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Free lance work is notoriously uneven, and it's difficult to make a real living at it even in low COL areas. I'm not going to shed many tears over this guy because it's his choice to be a free-lance writer in San Fran. This is much like the thread over on the Retirement forum called "Too Poor to Retire and too young to die" which started with an article about three people who "retired" and are working part-time gigs to support their RV travel life-styles. Again, it's their choices to live that way.
I'll save my sympathy for the truly poor not the poor by choice folks.
I agree with you regarding the guy who wrote the article, but I do think the people who worked there were abused...especially if they were required to show up 2 hours before the game to board buses and weren't paid for their time.
I'm writing this post sitting in San Francisco Airport, waiting for my flight back to the Midwest, having driven around quite a bit up and down the Bay Area. And you know what's the most amazing sensation? Everywhere that I go, I see middle-class life. I see modest houses and somewhat less modest houses. But I see no Blenheim Palace. I see no fortresses surrounded by razor-wire and armed guards (the closest thing to that would be NASA Ames' research installation). I see no favelas, or tent-cities. I see no liveried footmen escorting aristocrats' carriages, and I see no bedraggled beggar-children standing on their knees outside of the city-gates.
The great surprise, the great astonishment, is the comparative uniformity of life. Where are the truly wealthy? Where are the miserable hordes of the destitute? Even in Palo Alto, that supposedly tony display of concentrated wealth, I saw nondescript single-story houses and compact apartments.
I'm writing this post sitting in San Francisco Airport, waiting for my flight back to the Midwest, having driven around quite a bit up and down the Bay Area. And you know what's the most amazing sensation? Everywhere that I go, I see middle-class life. I see modest houses and somewhat less modest houses. But I see no Blenheim Palace. I see no fortresses surrounded by razor-wire and armed guards (the closest thing to that would be NASA Ames' research installation). I see no favelas, or tent-cities. I see no liveried footmen escorting aristocrats' carriages, and I see no bedraggled beggar-children standing on their knees outside of the city-gates.
The great surprise, the great astonishment, is the comparative uniformity of life. Where are the truly wealthy? Where are the miserable hordes of the destitute? Even in Palo Alto, that supposedly tony display of concentrated wealth, I saw nondescript single-story houses and compact apartments.
Who says that de Tocqueville's America is gone?
Go ahead and do a zillow search in the neighborhoods you drove through and see how affordable it is.
I've had several job opportunities in the Bay Area in the 90-105K range but even that will not buy me an $850K house. Not a mansion, mind you, a normal, 3/2 middle class house.
While the Bay Area is an extreme case, all over C-D you see the same complaints - rising housing costs, stagnant or even lower wages when inflation is factored in. There is a thread in the Dallas-Fort Worth forum about it: D-FW housing market gets bad marks for soaring prices
QFT +1000.
Even as glad as I am that I have increased my salary by quite a lot in the past few years at my current company, my purchasing power still does not go as far as I would've thought. Especially since everything else (like housing, food, etc.) has gotten way more expensive as well.
What should be the hourly rate for a job requiring nothing more than sticking your arm out holding a beer cup or a hot dog then grabbing some money and making change? Hell at $13 it's already overpaid
I think the real question is where are the jobs with adequate wages going to come from since we no longer have the manufacturing, mining, and agriculture jobs that allowed many people to raise families on a single income.
On top of that, our education system struggles to graduate kids who can read and do basic arithmetic.
But if people aren't qualified or capable of finding a better paying job, they can always resort to selling drugs or other illegal activities.
I'm writing this post sitting in San Francisco Airport, waiting for my flight back to the Midwest, having driven around quite a bit up and down the Bay Area. And you know what's the most amazing sensation? Everywhere that I go, I see middle-class life. I see modest houses and somewhat less modest houses. But I see no Blenheim Palace. I see no fortresses surrounded by razor-wire and armed guards (the closest thing to that would be NASA Ames' research installation). I see no favelas, or tent-cities. I see no liveried footmen escorting aristocrats' carriages, and I see no bedraggled beggar-children standing on their knees outside of the city-gates.
The great surprise, the great astonishment, is the comparative uniformity of life. Where are the truly wealthy? Where are the miserable hordes of the destitute? Even in Palo Alto, that supposedly tony display of concentrated wealth, I saw nondescript single-story houses and compact apartments.
Who says that de Tocqueville's America is gone?
??? ???
What does a nondescript house in Palo Alto cost to buy?
My high school girlfriend inherited a million dollars on her 18th birthday and the first thing she did was buy a house on the Jersey Shore (and sock away the remainder, leaving her set for life).
Turned out there was NOTHING remarkable about the nondescript houses in her town (which later was Ground Zero for Hurricane Sandy). The only thing those houses had was location.
It doesn't restrict your housing at all. Just like the car and the widget, it's determined by how much you can afford. The fact that you have caviar taste on a McDonalds budget when it comes to housing isn't anyone's fault but your own.
When you come to town and bid up the price of housing, you decrease the universe of "how much I can afford".
In the late 1980s, as my neighbors became more affluent, I faced five rent increases in five years and had to move three times when I was priced out. Each time I downsized from a small studio to a smaller studio.
Since when does a small studio in a small city require a caviar budget?
I enjoyed the Super Bowl, though I couldn't dream of attending it live. I watched from home and the beer I drank cost about that much per case. Interesting there were unpaid volunteers as well. I volunteer for a local agency, but couldn't see doing it for a multimillion dollar sports league. The lesson I think we can all learn is that sports stadia are not the economic engine they are touted to be. And Santa Clara is in the heart of Silicon Valley, which is already so expensive that many commute from places several hours away. Right wingers may not care about those working low wage jobs, but they usually get upset over even small amounts of wasted taxpayer money. The stadium is a good example of this.
Can we please stop with the stereotypes? I'm a "right winger" (at least by Bay Area standards) and I care about how the workers were treated AND the wasting of taxpayer money for the stadium. No way I would've voted for it if I lived in Santa Clara.
I'm writing this post sitting in San Francisco Airport, waiting for my flight back to the Midwest, having driven around quite a bit up and down the Bay Area. And you know what's the most amazing sensation? Everywhere that I go, I see middle-class life. I see modest houses and somewhat less modest houses. But I see no Blenheim Palace. I see no fortresses surrounded by razor-wire and armed guards (the closest thing to that would be NASA Ames' research installation). I see no favelas, or tent-cities. I see no liveried footmen escorting aristocrats' carriages, and I see no bedraggled beggar-children standing on their knees outside of the city-gates.
The great surprise, the great astonishment, is the comparative uniformity of life. Where are the truly wealthy? Where are the miserable hordes of the destitute? Even in Palo Alto, that supposedly tony display of concentrated wealth, I saw nondescript single-story houses and compact apartments.
Who says that de Tocqueville's America is gone?
They swept the homeless people away from the most visible areas. For example, San Jose City Hall has a regular homeless camp behind it and they cleared them out a week before the game. Some of them cam back in a few days, though. I hear San Francisco did similar things.
It doesn't restrict your housing at all. Just like the car and the widget, it's determined by how much you can afford. The fact that you have caviar taste on a McDonalds budget when it comes to housing isn't anyone's fault but your own.
If the town in only full of caviar and there ISN'T a McDonald's, then it's a problem. And telling people to move is like telling starving Africans to suck it up and "go where the food is."
If all the low-income workers move out of the Bay Area, who will be left to hand the rich people their $13 beers ... or clean their million-dollar homes, or take care of their beautiful lawns and service their pools, or drive their limos, or repair their roads and bridges, or caddy their golf courses, or even wipe the bums of elderly wealthy people? Who's going to do those jobs? The people who do already have ridiculously long commutes to their jobs sites. Pretty soon they will be pushed out of neighboring counties.
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I'm a "right winger" (at least by Bay Area standards) and I care about how the workers were treated AND the wasting of taxpayer money for the stadium. No way I would've voted for it if I lived in Santa Clara.
