The reality of where the jobs are going (Oakland, Palo Alto: car registration, mortgage)

[WeakandDizzy]

user_id,
No one argues that interesting start ups are being started in California ( SF Bay Area and LA). The point is that a healthy middle class is being shortchanged. There are a lot of bucks to be made in California. My brother in law has a patent on a chip and lives quite nicely in the Napa Valley. His company manufactures his products off shore in Singapore. California entreprenuers are generating interesting ideas/products. Will they contribute to supporting a vibrant middle class in California?

[WeakandDizzy]

Originally Posted by Lovehound

Good post, I sent you some +reputation.

The word is "pander."

Sorry for the typo. I did not intend to offend anyone's sensibilities.

[user_id]

Originally Posted by WeakandDizzy

user_id,
No one argues that interesting start ups are being started in California ( SF Bay Area and LA). The point is that a healthy middle class is being shortchanged.

How are they being short-changed? How is the situation in California any different than the rest of the nation?

Originally Posted by WeakandDizzy

Will they contribute to supporting a vibrant middle class in California?

Yes, most of the jobs they created are middle-class jobs.

[WeakandDizzy]

Originally Posted by user_id

How are they being short-changed? How is the situation in California any different than the rest of the nation?


Yes, most of the jobs they created are middle-class jobs.

If that is the case then I have no problem. Middle class jobs provide the " backbone" for fueling our economy and maintaining the structure of American Society that is envied by most of the developing world.

[WeakandDizzy]

[quote=user_id;16655056]How are they being short-changed? How is the situation in California any different than the rest of the nation?

Have you ever lived ( as a taxpaying adult) outside of California?

[user_id]

Originally Posted by WeakandDizzy

Have you ever lived ( as a taxpaying adult) outside of California?

Yes, are you going to answer the question now?

[majoun]

Originally Posted by Ultrarunner

I live in Oakland CA and my father taught high school... many interesting discussions about the Teacher Union.

Our teacher union is always blaming lack of funding for dismal student performance... Oakland spends about 15k per student... just how much more will it take to property fund education?

Obviously that money is going somewhere and it's not going to help the kids.

Nancy O'Malley's office needs to do a corruption investigation of Oakland Unified. Wouldn't be surprised if there are quite a few indictments that would come out of such an investigation.

The teachers' union is one of the problems in Oakland (and elsewhere in the state) ; on the plus side Oakland has embraced charter schools more than elsewhere in the state, and it could benefit from even more charters.

[.highnlite]

Not when water is diverted from farms to save the Delta Smelt.

The water that is being diverted from farms to save the delta smelt, is actually water stolen from the Feather River and sent south for the swimming pools of Los Angeles, and indeed some was diverted to agriculture on the west side.

None of the land farmed before the completion of the Feather River water theft in the early 1960's is affected.

What goes around, comes around. That said, I would stop the water at the Grapevine and turn it all to ag.

The decision was made to cut water to farms to save the smelt, instead of cutting water to Los Angeles to save the smelt, a decision I disagree with.

[WeakandDizzy]

Originally Posted by user_id

Yes, are you going to answer the question now?

Certainly,

As a Native Californian who spent the first 36 years of his life in California and the last 16 years in the Midwest and Southeast I can tell you the cost of services and quality of life in California as opposed to those provided in these other regions of the country have no comparison. A skilled workmen in the Midwest lives far better and his children are far better educated than those of a typical Silicon Valley engineer in California ( I have several typical Silicon Valley engineers in my family and my children all received a better public school education outside of California than their's did in California) . A more fair property tax system, a workforce of teachers, police, shopkeepers, and other skilled laborers that can actually afford to live in the community provides a sense of spirit, continuity and support not seen in many of the bedroom communities I have lived in California. Start ups that create wealth for a few but do not generate additional significant wealth for the " worker bees" result in a fragmented community ( like Palo Alto) where the children of wealthy executives go to the private schools and the " hired help" ( ie teachers) commute in from the " poorer" suburbs ( ie East Bay). This leads to an elitist mindset so prevalent in the Bay Area. It robs the members of a community a real sense of " community" . Sure the same can be said of wealthy suburbs in the East Coast. Much of the California talent is imported ( from the East and Far East) and not home grown. In my opinion that is one manifestation of shortchanging the middle class in California.

[.highnlite]

Ya'll crack me up, some rightwing whack made "unions" the bogeyman. Ya'll continue to fall for it. The problem in Education today is not teachers, nor teachers unions, to believe that they are is just nuts.

Where does the money go? Two places: Administration, not teachers, and the federal mandates of Sped.

Have fun with that, if it is too hard to work on that, you can always blame the ever so powerful teachers unions, much easier that way.