, a table-service chain restaurant in the same area?

Edit: Comparison to tipped workers seems apples/oranges. More curious if ~$18/hr is unusually low for a worker in a similar, non-tipped, job in the same area. Like maybe a BBQ restaurant where the service is similar to a cafeteria.

Actually, yes. California doesn't allow tipped restaurant servers to be paid less than minimum wage like many other states. PA minimum wage is $15(10-12 take home), and you can expect another $15-30/hr cash.

So yes, that's not that much. Not a living wage.

Not all the employees get tips though. Cooks, busboys, host/hostess, etc.

Often waiters will pool tips are pooled with kitchen staff, the exception being managers (managers taking tips would be illegal)

The fair labor standards act limits that basically to front-of-house in the US.

"A valid tip pool may not include employees who do not customarily and regularly received tips, such as dishwashers, cooks, chefs, and janitors."

So THIS is why California has so many" no waiter, order at window and take food back to table" restaurants. I knew there has to be a reason but couldn't figure it out...

Which I guess means this policy is very polar. The waiters that still have a job make more money. The ones that got replaced by a to go window have nothing.

Re-read the comment.

There's a lot of truth to it: raise their wages, and in a heartbeat, those workers will see their rents rise.

...and more development projects will make financial sense, so there will be more investment in housing. Rising rents are a short term problem, but they do provide long-term solutions.

Of course, communities in the Bay Area (and elsewhere) can make it less expensive to build affordable, denser housing. That should have similar long term benefits.

>...and more development projects will make financial sense, so there will be more investment in housing.

Not with the current policies that the G/GGP were criticizing! Numerous projects already make sense, in spades, but are being blocked by planning commissions.

> and more development projects will make financial sense, so there will be more investment in housing

Maybe. The price of land and the price of construction labor reflect the new realities as well.

>There's a lot of truth to it: raise their wages, and in a heartbeat, those workers will see their rents rise.

This offers a brilliant solution, just in the other direction. Let's lower the wages of programmers in the area. As their wages decrease the price of real estate will go down!

That's true, housing prices will go down as techies move to other areas with better wages like Seattle, Austin, Boston, etc.

But then the low paid techie cafeteria workers will be out of a job. So I'm not sure that's a net win.

It sounds like you think you are being sarcastic, but this is actually what will happen.

See: Any area where this has occurred due to plant closings, etc.

That is more-or-less exactly what anti-gentrification activists are trying to accomplish: push tech out, reduce the average wage, rent goes down.

Why not get rid of political NIMBYism? Aritficially reducing housing supply to increase demand is morally wrong.

The fact is Apple, Facebook and Google have not been able to do that already, despite all three companies and their employees showing interest in doing precisely that.

Turns out our democratic processes have not yet been entirely subverted, for better and for worse.

Both Palo Alto and Mountain View have recently elected pro-growth majorities to their city councils.

Rents are rising at 5-10% a year in the south bay, and if you don't live in mountain view you don't have renters protections. There is no end in sight for cost of living stabilization for the bottom end of the market without large supply growth and/or rent control policies being enacted. Facebook could solve the problem this year by issuing a broad based 10% raise for all of their contract workers, but they would need to do the same thing next year, and the year after that etc etc etc. At the end of the day, all of this money takes a winding route through the valley and ends up in the pockets of people who own land, which is the most scare resource out here.

Due to the land use policies of the SFBA (huge swaths of Single family zoning), land itself has become a proxy for access to opportunity, and the land value is derived from both its scarcity and its proximity to high paying jobs. Single family zoning in essence creates a minimum amount of land you need to occupy through rents or investment to have access to the opportunity in the area. While we cannot create more land, we can minimize the amount of land one must occupy to have access to opportunity through up-zoning single family districts to multi family districts (more families occupying the same plot of land in multi family housing compared to single family housing).

If we want more people to have more access, then we need to reduce the amount of land they must occupy for that access, through sensible land use reforms. As far as I know, there is no other solution (other than full communism) that does not involve the equivalent of vast subsidies to existing land owners

You can also invest in improving public transit and shoring up what you already have - for example, BART and systems like it could be used to link areas more effectively/reliably.

In talking with some friends in the Bay Area, all feel that East Bay is just too risky with problems BART has been facing in reliability, but all love the less congested feel of say Moraga or Walnut Creek.

The article focuses on the fact that the family cannot afford Menlo Park. There are surrounding communities that would allow them at least a 2br for what they earn, yet I suspect they cannot do this because of commute difficulties and schools for kids. Both parents can't really be expected to endure 2 hour commutes, as things come up with kids and you need to be there for them quickly.

Schools deserve a separate discussion though.

Menlo Park is great and super expensive, but I don't think it's fair to demand that everyone be able to afford it. I can't and that's ok with me. However, the cost of not being able to afford it should not be not seeing your kids grow up. That's a solvable problem and not a class struggle.

Yup, those outlying areas are great. But they're getting expensive too - you're looking at $700k plus for a townhouse in Walnut Creek, and homes are over a million. And you're already looking at a 45+ minute commute to the city via BART.

There's simply no affordable place within an hour of the city. That's not just because of bad public transportation - that's because of poor housing policy.

For sure - these investments need to be made together, otherwise it won't work.

Say we build more housing but it's across the bay. Those bridges and BART can only transport so many people.

That said, I do think that transportation investment is lacking and should be increased.

Let's build some businesses across there too. So not everyone want/need to all live at the same place, so we don't need everywhere to be NYC.

denser housing and better transit go hand in hand. Its hard to have a good mass transit system when everyone lives on their own 1/3 acre plot of land in a single family home.

Bay Area has natural choke points because of bridges and terrain. Because of this you can still have fairly efficient setup with some driving and park'n'rides at the hubs.

This is a lot harder to do with LA sprawl.

Why should they be paid more? If someone is willing to work for that wage then that is what the wage will be set at.

"willing to work"

This pretends there is actual choice for most folks, when the truth is most folks are just choosing between jobs that pay around the same. The alternative is to not have food, shelter, and such things. That is hardly a choice - of course folks will be willing to work for that amount.

Theoretically one can go to college or work their way up, but all those take time. College takes money. I don't know where one is supposed to get that without taking such jobs in the meantime, nor how one is supposed to afford it if they can't afford basic things. Promotion? good luck.

Student loans?

Which are becoming less and less worth it everyday as other forces extract all the value out of them with higher rates? It's a problem along every facet of society currently, all of the value is being extracted to an increasing few

They generally won't cover housing and food costs to make up for the lost wages while going to school, especially if you have a family to feed. One might make it working part-time so long as you have a spouse to help you out. But hey, folks get lucky. Others don't, though, and still wind up paying for some books and fees on top of taking out loans. Not to mention buying things like a current computer, making sure to have internet access (lets face it, with a job, kids, and school, you probably aren't making it to the library), and so on.

Afterwards, you'll need to pay that student loan back. You get 6 months before you start paying it back. You might not even find a decent job at all.

There are income-based payment plans. They require not falling behind on your loans most times, and even if they don't the private company collecting might make you think that way. If you can't pay and stupid things happen, they'll garnish your wages. 25% (ish), but they'll make sure to leave you a salary equal to 30 hours work at minimum wage. They'll take your tax returns too.

And as an odd fact: It really ins't possible to take out loans for part-time schooling if you want to get a bachelors degree: Federal student loan funding stops after 6 years, at which point you must pay off the first year's loan to get another year. (I think full time does 5 years). You might be able to get an associates or professional certificate at the local community college, though, if you are lucky enough to have one in your area (many do not).

I know this isn't everyone's story, but this stuff is common enough to consider as a risk factor. It might have been a way to financial stability at one time, but it isn't such a sure thing anymore.

Did you read the article? They don't work for Facebook. They work for a contractor that Facebook uses to supply food service to employees.

When tech companies pay out billions and billions more per year in salary which end up in rent or mortgage, we should question why they don't decide to move partly or expand largely elsewhere and save those billions. They must know that a lot of talents will follow them to whichever city that has reasonable living conditions.

My suspicion is that the system serves as a golden handcuff. The elite tech workers feel like they are getting paid a lot more, which they are, but they still cannot retire or pay off mortgage easily. So they need to continue to work diligently at the company for a long time.

This reduces turnover and keeps experienced workers happy and handcuffed.

Downvoters:

Please give your reason why you think the theory is likely wrong. There are many nice, much cheaper areas that these companies can expand to. Many groups can function without always connecting with the headquarters.

Why is the USA the center of the developed world from post WW2 until whatever future point that it transitions to China?

Why is New York where all of the large financial players are?

Why was Rome so much more magnificent then the corners of the empire?

Why does your group of friends all meet at te same bar to watch the game on Sunday?

Why does the top streamer for a game on twitch have 10-20 times the viewer of the rest of the streamers for that game?

There is no conspiracy at work. Just a large disparate group of humans engaging in human nature when faced with the same core set of principles.

The housing supply obviously isn't the main problem as the bay area techies can afford to pay it. The core of the problem is the wage disparity between techies and service workers.

Your absolutely right. I hope the progressives who prevent housing supply from increasing learn something from this - otherwise the rest of the bay area will be heading the same direction.

But, I think Facebook can also play a role in the solution by moving half the company out of the bay area, or at least off the peninsula.

“Back in the day, [the wage] would have been a great number,” said Victor, “but because of Facebook moving in, everything is so expensive. I have to get payday loans sometimes. We barely make it.”

They make a combined (rounded) $75,000/year. The real tragedy is that you can't afford to make it in the Bay Area on $75k/yr.

I don't think that's something you can blame solely on Facebook.

> I don't think that's something you can blame solely on Facebook.

I don't think "Facebook" is solely blamed. Facebook is used as a canonical example of SV companies.

Even then. Housing prices are obviously related to Silicon Valley companies, but there's much to be said about housing policy as well.

The sad part is that California, being the largest state in the US, should be the last one to have this sort of housing problems...

It has been attempted, and the only thing to show for it is perhaps America's most over-hyped ghost town[0]. Few Californians or transplants to California want to live anywhere but near the coastline. California's climate is not as pleasant once you go further inland.

Also, the coastline is seismically active, and does not pose as a great location for Manhattan-style skyscrapers. (For that reason, I have always found San Francisco's skyline to be underwhelming).

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California

Also, the coastline is seismically active, and does not pose as a great location for Manhattan-style skyscrapers.

So is Tokyo, yet there's plenty of high buildings.

Skyscrapers withstand earth quakes better than lo rise in most cases

>Few Californians or transplants to California want to live anywhere but near the coastline. California's climate is not as pleasant once you go further inland.

That's so untrue. If some of the large open areas in the South Bay or east bay were turned into suburbs people would happily move in

More suburbs is probably a bad solution to lengthy commutes.

Not if you have high speed transport. If you can commute at 200mph, living as far as 100 miles from work you could commute faster than people who live closer and go by car.

This comment is wrong on many levels...

1/ State borders within the US aren't any sort of obstacle to commuting for work, so how big your state is is completely irrelevant (it's only a slight exaggeration to say that half of New Jersey is fully integrated suburbs of NYC).

2/ Even if it did matter, California is definitely not the largest state in the US.

> it's only a slight exaggeration to say that half of New Jersey is fully integrated suburbs of NYC)

By land, yes. If measured by population, your "exaggeration" is probably even an understatement.

But still, 95% of CA is undeveloped. Even in the bay area, you can see vast amounts of land that are undeveloped or underdeveloped.

I see prime real-estate near bart being squandered with these tiny little 2-4 story buildings - it's pathetic. From 580 you can see nothing but land in every direction - none of it being developed on at all.

Meanwhile, people are driving farther and farther to work to find cheaper housing, x10 the amount of traffic.

All due to politics - zoning and NIMBY.

> They earn too much to qualify for state health care, but not enough to afford the health insurance offered by their employer. They frequently struggle to find enough money for basics like food and clothes for their children. Victor recently borrowed money from his mother to hold a birthday party for one of his daughters, and from a friend to pay for a dentist appointment.

This one might be a little unpopular but it needs to be said. I have an ax to grind / pet peeve here. What we need to do is get rid of means testing for entitlements and government services in general. I want to live in a world where the excelsior scholarship[1] does not ask how much your parents (or you!) make. If we can afford a program to feed the poor, we can afford a program to feed everyone (who meets residency requirements I guess if we are talking state or city level funding).

The real devil is means testing and nobody talks about it because we are essentially using it as a vote bank / scare tactic. "Don't vote for Republicans or they'll starve you and/or let you die without health care." we say.

tl;dr we should get rid of means testing.

[1] https://www.ny.gov/programs/tuition-free-degree-program-exce...

> If we can afford a program to feed the poor, we can afford a program to feed everyone

This isn't actually true, which is why means testing exists. If San Francisco gave every resident just $200/month for food, it would cost the city over $2 billion/year. And that's assuming only $200/month and no other assistance programs.

The only way to get rid of means testing while maintaining existing social services would be to drastically raise taxes.

"drastically raise taxes."

Sure, on paper it would drastically raise taxes, but the net effect would be nil. The average taxpayer would have taxes raised by $200 and receive a benefit of $200/month.

And the raise should be substantially less than $200 because you no longer have to pay for the old food assistance program, nor most of the bureaucracy for it.

I kind of doubt anyone would vote for a tax increase spread across the population evenly, even if it hypothetically was offset by equivalent benefits. In reality, the tax burden would be progressive, and upper middle class people would rightly ask why they're paying extra taxes for this.

I don't know why you think giving everyone money is going to "substantially" reduce net cost, either. The bureaucracy isn't where most of the cost goes.

> In reality, the tax burden would be progressive, and upper middle class people would rightly ask why they're paying extra taxes for this.

Will they ask? Sure. Will they rightly ask? Absolutely not.

I didn't mean to imply that eliminating (or as someone pointed out a gradual ramping down) means testing would save us money. That gets us to basic income territory and there are a lot of unknowns especially with whether "people with vulnerabilities" will be better off with a small amount of cash and a salute every month. I'm not saying most people will have trouble (I love basic income) but that it is not a one size fits all solution.

Back to the topic at hand, if we want to expand entitlements to cover more people then we absolutely need to either: 1. reduce what we cover 2. increase taxes on the wealthy. We have the most generous poor people in the entire world. The poor (yes, if a family makes say under $60k a year with two adults working full time I consider them poor) oppose tax increase on the wealthy.

> Will they ask? Sure. Will they rightly ask? Absolutely not.

Considering that we're discussing doing away with means testing and giving benefits to people who literally do not need them, it seems quite right for someone paying extra taxes to question this.

Sounds more like the problem is means-testing with strict cutoffs. Mean-testing is good in helping to even the field, the problem is that (some of) our current programs don't slowly fade out as you climb up.

Do you have any idea of a situation where means testing results in better outcomes? I tend to be wary of hard and fast rules regarding most anything, so I'm hoping you can round out your comment and, by proxy, possibly my opinion.

> I tend to be wary of hard and fast rules regarding most anything, so I'm hoping you can round out your comment and, by proxy, possibly my opinion.

As you should be. I tend to be wary of absolutes as well. The "right" has been very efficient with dog-whistling and the window of discourse (Overton window) by taking things to the extreme and tugging on people's heart strings using fear and hatred as driving forces.

I am sure means-testing is good in a lot of scenarios. It is definitely more efficient than my crude "proposal"[1]. It makes "sense", right? Nobody has infinite resources so we should try to focus where we need it most. If humans were rational, this would be a good answer. Unfortunately, we are not rational, level-headed beings. We are emotional, irrational, overgrown infants living in our own bubbles.

What do you think?

[1] It is not actually a proposal, more of a thought experiment.

> You are delusional or you have serious maths problems: if you can afford to give 100 to 10 people, you automatically afford to give 100 to 100,000 people? What logic is that?

Ah, yes this is what the economists say. They are the delusional ones. Means testing breeds resentment and separates people. No, Scandinavians you don't get a say in this until you have as much "diversity" as we do in the United States.

Here is what I say to the economists (no offense to the news outlet): seriously, screw you. They have to disown Alan Greenspan before I will listen to a word of "logic" from the "economists".

We have two options: eliminate entitlements or raise taxes (or a combination of both). I am OK with either option. What I am not OK with is divisive politics, fear-mongering, hypocrisy.

Raise income taxes as much as you need to and/or lower entitlements as much as we can but let us agree to get rid of means testing. Let us aspire to what Barack Obama said in his speech,

> There is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there's the United States of America.

Thank you.

(PS I didn't flag you)

A more middle ground solution would be to keep means testing but turn hard cut-offs into smoother ramp-downs. Making a few grand more shouldn't lose you benefits worth much more.

They are objecting to wealth transfer, I doubt making it more effective matters to them.

Where is their $75k/year going? I totally get that the bay is ridiculously expensive, but they're living in his parents' garage. Are his parents charging him that much rent? I'd think someone living in their parents' garage and earning $75k would be doing pretty well in terms of money. (Setting aside the fact that living with your family in a 2-car garage would definitely suck.)

They must be paying a lot of rent for the garage. Otherwise the numbers don't work (or... not work, as it were)

Could be that they're not getting the hours to actually earn anywhere near $75k.

"Living in a garage" sounds a lot worse than "staying with your parents rent free"

Maybe the parents also rent the house. At 29/26 the parents could easily be 49/46 and still working.

Also, mind that poverty has a role in poor economic decisions (payday loans being one of them).

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-br...

(edit: added some extra info)

75K before taxes with 3 kids..

They have children. Raising children is expensive.

The Economic Policy Institute's Family Budget calculator, which is a better estimate of area-adjusted living costs than the federal poverty line "measures the income a family needs in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living"[1].

For the San Francisco, CA metro area (which in their model includes Menlo Park, where the family lives), they estimate that this "modest yet adequate" standard of living would cost ~$116K per year, inclusive of housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, other necessities and taxes. Even removing housing from the equation ($32K), that leaves about $85K to meet a basic family budget. So I think that their experience that their income is a real stretch to meet basic needs is not so far from reality as you might conjecture.

[1] http://www.epi.org/resources/budget/

The only reason $75k/yr is considered low wage has to do with the housing prices in that area.

Everyone knows the solution to that problem is to increase the supply of housing, yet little is being done.

Maybe soon enough, $100k/yr will be the new $75k$. What then?

The long-time residents have enacted legislation that insulates them from price increases, so house prices are irrelevant to them. Rent controls, property tax freeze, etc. aren't failed policies, but wildly successful ones because they allow long-time residents to pretend that SF is still a small town. That it puts a hard squeeze on people moving in to SF is probably just frosting on the cake.

This - the headline of the article is a bit click-bait-y, but you nail the crux of the issue.

When I worked there years back, I recall chatting with a few cafeteria workers and learning that they were paid more than the average contract worker; the issue isn't that they're being paid poorly, but rather that the Valley is _so expensive_ to live in.

It should be more of a commentary on the state of California and the cities north, and including, of San Jose, rather than the tech companies that populate the region.

Well you can't really consider the Bay Area housing bubble and cost of living spike without taking the tech boom into account. I think it's both the fault of NIMBYism/failure to build sufficient housing in the South Bay, and the fault of large companies, VCs, and startups for doubling down on the South Bay instead of distributing new jobs more evenly throughout the rest of the country.

Why should they given the gains to concentration? Other metro like Chicago and NYC do have tech offices.

Maybe to not effectively destroy cities and communities with CoL traps? Y'know. Basic "we are members of a society and should be working to make it better" stuff. (Shocking, I know, but there have been eras where even Big Businessmans thought about this.)

Those cities should stop destroying themselves and allow new construction.

Ah, yes. It's the cities' fault. Only the cities'. Not the people piling on top while knowing it's both untenable and unfair to their fellow citizens to piss in the public pool as they are--they're blameless.

You know we can walk and chew gum at the same time, right?

What does that even mean?

Piling housing on top is exactly what is illegal.

The 'cost of living trap' is due far more to a growing amount of wages (good!) chasing after an essentially-capped housing supply near those jobs. When well-paying manufacturing jobs boomed in Detroit during the 1910s auto boom, its population doubled in a decade, and increased by 50% in the following decade— but its housing stock grew to match! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit#Demographics

On the other hand, the population of Menlo Park has increased around 10% in the midst of a world-historical boom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menlo_Park,_California And neighboring Atherton is still well below its peak population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherton,_California This is because they've zoned out pretty much all new apartment, or even sometimes 2-story house, construction.

So instead more and more of those rising wages chase after the same houses.

I am aware of everything you are citing. City policy should change. At the same time, the corporate interests that are triggering this should have the social conscience to seek alternate solutions rather than straining the public good to its breaking point. Corporations exist to serve society, not the other way around, and bad actors should be treated as such.

Aren't the high wages already a response to the high cost of living? If cheaper housing was available, what would stop wages from (slowly) going down?

Competition for talent

Uhm, you do know that CA housing supply has not grown nearly as fast as in other states? We are not keeping up with population growth. That's why CoL is high. What should be an easy deal of more tax dollars from the rich and services for the poor has become more money for landlords and evicting the poor.

I'm not convinced that concentrating tech exclusively in the valley has objective network effects that outweigh the costs.

Regardless, from personal experience most of my colleagues would prefer to live in any large metro area but the South Bay (including friends in Mountain View, some of whom were told in the interview process that Google did not have availability in NYC, Chicago, or Pittsburgh). It's untenable for Google to hugely expand its Mountain View campus (http://www.mountainview.gov/depts/comdev/planning/activeproj...) while its satellite offices, where many employees would prefer to work, are at a standstill. This is driving potential employees on the east coast into Mountain View, where they don't want to be, who end up pricing out working-class families from the bay who are desperately trying to stay there.

> I don't think that's something you can blame solely on Facebook

You'll never be able to solely blame macro economic issues on a single entity, they certainly contribute to the to the issue however.

Contributing to the issue? You mean by creating a ton of high paying jobs? Are you saying they should stop doing that?

A ton? Yes high paying jobs that clearly have had an effect on the local economy as shown by this article. Like I said it's a macro economic issue that can't be fixed with a comment on a discussion board.

I’m literally any other situation, supply and demand would have taken care of this a decade ago. PA doesn’t allow new construction and then blames a third party for housing costs. It’s asinine.

Removed, changed my mind.

To be fair, though, is your health insurance covered by your employer?

This is fair point, medical expenses are largest risk in their situation, but I found that article is not about this.

This is precisely why the USA need to get on the HST gravy train. Fast, reliable trains provide a way for people who cannot afford living in the more densely populated area (or don't want to) a way to live in a huge house with a yard and a pool 100 miles from said populated area. You then have an hour long commute every day (door to door), which is quite long, sure, but bearable.

The valley is not densely populated. It has acres of luxury zoned single family housing.

Neighboring Atherton has a land use goal of 'preserv[ing] the Town's character as a scenic, rural, thickly wooded residential area with abundant open space.'

Should the residents of the town of Atherton be able to vote and enact policies on how Atherton should evolve?

I think they should.

When every city in the bay thinks that way we get a situation where only the lucky get to live here.

And that's a bad thing why?

Why shouldn't there be nice, exclusive areas to live in, just like there are exclusive schools to attend and exclusive companies to work for?

It's one thing to have Central Park West. It's another to have an entire region whose service workers commute from 3 hours away, whose public schools are off-limits to the poor, whose landlords got rich off of others labor.

I see we welcome immigrants sign on the homes of people who have driven out anyone making less then $100,000 a year. It's shocking to see so many want to slam the doors of opportunity and a better life in the face of the less fortunate.

Go have your enclave, but don't ask the state to help pay for your schools, roads, and pension costs while higher education support is massively cut.

>I see we welcome immigrants sign on the homes of people who have driven out anyone making less then $100,000 a year.

That is why so many working class people see "big city" liberals as hypocrites.

>but don't ask the state to help pay for your schools, roads, and pension costs while higher education support is massively cut.

I'm not seeing the connection here.

Yes, Berkeley residents who downzone are hypocrits. That's the point I'm making. As for money if you live in CA you would know the UC system faces funding challenges while millions from the state to fund road maintenence in Marin and Atherton.

Because it's unjust, as these 'nice, exclusive areas' are the ones with the best access to employment and educational opportunities.

And it creates an urban form that induces long, high-emission solo driver commutes and fewer residents in a part of the country that requires very little HVAC— both of which lead to a lot of climate change.

And it maintains a segregated society, racially and otherwise, where the wealthy may ignore social problems.

And it's likely a significant drag on American GDP.

So, for all these reasons— it is an abuse of the a local government's police power to make it illegal to build apartment buildings.

I believe that zoning is a proper matter for local governments. If it's not a local matter, it seems that governmental zoning has to either not exist or become a state or federal matter. I sure don't want the feds zoning my city, nor do I want the state doing it. I also don't want to live in a world of no zoning.

It's a pain that I'd have to appear before the zoning board to get a variance for a larger garage on my property, but the alternatives are far worse, I think, and I like the idea that fellow city residents are the ones deciding our zoning and variance process.

What concretely do you propose to effect a fix for the problem that you see?

In much of the world, zoning is enacted at a regional or national level, and serves wider social interests rather than a small group's desire to decide what their neighbors look like. These areas generally have significantly more reasonable housing prices than the Bay Area, as well as higher mass-transit usage. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html https://www.gtai.de/GTAI/Navigation/EN/Invest/Investment-gui... Why don't you want the federal or state government making decisions on zoning law?

Until everyone has perfectly identical IQs, attractiveness, charisma, strength, agility and luck, some things will be perceived as economically unjust.

In other words, it will always be this way. Life is a competition for resources and genetic legacy, there are always going to be winners and losers.

>wealthy may ignore social problems

Yes, that's one of the best parts of being wealthy. Being able to enjoy life without constantly worrying about other people's problems.

>And it's likely a significant drag on American GDP.

Doubtful. Silicon Valley is pretty segregated and does pretty damn well GDP-wise.

>it is an abuse of the a local government's police power to make it illegal to build apartment buildings.

Zoning laws are police abuse? That's one I haven't heard before. You'd want no government intervention then? Can we build miles and miles of structures like the Oakland Ghost Ship in your fantasy society?

No zoning doesn't mean no fire code. And why not give poor people a place to live they can afford?

Land use law is, under American constitutional law, permitted to local governments under the 'Police Power': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_power_(United_States_co... In my opinion, using land use law to ban apartment buildings is a misuse of this power.

I think that we should be able to build miles and miles of apartment buildings that meet fire-safety codes, rather than laws that mandate vast swathes of a region's land are only usable for single-family homes, leading to sprawl and long car commutes.

Just because a society will never be perfectly just doesn't mean the status quo is particularly just— that's the is-ought fallacy. Do you think the state should use its power to ban things you dislike or find aesthetically distasteful, no matter its effects on others, when you're already wealthy and able to build yourself a pleasant life? Because that's the current usage of zoning law in the US.

It's an hour door-to-door from Menlo Park/Palo Alto to SOMA using Caltrain. People do that every single day. So a 1 hour door to door commute that extends the radius to 100 miles would be phenomenal in terms of opening up supply.

> I don't think that's something you can blame solely on Facebook.

They could pay their cafeteria workers better. Of course, it's not only Facebook that's a problem. I doubt many cafeteria workers make 75K/year.

That said, aren't social housing projects an option here?

>>I doubt many cafeteria workers make 75K/year

Isn't that 75k the gross from both adults in the family? And the worker even mentions facebook is their second gig so that's at least three jobs to hit 75,000.

I don't think people working that hard should be living hand-to-mouth.

> Isn't that 75k the gross from both adults in the family?

One reason I mentioned it is that requiring both parents to work in order to make ends meet limits their movement, limits their ability to change jobs and limits their ability to save for retirement.

> I don't think people working that hard should be living hand-to-mouth.

I imagine there are studies indicating this is bad for the overall economy.

That's why they should be commuting to from a more reasonably-priced area of CA instead of living in the hideously expensive place they chose to live. This is colossally stupid on their part.

I agree so much. At $75k/yr in my area, you would be able to live in a top 15 school district and go on a family vacation anually. I literally cannot conceptualize scraping by on $75k a year. That is just unfathomably expensive!

What area is that?

Kansas City, and it's nearly infinite suburbs, would be incredibly comfortable at 75k. Could easily afford a nice home in one of the bustling urban neighborhoods, or a 2,000+ sq ft. in the burbs, or something with a few acres out in the country but near an interstate for commuting.

Ahh, could you recommend any specific neighborhoods? I'm starting to seriously consider Kansas City, coincidentally enough.

My knowledge of what neighborhoods are currently great is a little rusty. I moved away from the area for a while, and now I'm one of those people with acreage outside of the city.

But when I was in the city full time, my favorite area was around 39th street just over the state line on the Missouri side. Walking distance to quite a few restaurants, coffeeshops, bookstores, and other funky shops.

Another fun place was the area around the Plaza. Some nice old apartments and houses. Walking distance from the Nelson art museum, the Plaza stores and restaurants, and fairly close to the bars in Westport. Westport is a fun place to hang out, but it's a little dodgy in terms of living there. Lots of petty crime, and a sad uptick in shootings of late. But when you're in your twenties, it's one of the most fun places in the city. At least it was for me.

One thing which changed after I left was the revitalization of downtown. Used to be dead, and now you can have a semblance of urban living there. Lots of lofts and townhouses available, and in walking distance of the new bar / restaurant district, plus the convention center and the new performing arts hall. Related is the River Market area. It's on the edge of downtown with lots of rennovated apartments & lofts. Has the main farmers market, and the usual bars, restaurants, and odd stores. And is very walkable. The new streetcars have a very limited route, but River Market and Downtown are covered (or will be).

The place I used to live now has a name: Crossroads Arts District. Stretches between downtown and the area around Crown Center. Has lots of art galleries, predictably enough, and all the other usual stuff. Holds a street art & food festival (First Fridays) once a month. Streetcar service will be coming soon-ish, but not quite there yet.

There's also the West Bottoms. Used to be a swamp, then was a warehouse / industrial district, then was abandoned (when I was there), and now is an up & coming area with the usual lofts and stuff. Used to be one of my favorite areas of the city due to the interesting abandoned factories and how quiet it was despite being in the middle of the city. Probably a lot of fun now.

I don't know much about the burbs. Johnson County (suburbia on the Kansas side) was great for big box stores but was otherwise a black hole for me. However, one great thing about Johnson County is that it has a Microcenter and it's glorious. Need a Raspberry Pi Zero + a handful of sensors for a project and need it now? Done.

Though speaking of the burbs, if you have a little extra money for buying, check out some of the inner ring suburbs. Places like Leawood. Some beautiful houses with old huge trees. Some of the more expensive neighborhoods in the city, but cheap compared to the Valley.

If you want to get off the beaten path, and are interested in fixer uppers, I always kinda liked Kansas City, Kansas. There are some neat old homes there on bluffs overlooking the Kansas River. And, last time I looked, many of those neighborhoods haven't gentrified, so there are bargains to be had. The neighborhoods are rough in spots, but there's something about the old blue collar neighborhoods that I always liked.

KCK and the area around Bonner Springs can also give you some country living on the edge of the city. There's still some farms left and still some acreage while being 10-15 minutes away from the city center. The only risk is that you buy your perfect quiet piece of land and then get swamped with development a few years later, but I suppose that's a risk for any city's edge.

Another good place for quiet small town-ish living while being very close to the city center is Parkville, MO. It's adjacent to the city. Probably one of the first KC suburbs. The town's center is Victorian and has a vibrant downtown with the typical Main Street USA feel. Also has a huge riverfront park on the Missouri River. The latter is quite nice because in much of KC, they've turned their back on the river and there's not much in terms of waterfront parks. This will be changing in the upcoming years with parks planned. But for now, there's not many.

One last place to mention is Lawrence, Kansas. It's about 30-40 minutes away from the city, and is the home for Kansas University. It's an absolutely wonderful place to live. Reminds me of Austin but without the crowds and high prices. Very vibrant downtown and music scene. Low crime. Very walkable for both the neighborhoods and in terms of hiking trails that start in the city. Tons of interesting old houses. Extremely laid back. Surprisingly hilly. One of my favorite places on earth.

Didn't mean to write a novel but that should give you some places to start looking. I spent much of my twenties in KC before heading out west in the dot-com boom, and then came back ten years later when I wanted some quiet times. I would sometimes be jealous of other larger cities, but KC was in many respects perfect for me. Unpretentious, unjudgemental (outside of the burbs, of course), and was a live and let live place from every angle. The biggest downside of KC is that a car is essential. I've tried to point out walkable neighborhoods, but public transportation is mostly limited to bus. No metro, no light rail (beyond a couple of miles of the streetcars). And a level of sprawl which is enormous. I suppose with Uber / Lyft these days, a personally owned car isn't quite so required now. But it was mandatory in my day.

On the plus side for cars, traffic is usually not too terrible outside of rush hour. And if you end up living in the city center and working in the suburbs, there's a good chance you'll be going opposite to the huge traffic flow, and even rush hour will be easier. That's what happened to me.

If you end up coming here, I think you'll like it. If I can help any further with your search, just let me know.

I would love to move to a more affordable rural area, but as an Asian guy married to a white wife, I'm a little afraid of how we (and our kids) might be treated.

Back in the early 90s, my family temporary moved to a predominately white neighborhood in the more rural parts of Pennsylvania and got some death threats that very day. We only stayed a few months before we moved again, but that left some lasting memories for me.

It was a long time ago and I would hope in 2017 things have completely changed, but it still worries me. One of the best things I love about the Bay Area is the diversity and how much camaraderie there is between all cultures.

Of course I know the first generation immigrants still tend to stick to their own ethnic groups, but their kids definitely don't. And that's one thing that makes me very comfortable and happy.

Sorry for the late reply. Didn't see it until today.

I think you and your family would be fine in a midwestern city like Kansas City. But I also know there are risks. The Indian men who were shot by a racist, were shot in a suburb of Kansas City. However, the city as a whole was horrified by the event. And it's a very diverse city. Not as cosmopolitan as cities on the coast, of course, but every time I go to the city center, I see people of all types and frequently hear languages other than English & Spanish spoken.

I currently live in a rural Kansas town. Living in a place like this as an Asian would present some challenges, but the overall attitude from most of the people is generally "If you don't scare the horses, we don't care who you are or what you do." It's a different place than the American South (or rural Pennsylvania). Here people just want to mind their own business. I couldn't guarantee it would be a great place for you, but if you want to try being rural again, it wouldn't be a terrible place to look.

> They earn too much to qualify for state healthcare, but not enough to afford the health insurance offered by their employer. They frequently struggle to find enough money for basics like food and clothes for their children. Victor recently borrowed money from his mother to hold a birthday party for one of his daughters, and from a friend to pay for a dentist appointment.

They might want to look into not being married. A single mother with three children would qualify for quite a few benefits. The lower income (single parent) would also qualify her for Medicaid. Separately, the husband could continue to work and pool his income with her, though not on paper.

It's pretty sad that the combination of the tax code, income based benefit eligibility, and a high local cost of living make something like "Divorce for the sake of the children" a real option.

> but not enough to afford the health insurance offered by their employer.

This is what is wrong with health care in the US. How can this not be considered a serious flaw in the way the system is currently structured?

Plenty of people consider it a serious flaw. It's just that very few of them are in government.

Single-payer in California is currently blocked by just one guy (CA speaker of the house) because the people haven't bribed him as well as the health insurance lobby has.

No single payer in California is blocked by 40 years worth of voter approved laws and constitutional amendments that tie the state's hands in ways that make it impossible for the state to raise the revenue necessary and direct it solely to healthcare.

https://theintercept.com/2017/06/30/california-single-payer-...

Nothing stops a single-payer plan at the legislature from including the submission to voters of a ballot measure clearing funding allocation barriers away. Proposals that exempt something from those barriers are not uncommon.

Single payer in California is actually blocked by the absence of an actual concrete proposal (covering, among many other things, a funding mechanism) rather than merely a vague descriptive goal.

Right, and the authors of SB 562 chose not to include such a submission.

The authors of SB 562 chose not to include a concrete proposal at all. (It was pretty clearly a placeholder that was intended to be amended into concrete form that was passed by the Senate to keep it alive for timeline related reasons; the real work would have had to occur in the Assembly version and then gone back to the Senate.)

Because wages are not tied to family size but the means test for state provided benefits are. They should also apply even if they are married and talk to a social worker.

It's a feature, not a bug

> How can this not be considered a serious flaw in the way the system is currently structured?

It is, quite widely.

The problem is that the two main camps on what should be done instead each think the other proposal is even worse than the currently broken state.

What you describe is called fraud, and the anti-poor people in this country would go after them for it, just like they went after "welfare queens" and the like.

How is getting divorced to maximize tax avoidance or get government services even remotely fraud? Is there a statute on that?

You can obviously avoid marriage in the first place, in order to maximize services or avoid taxes.

Well, if the theory is that the benefits are for single parents rather than those who are benefiting from the pooled resources of a marriage, in principle, then, at the very least, such a benefit claim could be said to go against the spirit in which the benefits are offered.

That said, given the absurdity of the situation and the fact that the rules severely punish them for being married, I wouldn't fault them in the slightest for doing exactly that.

>You can obviously avoid marriage in the first place, in order to maximize services or avoid taxes.

No, you really can't. Do you seriously think the state is going to pay out more benefits to parents solely because they haven't signed a marriage certificate?

You _can_ absolutely qualify for more benefits if the other parent is unable or unwilling to contribute financially and the state is unable to coerce them to do so. But the state goes after the other parent first.

Part of the reason these programs are so harmful is that they provide incentives for the father to stay away from the children. Staying around to raise the children makes it a lot easier for the state to A) find him and B) make the case that he's the father or has taken on a fatherly role and is therefore responsible for paying for them.

No. If they both declared the children as dependents, THAT would be fraud. But choosing not to be married is perfectly legal. It's called a divorce, is legal in all 50 states, and in California doesn't even require a reason. I'm not sure you actually thought about what you typed.

The proposed covert transfer of funds (pooling resources, but not on paper) from the working ex-husband to the non-working ex-wife while the ex-wife claims public benefits is straight-out, textbook public benefits fraud by concealing income (it probably also involves tax fraud by concealing income, otherwise it's going to get discovered in less than a year.)

They might want to look into not being married.

Wow. Just wow. For some people, marriage is more than a financial arrangement.

They'd also save a bundle by not having kids. Maybe they should sell one of them, it would help pay for the others?

-Legally- married. There's usually a difference between legal recognition and personal recognition. Though I agree (as does the OP) that even having a situation where that might be an advantageous distinction is messed up.

> Wow. Just wow. For some people, marriage is more than a financial arrangement.

In the eyes of the government the only thing in marriage that's more than a financial arrangement is hospital visitation privileges and the right to not testify against your spouse.

I didn't say to annul their wedding vows or diminish whatever non-financial meaning their marriage has.

> They'd also save a bundle by not having kids. Maybe they should sell one of them, it would help pay for the others?

That's disgusting.

That's the point, dude.

The point seemed to me, they were saying that selling a kid to pay for the others was equivalent to not being legally married.

I believe the point was that selling a kid to pay for the others is a suggestion similarly (if not identically) indifferent to emotional realities as suggesting that a committedly-married couple get a divorce to change their tax status.

It's a nasty analogy, since they are not the same class of event.

He's pointing out the absurdity of various incentives that exist, not defending them.

> Wow. Just wow. For some people, marriage is more than a financial arrangement.

Marriage in the legal sense and marriage in the religious/personal/emotional commitment sense are not the same thing. I don't think you're necessarily _always_ wrong, but I also don't see why you think it's so universal that people should load a specific legal status with so much emotional weight and be unable to separate it from the actual commitment, in the context of meaningfulness.

If I have a religious ceremony during which I get married to someone, I would consider myself married even if I didn't file the papers at the courthouse. The latter is just paperwork. I can't say I relate to the notion that a relationship between two people doesn't have meaning until you get the government to approve it.

It sounds like you've never been married. It's not a matter of getting the government to approve, it's a matter of getting other people to recognize it. If you have a common-law marriage but it's not documented then if your spouse falls ill and taken to hospital you might be denied visitation rights, for example.

I suggest you read some court filings/legal articles on the gay marriage cases from a few years ago to get an understanding of why people sued to have the right to get legally married, over and above just having an emotional commitment.

It sounds like you haven't read the thread you're commenting on. Those issues (visitation rights etc) are explicitly stated in the GP comment, and the comment was speculating that it may be worth the trade-off. The comment _I_ was responding to was talking entirely about legal marriage _meaning_ more to its participants.

I suggest you read the threads you're participating in before smugly assuming that someone else is the one who doesn't know what they're talking about.

I'd read it, and I stand by my original comment. Your understanding of this seems to be abstract rather than concrete and I'm suggesting reading material you could examine to concretize your understanding. I don't know why you're being so rude about it.

Bingo.

Marriage is a responsibility, but it also provides rights. A system that financially punishes marriage is cruel.

There are obviously real benefits to being legally married.

That said the #1 reason that marriages fail is finances and I can imagine divorce would be massively net positive it if alleviated the financial desperation this family feels, allows them to spend time together vs working overtime and gives them healthcare they wouldn't have access to otherwise.

The downsides of not being legally married honestly seem trivial in comparison to the realities of poverty.

I concur about the corrosive effects of poverty, but it seems to me that you're ranking different circumstances in a one-dimensional utility calculus, and I'm arguing that many aspects of a long-term relationship are orthogonal to each other.

Marriage and family are contexts within which people are willing and/or liable to make life and death decisions which transcend fiscal considerations. The combination of a tax code and economic circumstances that (perhaps unintentionally) incentivize the breakup of families and the loss of rights for short-term economic reasons is not politically sustainable.

> hospital you might be denied visitation rights

I don't understand this. If I turn up at the hospital you're in and claim you are my (opposite sex) spouse (with the same surname), do the hospital staff demand to see a certificate of marriage registration and then perform a search to ensure there is no state issued marriage annulment?

No, but consider the situation where A elopes with B (but doesn't get legally married) against the wishes of A's parents, and they have a child C. A tragic car accident puts A and C in the hospital but A is in a coma, and by the time B gets to the hospital A's parents are there and disputing B's eligibility to attend at the bedside of family members.

B should just respond with "those aren't my wife's parents, don't know who they are".

Their ID shows them to have the same last name, and they can probably dig up other documentation to prove their case. B has no such documentation, his last name doesn't match, etc.

No, you don't need to have the same last name to visit your sick partner, but when people start accusing eachother of lying, it will sure help.

Asserting counterfactuals is the short track to a loss. I encourage you to think through the ramifications of a situation or consult some case histories rather than just documenting your reflexive response.

joke [johk] : noun : something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement, as a witticism, a short and amusing anecdote, or a prankish act

Ah yep, that's a very good point and quite obvious now you point it out.

While I support marriage equality I think that was a suboptimal solution. A better, although more complex, option would have been to eliminate civil marriage from the legal code altogether. Currently a civil marriage is a fixed bundle of legal rights, penalties, and responsibilities. But it doesn't have to be that way. Issues like hospital visitation rights could be easily handled through standardized written agreements instead.

Marriage should be strictly a religious or social status with no official government recognition.

Sadly, the US tax code rewards not getting married, doubly so if both partners are high earners (see the marriage penalty). If you don't like this, don't concern troll, instead, ask your representatives why this continues to exist.

The US tax code also rewards people getting married, typically when the partners have very different incomes (see marriage bonus).

Marriage penalties and bonuses are a consequence of joint filing combined with a progressive rate structure. They continue to exist because to get rid of them would require giving up either join filing or progressive rates, and it is very unlikely that people would go for giving up one or both of those.

So what you're saying is that the US tax code continues to reward one partner sacrificing their career and penalizes partners who wish to both continue their careers?

There's more than one way to make ends meet and I'd be happy to see the wide variety of elaborate tax breaks available to high-income sorts based on elaborate business constructs removed to make up for this rather than punish young married couples. But then, I'm all for a mostly flat tax, warts and all, no deductions whatsoever, past a certain level of income, say the national median.

> For some people, marriage is more than a financial arrangement.

For sure, but you don't have to tell the government about it. You can still have a ceremony and wear rings and swear you'll live together until you die. Informally, you can pretty much have whatever kind of marriage you want, even a polygamous one. No-one is going to stop a bunch of people from living together as roommates in some kind of committed relationship. Although I just checked, and some of these relationships are actually illegal in Canada [1]. I think it's really just to protect minors, and they don't care what a bunch of adults are doing.

EDIT: Haha I also just noticed your username

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_polygamy#North_Ame...

There's no federal law against it, but many parts of the US have laws against "unlawful cohabitation". Which is the main tool used to enforce the ban on polygamy. The laws could apply to unmarried couples that live together, but have only ever been used against polygamists. The supreme court recently turned down hearing a case to overturn such laws, keeping the practice illegal: http://www.sltrib.com/home/4848475-155/polygamy-remains-a-cr...

Marriage being for love is a fairly recent re-definition of the institution. For most of human history the social and financial contract has been far more important than peoples' feelings.

You can get married in your church and simply not get a marriage license if that is what is important to you.

> They might want to look into not being married. A single mother with three children would qualify for quite a few benefits.

Or maybe not; what she would qualify would be based on her income after child support payments, which she would be (in most if not all states, and definitely in CA as I've helped people do the paperwork for it) be required to seek an order for as a prerequisite for seeking public benefits.

And some people still say that "single payer healthcare" is non-sense. Amazing..

Is this sarcasm, or are you suggesting that the same institution which set up these perverse rules has done such a great job that it should be given control over the funding of health care for 99% of the population?

It's not like private enterprise is doing such a great job.

People are legally mandated to buy third party health care payment plans. How could you possibly expect that to go well?

Perhaps they can eat cake too

It's pretty sad that the combination of the tax code, income based benefit eligibility, and a high local cost of living make something like "Divorce for the sake of the children" a real option.

Christ, is this where we all are now? Just to work and eat, you have to get a divorce and try to finagle your way through the state systems? I don't even know if I know of a word for the feeling I get from this. Despair, resignation, disgust, extreme tiredness, a sense that I should be shocked by this but I am not anymore, a small pinch of Jurassic Park's 'clever-girl' moment....

I don't know what the solution is here, there are a lot of ideas, but good God people, this is really crazy now.

I mean, I know that an armed rebellion/revolution is a thousand times more horrible, the deaths will be millions of times worse than Antietam, the Cultural Revolution, and the Khmer Rouge combined, but the system, the bureaucrats, they will not reform. People become accustomed to poverty and abuse, like they did with slaves whipped and raped in fields in the Antebellum, it becomes normal to just put on sunglasses in the rain to not look at the stunning injustices of a family shitting on the sidewalk, in dirty, wet, and stinking rags. Whatever, where is my gluten-free latte?

And this is flippin' FB! These folk are not neo-slavers or people with dreams of a new nobility.

These are us, hackers, lovers of freedom and justice and peace and order and linked-lists and a good Pad Thai.

Christ, what is going on anymore!?

Income inequality is far greater in the Facebook/Google/Mozilla types of places. Rural areas have much less variability.

When hackers grow older, and decide they don't want noise and 4-story apartments nearby, then yes, the peaceful do have an impact. They don't feel it because they donate to EFF and recycle and have a "Nuclear-Free Zone" sign at the entrance to their town.

But the root of Bay Area inequality is housing, full stop.

I took a ride share from the airport a couple of months ago. The driver lives better than I do. He lives in Sacramento and drives all weekend. He then comes back to his 4 bedroom house in a rural suburb. His children attend a decent school. There is low crime in his town.

Other states have other problems, perhaps due to national policies. But the Bay Area's problems are almost all of it's own making.

The worst off are the locals who can't move back to their Midwestern towns as the newcomers can. Their entire support structure is in the Bay Area. So their only option is to move to Antioch or Tracy to accept a 2 hour commute for a $15/hr job.

You're right that there will be unrest, but it won't be in Alabama, nor will it be in Fresno. It'll be where the nice hackers live.

Well you can move just without your support system and build one. Plenty of people do that.

Yes, middle-class families can do this. Lower-middle and the bottom 25 percentile of income cannot readily build a support network.

Facebook, the one that's trying to track every single facet of data on every individual on the planet, with or without their permission? Facebook the place that outsources the jobs mentioned in the article out to contracting firms so they can pay the non hackers less? What makes you think that Facebook or any mega corp is a place that wants any of "freedom and justice and peace and order". They want money, that's it. If you work for them, you can have your own private desires but you are not helping them do anything but make money

It is pretty sad that government in effect requires the dissolution of what many consider the family unit in order to receive benefits. If anything government should reward more to those who maintain an active family unit.

However this has been known for decades and combined with imprisonment is reason behind the lack of two parent families among some groups, mostly minority. how did we ever arrive at a solution that values on parent more than another?

They make decent money -- good money even. This is really an article about the high housing costs in the Bay Area. I don't see any other real message here.

All of the people who oppose residential development near work sites are to blame. Period.

They make terrible money because they have no net money after basic expenses.

> All of the people who oppose residential development near work sites are to blame. Period.

Are you saying that is the only thing that is keeping the bay area's cost of living high?

Housing costs are exaggerated in San Francisco by orders of magnitude more than every other component of cost of living.

There are other factors that also push up housing costs. placeybordeaux just disagrees that NIMBYism is the ONLY factor. I don't know if NIMBYism is even the primary factor.

For example, we have a small public transit network resulting in few options for high density construction.

There's a construction labor shortage that will likely worsen.

There's a sudden surge in jobs.

No, I don't think the GP is. But it's a rather predominant factor!

doesn't say how much are they paying for the two car garage, even at lower rents how much lower they must be, to be cheaper then what they are paying now, so that they increase their standard of living.

The article never mentions what hours they get, just their hourly rate. It's not fair to say they're making good money.

Sorry for having to be "that guy" but they're living in Menlo Park for crying out loud! I'd love to live in Menlo Park too, but I can't afford it, so instead I live 2 hours away and commute to work like everyone else. In the Bay Area, living close to work is pretty much a luxury for the rich.

I suspect this is actually East Menlo Park, since the homeowners in Menlo Park proper are very unlikely to rent out a garage like this. East Menlo Park is substantially more affordable than Menlo Park, though at this point more costly than many East Bay areas.

Living in Hayward for example would make housing more affordable, but as you allude to, commute times would likely 4-5x (because bridges) and their kids' education would suffer due to school districts since they likely take advantage of the Tinsley Voluntary Transfer Program to attend schools in Menlo Park's school district (whereas Hayward schools are not good by any stretch of the imagination)

What is East Menlo Park? Do you mean East Palo Alto?

No, East Menlo park is north of East Palo alto. It's adjacent to FB HQ and has separate services from MP.

I live in the Belle Haven neighborhood. And I love it. Go jogging frequently, always feel safe, diverse neighborhood...

yeah if they lived in the East Bay or further north with access to BART such as Pittsburg or Concord, it would be more affordable. I've had developer coworkers live there talk about the commute. Not fun, but makes the finances better.

Sorry, you commute two hours EACH WAY EVERY DAY? Nothing is worth that. I'd expect serious money for putting up with that, and at that point, you could just afford to live closer.

Nobody pays you more based on how long your commute is.

It's a tradeoff lost of people make. 1. Live in a garage, 2. Long commute, or 3. Live in an area with fewer job prospects?

I didn't say they were based on distance, but you shouldn't be accepting average pay for that. There are jobs everywhere, especially software. The bay area is completely ridiculous. 1/6th of your life is wasted. Think about it.

Nobody pays you more based on how long your commute is.

Somebody has never negotiated a salary... The answer is yes, a lot more, you just go "This commute is unbearable and I won't move to your stupid neighborhood so if you want me, pay me 20k more" (not a joke, I did that, for a 45 mins commute).

Just think about all the stuff you've missed out by being so closed minded and not saying it, many people will pay you more if you complain about your commute, that's a fact.

Yeah, I have a feeling these super-commuters don't value their time especially well.

Apparently good money does not translate into a liveable wage.

"Stop grandstanding and take care of your own house first" is more of the message of this article, I'd say.

"$x is a 'good wage'" has always been a simple and loaded statement, but with the media highlighting economic inequality (esp. around tech and silicon valley) for so long, news & people now commonly discuss cost-of-living with wages and now look at the net value as the talking point.

It's not a loaded statement. No one is making you live a the place with the highest cost of living in the US.

"Just move away" is not a legitimate response to these problems.

There is a limited supply of housing and they have no interest in building more. That means only a limited number of people can live there. Someone has to move. Rents will just keep increasing until they do. Paying them more will just increase rents more until someone else is forced out.

And I do see it as a lifestyle choice. You can't choose a lot of things in life, but you can choose where you live. I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for people who choose to live in the most expensive part of the US, and then complain about the cost of living. Despite making boatloads more money than me. I certainly don't feel like I should be forced to subsidize their lifestyle choice (I know that isn't the argument presented here, but it is an issue that often comes up with these issues. I don't think cost of living should be taken into account with regard to government programs and subsidies.)

>There is a limited supply of housing and they have no interest in building more.

Who is "they"?

The people who own the local supply of housing.

At what point do you think that the interests of citizens who don't own property supersede the interests of those who do?

In political science terms: At the point where there are enough of the former to take the property from the latter (by any given method).

> ...they have no interest in building more

"They" are easy to motivate, though. You just need to make it profitable and possible to do. "They" are actually very reliable that way.

good money even

How is $19/hour good money in California?

Housing costs? Well partly sure, but equally due to the lack of a social welfare system.

This is a problem with zoning in the area. Paying these workers more money would enable them to move out of a garage, but the amount of housing would stay the same, causing prices to rise until someone else is forced into a garage. Unfortunately, local governments in the south Bay area are controlled by people who want to maximize the price of their houses, injury to the poor and middle class be damned.

Yea, but they use reusable shopping bags and drive a Tesla. So obvs. they care about people and the environment.

We really need some regional or state-driven action to drive down housing prices in critical areas. It'd be pretty straightforward - make a "Zoning Authority" tax and levy it on counties, cities, and neighborhoods that do not meet a development target. Want to be an obstructionist NIMBY? I'm fine with that if we're charging you $10k/yr for the privilege.

There is a regional authority which tries to force communities to match new office space with new housing in the same city. And there's state action on the way to force local areas to approve dense developments near transit hubs like Caltrain. Obviously this isn't doing enough today, but there is action happening.

Which politicians are behind this, and where can I learn more? I wish to write them a letter stating my approval and donate to their political efforts.

Serious question, politics aside. How many jobs have been prior filled by teenagers or recent college graduates, that are no longer being filled by those groups for whatever reason? Is every single type of profession required to support a family of 4?

Edit: 5, per the photo on the article

It's the opposite. Middle aged people used to work in manufacturing, farming, and other industrial positions. Now that these industries have either died or gone automated, they have to join teenagers in service jobs as well. It is not a matter of how many children they have either because families used to be a lot more numerous in the past and it was not considered a problem at all.

> It is not a matter of how many children they have either because families used to be a lot more numerous in the past and it was not considered a problem at all.

I think in theory you could raise an 1800s-size family today, but you'd have to settle for 1800s-level quality of life, which nobody is likely to do. And in practice you can't just set up a shed on unclaimed land, because there is no unclaimed land left and NIMBYs wouldn't want a slum anywhere near their property. If you tried making your children useful as labor, you'd quickly lose custody for your child exploitation. And so on.

The things our society expects and accepts have changed, so you can't always point to the past and say "it worked then, so it will work now"; because if the social structure enabling it has changed, this may not be true.

About half of minimum wage workers are at least 25 and three-quarters are at least 20.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/08/who-makes-mi...

>Is every single type of profession required to support a family of 4?

"A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation."

"They who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged."

"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."

All from Adam Smith.

> the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.

I don't believe people (well, the people with the influence more accurately) care about this anymore, not with the promise of automation to replace that lost generation while lining their pockets with money.

Aren't cafeteria workers stereotypically ("in the old days") older women? (AKA "lunch lady")

I used to work at cafeteria [non-school, for employees] part time and all the full timers were old woman who fit the stereotype to a T. The part timers were all teenagers though. The only people who see part timers where those who worked outside typical business hours.

Line cooks, dish washers, night cleaning staff, and bus boys are often male. People "out front" are often female for various reasons.

When I worked in a cafeteria, the men and boys often did the dirtier and heavier work like stocking freezers, cleaning grease traps, etc. I don't think it needs to be this way, but it's what happened. I'm not sure if that's typical or not, but it probably affects the longevity in food service work over time.

That is, different work cultures and different managers may treat men differently.

It's education inflation.

a college degree is the new highschool diploma. Even with a 4 year degree in a "real" field of study (business/stem/finance/whatever) it's becoming more and more difficult to land entry level jobs. If you pay 30/60/90k for said degree, you are going to feel entitled (rightfully or not) to working in a position that's not for the "uneducated". These positions still need to be filled though, because they are generally the jobs that make day-to-day life happen. Nobody wants to flip burgers but they still want to be able to eat one at lunch.

I'm of the opinion that yes, even minimum wage jobs should be able to get the bare minimum expenses of an average family covered (housing/food/medicine), let alone two incomes making more than minimum wage.

Should minimum wage jobs pay well enough to raise a family in Palo Alto?

Yes. The minimum wage in Palo Alto must support a family in Palo Alto, or within a very reasonable commute.

I agree employers should pay that much, ethically and morally. I don't think legally they should be forced to pay that much.

In order to rigorously capture the notion of a "reasonable commute", I've suggested we stop thinking in terms of nominal wages and start thinking in terms of "DIPHLoW": [real] discretionary income per hour lost to work.

Discretionary income = subtract off taxes and housing.

Hours lost to work = time at work plus time commuting or anything you have to regularly do to be able to work.

That way, the measure is less susceptible to the dismissal of "just move farther out" -- that has a cost in terms of increasing hours lost to work and therefore decreasing DIPHLoW.

It also highlights the impact of housing costs -- anything that keeps them from going down is effectively keeping DIPHloW down too.

Perhaps but consider even in developing economies these kinds of jobs aren't the ones which allow you to raise a middle class family, never mind a doing so in a developed economy.

Just to be clear - I'm not advocating for minimum wage jobs to put a family of 4 (or 5) in the middle class bracket.

What I'm advocating for is that (2!) minimum wage jobs should afford rent, food, and medical/dental expenses. There is absolutely no excuse why $75k combined income should afford a 2 or 3 br apartment, food, and to keep the kids healthy.

The only options are to a) either lower costs to make things affordable, b) raise the lower end of the pay scale, or c) sacrifice the luxuries/services that come with low paying jobs (fast food, manual labor services, etc).

a) will never happen, prices will only rise until all the tech companies go bust or move b) to raise the lower end of the pay scale the higher end would have to sacrifice salaries c) most likely to happen - or be replaced with automation -driving these families and jobs out of the area completely.

I'm interested to see how SV will develop over the next 15-20 years. It will probably end up being over paid tech-workers and robots automating everything else.

Low end jobs that can be automated will be automated. Only reason they have not is because wages have been depressed via replenishment of the low end of the worker pool from underdeveloped economies. If you look at Japan lots of the fast food stuff is automated. We will see more automation in agriculture. No kids will grow up wanting to pick vegetables, quite reasonably but they still need harvesting.

We wouldn't need 4 year degrees if we hadn't dumbed down public school. We wouldn't need 4 year degrees if employers were allowed to give potential employees an IQ test. Want to become an electrician? You aren't allowed to take an unpaid internship, so what do you have to do instead? Now you have to pay the electrician to teach you in a classroom setting, putting you in massive debt.

>I'm of the opinion that yes, even minimum wage jobs should be able to get the bare minimum expenses of an average family covered (housing/food/medicine), let alone two incomes making more than minimum wage.

Do you support us immediately ceasing trade with China and Mexico? Or is it only a problem when you can actually see the people that can't afford to live a lifestyle similar to yours?

An electrician union here advertises apprenticeships with (decent for entry level) hourly pay, benefits and no debt upon completion.

It's several years to complete, but the 8000 hours of work experience is then sufficient to get a license to work independently.

What's really important is that we design the system so that incumbent wealth can maintain their position by controlling the market through government regulation (licensing).

That's a great defense of your misstatement about what it takes to become an electrician.

Of course regulation often goes wrong. I'm pretty sure that isn't a reason to do away with it altogether, it is merely a reason to find ways to do it better.

I didn't make a misstatement. Both cases have the same problem. The government has stepped in and made it more difficult for you to enter the market. In one case, you have to pay an electrician to take a class because the government won't let you learn for free. In the other case the government has made it even worse because you now have to perform labor at sub-market wages for 4 years before you're allowed to do work that you likely could've performed on your own after just a few weeks.

There's a difference between the requirements for licensing being excessive and "massive debt".

In both cases the government regulation is making you an indentured servant to incumbent wealth. In one case you're a slave to financiers and the education incumbents and in the other case you're a slave to the labor union who doesn't want you coming in and undercutting them. I'm not interested in debating which one is worse, they're both very similar problems. And neither is necessary.

I think the issue is that the rate we pay people at has not grown much at all, but the cost of living has skyrocketed (Especially housing.) Also education requirements for specialized jobs have increased, and if you fail to use your degree after school then you are pretty much screwed from the accumulated debt.

My grandpa was a mailman his whole life, and supported a family of 5 on that income. He is pretty well off now. Today the average $15 an hour USPS carriers get paid will barely support one person in a small city.

It's been a long time since I've seen teenagers (or the college-aged) working at a grocery store, or even Target.

Really? That's odd, because that's at least half the staff where I live for all of those types of positions.

>Is every single type of profession required to support a family of 4?

Certainly not. And anyone who says it should is being disingenuous unless they also support rabidly protectionist trade policy like not purchasing virtually anything from China or Mexico. What they really mean is that they don't like seeing poor people close to them.

They have been priced out of their own neighborhood and that is really unfortunate. Theoretically they should move to a place with a cheaper cost of living. People move all the time for wages and cost of living; I would guess its the number one reason people move. They don't work for Facebook they work for a contractor; I would say they need to find a better job or a less expensive place to live (cost of living).

Theoretically they should move to a place with a cheaper cost of living.

Theoretically the entire company could do that.

So...make all of their employees choose between uprooting their lives to move to a low-cost area (which they they didn't get to pick), or leaving their job? Didn't Reddit catch some flak over that recently? (yes I'm aware it was the other way, into the Bay Area rather than out)

Please. Most (if not "basically all") of their employees already moved to work there.

I'm one of those employees. I'd still be resentful if my company unilaterally imposed a move on me. And I don't even own a house here. If I move away, I'd want it to be a place I chose, taking into account my own needs and preferences. People put down roots after a while; friends, family, schools, social clubs.

I mean, they slowly are... Seattle is booming. Google, Facebook, et al. are all massively expanding their presence.

Admittedly, the COL is going up rapidly there too, but at least there's a huge amount of construction happening.

I wish the large tech companies would experiment with more remote-only teams, it would be great to eliminate the commute and live anywhere I want.

When things go bad, the satellite offices get shut down first. That is a reason for employees to stay in the area.

I know, now those of us who do not make wages indexed to cost of living in the bay area are being pushed out.

Unfortunately, rent controls and frozen property taxes prevent this sort of thing - changes in living situations reset the ratchet, which means that the terms of trade are going to be extremely unfavorable.

Moving costs money.

If you're scraping by as tightly as they are - how would one expect them to afford to move?

You need money to rent a u-haul to haul your stuff, some cash to rent an apartment, and then enough cash to provide a runway to find a job (which in a service industry role shouldn't take more than 6-8 weeks) - that still adds up to about 10k to relocate to a cheaper part of the country.

Having moved across the country a few years back for my job, the idea that it costs near $10k is ridiculous. I didn't even have half that to my name when I moved. Checking U-Haul, you can geta 15' for 10 days and go from SF to NYC for under 3k. And you're probably going to be going half that distance and in less time.

So let's say you go more central. Estimate U-Haul at 2k, gas at 1k, rent of new place as $500/mo (so $1k first month). And let's say you eat out every day on the trip and actually use all 10 days. For 3 people that's $5(per meal)3(people)3(meals per day)*10(days)=$450. You're at ~$4.5k right there, under half your value. I can tell you I did 2/3 of the country in 3 days and closer to $2k (but I own a truck).

And with my experience this is a conservative value. I'd expect you could do it a lot cheaper than that. With $5k you CAN move most places in the country. For a few grand you can move most places within a half country radius.

I'm not trying to say that saving isn't hard, but I'm calling BS on your $10k number. A few grand is a number close to which you can save and borrow from friends/family. I think the reluctance to move is more a reluctance to move, not so much the financial burden. I know most of my friends won't do it for that reason. And I won't lie, that is a tough part, but you have to do what you have to do.

You're not considering that these people are living month-to-month so they don't have 5K lying around and that the time between jobs when they are moving is time they're not getting paid. That means that you need >5K, otherwise you just erased all your savings to move to a place with a lower job prospects.

> You're not considering that these people are living month-to-month so they don't have 5K lying around

Uhhh.... I said

> I'm not trying to say that saving isn't hard, but I'm calling BS on your $10k number. A few grand is a number close to which you can save and borrow from friends/family.

I'm also suggesting that the cost (from experience and our estimate above) that it is far less than 10k to move. I also acknowledge the difficulty of the task and realize that you might not be able to do it independently. I did say that I recently did just this. So, please read the entirety of a comment before replying.

> otherwise you just erased all your savings to move to a place with a lower job prospects.

Who said that? Have a job lined up first. Consider cost of living changes. I'm not saying to just pick up your bags and determine where to move by throwing a dart at a map. You can line up a job. You can line up housing. You can line up your travel and moving so you only lose a few days of work. This is literally how I did it. No, it isn't trivial, but it also isn't that difficult. Especially if you're really open to where you move to. You're making an unreasonable assumption here, and I don't appreciate the red herring. As for erasing ALL your savings? Yeah, I've been there, done that. Sucks, but it is making an investment in yourself. And IMO a good investment.

Uhaul 2-3000k Hotel during moving 80/night * 6 days = 480 fuel for other vehicle on trip (presumes two cars, and uhaul can haul one) = 350 food on trip = 720 dollars (assuming 40/meal (assumes $8/pp) and you eat fast food) 3 nights of hotel upon arrival = 300 (more expensive in city.) 2 months of food on arrival for a family of 5 for two months, assuming you can cook at home 5 (head) * 3 (meals) * 4 (dollars per person) * 60 (days) = 3600 dollars. apartment 800 (first month) +800 (security) +800 (last month) +800 (second month) +200 (key fee, background check) = 3400 Starting up utilities (power/internet) = 300 Cell Phone 100

Total: 11250

Now this is my worst case for a family of 5 - in all likelihood, move in costs could be lower, food on the road might be cheaper, and food at home could be much cheaper - but the 10k number was picked because you need an emergency cushion - my original back of the napkin (literal) showed about 8500 dollars, which would leave you more cushion for the unexpected.

So while I agree with you.. that I could move cross country for 5k - I don't think I could move a family of 5 cross country for 5k.

I totally disagree with your numbers. $800 is a lot for rent. We're assuming we're going somewhere cheap. Even that $500 is high if you're moving to the middle of the country. You can find a 2 or 3 bedroom rental at $500 in even "bigger" cities like Oklahoma City or Albuquerque. That's a huge upgrade from a garage. Utilities are going to be nowhere near that. You're also inflating numbers. Like where does this 2 months of food come from? Where are you getting the second month? Who does this? It is first and last (which is your security deposit). Utils are going to be <$100/mo, including basic internet.

So for 5 people, on the cheap (because come on, they are living in a garage, we're just looking for an upgrade, not middle class status on arrival). So let's do an even more refined analysis from what I did before.

Uhaul = 2-3k with fuel (we aren't doing the 10 days Uhaul estimated. NYC to SF is 44hrs driving). You tow your car, but I'm guessing they don't have one, let alone two. $5/person/meal for lunch and dinner (breakfast at motel or you skip). That's $150 for 3 days (we're on the road ALL day). Motel at $40/night (two nights). You also have a uhaul... (you can trade off driving through the night too...) First and last month is $900 (we're doing 2bd 1ba in not the greatest neighborhood but not out in the boonies. The kids have a room). Utils are $150 for turning on and first month. You buy a cheap cell phone or a prepaid, $100 for two phones (you and wife). You probably already have this, but hey I'm adding a little wiggle room. Nothing about this is glamarous, but that's not what I'm trying to illustrate here. This comes to $3,380-$4,380. Clearly we can do even cheaper. These numbers probably seem low to you because you've never had to do this or never lived in these places.

5k would give you wiggle room, and honestly we're not concerned about that. We're looking bare minimum. Most people don't even have $500 in their savings, so unfortunately we're not going to presume that our imaginary family of 5 does. We can definitely argue over this number but I'll say CAN is in the range 5k+-1k for a good portion of the country.

So CAN we move a family of 5 across the country? Yes. Is it going to be easy? No. Is it going to be comfortable? No. Are you going to live in the greatest area? No. Are you going to have an easier time saving money once you move? Yes (on the condition that you did your research. Even a "pay decrease" can be a "raise"). Is it going to be better than a family of 5 in a garage? Hell yeah.

So I've been researching a move to DFW for the last two years.

Consider that when starting a new job you may go upwards of a month without a paycheck (to do pay cycle alignment). So beyond that the presumption is that you'll need to pay two months of living expenses if you move without a job - and its near to impossible to find a service job by interviewing remotely - and it will take 2-8 weeks to find one, and then another 2-4 weeks before you see a paycheck. (hence the two months of food, and extra month of rent)

800 a month is reasonable for a decent but not great area in DFW. Also, some places do want first/last/security deposit, plus various other "non-refundable deposits" - but if you're willing to put them in a bad part of town - I'll concede that 550-600 is possible.

The 100 dollars for a cell phone - was to pay for their existing services.

It's California, so yes they have a car (even odds) also, how do you fit 5 people in the cab of a uhaul? you don't. You can fit three legally, four is pushing it, and five is out of the question.

Also 40 bucks/night is unrealistic for hotels, they usually start at 50 and go up from there - some motel 6 properties do still have the 39.99 rate - but they're increasingly rare at this point - even when they do, thats for single occupancy (they charge more with more people) - in addition, no 40 dollar motel has breakfast.

As far as your quip that I've not done this? I have, I moved to Seattle with basically no money, and no stuff - which isn't practical when you're raising kids - I'd very much like to get out of the west coast as it is - but my job is here, and they pay me reasonably well for it. I also travel a ton for work - in the last 18 months I've been to: Erie (PA), Pittsburgh, Toronto, Ottawa, Dallas (twice), Phoenix, Palo Alto, Cheyenne (twice), Denver (twice), Newark, Chicago (Elgin), Winnipeg, Washington DC, Portland (OR), Ontario (CA), Vancouver (BC), and Newark. So I do have a good scope of cost of living elsewhere - and most importantly reasonable hotel costs. In addition two years ago I did a cross country road trip, from here to Nashville - some of my hotel data comes from that.

Bay Area has a unique challenge in this regard. All jobs (pretty much) pay more than what would have one qualify for benefits but not enough to actually pay for even the basics - healthcare, housing and food. The only solution for those who are not already locked into a rent controlled place and can't afford the sky high rent is to move out. Politicians, NIMBYs everybody blocks or opposes every proposed solution for one reason or the other. It's a stalemate. It needs a big big political push out of this. Only someone who has a lot of political capital can get it done - not just money.

My personal preference is to merge the housing, zoning and public transportation authorities of all cities and municipalities in the bay area into Metro wide organizations that plan for the whole area instead of just a city/town.But this is the antithesis of local governance and a really hard pill to swallow. Until then cities like SF and Oakland will bear the brunt of this crisis while cities like Palo Alto try to ban even two story constructions.

Agree with this view. Only the state can force that type of cooperation. MN did a variation of this in the early 70's to stop Twin Cities municipalities from competing against each other with tax breaks in order to attract companies. The result has been the only metro region that works together for the benefit of the region, not individual towns.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/the-mir...

"No other large American city has adopted a plan like Minneapolis’s to sprinkle business taxes across a region in order to keep the poorest areas from falling too far behind."

"In the 1960s, local districts and towns in the Twin Cities region offered competing tax breaks to lure in new businesses, diminishing their revenues and depleting their social services in an effort to steal jobs from elsewhere within the area. In 1971, the region came up with an ingenious plan that would help halt this race to the bottom, and also address widening inequality. The Minnesota state legislature passed a law requiring all of the region’s local governments—in Minneapolis and St. Paul and throughout their ring of suburbs—to contribute almost half of the growth in their commercial tax revenues to a regional pool, from which the money would be distributed to tax-poor areas. Today, business taxes are used to enrich some of the region’s poorest communities.

Never before had such a plan—known as “fiscal equalization”—been tried at the metropolitan level. “In a typical U.S. metro, the disparities between the poor and rich areas are dramatic, because well-off suburbs don’t share the wealth they build,” says Bruce Katz, the director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. But for generations now, the Twin Cities’ downtown area, inner-ring neighborhoods, and tony suburbs have shared in the metro’s commercial success. By spreading the wealth to its poorest neighborhoods, the metro area provides more-equal services in low-income places, and keeps quality of life high just about everywhere."

> "Working at a Facebook cafeteria is an enviable job in many ways. Nicole earns $19.85 an hour as a shift lead, while Victor makes $17.85 – well above the $15 per hour minimum for contractors that Facebook established in 2015."

Assuming they work 40-hour-weeks, for 49 weeks every year, they make a combined family income of $74k/year. I've volunteered with low-income families in SF. I've seen families just as big as theirs, getting by in San Francisco, with half their salary. The way they are demanding attention, and comparing themselves with others in far worse situations, makes them sound really petty.

I've personally met people who are truly struggling in horrendous ways. If Mark Zuckerberg wants to use his personal time to help those at the very bottom, good for him. Someone making ~$18/hour really has no business chiding him for doing so.

> I've seen families just as big as theirs, getting by in San Francisco, with half their salary.

It's hard for me to judge individual budgets out of context. Some people are in financial holes in various ways: healthcare debt, personal debt, usurious lones, bad credit, bad investment choices, support payments, victims of investment fraud, etc. Sometimes we can say it's their fault, but it's not fair to assume it is.

It's also worth pointing out that "getting by" in the short term does not mean living a net-wealth-building lifestyle in the long term.

A few things. They aren't Facebook employees, as some people might infer when reading the headline. They're working for the cafeteria contractor - Flagship Facility Services.

They are making $2 and $4/hour more than the $15/hour minimum wage people are fighting for. Obviously $15 isn't enough and neither is more than $15.

>> Earlier in their relationship, the couple both earned about $12 per hour as managers at Chipotle and were able to afford their own apartment.

What changed? Having the 3 kids? Did they move to a different area? $12/hr isn't going to get you an apartment in most of CA.

> They aren't Facebook employees, as some people might infer when reading the headline. They're working for the cafeteria contractor - Flagship Facility Services.

Not saying you're doing this, but this is very regularly used as a dodge to erase the responsibility of very large companies (and smaller too, of course) to ensure that the people working for their contractors to be treated fairly and equitably, too.

Contractors-as-plausible-deniability is a bad, bad scene.

What is "fairly and equitably"? If I choose to live in the most expensive metro area in the country, have ten kids, and then kill my wife so there's no one else to help support them, is it my employer's fault I'm struggling? At what point do people's situations stop being other people's fault?

Almost 80k/year in salary leaves a family stuck in a garage over there? That's absurd

Only if you need to live in the most expensive housing market in the nation.

...which you do, if your job is tied to a location in that market. Uprooting a family to move elsewhere is more of a burden than a lot of affluent young single people seem to think.

Right. Raising their pay wouldn't even help. Oh, it would help them but whatever place they manage to move into with their improved cash flow would displace someone else. Then those displaced people would have a sob story until they get their pay raised, and displace someone...

The real problem is the lack of housing for the number of people that want to live there.

A few good skyscraper high density developments would fix it better than pay increases.

They are living in his parent's garage, so it's likely rent free or below market, and they would have access to the home I'd imagine.

80K/y is barely above the poverty line for a family of four in the area.

The cost of living in the Bay Area is -- and I say this with no figuration -- frightening. It provokes genuine fear in me.

Har, "with no figuration" is a good substitute for old "literally". Thanks.

I only frightens me figuratively, but that may be because I don't plan on moving there.

Totally off-topic but considering the primary sense of `literally' is being figuratively eroded all around me, “with no figuration” might be the best option we'll end up with. I wish I could insure it never came to pass.

That's contractor salary, so remember no benefits.

Maybe equivalent to 60K normal salary. With 3 kids that's not so easy.

  "Neither Facebook nor the food service contractor, Flagship Facility Services…"

It sounds like he is not a contractor, he is an employee - of the outsourced service provider, Flagship Facility Services.

I have to travel to Facebook HQ once a month, unless I'm traveling to some other FB facility. Since I switch hotels and run in the mornings, this has given me a good opportunity to see what's going on in several different neighborhoods. One constant seems to be a pretty high number of camper vans, or sometimes plain old utility vans, parked semi-permanently on side street. I'm sure some of these are just there because there wasn't room in the driveway, as might happen anywhere. I'm equally sure that most are people living there, and not always low-income people. There are surely a fair number of Google and Facebook and whatever-else developers, making well into six figures, saving money that way. That's how bad the housing market is. Even the tiny bit of land for a mobile home is expensive. Glad I don't live there myself.

>I have to travel to Facebook HQ once a month, unless I'm traveling to some other FB facility.

I'm curious, is this because of your role or do all FB employees do this if they work outside of MPK?

Most FB employees are expected to work in a specific local facility most of the time, and have no particular travel requirement. I flipped that on its head; I save on my daily commute by WFH most of the time, and pay it back with the monthly trip. In the end I think it works out roughly equal. It's partly tied to my role, partly to leverage applied when I was being hired, and it seems to be unusual enough that my colleagues often look at me funny when I mention it.

That's incredible! I'd like to do that someday.

I pay almost $50k/year in rent for my family of four well outside of any city center. We live in a very modest apartment/townhome. That's right: my annual rent is just about the same as the median gross income for a household in this country.

It is absurd, but I can easily see a family struggling to live on ~$65k take-home.

That sounds like a good deal for most of SV.

It is. We have a two year contract at our current rate.

Yep. A lot of junior people at the large companies roomshare, because they can't afford living by themselves. Many of the slightly more tenured people can finally get a place if they are willing to have a 90-120 minute commute. (Each direction)

The bay area is a giant clusterfuck when it comes to housing.

Currently many Bay Area cities, including ones that are a solid 90 minute drive, have median household incomes in the 75-$125K range. But the payment on a median house is 100% or more of that income. The situation is not yet literally Dickensian, but I don't know it's that far off.

>Nicole watches large amounts of leftover food go into the compost – food she’s not allowed to take home

Why is she not allowed to take it home? It would be free for whoever her employer is, it would help her and her family.

Also I really dislike wasting food.

> Why is she not allowed to take it home?

Liability. If her kids get sick she could sue. On one hand, I feel like this should be something a waiver solves. On the other hand, that opens the door for handing rotting food to employees

One of the reasons for disallowing employees from taking home food is that they will lose their motivation to sell food if they get to keep the unsold food after business hours. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the deli employees hide expensive food from customers and take it home after work because it's "unsold".

My cousin worked at Walmart during Black Friday sales and he has told me that his coworkers hide popular sale items in the back-shelf for themselves to buy it when they are off the clock.

There's no excuse for food waste. If they're not willing to work with local charities directly, they should at the very least work with Copia to deal with it https://www.gocopia.com/

Facebook didn't make the area expensive. No tech company did. Those local businesses, and the chains alike, have made it expensive. So much blame gets put on the tech companies, but the tech companies aren't raising the prices, they are just paying people better, and the local businesses abuse that to the fullest extent. There is no NEED to charge $6 for a gallon of milk, when milk from those same cows is sold for $2 50 miles away... thats not a SV valley tech company problem, its a SV valley retailer problem, and the blame needs to shift that way...

[edited because splellings]

> Facebook didn't make the area expensive. No tech company did. Those local businesses, and the chains alike, have made it expensive. So much blame gets put on the tech companies, but the tech companies aren't raising the prices, they are just paying people better, and the local businesses abuse that to the fullest extent. There is no NEED to charge $6 for a gallon of milk, when milk from those same cows is sold for $2 50 miles away... thats not a SV valley tech company problem, its a SV valley retailer problem, and the blame needs to shift that way...

You're attacking a false target. Buying food in the bay area isn't expensive. Rent and housing is expensive. There's a great Costco in mountain view that charges the same prices as Costco most other places. Similar for other grocery options.

When I lived there last year, our food bills were comparable to living in Pittsburgh. Our rent on a 3br/1ba house, not renovated since 1956, with a portable dishwasher in the garage... was 50% more than my mortgage is in Pittsburgh for a decent size house in a lovely little neighborhood 3/4 of a mile from my work. It was rather shocking.

It's a combination of high salaries and crappy housing policy leading to an explosion in property costs.

> Buying food in the bay area isn't expensive.

Yeah, I found that to be pretty much true. Of course there are plenty more options (organic/natural/raw) if you WANT to spend more, but no intrinsic cost increase.

But there are a lot of marginal cost increases in the Bay vs other places. Car insurance is more expensive. Gas is more expensive. Simple one-offs (like oil changes) are more expensive. You're more likely to eat out because of the brutal commute times. Etc.

Your assumption is the "local businesses" own their property. I don't know many small grocery chains that own their lots. "All boats rise with the tide". High demand for residential means commercial and industrial zoned lots will also increase in value/rent/lease.

That's very very backwards. Local business are charging $6 for milk because they have to make enough profit to pay rent. The soaring rent is absolutely due to high-salary tech work; the bay area existed for decades without these significant rent issues.

If those retailers could do market segmentation, to sell the milk for $6 to software engineers and for $2 to cafeteria workers, they'd do it.

What I get from this article is that these people should be salaried employees, not contractors.

Sure it's not as cheap for Facebook, but folding them into a system that already exists is probably more cost efficient for society itself than having them fend for themselves in the money-pit of a private marketplace.

They could move to Texas. The price for that garage is probably more than the total cost of a 3000sqft house in north Fort Worth. The Toyota headquarters just moved from CA to TX and those guys are buying large houses in expensive areas of town in cash.

I have known many people who have left CA for exactly this reason. I am sure CA is great when you are young and single, but once reality kicks in CA becomes very expensive.

  The family of five have lived in this cramped space next
  to Victor’s parents’ house for three years.

It sounds like the garage belongs to his parents. Which implies they don't own it (so no equity to free up in order to buy a place in Texas), and they may well pay a very low (or no) rent.

Didn't notice that- if that's the case this story is pretty different than what I'd initially thought.

80K/year with no or a trivial amount of rent is a pretty good setup. There are tens of millions of people in the US who have it worse.

They're living in their parents garage. With the single biggest cost of living(housing) removed, I'm curious how they can't afford life at 80k/yr. Besides for housing, cost of living does not need to be particularly higher in SV than elsewhere.

Either that, or the parents are charging them market rate to live in the garage, which is probably illegal anyway...

How do you figure that "besides for housing, cost of living does not need to be particularly higher in SV than elsewhere"? While housing is undeniably the most wildly out-of-control expense in Silicon Valley, the rest of the essentials of life ain't cheap either.

But my family (4 persons) lived at apartment ($2600/month) in south bay with 90k/year income. 80k/year wasn't that bad if they pay more than $1000/month for that garage.

> the rest of the essentials of life ain't cheap either.

Rent makes up between 1/2 and 2/3 of my monthly spending. Most "essentials" are actually pretty cheap in SV (gas maybe being the exception). Unless you have kids and need to pay for childcare; and that's also a function of the high housing prices because the workers there need to pay rent also.

What other essentials of life? A car and car insurance are within bounds of normalcy. Food at grocery stores is in line with the rest of California and farm raised food can be dirt cheap. Good public schools are readily available. Healthcare costs are the same as anywhere else in the USA.

What other essentially things besides housing are inflated in SV? Yes, you can go out and buy $20 bean sprout sandwiches, but that isn't exactly a necessity.

Someone else was downvoted for saying so, but Zuckerberg is running for president, which is exactly why he need not look at his own employees. Votes in California are almost a sure bet for D nominee, if he becomes one. It is voters in the swing states that politicians actually have to care about. It is them who have to be understood and pandered to because they have political power.

If you're interested in trying to improve the conditions of those who serve you at your workplace, consider attending a meeting of the Tech Workers Coalition.

Free beer!

https://techworkerscoalition.org

But he is on a journey to connect the world, since that is the greatest challenge of his generation

The big problem seems to be the lack of affordable housing in the area - when I was looking for 1br apartments, none of them were under $2700 a month (plus 300+ for car parking), and they were all brand new luxury rooms.

I've been looking to move from San Jose further up the peninsula.

There are apartments under $2700. Even under $2000. However, there are differences of quality. A unit around $2000 won't have in-unit laundry, a dishwasher, a/c, a pool, etc. A place about $2700 likely will have those things, new appliances in the kitchen (oops, forgot "newly renovated"), etc.

It's definitely tough to find a good, decent quality place.

When I hear stuff like this I'm flabbergasted. I live and work in downtown Manhattan, and it's much more affordable to get housing [1] or parking [2] than what online commenters describe about the bay area -- contrary to what stereotypes would have you believe.

If the world's richest, densest, most economically productive city is outperforming you on affordability, you're doing something really wrong.

Get out of the bay area and come to NYC. You can live well here on $20 an hour (if it's fulltime with health benefits and you have no dependents), and amazingly on a developer salary. You can live in a small place walking distance to work, or in a huge place a comfy train ride away, or something in between, all for substantially less than in the bay area.

All the big tech companies are here and a lot of startups have come from here -- and we actually have other industries too, helpful if you have a spouse that doesn't work in tech -- or if you change careers someday -- or if you just enjoy having friends who don't all do the same thing you do and offer different perspectives. It's just a much bigger place.

Computer tech had its day in the california sun, but I honestly believe NYC will ultimately capture the US based computer tech industry, the same way it has captured many industries in the past -- by outperforming all other US cities at things that matter for employees and employers.

[1] I pay $1850 for a 1 bedroom near Houston St. It is still easy to find similar and slightly cheaper deals. You can pay much less if you trade away space or the luxury of being able to walk to work. For an example of trading away for price alone, a friend of mine recently easily found and leased a room (in a 3br share) for $650, a 30 min subway or bike away from downtown manhattan.

[2] I had a car for a while for purely stupid fun impractical reasons (don't anymore, for practical reasons) and paid almost nothing for parking by parking it on the street, which is easy once you learn the tricks. Paid maybe $65 or $130 a month for the occasional ticket. But parking is unnecessary anyway since car ownership is unnecessary due to excellent transit (and walkability/bikeability) -- and if you really needed a car once in a while, you're surely in walking distance of a zipcar or one of its several competitors.

One way to minimize the cost of living impact is to set up satellite offices. Set up a campus in Texas or Oklahoma. It's not like people would not take jobs there. I'm sure some globe trotters would not, but most jobs don't need the globe trotter kind of mentality.

Janitors, bus drivers, food service workers and security can't work from a "satellite office". This is about more than engineers.

Fewer engs in the bay area lowers pressure on cost of housing, among other things.

Yes, but a lot of the big tech companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft want people to work at their head office location rather than opening up satellite offices across the world. I understand how it simplifies logistics and communication, but it's not without its own problems.

I live in and grew up in Oklahoma and every time I hear a horror story about housing in these high-population areas I balk. I have a good, challenging job making what would be poverty-level income in SF but I have a house, a nice car, and can travel a few times a year. I guess the night life isn't as good or there is "not that much to do" but I hang out with my friends, eat good food, and drink good beer so I'm not so sure what else I could really want.

The tech giants could put satellite offices in OK, or people could just move and shoot for one of the good jobs that are already here. I really don't get why anyone puts up with SF.

At one time, Google had such an office here in the Phoenix area (I think it actually located in Tempe or Chandler); they closed it after a few years ostensibly because they couldn't find enough workers who met their standards.

So maybe it's a chicken/egg problem; they'd love to set up such offices, but they can't find the workers they need. The workers they need are all in California or some other similar, more liberal-outlook place (Arizona as a whole, and Texas, and a lot of the rest of these desert places are mostly very conservative, unfortunately) - and they don't want to move to such places.

I don't know how you change this quickly. I don't think you can. I'm wondering if it is this divided political and social culture wars attitudes etc that is making this a gordian knot to figure out...?

They are not unable to find people to staff their DCs and their DCs are typically in small cities (though not all). So it's not that.

I'm sure they could find talent in BOS for example, but they don't have major offices there (as opposed to LAX, & LON, for example).

There is no Photo OP for Mark if he is working within his own company walls to genuinely try to help his 'own'. T'sall 'bout managin' perception.

It is terrible that he can't live in Menlo Park on 75K. On the other hand the reason he lives in a garage is because he and is family are living with his parents, most likely to save money and avoid the horrendous commute most of his coworkers probably face.

On yet a third hand I can't feel all that bad for this guy since he someday stands to inherit a house worth millions of dollars

You had to pull out a third hand, but I'm glad you were able to figure out a reason not to feel bad for them. That was close.

haha, yeah. It's petty but I'm well into adulthood, have what I would have considered an excellent income (had you asked me as a teen) and rent what I would have considered (had you shown me as a teen) kind of dump because my job is here. So yeah I have a bit less sympathy for the people who complain about their income while ignoring the fact that they have a large financial asset which is only ridiculously valuable because of the same things that make it too expensive to live around here.

On yet a third hand I can't feel all that bad for this guy since he someday stands to inherit a house worth millions of dollars.

He's 29 years old, so his parents could be in their 50's. So living in a garage and then inheriting a million dollar house 20 years from now after his kids are grown and out of the house (well, garage) doesn't sound like much to be happy about.

I take it you aren't old enough to have started sweating about retirement ;)

As many have pointed out, the main issue here is the Bay Area's cost of living - especially housing. What they're earning is higher than a lot of people in the food service industry, but still isn't enough to afford a decent house or apartment here in the bay area. It's not like Facebook can start paying them 30$ per hour or issue them stock.. some types of jobs just don't scale in terms of salary and it's just unfortunate that homes in the bay area are overpriced.

Something just needs to be done regarding affordable housing here. Otherwise people not doing tech will just slowly get priced out from neighborhoods and will have to deal with living 2 hours away in cheaper areas

I'm not saying Zuckerberg couldn't do more to include his cafeteria workers but let's face it, even doubling the pay rates of the workers at the bottom of the pile won't solve their problems because they lie elsewhere - with the free-for-all property and rental markets which have been tearing communities apart across the globe for decades. Nowhere is the brutal reality of capitalism and its failings more evident than in the property market. Property and finance are founded on the principle of getting something for nothing but someone has to pay - you, who have only your labour to sell.

Brutal, but honest. Finance and property are where concentrated wealth really show their ugly side. Without regulation, or with the wrong regulation, this cannot spell good news for average joe worker.

In the end, the article reads as an advertisement for the union they're joining. That's probably the general purpose of the article anyway.

That said, it does drive home the overall point that "inequality" is a very complicated issue, and for all the good PR that Facebook and Zuckerberg have, they're just as guilty, inasmuch as there is any real guilt to assign.

Facebook certainly has the money, and if they do indeed care about wealth inequality, they would do well to start at their own doorstep. So this worker is a contractor. So what? Very convenient; result still stands.

>They look at us like we're lower, like we don't matter

:\ Please stop doing this. You know who you are.

Management often contracts out food service, security, and janitorial work. This means they do not qualify for perks that are described in the article. It also means they don't qualify for company picnics, etc.

Good managers will often do retreats, mixers, happy hours, etc. to encourage sales and accounts staff to mix with the engineers. I've never seen the same concern about how white collar workers get along with blue collar ones.

I understand all the above reasoning. I'm just saying it's not just a problem in personal interactions.

The low income limit in the Santa Clara County is 75K for a family of 4. Which should trigger a lot of program eligibility, especially for housing through HUD. I would guess that availability of Section 8/HUD subsidized housing is a critical factor with regards to this county though. Most section 8 properties seem to be on long waiting list.

The exceptional property values would most likely limit the participation of developers in any of the Section 8 lending or construction programs.

Only mentioning this because there are programs in place to support families in this scenario, but local governance and investor behavior can directly negate the effectiveness and availability of these programs.

https://www.wetakesection8.com/search/CA/palo-alto/ http://section-8-housing-income-limits.credio.com/l/227/San-...

I wonder how much interest they're paying on those "payday loans".

A good bit. Payday loans aren't something anyone wants to do, ever. They are predatory, they know people only turn to them at the last resort (ie, cant feed your kids) so they can charge whatever they want.

The justice comes in the fact that they lose a shit ton of money, because of how sleazy they are, the important credit companies (Equifax, Transunion, etc) wont work with them, so if you don't pay them back, your only loss is not being able to get more payday loans... (there is a specific payday loan/pawn shop loan credit bureau).

So, dont give people shit if they have to take a payday loan, i've been there... i've had to, when i got laid off and went 2 months without income and borrowed from about every family member I could... i basically asked my prior manager to lie and say i still worked there so i could get a loan to feed my family. I'd never walk into one of those places if I werent in dire straits...

Yeah, um, protip: avoid those.

I'm going to come right out and say it and fully expect to be downvoted to death - these people are the problem. Not Facebook (who they don't actually work for) and not their actual employer. They make a combined 75-80k a year. The median household income in CA is 61k. The median for the Silicon Valley area is 94k. They need to get up and move to give their children and themselves a better lifestyle. They have the means to do it based on the state's median household income. They're just being assholes.

They need to make the commute to work and live in a place that's much more affordable. It's that simple. I work in NYC and make substantially more than their combined incomes and yet I don't live in Manhattan or any NYC borough. Why? Because it's hideously expensive in Manhattan and the nearby areas. I drag my ass all the way from central NJ and it takes around 2 hours each way. I'm not an outlier either. They have multiple bus lines to service all the other central NJ commuters. These people need to come to grips that they can't afford to live in that ridiculously overpriced area that happens to be located within a convenient proximity to their jobs.

Also, their entirely mentality is completely fucked. They seemed surprised that they weren't allowed to bring their kids to work when other, actual Facebook employees did. It's like they don't realize they don't actually work for Facebook, but rather just work in a Facebook building. Also, there's this entitlement-driven, handout-seeking garbage: “Our motivation is not to bash either company. It’s for our families. Why do we have to live like this, when the company we work for has the resources to make it better?” So...just because your company has enough money to give you a raise, it should do so? Their employer should just ignore market forces and the fair price for this work? Speaking of which, they receive above the fair market rate already which makes this comment even more astounding. They want their employer to also ignore shareholders/owners interests and just give them more money? And this money wouldn't even be done to retain talent, reward extraordinary performance, or any of the other standard reasons for which this is usually justifiable? Wow. The company I work for makes a lot of money and has fantastic margins. But if I ever was in a performance review and said something like, "hey, the company makes a lot of money and I feel like I should get a larger piece" - and didn't follow it up with a damn good reason to justify that comment and prove my increased claimed value to the company, they'd laugh in my face, and rightfully so.

These people need to get a clue.

Exactly who then is supposed to do the service industry work for the bay area?

Two hours from Palo Alto gets you nowhere - because its not any more affordable two hours away by car - there two hours on public transit wouldn't even get you out of the Bay Area proper.

50 years ago, it was common that the employees in the cafeteria (janitors too) were actually employees of the company who's building they worked for - why should they have a different want - its not unreasonable to ask that they be extended the same benefits of others working on the site.

To give you a clue - most of the bay area housing is single family homes (by area) - its not anywhere near as dense as NYC or even large parts of NJ - its a housing supply problem.

While I'm not familiar with the area, a very quick search produced a rental available across the water in Fremont, apparently only ~30 minutes by car. The rental is $2,319 a month and has 3 beds and 2 baths and a total of 1,100 sqft of living space.

Sounds extremely reasonable, all things considered.

Their combined pretax income is like 74k - that means their take home is probably closer to 58k - a 2300 dollar apartment is a stretch on 8k - it would be a stretch for me and I make considerably more.

Also the distance makes childcare more complex too.

Also, I'd look at the average price you're seeing too - not the one or two outliers.

I grew up in India and both my parents worked for a Central government company. Their company has quarters (apartment complexes) which were heavily subsidized. The employee could own one individual apartment or pay subsidized monthly rent. The company (central govt. in this case) offer loans for their employees at a lower than market rate to own this apartment.

I like that approach. Since both my parents were working they were able to afford a house outside of the area but a lot of their coworkers owned an apartment.

Those apartment complexes were categorized differently for different income people. So a lower income worker is not forced to live on an apartment that they can't afford.

I wonder why Facebook or Google can't take a similar approach. I understand that in this particular case, the employee is a contractor who happens to work at Facebook. Heck, if I happened to work for such a company I know I would live there.

Facebook actually is trying to [build their own housing](https://sf.curbed.com/2016/7/27/12299438/facebook-housing-de...) now.

Ultimately though its a failure of Menlo Park that it hasn't allowed enough housing units to support the number of office units its allowed to be built.

i did not know that. I wish more and more companies did this.

Amazon, Wallmart, McDonalds are notorious for pushing the cost of employees onto welfare and the rest of the population. Facebook doesn't seem as bad but clearly there are lingering issues around the widening wage gap, part time work, contracting and access to basic facilities like healthcare that reflect our societal values and need to be addressed as a whole.

Discrimination in access to facilities and making some employees feel they are some kind of lesser human beings is backward and regressive behavior. Google does this and so does facebook and no civilized society can accept this kind of behavior. I don't know how decision makers in SV companies come to agree to dehumanize some in this manner.

What kind of utopian future or 'better world' can these companies usher if they can't even get basics like human dignity right.

> “He doesn’t have to go around the world,” said Nicole. “He should learn what’s happening in this city.”

The journalists probably wouldn't notice and thus there would be no (noteworthy) PR and thus no reason to do it. But now that there's negative publicity he might just get around to that.

People here in the comments are so insensitive.

I got from the article that Mark Zuckerberg is traveling the US to find people struggling, while a person like that serves him food every day. He's a hypocrite, no need to look for a different meaning in the article.

The argument here should be don't have a kid when you work at chipotle, let alone three. Why is this ludicrously irresponsible behavior not called out? Why do we feel sorry for people who engage in such monstrously stupid and selfish behavior?

Quite right! There should be laws against the poor reproducing. Perhaps a tax on children? Or some sort of permit system? Maybe a one child policy, exceptions only for the rich? Or just take away the children of the poor if they're irresponsible enough to have them and not be able to afford them. Give them to rich families so they can be raised properly.

I wonder if there are any examples in history that we could learn from? Surely other enlightened countries have tried something similar?

This doesn't address parent's comment at all. You act as if there's no difference between calling people out for irresponsible behavior and Orwellian policies to control that behavior.

They own a dyson fan and a projector in the picture, and possibly more expensive gadgets off-screen. It's just sad that when people are not willing to work hard enough through school and end up in shitty jobs that pay less -- then complaining about the undesirable outcome. Suck it up and take an online coding class or something. Time to build some cafeteria robots so they will at least complain on someone else's turf.

The vast majority of people isn't able to learn to code (or not well enough anyway).

School is an expensive endeavor, you'd have to shell out thousands of dollars or go into debt for years just to get a respectable degree. Without the degree, most employers wouldn't give these people the time of the day.

zuckerberg never got (finished) his harvard degree. Plenty of success people never went to college, richard branson, henry ford, rockefeller, murdoch, etc.

Tech workers from lots of different companies are organizing to get better working conditions for cafeteria workers and other service workers like them. See: http://brokeassstuart.com/blog/2017/06/27/the-tech-workers-h...

> Now she works at cafeterias with names like “Epic” and “Living the Dream”

It's like they went out of their way to come up with the most cringeworthy, Silicon Valley stereotype confirming names possible for their cafeterias.

Upvoted, it's easy to blame others for not taking care of the people, while walking by and not noticing thousands of homeless people on your way to a 6+ figure job.

In summary: wages have not kept up with dramatic cost of living inflation. A very common story on the west coast.

They own a dyson fan and a projector in the picture, and possibly more expensive gadgets off-screen.

Zuckerburg is running for president.

If you're going to be featured in an article highlighting your financial difficulty, move the $450 Dyson fan, 65" DLP TV, and overhead projector out of the frame. It begins to erode their footing and make you question their priorities.

I have friends that make much less than these folks. Some can barely make ends meet and sometimes I will help them with their personal finances. Which is when I usually discover why they can't make ends meet. $150/m cable bill, $100/m mobile bill, a car they can't afford, and constant meals out. They're usually living larger than me on 1/4 the income.

It's sad really, and I'd argue that it's probably not their fault. The level of entitlement we feel is out of control at all income levels.

Question - Why is this down voted? Isn't living within your means a basic idea in major parts of the world?

This is a great question. Those electronics are actually rational purchases, considering their situation.

The total value of the entertainment devices is around $2500. Spread out over 3 years (the length of time they've lived there), this equates to about $70/mo.

These devices offer a lower-cost option than taking the family out to eat twice per month, cable television, or for each of the adults to go out to a tavern once per month.

In other words, $70/mo wouldn't bring great opportunity to them but allows a low-cost way to blow off steam. Gardening, cooking, or athletics would be nice recreational options at similar costs, but they don't have a yard, nor a kitchen, nor do they likely have the time for scheduled athletics if they work varied shifts. Hence, the electronics are by far the most rational choices for entertainment.

I can't agree with you sorry.

No yard? Try a park in town. You can have hours of fun with a $20 soccer ball or basketball or wiffleball or cornhole or horse shoes.

Need entertainment? Read a book from the library. The great thing is you might actually learn something.

You're wrong about the value of $70 a month for someone who takes payday loans. If they banked the $840 per year they could save hundreds in payday loan interest on top of that.

Then after a few years of savings one of them could take night classes and become a welder, a nurse, or learn some other trade that would boost their income.

That is the American dream.

Let's stop pretending their jobs should pay more and start looking at reality. The reality is there are plenty of opportunities out there. Stop dreaming that your current skillset is worth more and start learning one that actually is.

Thanks for the input. I think you either are an extreme autodidact or haven't been exposed to the poverty trap.

Try a park in town? Not at night time you won't. Night time? Yeah, your irregular shifts cause you to have down time at random times. Remember, the Facebook contract isn't their only gig.

I never pretended the job should pay more. I'm remarking about the choice to purchase electronic entertainment being rational.

I actually agree with you that the parents have the choice to commute from East Oakland, Antioch, or Tracy if they want to start saving money. They are clearly making some trade-offs. I think their trade-offs are rational, but they shouldn't blame Zuck

Facebook is heavily pushing employees to transfer to Seattle. They even keep their pay rate!

MacDonald's is also a multibillion dollar corp., nobody in their right mind thinks they can raise a family working at MacD's without additional income or subsidy.

It's a job for teenagers to get experience and for blue collar retirees to make some money to and to their SS checks.

People should stop thinking teenager jobs sustain families. It doesn't have the value add. If you want to make a living open up a stand and maybe if you do things well, you'll survive and thrive.

Even in developing economies, this is ceasing to be the case. Never mind mature economies.

I don't understand, what point are you making? Your solution is pull yourself up by your bootstraps?

"have the poor considered making more money?"

No, but you cannot in good conscience believe that you can raise a middle class family if that's your one skill.

We also have people complaining about vanishing steel jobs, listen, they're not coming back and you are going to have to adjust.

Have you considered there is no possible skill that will establish a societal middle class for the population, no matter what effort or resources are put behind it?

In less than ten years you'll be talking about vanishing coding jobs, and the word is they're not coming back. What then? There is nothing we can't optimize to require less human labor. There is no possible skill that will translate to 'humans as a class' remaining relevant to productivity and a labor pool that's increasingly nonhuman. It's like expecting people to hammer in railroad ties, or dig through rock with pickaxes. Absurd, unreasonable, insane.

I quite agree with 'adjust', but I'm shocked by the idea that 'acquiring skills' is your notion of the standard to apply to all humans. There is no skill or skills that will do what you think is going to happen. All that will happen is, desperate people will obliterate the labor value of coding and thinking, during the final phase of human-centric thinking as a type of labor.

I can in good conscience believe he shouldn't have to borrow money simply to see a dentist.

I'm not clamoring to say they deserve a nice car or go to Disney world, but surely you can agree that every citizen in this country deserves a basic right to basic health care and education, and the means to achieve them?

Basic message is don't expect much from an entry level job. You can't make a living from them even in developing countries, much less in developed countries.

>If you want to make a living open up a stand and maybe if you do things well, you'll survive and thrive.

And if you don't survive and thrive? Then what?

Luckily, capitalism has a solution to that: https://media.giphy.com/media/Qa5dsjQjlCqOY/giphy.gif

The minimum wage was always supposed to be a living wage, not a pittance for teens and retirees. To quote FDR's statement when signing the law which instituted the first federal minimum wage.

> In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.

http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html

Well, we have a problem, then. Currently the whole of commerce and the whole of industry consider it a moral imperative to pay less than a living wage to workers, because that's how the value proposition shakes out when you include all possible sources of labor local and global, and include the option to automate away the labor entirely.

It's considered a moral imperative to seek the lowest cost and highest efficiency. Far from being 'not allowed to continue', any business that can legitimately arbitrage its labor so that it's paying less or substantially less than a living wage for equivalent labor, is celebrated and encouraged with the full force of societal capital. No other consideration is allowed to happen.

FDR's thinking absolutely doesn't apply anymore. Maybe it should, or maybe this just reveals the fact that our economic system is now orthoganal to human survival as a species.

> The minimum wage was always supposed to be a living wage

Well, that and a way to keep dangerous newcomers and minorities from driving down wages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Bacon_Act_of_193...

"The Coolie cannot outdo the American, but he can underlive him." - E.A. Ross

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