patrick.net

The cost of living difference in $ is enormous between the BA and other areas. It costs the better part of 50% more here than where much of my family lives in Ohio.

But the purchasing power parity is about the same. Therein lies the confusion.

Actually, people in rural Ohio are worse off, not better, because they have to buy things that are nationally priced on the margins -- meaning assuming our inflated dollars.

hmm, randy h. is converting me to objectivism by degrees...

interestingly, 'libertarianism' seems to be mostly an american phenomenon, the very small number of people i've encountered here who claim to espouse it (mainly from the net) seem to have just gotten an extremely unreflexive wash-over effect from the US.

while i agree with randy about the nuttiness of the extreme libertarian case as it is often presented, ironically *some* libertarian ideals have strongly influenced political discourse and political freedoms everywhere over the last couple of centuries (to our benefit), concerning our present-day understandings of one's 'freedom' to live without excessive state interference. for instance, you can no longer be shanghai'ed into the Navy against your will just by being found drinking in a pub in a coastal town...

"Dude - groceries at Safeway are 20% more expensive here than the same items at Safeway in Seattle"

My grocery bill is around 35-40 a week, with discount. Its all noise level for a single person. For families that may be different. Since you like the Green stuff. I suggest a trip to the farmers markets on weekends.

It costs the better part of 50% more here than where much of my family lives in Ohio. But the purchasing power parity is about the same.

Randy H,

You mean excluding housing, right?

"Dude, “sunshine premium”

Go to safeway and buy Grapes from Chile! Hum!!!!
WTF, in California, of all things.

Am I an objectivist, a libertarian, a sophist, or just a jerk?

hmm, randy h. is converting me to objectivism by degrees…

Hallelujah!! All hail Randy H!

Am I an objectivist, a libertarian, a sophist, or just a jerk?

Who says you have to choose? ;-)

the irony is that the rosy picture of idyllic life presented by the libertarians closely resembles the stated desired outcome of 'true' communism, of independent, autonomous small communities beholden to no-one, where the state has withered away, and people are no longer alienated by their work and power relations in a capitalist colossus from themselves, each other, the nature of their own work, and so on. somehow, some kind of freaky space-time curvature brings the 'far right' into contact with the 'far left'. this is also the anarchist-communist nexus. try telling the average hairy-chested libertarian they are working towards the communist ideal...

I am a software engineer for a semiconductor capital equipment company. We are in a great market position, but cost cutting abounds. We seem to be laying off ppl in dribs and drabs- 4-5% last fall, a "small", unpublished number last week. Meanwhile, there is hiring in India and elsewhere is Asia. I feel fairly secure given my somewhat non-generic skillset, but at the same time, I am keeping my eyes open for opportunities. I would HATE to be in manufacturing here- feel bad for those people.

I thought it was interesting that BearCat mentioned Galil of all places. I worked there when it was in Mountain View. 1 mile commute- can't beat that. Good company, but I wasn't prepared to move to Rocklin. At the time, I felt like SV RE had a few more good years in it and boy was that an understatement!

somehow, some kind of freaky space-time curvature brings the ‘far right’ into contact with the ‘far left’. this is also the anarchist-communist nexus.

Many years ago, my dad told me, "if you go right far enough, you'll run into the far left." I was an adult before I fully understood what he meant.

“Dude - groceries at Safeway are 20% more expensive here than the same items at Safeway in Seattle”

My grocery bill is around 35-40 a week, with discount. Its all noise level for a single person. For families that may be different. Since you like the Green stuff. I suggest a trip to the farmers markets on weekends.

Actually I really like cookies. And the ones I like are 20% more here than the exact same cookies at Safeway Seattle.

I guess the cookies here are sunnier, smarter, and generally more special.

Marx on alienation. Admittedly, he was operating in a manufacturing society, which today, in terms of work opportunities and pay scales, most closely resembles, say, China producing goods for the West from 'globalisation' effects...

Under capitalism, workers are inevitably alienated from their own lives. That is, they do not feel part of their own lives. They are just 'going through the motions'.

Why does Marx say this? Under capitalism, a worker is constrained both physically and psychologically; he is alienated from both nature and himself (body and spirit), and from others. Under capitalism, we see the worker’s progressive intellectual and psychological “dis-integration.”

Marx notes at least five kinds of alienation:

- Alienation from nature (pollution, industrialisation, cities)
- Alienation from the body (harnessing)
- Alienation from fully human species-being (the worker has only an animal-type existence)
- Alienation from others (competition, no time to talk)
- Alienation from one’s own intellectual ability (repetitive work, constrained thought)

Maybe that's why all the people you talk to on the phone all day long sound pissed off...

Tommy writes :

"VMware is hiring and they are doing an IPO later this year…
Google made again a ton of money….

What more do you need in bay area? These two are enough to support our local economy for a while. VMware is guaranteed to make quite a few people rather well off. "

Oh baby! you have a lot to learn my dear boy! Come back after your 35.
A work force of mear 2,500 is hardly going to compare to a workfore of 840,000. Please grow up.

Google will have its day, just like the other "googles back in its day". VMware (buddy works there) is planning a spinoff (not bad!) because everyone from VMware is leaving and the product is flaming out. Employees dont like EMC Parent company anyway. Why did a storage company like EMC buy a SW company VM for anyway? Bad business decision more like it.

"Actually I really like cookies."

I suggest some local brownies during the Height Asbury Street Festival in SF later in June. Its a total buzz trip.

I thought VMware was doing well, and had a good product. Virtualisation is getting to be a really big deal on x86 platforms, I'm looking at converting our legacy system right now...

VMWare is very good, and quite an improvement over the old Ghost/reimage method. I am using it at work right now. It does have some limitations, though --mainly a few applications that don't virtualize well or require "real" access to HW.

I am not an Objectivist for the same reason that I'm not a Scientologist.

I can't support a worldview espoused by horrible, horrible writers.

yeah, we can either use a VM P->V image as a disaster recovery fallback system, or else just run our legacy system entirely as a VM. The ERP runs on Oracle, I don't believe there's any HW problems with doing that, the vendor themselves do it all the time. Except for the speed benefits of spreading over multiple SCSI disk groups and RAID arrays -- that's the only issue I have with it, but for DR and legacy on a low transaction system, who cares...

BearCat,

Web 2.0- I can relate. I love to code, but it has to be something "real". Some would say I am just a bit twiddler. To me, it's all ball bearings and motion controllers nowadays, so it was sad to see Galil and Chris King move away. At least we have managed to hold on to Phil Wood.

The Social Democrat welfare state of Sweden talked about producing 'selective utopias' or 'partial utopias' rather than trying to deliver some sort of socia1istic utopia all at once -- so they would target housing, or unemployment, intensively for several years, to try to improve things -- and it worked. If housing was really targeted as a social right, and taken out of the market to a greater or lesser extent, you would clean up the homelessness and the unaffordability problems all at once... Right now on the news, they are threatening pensioner renters at retirement villages with massive upticks in rent -- causing a lot of consternation. This is the problem of setting everything up as a money-making exercise for some f&cking capitalist pig at the top who thinks they have a 'right' to gouge everyone for their own wellbeing for taking the 'risk' of building a retirement village or trailer park or whatever... better off just building the housing with public money under public control and some social assurances and certainty.

@simcha
nice to hear your story,tks for sharing . Those kids are fortunate to have somebody like you as a compass
@space age
35 to 40bux a week on groceries?

would like to hear what your 21 a week meal plan is on a budget of $1.90 permeal
financial times says americans spend 6.7% of their disposable income on food and that figure surprised me

tell me if I'm a big spender on food but even cheap restaurants take 40 to feed 3 of us with tip no alcohol --ex bac ch burger/fries 8.50
crabcake swich/fries 8.50
1 caesar salads 7.50
cup of soup 3.50
2 sodas 3.50
1 water 1.50
tax 1.98
tip 6
total 40.98

and 4 that meal are you saying that I could feed simcha's client for a week or space age ?
would love to hear your dieticians meal plan for $40 a week
would also love to hear other posters tell me what they think they spend in a week to feed their families

if all of you spend just 40 a person a week for food then I now know how people live in 800k 800sq ft homes
they don't eat cookies nor drink organic milk or bottled water
or fruit vegees cereal or orange juice

hostess twinkees every meal ??

Food can cost more than housing for many people.

I think that completely socializing the housing industry would be a very hard sell in this country. I think that a better model is what has happened around the Chicago area. CHA (The Chicago Housing Authority) built big government housing projects many decades ago and put only poor people in those big buildings without any other real assistance or programs to help them change their lot. This failed miserably. The projects became crime and gang ridden and largely condemnable before they all were torn down.

The dismantiling of the housing projects in Chicago marked a major change in policy and a major shift in how the City handled its poor and homeless. The homeless problem is far from solved but there are some creative things that have been happening in the Chicago Area.

As the projects were being torn down, the people who were still living in the projects were offered section 8 housing and were moved out to suburbs and other areas of Chicago. This way they were moved to better school districts that had more money. Their children could receive better educations and live in safer neighborhoods, in general. Most people are faring better who have moved out of the projects. So, private landlords got their rent paid for by the CHA and were assured of the income. The tenants had, mostly, better housing opportunities. It was a better cooperation between the private sector and government.

The negative side of this was that the neighborhoods where the projects were (i.e. Cabrini Green) were now prime real estate. These properties were sold to private investors and they built luxury condos and apartments on the land. Thus they priced out the people who once lived in these neighborhoods forever. A very small percentage of apartments in those new neighborhoods were set aside for former poor residents. Thus these neighborhoods were gentrified. In Chicago, gentrification means moving white yuppies in and pricing all other poor people out.

Now, the city of Chicago benefits from the property taxes collected from the new property owners in these newly gentrified neighborhoods. Some of the people who were displaced were moved too far out from the City to keep their low-paying jobs. They became jobless in the far out suburbs where they were moved to. Also some of the suburbs used zoning to force only certain lower priced neighborhoods in their respective towns to take these new section 8 people being shipped out of the City. Thus some of the suburbs created new ghettos for urban poor, merely displacing the problems from the City to the suburbs... And this time, the newly arrived were woefully unprepared for what they would find there. No public transportation exists in many of these suburbs. Therefore, there is no way for some of these people to get around to go out and find work, let alone get about to go to work once a job could be found. No education was provided for the displaced people so that they could get jobs that would pay them enough to get a car so that they could get around to find work and maintain stable employment.

So, this solution wasn't perfect. It is better than the government project system that existed before though. So there's more work to be done between the private sector and the government if homelessness can be solved in this country. A more realistic solution in this country is to find a way that government and the private sector could work together to help people help themselves. This would require an organized plan to create better infrastructure, like creating better and more affordable public transportation systems (trains, buses, light rail, etc.) largely run by the government, with cooperation from businesses to train and hire poor people paying them a living wage, and for private land owners to cooperate with business and government to provide affordable housing where land owners profit and tenants benefit from housing they can afford.

This is a very tall task. It takes will, moral fiber, determination, cooperation, and hard work. These things seem to be lacking in our country today. People would rather make a quick and easy buck on markets like, say, real estate or the stock market than actually WORK together to create a just society where everyone wins.

The best way to solve the housing problem is to build, build, build.

We should build until there is no question that housing will be readily available in the future. The society will quickly self-organize into all kinds of neighborhood. Housing will be very affordable in some. Problem solved.

Note that if housing is scarce, higher-income people will have to move into lesser neighborhoods, driving up costs there. The result will be a metropolitan-wide ghetto like the Bay Area.

Bruceb:

"@simcha
nice to hear your story,tks for sharing . Those kids are fortunate to have somebody like you as a compass
@space age
35 to 40bux a week on groceries?"

OK, I live off of $40 per week for groceries. Honestly, I can't afford to spend more. I don't eat out very much at all. If I do, it's under my "entertainment" section of my budget (which is a small item too).

I go to Grocery Outlet for most of my food. They actually have some amazing things there for very little money. Of course, you have to be careful not to buy something that might go bad fast or looks too old... Honestly, I can't afford Albertsons or Safeway. Berkeley Bowl is actually reasonable for green things... fruits and veggies... Most of the rest of their stuff is too darned expensive.

I eat very little meat, because it's expensive. If I do, I make sure that it's a good cut and on sale...

Oh, and if I have to go to Albertsons or Safeway, or even Berkeley Bowl, 90% of what I buy is on sale. I'm not an extremely picky eater so buying what's on sale gives me variety every week.

Would I rather be able to spend more and not have to rely only on what I can scrounge around and find for less? Sure... But I don't have it, and neither do my clients... So, yeah, sad to say, I only spend about $40 per week on groceries.

Also, I grew up in a family where we had very little money. We were broke at the end of every week. My Mom taught me how to squeeze every penny and shop the bargains. So, I'm more used to having to budget very carefully.

Would I rather be able to spend more and not have to rely only on what I can scrounge around and find for less? Sure… But I don’t have it, and neither do my clients… So, yeah, sad to say, I only spend about $40 per week on groceries.

Wow. You are enlightened.

This is the problem of setting everything up as a money-making exercise for some f&cking capitalist pig at the top who thinks they have a ‘right’ to gouge everyone for their own wellbeing for taking the ‘risk’ of building a retirement village or trailer park or whatever

Just when I thought we were making some progress in opening DS's mind... Oh well.

DS,

As you know, most of the regulars here don't particularly care for greedy, self-serving anarchists who call themselves "free market capitalists" (but aren't). But to call every single builder a 'gouger' and say that building never entails any risk (though that's been broadly accurate for the last 6 years or so) is ridiculous.

Any venture that requires up-front capital investment has risk, and real estate development is among the most capital-intensive investments out there. There is a risk of market declines (witness recent builder financial problems with slow sales & land option write-downs). There is regulatory risk, including dealing with unexpected easements, title problems, regulatory zoning hurdles, local politicians who want their palms greased, etc. Builders expect to be compensated for this, just like any other business. Then there is lawsuit risk (witness class action suits pending against Lennar, Toll, Beazer, KB, etc.).

Remove the profit motive and you remove the incentive to build. If you want to cut down on RE price-gouging, why not start by eliminating government manipulation of interest rates (a biggie), reduce direct government subsidies for flippers (limit mtg. interest deduction & cap. gains to just primary house), eliminate government risk underwriting in mortgage markets (GSEs), and encourage competition by removing needless barriers to entry (MLS). Oh, and something the government might do MORE of would be to (a) stop taking massive bribes from the REIC, and (b) actually start policing the banksters and prosecute mortgage fraud. *

(*Not holding my breath on any of these)

But let me tell you something. You will be in a much better position to help people if you are resourceful (i.e. rich). This society revolves around money and that is exactly what you need to get anything done.

If you ignore a few hundred people now, work hard and get rich, then you may be able to help a few thousand people in the future.

Speaking of jobs, Astrid, we are actually looking for a junior associate, a rare thing for law firms nowadays.

I don't know if you all would consider relocating to SoCal, but if so, email me.

Well I don't have a job anymore....because of the BA real estate bubble.

In 2005 I was a corporate patent counsel for a major tech company, making fairly good money. I had a crummy 1040 square foot (but paid off) SJ house and was saving feverishly to afford that nice place in Saratoga. I had about a half mil. in the bank in my "nice house" fund.

But then...

I woke up one day and asked why would I put all of my money - and I mean ALL of my money - into a single asset. I did my books and decided to pull the plug.

I sold my SJ house for a huge amount of money in April 2006 to some Mexican immigrant who took out a no-doc 103% loan. Poor guy.

I bought a luxurious place in Boise for $270K. The rest of my money is invested in CDs and Index ETFs. I never need work again. I retired comfortably at age 53.

Peter P:

"But let me tell you something. You will be in a much better position to help people if you are resourceful (i.e. rich). This society revolves around money and that is exactly what you need to get anything done."

Actually, it's my dream to open my own agency one day. My colleagues and I have talked about how we can pool resources together and do it. First we have to finish the licensing process. You can't do anything in our field without a license. That requires working for peanuts as an intern until you earn the 3000 hours of experience that earns you the right to sit for the two big bad tests.

"If you ignore a few hundred people now, work hard and get rich, then you may be able to help a few thousand people in the future."

So, the end justifies the means?

And, I thought I made my point that working hard does not necessarily equal getting rich. So many people think that it does. But alas, that is just a pipe dream. I've worked by a$$ off for decades, I have a graduate degree, I've always been careful with my money, and I only have $40 per week for groceries.

There are several ways to get rich. One way is to be born into a rich family. All other ways seem to involve some recipe of good luck and hard work. Being at the right place at the right time isn't all about planning and foresight either. You can only make so much luck for yourself, some of it comes down to plain old "dumb luck."

I think the experience of this decade is proof that the job market is not the driver of house prices around here. Probably, it affects the rents a lot, but not the house prices.

When the job market was hot, rents were going up like crazy. When the job market tanked, the house prices went up like crazy. Some self identified JBRs here have shared a lot of anger about that because they voted on the job market timing model and (at least till now) it turned out to be the wrong vote.

We probably lost more jobs here in the first half of the decade, than any region in the USA ever did in such a short time, and the house prices shot through the roof.

I am not saying that it means a bad job market in the B.A. is always good for house prices. I am just saying that we have proof that there's not always a strong correlation between the house prices and the job market. At least not here.

It doesn't make sense to me, either, this decoupling of the real estate to the job market.

What does make sense to me though is how I see the demographs of the home buyers change. I noticed two Saturdays ago in the S.J. Mercury News weekly listing of real estate transactions that all but a couple or so of the names of listed buyers were Chinese. Probably, increasingly crowded Cupertino looks like the wide open spaces in the Big Sky Country to rich people from places like Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, Singapore. In fact all three of the people I know who bought in the past few years in Cupertino are wealthy Chinese from (guess what): Singapore, Shanghai and Taipei.

@dennis
congrats but be careful there--i just googled "boise scam"
and got back 240,000 results
@simcha
you said you worked in Paris. Did you enjoy that ? If I were your pyscotherapist I would tell you to file chap 7 on those consumer debts, take some time off work , and go where you think that you would be happier as I don't think it is in the BA which is unfortunately going to be like you predict. You seem bright intelligent and focused and imho you deserve a better life than the self imprisonment that you've commited to. The world is your oyster

Joe,

Thank you, that is a truly generous thought! During the last year, I realized that I would make a terrible lawyer and would have been pretty unhappy into the bargain.

The money in my current job is pittance compared to the crazy first year salaries (almost a Ha Ha, ha ha), but the hours are quite civilized and it's a great perch to observe the legal community. My law librarian position is surprisingly interesting and challenging, and I am learning a lot about office politics and business development (internal and external).

However, my firm does have an LA office. If I ever visit there, I do very sincerely hope we can have lunch together.

Peter P says

"If you ignore a few hundred people now, work hard and get rich, then you may be able to help a few thousand people in the future."

You are correct.

A young person should live cheap and have fun. Modest apartment, roommates, standby travel. Save the money for later. Nobody expects the young to have pricey toys, just to be attractive. Don't need fat stacks to get babes.

When you are older, in the prime earning years, make as much as you can and pack away for old age. Babes do expect you to have assets by now, so splurge a little.

When you are retired, you can use your life's earning to really give back to society. You'll have the time and cash for items like Habitat for Humanity, Doctors Without Borders, give scholarships, or use your talents for other stuff that needs doing that nobody can pay for. Can't do nothin' for nobody if you are broke. Even worse if you are needy.

I could probably survive on $100/month. It would involve a lot of frozen corn, chicken thighs, canned tuna, and pasta with peanut sauce...

The bread selection would suck though, I would be restricted to lean doughs like French bread and sour dough. I used $3 worth of artichoke and pine nuts on my last bread.

simcha,

I wish you lived nearby. I like feeding people but everybody I know seems to be on a special diet or some kind of dietary restriction.

Simcha,

I have done limited chartity work over the last few year with elemenatry school kids of welfare parents. With the small resources I am willing to donate at this time, I don't waste any on adults as I think they are beyond help (except I give cooked food to the Union Mission).

Since you have much deeper experience, I have a question for you.

How do these mothers and children fall through the net? All the children I have worked with have a mom who does not work, but is provided with either apartment (city owned) or Section 8 house. They also get money and food stamps. Some even have cable and callers id. I have not seen the families living in cars, but I wonder how they could be turned down for services based on who I have seen accepted.

I admire people who give so much of themselves to charity, they are better men than me. The best charity I have seen, though is the small businesses that hire someone they really do not need, but that person needs work. Another is when a family adopts a child.

So, the end justifies the means?

I would tend to think so.