I feel like some people in this thread just aren't fans of San Francisco (probably for good reason) but are conflating that for having any actual idea what trying to live anywhere on the coast in California is like. I've lived there, all over... and essentially everyone is being forced to have longer commutes and paying higher rent. I moved from Oakland, out to Walnut Creek... then Pleasant Hill, then Concord and then finally said fuck this.
That it's an issue with the bay is fine, except it's not. If you look at the trends for housing cost all up and down the coast lines even in cities that used to be affordable, you'll find that in places like Portland where you could buy a house for 225k 10 years ago, you'll be priced out of the market by people willing to make cash offers up to 500k for those very same houses. I can't fault her for wanting to live in her hip coastal city, and it was a bad decision... but it wont be long until "hip coastal city" is interchangeable with "any city of interest". What's it cost to live in Nashville? How about Lexington? Raleigh? Pay simply isn't going up.
Reddit users trawled through her instagram and twitter posts, before she deleted them, and it's really hard to feel sorry for her.
She moved from a cheap city to an expensive city with no savings, financing the move via credit cards.
She moved near her dad, but decided not to live with him.
She moved to an expensive suburb, when there were cheaper suburbs nearby.
She moved into her own place, rather than live with roommates.
When she accepted her job, she knew it barely paid more than her rent.
She failed to either look for a second job, or find a roommate, to deal with her low net monthly income.
Good ol crab thinking, Internet style.
... because if you don't agree with Hedgie, you must be wrong!
No, because if your first reaction to someone saying "I can't live on this salary in San Francisco" is to root through her digital past to determine whether or not she has properly minmaxed her living situation in order to determine if she is, in fact, worthy of commiseration, then you are an extremely silly goose who has missed the point.
You wonder why the upper class is winning in the ongoing class warfare struggle? This is a perfect example of why - someone comes out and points out how badly our system is failing the lower rungs, and our first response isn't to say "yeah, that's fucked up", but to immediately interrogate every decision that they make, looking to pinpoint exactly how they've screwed the pooch by choosing to be comfortable instead of sacrificing...for what, exactly?
Because God forbid a twenty something has to have a roommate to live in their hip coastal city of choice.
So tell me - exactly what level of privation is necessary in order to make her argument acceptable?
So yeah, I find the arguments that this is her fault because she didn't do everything she could have to minimize her costs problematic.
So according to you is she just entitled to live to whatever standard she wants and somehow her employer is supposed to magically pay her enough to support it or what? What standard of living is a minimum wage worker supposed to have according to ypu?
What do you think the Fight For $15 campaign was about? I don't think that saying that workers at the lowest tiers should be able to live securely on one salary without having to live a Spartan lifestyle is somehow so wrong. Perhaps if salaries had kept in line with productivity gains, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Okay so $15 minimum wage? Nation wide or just in California or just San Francisco?
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Reddit users trawled through her instagram and twitter posts, before she deleted them, and it's really hard to feel sorry for her.
She moved from a cheap city to an expensive city with no savings, financing the move via credit cards.
She moved near her dad, but decided not to live with him.
She moved to an expensive suburb, when there were cheaper suburbs nearby.
She moved into her own place, rather than live with roommates.
When she accepted her job, she knew it barely paid more than her rent.
She failed to either look for a second job, or find a roommate, to deal with her low net monthly income.
Good ol crab thinking, Internet style.
... because if you don't agree with Hedgie, you must be wrong!
No, because if your first reaction to someone saying "I can't live on this salary in San Francisco" is to root through her digital past to determine whether or not she has properly minmaxed her living situation in order to determine if she is, in fact, worthy of commiseration, then you are an extremely silly goose who has missed the point.
You wonder why the upper class is winning in the ongoing class warfare struggle? This is a perfect example of why - someone comes out and points out how badly our system is failing the lower rungs, and our first response isn't to say "yeah, that's fucked up", but to immediately interrogate every decision that they make, looking to pinpoint exactly how they've screwed the pooch by choosing to be comfortable instead of sacrificing...for what, exactly?
Because God forbid a twenty something has to have a roommate to live in their hip coastal city of choice.
So tell me - exactly what level of privation is necessary in order to make her argument acceptable?
So yeah, I find the arguments that this is her fault because she didn't do everything she could have to minimize her costs problematic.
So according to you is she just entitled to live to whatever standard she wants and somehow her employer is supposed to magically pay her enough to support it or what? What standard of living is a minimum wage worker supposed to have according to ypu?
What do you think the Fight For $15 campaign was about? I don't think that saying that workers at the lowest tiers should be able to live securely on one salary without having to live a Spartan lifestyle is somehow so wrong. Perhaps if salaries had kept in line with productivity gains, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Okay so $15 minimum wage? Nation wide or just in California or just San Francisco?
I made 14$/hr starting out with a job hosting at a restaurant in Concord and my rent was 1200$/month for a 1 bedroom I split with someone. Our electric bill alone easily ran 300$/month in the summer. There are factors that go into cost of living beyond "rent and food".
I feel like some people in this thread just aren't fans of San Francisco (probably for good reason) but are conflating that for having any actual idea what trying to live anywhere on the coast in California is like. I've lived there, all over... and essentially everyone is being forced to have longer commutes and paying higher rent. I moved from Oakland, out to Walnut Creek... then Pleasant Hill, then Concord and then finally said fuck this.
That it's an issue with the bay is fine, except it's not. If you look at the trends for housing cost all up and down the coast lines even in cities that used to be affordable, you'll find that in places like Portland where you could buy a house for 225k 10 years ago, you'll be priced out of the market by people willing to make cash offers up to 500k for those very same houses. I can't fault her for wanting to live in her hip coastal city, and it was a bad decision... but it wont be long until "hip coastal city" is interchangeable with "any city of interest". What's it cost to live in Nashville? How about Lexington? Raleigh? Pay simply isn't going up.
A somebody who just went through a house search in Seattle, you don't have to tell me. 380K asking? Meaningless, three cash offers for 500K or more. And the rent ain't cheap either.
However, it's hard to take seriously the complaints of somebody who seems like they were willing to make zero compromises. And made the worst decisions possible.
I feel like some people in this thread just aren't fans of San Francisco (probably for good reason) but are conflating that for having any actual idea what trying to live anywhere on the coast in California is like. I've lived there, all over... and essentially everyone is being forced to have longer commutes and paying higher rent. I moved from Oakland, out to Walnut Creek... then Pleasant Hill, then Concord and then finally said fuck this.
That it's an issue with the bay is fine, except it's not. If you look at the trends for housing cost all up and down the coast lines even in cities that used to be affordable, you'll find that in places like Portland where you could buy a house for 225k 10 years ago, you'll be priced out of the market by people willing to make cash offers up to 500k for those very same houses. I can't fault her for wanting to live in her hip coastal city, and it was a bad decision... but it wont be long until "hip coastal city" is interchangeable with "any city of interest". What's it cost to live in Nashville? How about Lexington? Raleigh? Pay simply isn't going up.
A somebody who just went through a house search in Seattle, you don't have to tell me. 380K asking? Meaningless, three cash offers for 500K or more. And the rent ain't cheap either.
However, it's hard to take seriously the complaints of somebody who seems like they were willing to make zero compromises. And made the worst decisions possible.
Absolutely agreed. Her expectations weren't grounded in reality and she didn't really accept that a compromise is necessary for literally every human on the planet in order to get through a normal month on a budget.
I'm not sure how much room there is to compromise when you earn $12.25 an hour in the Bay Area. That comes out to a little under $1300 a month after tax. If you're limiting your housing costs to no more than 1/3 of your income, that means your max budget is $400 a month.
A quick Craigslist search shows that there are rooms available for that little, but there aren't a lot and many of the ads look like they're fake. There are also a few that I would be uncomfortableresponding to if I were a single woman.
$15 minimum wage nation wide would be a spectacular start though.
Yeah. Probably need to aim for something like $20/hr in the coastal cities, too.
Oh definitely. Just thinking in general. Even if major cities didn't get a larger increase it'd help a lot with being able to leave and make other places much more attractive to live and work.
$15 minimum wage nation wide would be a spectacular start though.
Yeah. Probably need to aim for something like $20/hr in the coastal cities, too.
Oh definitely. Just thinking in general. Even if major cities didn't get a larger increase it'd help a lot with being able to leave and make other places much more attractive to live and work.
Yeah, that's true. People would be a lot more willing to live other places if you could make $15/hr instead of $8/hr with cheap COL.
I'm not sure how much room there is to compromise when you earn $12.25 an hour in the Bay Area. That comes out to a little under $1300 a month after tax. If you're limiting your housing costs to no more than 1/3 of your income, that means your max budget is $400 a month.
A quick Craigslist search shows that there are rooms available for that little, but there aren't a lot and many of the ads look like they're fake. There are also a few that I would be uncomfortableresponding to if I were a single woman.
In the Bay Area, you have to look more like 50% unless you're making a ton of money. $650/mo could probably get you a decent room near a BART line in the East Bay.
I feel like some people in this thread just aren't fans of San Francisco (probably for good reason) but are conflating that for having any actual idea what trying to live anywhere on the coast in California is like. I've lived there, all over... and essentially everyone is being forced to have longer commutes and paying higher rent. I moved from Oakland, out to Walnut Creek... then Pleasant Hill, then Concord and then finally said fuck this.
That it's an issue with the bay is fine, except it's not. If you look at the trends for housing cost all up and down the coast lines even in cities that used to be affordable, you'll find that in places like Portland where you could buy a house for 225k 10 years ago, you'll be priced out of the market by people willing to make cash offers up to 500k for those very same houses. I can't fault her for wanting to live in her hip coastal city, and it was a bad decision... but it wont be long until "hip coastal city" is interchangeable with "any city of interest". What's it cost to live in Nashville? How about Lexington? Raleigh? Pay simply isn't going up.
This really has nothing to do with pay not going up. 10+% rise in housing prices year after year for a decade is not pay failing to keep pace with inflation. They are going up because living there is a desirable luxury, and local policies are put in place to constrict supply.
That's a great article, explaining why San Francisco's housing market is completely screwed, and will be completely screwed for the foreseeable future. In a nutshell, it's effectively 40 years of bad politics. Any one political policy seems okay in a vacuum, but the totality produces spectacularly bad results. If you want to see the slippery slope in action, San Francisco's housing politics is it.
I feel like some people in this thread just aren't fans of San Francisco (probably for good reason) but are conflating that for having any actual idea what trying to live anywhere on the coast in California is like. I've lived there, all over... and essentially everyone is being forced to have longer commutes and paying higher rent. I moved from Oakland, out to Walnut Creek... then Pleasant Hill, then Concord and then finally said fuck this.
That it's an issue with the bay is fine, except it's not. If you look at the trends for housing cost all up and down the coast lines even in cities that used to be affordable, you'll find that in places like Portland where you could buy a house for 225k 10 years ago, you'll be priced out of the market by people willing to make cash offers up to 500k for those very same houses. I can't fault her for wanting to live in her hip coastal city, and it was a bad decision... but it wont be long until "hip coastal city" is interchangeable with "any city of interest". What's it cost to live in Nashville? How about Lexington? Raleigh? Pay simply isn't going up.
This really has nothing to do with pay not going up. 10+% rise in housing prices year after year for a decade is not pay failing to keep pace with inflation. They are going up because living there is a desirable luxury, and local policies are put in place to constrict supply.
Indirectly however, everything scaling up 10% a year or more does seem to indicate to me that inflation / cost of living are increasing at a rate not in line with pay. Medical coverage, groceries, gasoline, BART tickets, PG&E bills. It's all increasing at a rate that most tenured teachers can't even afford. When people ask about how anyone afford to live in California or more specifically the Bay Area without being destitute the only answer most people can give is, "Be rich."
It may as well be a walled off Golden City where the price of entry is a million dollar bond when going through the Caldecot Tunnel. There's no way people who have good jobs and make 45$ an hour should need two roommates.
Edit: If we're okay with there being cities that the peasants can only dream of visiting one day, that's fine I guess.
Also, the housing isn't going up due to demand as much as really wealthy people are buying it up in cash and then leveraging that to make even more money. (for a while this was foreign investors, I don't know if it's still the case)
Can we please stop discussing Minimum Wage, or San Francisco Cost of Living, or the life choices of some employee, in the Independent Contractor thread?
That's a great article, explaining why San Francisco's housing market is completely screwed, and will be completely screwed for the foreseeable future.
Good read, but out of respect for GI's quite reasonable suggestion I'll leave it at that. Thanks for the link.
I apologize. The reason I feel pay is relevant is that the expected wage of a 1099 or H1B Visa worker directly impacts the liveable wage for people native to the area. I now live near the Intel headquarters and there are entire apartment complexes built around renting to the contractors at a rate that is incompatible with someone actually living here as a basic resident of the area.
When you force the wages down with contract work, you impact everyone. I didn't intend it to be about the specific needs of living in the Bay Area.
Reading through this thread and listening to a recent story on NPR, I am realizing I shouldn't be worried about my job getting outsourced to Bangladesh, people that want a good designer need to be able to talk to me directly and I need to be able to understand their project and the culture/marketing related to it. I'm much more worried about them being able to go on elance and find someone in Kansas that has the same experience and talent but is happy to work for 25-30 an hour instead of 50+.
There's still a lot of value in being able to meet face to face on things. Now whether the company recognizes that is a separate issue.
The trouble is that there is a real but hard to quantify benefit to meeting face to face, but the benefits of finding the lowest-paid workers from elsewhere shows up right there on the spreadsheet.
Businesses make poor outsourcing decisions all the time. It's really impossible to tell based on financial statements how individual employees contribute to the whole thing, and what kind of differences you will get in production when you outsource. A lot of outsourcing operations end up losing money, even the cheap factory stuff. It doesn't stop businesses from trying. I've read some research papers that indicate it's the minority of outsourcing situations where they end up making more money overall.
But yeah, people should be worried about their job being moved to another state. Since I've been out of college, at least one of my jobs specifically went to Arizona to lower costs. The company I work for has moved most of their offices to Arizona, and is talking about moving our office to a cheaper state than California.
At one point I was working under a CPA who was a temp. I think the idea that someone who could have that license would end up as a temp means that no matter what you do there is some chance that your job can be either outsourced or made scarce. I'll probably wake up one day and be doing individual days accounting work for random companies all over the place on an app.
Businesses make poor outsourcing decisions all the time. It's really impossible to tell based on financial statements how individual employees contribute to the whole thing, and what kind of differences you will get in production when you outsource. A lot of outsourcing operations end up losing money, even the cheap factory stuff. It doesn't stop businesses from trying. I've read some research papers that indicate it's the minority of outsourcing situations where they end up making more money overall.
But yeah, people should be worried about their job being moved to another state. Since I've been out of college, at least one of my jobs specifically went to Arizona to lower costs. The company I work for has moved most of their offices to Arizona, and is talking about moving our office to a cheaper state than California.
At one point I was working under a CPA who was a temp. I think the idea that someone who could have that license would end up as a temp means that no matter what you do there is some chance that your job can be either outsourced or made scarce. I'll probably wake up one day and be doing individual days accounting work for random companies all over the place on an app.
Yeah, I actually did a small paper a couple years back about outsourcing, and a lot of it had to deal with how there are a number of loopholes and qualifying factors that companies ignore that end up biting them in the ass.
Businesses make poor outsourcing decisions all the time. It's really impossible to tell based on financial statements how individual employees contribute to the whole thing, and what kind of differences you will get in production when you outsource. A lot of outsourcing operations end up losing money, even the cheap factory stuff. It doesn't stop businesses from trying. I've read some research papers that indicate it's the minority of outsourcing situations where they end up making more money overall.
But yeah, people should be worried about their job being moved to another state. Since I've been out of college, at least one of my jobs specifically went to Arizona to lower costs. The company I work for has moved most of their offices to Arizona, and is talking about moving our office to a cheaper state than California.
At one point I was working under a CPA who was a temp. I think the idea that someone who could have that license would end up as a temp means that no matter what you do there is some chance that your job can be either outsourced or made scarce. I'll probably wake up one day and be doing individual days accounting work for random companies all over the place on an app.
Can you link some of these papers?
The more interesting papers I've read on the subject were in scholarly journals, I read them as a college student a few years back, they were behind paywalls. It's not possible to know if more outsourcing projects fail than succeed because companies don't have to disclose that kind of information, and when they do fail the people involved in the project have a strong incentive to cover it up, and are often in a position to do so.
In general though you can find tons of articles like this,
So, it's turning out that in many cases, the gig economy model is unsustainable, with companies finding that without VC support, the economic models don't work.
So, it's turning out that in many cases, the gig economy model is unsustainable, with companies finding that without VC support, the economic models don't work.
Awesome-ing both for the good news and for the article title. I hadn't even heard of TaskRabbit- its business model reads exactly like the scene in Bioshock Infinite where the workers were bidding for jobs.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
task rabbit sucks. I ordered a plumber with "20 years of plumbing experience" to unclog a drain. There wasn't a release in the trap, so he couldn't do shit. He offered to get a snake on the clock and i was like... bro... no... thank you for coming out.
to their credit, task rabbit voided the invoice and gave me a $15 credit. Maybe I'll use it to help set up/clean up a picnic this summer.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
edited March 2016
Angieslist.com is probably a better bet
Edit: For the sink. You want someone who knows what they're doing.
Fencingsax on
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
So, it's turning out that in many cases, the gig economy model is unsustainable, with companies finding that without VC support, the economic models don't work.
Awesome-ing both for the good news and for the article title. I hadn't even heard of TaskRabbit- its business model reads exactly like the scene in Bioshock Infinite where the workers were bidding for jobs.
That scene in Bioshock Infinite is something that has actually happened. I'm not sure how wide spread it was, but a while ago I read Condensed Capitalism which was a history of a particular Campbell's soup factory and during the Great Depression they auctioned jobs off to the lowest bidders at the beginning of every day.
Edit: For the sink. You want someone who knows what they're doing.
As a former Angie's list customer, let me emphasize that ANGIE'S LIST SUCKS.
Their entire model is dishonest and easily gamed and ultimately is a very expensive service to get the same crappy reviews that you find on Yelp!
The only reason they've lasted as long as they have is some borderline fraudulent practices, and it's only a matter of time before they draw the attention of some state's Attorney General.
DisruptedCapitalist on
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
Edit: For the sink. You want someone who knows what they're doing.
As a former Angie's list customer, let me emphasize that ANGIE'S LIST SUCKS.
Their entire model is dishonest and easily gamed and ultimately is a very expensive service to get the same crappy reviews that you find on Yelp!
The only reason they've lasted as long as they have is some borderline fraudulent practices, and it's only a matter of time before they draw the attention of some state's Attorney General.
Ya Angies list is worse than yelp. I don't understand why a competitor hasn't popped up. It seems like it would be pretty easy to setup a yelp style directory of licensed professionals in the area. i.e. its free to sign up but profiles display certifications and such in addition to the general review section.
So, it's turning out that in many cases, the gig economy model is unsustainable, with companies finding that without VC support, the economic models don't work.
Awesome-ing both for the good news and for the article title. I hadn't even heard of TaskRabbit- its business model reads exactly like the scene in Bioshock Infinite where the workers were bidding for jobs.
That scene in Bioshock Infinite is something that has actually happened. I'm not sure how wide spread it was, but a while ago I read Condensed Capitalism which was a history of a particular Campbell's soup factory and during the Great Depression they auctioned jobs off to the lowest bidders at the beginning of every day.
Underbidding on a group level, at least, is something that's gone on as long as there's been organized labor. That's basically what a scab is - someone who's willing (or desperate) enough to work for wages that most people aren't.
I'll be glad when the millenial zeal surrounding the gig economy burns out. It's bad enough that we've entered a labor market where a lot of people have to do the post-2010 economic equivalent of being a Victorian urchin walking around the garment district asking for a day's work; the constant sermons from out-of-touch (and otherwise employed) New Yorkers and Californians go all wide-eyed about how it's the wave of the future was just too much. I've never seen an article written by a finance writer who decided to give up a regular salary in favor of being an Uber driver, strangely.
And, even when it does stick around in some form (which it will, if reduced, until we enter a new economic paradigm), I sincerely hope that startups will start choosing less obnoxious names for these services. Why does everything have to be "creatively" misspelled, a random word unrelated to the service in question, leave out vowels, or all three? Gah. /grumpyoldman
And, even when it does stick around in some form (which it will, if reduced, until we enter a new economic paradigm), I sincerely hope that startups will start choosing less obnoxious names for these services. Why does everything have to be "creatively" misspelled, a random word unrelated to the service in question, leave out vowels, or all three? Gah. /grumpyoldman
I'd imagine it has something to do with trademark/copyright law. "Grinder" is a common word, "Grindr" is not.
And, even when it does stick around in some form (which it will, if reduced, until we enter a new economic paradigm), I sincerely hope that startups will start choosing less obnoxious names for these services. Why does everything have to be "creatively" misspelled, a random word unrelated to the service in question, leave out vowels, or all three? Gah. /grumpyoldman
I'd imagine it has something to do with trademark/copyright law. "Grinder" is a common word, "Grindr" is not.
That is entirely the reason. Plus everybody else is doing it so if your app isn't missing a vowel whats wrong with you?
So one of my friends recently told me that her credit score is so bad that she couldn't even convince the local credit union to give her a bank account. But somehow, she was approved of getting a car loan through Uber.
So one of my friends recently told me that her credit score is so bad that she couldn't even convince the local credit union to give her a bank account. But somehow, she was approved of getting a car loan through Uber.
So one of my friends recently told me that her credit score is so bad that she couldn't even convince the local credit union to give her a bank account. But somehow, she was approved of getting a car loan through Uber.
I'm just completely baffled by that.
Credit union is not easy if you have even a bit bad credit. Uber is going through the same places any other Bad Credit No Credit dealership would use. CarMax would probably also have done it, or a dozen more sketchy lots on the bad side of town.
*Users heavily skew to wealthy and educated, with most users being college educated and with annual salaries of $75k+.
*50% of low income individuals surveyed didn't know about the services in the first place.
In addition, a Chase study shows that there are fundamental differences between laborcentric services (Uber, Taskrabbit) and capitalcentric ones (Airbnb), with the former being used by lower wage workers to supplement their income, while the latter tended to have a slight bias towards more wealthy individuals leveraging their assets.
Posts
That it's an issue with the bay is fine, except it's not. If you look at the trends for housing cost all up and down the coast lines even in cities that used to be affordable, you'll find that in places like Portland where you could buy a house for 225k 10 years ago, you'll be priced out of the market by people willing to make cash offers up to 500k for those very same houses. I can't fault her for wanting to live in her hip coastal city, and it was a bad decision... but it wont be long until "hip coastal city" is interchangeable with "any city of interest". What's it cost to live in Nashville? How about Lexington? Raleigh? Pay simply isn't going up.
Okay so $15 minimum wage? Nation wide or just in California or just San Francisco?
I made 14$/hr starting out with a job hosting at a restaurant in Concord and my rent was 1200$/month for a 1 bedroom I split with someone. Our electric bill alone easily ran 300$/month in the summer. There are factors that go into cost of living beyond "rent and food".
A somebody who just went through a house search in Seattle, you don't have to tell me. 380K asking? Meaningless, three cash offers for 500K or more. And the rent ain't cheap either.
However, it's hard to take seriously the complaints of somebody who seems like they were willing to make zero compromises. And made the worst decisions possible.
Absolutely agreed. Her expectations weren't grounded in reality and she didn't really accept that a compromise is necessary for literally every human on the planet in order to get through a normal month on a budget.
Yeah. Probably need to aim for something like $20/hr in the coastal cities, too.
A quick Craigslist search shows that there are rooms available for that little, but there aren't a lot and many of the ads look like they're fake. There are also a few that I would be uncomfortable responding to if I were a single woman.
Oh definitely. Just thinking in general. Even if major cities didn't get a larger increase it'd help a lot with being able to leave and make other places much more attractive to live and work.
Yeah, that's true. People would be a lot more willing to live other places if you could make $15/hr instead of $8/hr with cheap COL.
In the Bay Area, you have to look more like 50% unless you're making a ton of money. $650/mo could probably get you a decent room near a BART line in the East Bay.
This really has nothing to do with pay not going up. 10+% rise in housing prices year after year for a decade is not pay failing to keep pace with inflation. They are going up because living there is a desirable luxury, and local policies are put in place to constrict supply.
That's a great article, explaining why San Francisco's housing market is completely screwed, and will be completely screwed for the foreseeable future. In a nutshell, it's effectively 40 years of bad politics. Any one political policy seems okay in a vacuum, but the totality produces spectacularly bad results. If you want to see the slippery slope in action, San Francisco's housing politics is it.
Indirectly however, everything scaling up 10% a year or more does seem to indicate to me that inflation / cost of living are increasing at a rate not in line with pay. Medical coverage, groceries, gasoline, BART tickets, PG&E bills. It's all increasing at a rate that most tenured teachers can't even afford. When people ask about how anyone afford to live in California or more specifically the Bay Area without being destitute the only answer most people can give is, "Be rich."
It may as well be a walled off Golden City where the price of entry is a million dollar bond when going through the Caldecot Tunnel. There's no way people who have good jobs and make 45$ an hour should need two roommates.
Edit: If we're okay with there being cities that the peasants can only dream of visiting one day, that's fine I guess.
Also, the housing isn't going up due to demand as much as really wealthy people are buying it up in cash and then leveraging that to make even more money. (for a while this was foreign investors, I don't know if it's still the case)
MWO: Adamski
Good read, but out of respect for GI's quite reasonable suggestion I'll leave it at that. Thanks for the link.
When you force the wages down with contract work, you impact everyone. I didn't intend it to be about the specific needs of living in the Bay Area.
The trouble is that there is a real but hard to quantify benefit to meeting face to face, but the benefits of finding the lowest-paid workers from elsewhere shows up right there on the spreadsheet.
But yeah, people should be worried about their job being moved to another state. Since I've been out of college, at least one of my jobs specifically went to Arizona to lower costs. The company I work for has moved most of their offices to Arizona, and is talking about moving our office to a cheaper state than California.
At one point I was working under a CPA who was a temp. I think the idea that someone who could have that license would end up as a temp means that no matter what you do there is some chance that your job can be either outsourced or made scarce. I'll probably wake up one day and be doing individual days accounting work for random companies all over the place on an app.
Can you link some of these papers?
MWO: Adamski
The more interesting papers I've read on the subject were in scholarly journals, I read them as a college student a few years back, they were behind paywalls. It's not possible to know if more outsourcing projects fail than succeed because companies don't have to disclose that kind of information, and when they do fail the people involved in the project have a strong incentive to cover it up, and are often in a position to do so.
In general though you can find tons of articles like this,
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2012/11/08/269888.htm
http://www.itproportal.com/2015/12/19/five-of-the-biggest-outsourcing-failures/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2013/01/16/why-some-u-s-companies-are-giving-up-on-outsourcing/#55c5ac6551ba
to their credit, task rabbit voided the invoice and gave me a $15 credit. Maybe I'll use it to help set up/clean up a picnic this summer.
Edit: For the sink. You want someone who knows what they're doing.
thanks, but i wound up amazoning my own snake. Clearing the blockage was SSOOOOOO satisfying.
pulling it back out was less so.
That scene in Bioshock Infinite is something that has actually happened. I'm not sure how wide spread it was, but a while ago I read Condensed Capitalism which was a history of a particular Campbell's soup factory and during the Great Depression they auctioned jobs off to the lowest bidders at the beginning of every day.
As a former Angie's list customer, let me emphasize that ANGIE'S LIST SUCKS.
Their entire model is dishonest and easily gamed and ultimately is a very expensive service to get the same crappy reviews that you find on Yelp!
The only reason they've lasted as long as they have is some borderline fraudulent practices, and it's only a matter of time before they draw the attention of some state's Attorney General.
Ya Angies list is worse than yelp. I don't understand why a competitor hasn't popped up. It seems like it would be pretty easy to setup a yelp style directory of licensed professionals in the area. i.e. its free to sign up but profiles display certifications and such in addition to the general review section.
Underbidding on a group level, at least, is something that's gone on as long as there's been organized labor. That's basically what a scab is - someone who's willing (or desperate) enough to work for wages that most people aren't.
I'll be glad when the millenial zeal surrounding the gig economy burns out. It's bad enough that we've entered a labor market where a lot of people have to do the post-2010 economic equivalent of being a Victorian urchin walking around the garment district asking for a day's work; the constant sermons from out-of-touch (and otherwise employed) New Yorkers and Californians go all wide-eyed about how it's the wave of the future was just too much. I've never seen an article written by a finance writer who decided to give up a regular salary in favor of being an Uber driver, strangely.
And, even when it does stick around in some form (which it will, if reduced, until we enter a new economic paradigm), I sincerely hope that startups will start choosing less obnoxious names for these services. Why does everything have to be "creatively" misspelled, a random word unrelated to the service in question, leave out vowels, or all three? Gah. /grumpyoldman
I'd imagine it has something to do with trademark/copyright law. "Grinder" is a common word, "Grindr" is not.
It's just this silly meme of grammr really.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
That is entirely the reason. Plus everybody else is doing it so if your app isn't missing a vowel whats wrong with you?
I'm just completely baffled by that.
They're incredibly predatory subprime car loans.
Credit union is not easy if you have even a bit bad credit. Uber is going through the same places any other Bad Credit No Credit dealership would use. CarMax would probably also have done it, or a dozen more sketchy lots on the bad side of town.
*Users heavily skew to wealthy and educated, with most users being college educated and with annual salaries of $75k+.
*50% of low income individuals surveyed didn't know about the services in the first place.
In addition, a Chase study shows that there are fundamental differences between laborcentric services (Uber, Taskrabbit) and capitalcentric ones (Airbnb), with the former being used by lower wage workers to supplement their income, while the latter tended to have a slight bias towards more wealthy individuals leveraging their assets.