NPR is starting a series on Si Valley as a microcosm for the
changing US economy and society. We've addressed some of these issues
before regarding wealth inequality and the Bay Area housing market.
Apparently some protesters recently blocked a Google bus in SF,
complaining that the private buses were using MUNI stops without paying
the city any fees. It's clearly part of a bigger sentiment of
resentment, and part of the general debate regarding who is taking more
of their fair share from society. Should those being priced out of SF
"get with the program" and develop the skills needed to be able to
afford living there? Or should the tech elites come down from their
privileged position in society and contribute their fair share to
helping the less fortunate? Or both?
As a tech employee (peon status) and longtime CA resident, I
am really torn by all of this. I don't want the Bay Area to become
"Facebookville" or "Elysium" where droves of poor, bitter service
workers support the aloof upper class minority. But then again, we
depend on disruption, competition, and innovation to win in the market,
or we will suffer the same fate as Detroit. I think we can innovate and
win, but also spread the benefits around so that the entire region and
populace is better off. Yes, the rich should be taxed more.
Disruption is a double-edged sword. A dedicated team works
like hell to address an unmet need or overcome some entrenched
inefficiency, so they and their investors can be paid handsomely for it.
But the industry that they just rendered obsolete is made up of people
with families that depend on them. Through no fault of their own, they
were disrupted out of a paycheck. A generation ago, all signs pointed to
machinist or travel agent being good, stable careers with great ROI for
the required education. But innovation changed the equation faster than
most could adapt.
Now car services like Uber are getting rave reviews from customers,
media, and generating decent financials. But what if they render
thousands of low-skilled immigrant cab drivers out of a job? What if the
Google self-driving car renders the Uber drivers out of a job? In some
cases it is a zero-sum game, even if the metrics suggest that society
overall is "better off". Does one new billionaire created compensate for
1,000 families who just got the American Dream taken from them?
Everyone seems to celebrate the "winners" without considering the
collateral damage. Yes, we need innovation to succeed and even survive
in the world. And those who succeed should be rewarded. But what about
the everyday folks who, through no fault of their own, get suddenly
shifted from middle class to destitution? Do the disruptors (and the
traditional companies being replaced) have a social responsibility to
help those workers transition to the new reality? Does the government?
If so, then I think they should fund such programs from the disruptors'
stock gains.
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Sort of related (in that it perpetuates the massive inequalities of the
Bay Area) is education. M Night Shyamalan just wrote a major book on
education (hopefully he doesn't write more and his natural follow-up
suck strikes!), and it makes a lot of good points.
Basically, he suggests that our education system is actually great - if
you're a a white kid. Our white kids do just as well as the Nordic white
kids or other European white kids. But if you're a minority (and,
typically, poor), the education system sucks and really drags down our
averages. There are a number of ways to address this, but:
1) They take money $$
2) And they mean de-emphasizing putting resources into already highly performing white schools
I've
come increasingly to the conclusion that American politics is all about
race. I'm sure many of you have seen the research that support for
redistribution increases if it is perceived by the voter as going to
"someone like them" - i.e. someone of the same race.
Most people in the Bay Area don't consider
themselves racist and it's probably true - in fact, the Bay Area is one
of the most diverse areas of the country. But poors in the Bay Area are
still "the other" - they didn't go to good schools, they struggle to get
by on bad salaries, their unemployment rate is x3 higher than
well-educated whites. Basically, their experience is completely alien to
most of the tech gods in the Bay Area and their presence is invisible.
No surprise then that the tech gods (which have actual power) use little
of their capacity to help the poors.
You can imagine the national consternation and
outrage by the well-educated press and electorate if the unemployment
rate was 20% and transportation and housing ate up 60-70% of the budget
of native-born, well educated Americans, yet this is exactly the
situation facing a plurality of Bay Area residents - the poors and the
immigrants. I guess it's only a crisis for those that are rich. If
you're poor and face such circumstances, given the media and elite
orientation, it's a statistic and at best regrettable. And the rich
wonder why resentment is on the increase...
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Thx, J. I agree, but why are non-whites disproportionately poor? Mostly
racism. The 1% vs. 99% has also been a pervasive, ubiquitous problem for
centuries, but of course the power balance has varied due to historical
conditions. As you said, now more than ever gov't is serving the
interests of the 1% at the expense of the 99% - and that is a big effing
problem that we have to tackle if we care about democracy. But even if
we returned to the economic conditions of 1960 when wealth and political
power were more evenly distributed, there is the underlying racial
problem that Andrew mentioned. Say we repeal Citizens United, reformed
the justice system, and made a bunch of other needed changes - it will
still be harder for minorities to get ahead. Addressing one problem is
not a distraction from the other. Both are critical, somewhat
independent, and deserve to be called out separately. There are some
solutions that can mitigate both issues (namely taxation and
campaign/election reforms), so we could try to prioritize those.
According to this moron, the poor and middle class
are doing better than ever, because we are enjoying a "golden age of
TV!" So what if I lose my job and get evicted... I can still watch the
latest episode of "Duck Dynasty" at the local library's PC lab. Forget
the macro indicators, our amazing selection of digital entertainment
options makes life more fun!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-02/who-needs-a-raise-when-you-have-tv-.html
------
Thanks, A. Good to see M. Night making a comeback of
sorts, with more social value than "The Happening". Yeah it seems the
path to inequality starts from grade school, and maybe even in the womb,
as lower income (often minorities) generally don't have access to
comparable health, nutrition, and child care as affluent whites. This
could set back their development, so that even if they were lucky enough
to attend America's best schools, maybe they wouldn't be fully able to
take advantage of the opportunity.
It is really sad that the inequality phenomenon has such a
racial component. But if a liberal dares to make that claim, you can
imagine the reaction from the right (race-baiting, it's a war on white
men, etc.). Roberts said that racism is over in America after all. It is
especially disappointing that minorities have fallen further behind
during the Obama presidency. It's not his fault and it could have been
worse under a white GOP president, but Obama's heritage almost blinds
America to the fact that tens of millions of minorities are not
succeeding despite his meteoric, outlier success. After all, the biggest
beneficiaries of US affirmative action historically have been middle
class white women. The social programs that disproportionately helped
the urban poor are being dismantled in the name of "budget compromise."
On a local level, I don't think the tech giants can fully
celebrate their CSM and social impact, when East Palo Alto (10 miles
away from FB and GOOG HQs) is still held back by the same problems it
faced a decade ago. Richmond and the Tenderloin are a stone's throw away
from Twitter and Salesforce. Sure the tech companies engage in their
annual "day of caring" and donate millions to worthy causes, but those
good works barely tip the scales vs. all the negative externalities they
unintentially impose on the less privileged. I guess rather than facing
the cognitive dissonance of the injustice/inequality all around them
vs. their desire to make the world a better place (ostensibly for all),
tech people would rather live insular lives and stick with their own
kind (luxury, exclusive housing to the luxury, exclusive bus to the
luxury, exclusive office to the luxury, exclusive bar, etc.). This of
course is not exclusive to tech workers, and the other Bay Area
professionals (doctors, lawyers, bankers) are just as susceptible, if
not more. But that is the problem when achievement and career take up so
much of our attention - there isn't much room left for people,
especially those who are different than us.
I am not sure if it is a generational issue either. After the Baby
Boomers exit the labor force, and the younger folks take the helm of the
big companies, I really hope for a sea change. Douchebags aside, I
think that many Bay Area yuppies would prefer a more diverse workforce
and society. CA is great because it's not a stuck up East Coast cocktail
party where your alma mater and family name come first. It's boring
when you only work with clones of yourself who think the same way (also
it's bad for business). The Valley has been successful in recruiting and
naturalizing so much foreign talent, but many of them were elites from
their native lands (and they tend to self-segregate in the US too). I
just don't see black and Latino native residents get recruited in
sufficient numbers any time soon.
Check out this slideshow from Business Insider about racial-economic segregation in SF-Si Valley:
http://www.businessinsider.com/maps-show-racial-divide-in-silicon-valley-2013-9#
This issue kind of reminds me of the military crisis. When
only poor people go off to war, society doesn't really notice, so our
leaders may be more likely to abuse those soldiers. But in the case of
WWII and Vietnam, when even some millionaire's kids and Ivy Leaguers
were getting slaughtered in the field, then that changed the equation.
As you said about Bay Area housing and transport costs, the privileged
won't lift a finger until they feel similar pain as the poor. A more
progressive income tax that funnels money to the working poor would be a
start, or maybe higher property tax on richer, less diverse
neighborhoods? But of course city leaders get elected by those
neighborhoods, so it's a nonstarter. In France, they have a saying,
"Vive l'impot!" Or a celebration of tax. It's not a dirty word like in
the US. Taxes are a mark of honor, a patriotic duty to reinvest in the
nation that you love. And those taxes should go to helping strengthen
society from the bottom up, not further the social advantages of the
elites or become giveaways to already rich special interests.
------
Part of the solutions that M. Night and other education scholars have
recommended is longer school days, year round schooling, and early
intervention programs like head start, universal Kindergarten, etc.
Basically spending a lot of money to get poor/racial minorities with bad
home environments and poor nutritional habits into a much healthier
system. Of course, doing this takes a lot of money. However, school
inequality is still a major issue so there are some resources that could
be recaptured from rich white schools.
As you may remember from the George Packer/New Yorker article, even in
the Bay Area, public schools such as Woodside and Paly have foundations
that parents started to "adequately" fund their school - i.e. they have
way more money than they need and marginal dollars there are not doing
much good, while schools like East Paly are hurting pretty bad. And of
course thanks to restrictive zoning regulations meaning no new housing
ever (into which the poors/middle class might move), public schools in
Woodside/Los Gatos/Atherton/Paly are only public in name only:
effectively they are privatized for the rich white residents. But beyond
that, it would take a massive infusion of resources into places like
the LAUSD, New York Public Schools, etc. that voters haven't shown the
will to spend.
I know you're fairly hopeful about the promise of the younger
generation, but I'm more pessimistic. It's true that race will be less
of an issue for our generation and some of the issues that the oldsters
have with things like gay marriage will dissipate. However, I feel like
our generation, while still well-intentioned, is even more clueless
about the life and struggles of poor people than any previous
generation. While J is right that the gap between the 1%ers and the
rest has grown astronomically, I feel like the life experiences of the
top 10% is becoming increasingly disconnected from the lives of the
rest. Worldly, plugged in, well educated, financially comfortable kids
on the Google buses have basically nothing at all in common with day
laborers in the Mission. I don't mean that they actively seek to screw
them but I think it's easy for many to not even people like that exist.
The problems and life experiences of the bottom 90% have basically just
don't show up on the radar of your average techie or higher.
And while the top 1% have arrogated for themselves increased power, the
top 10% still can drive the political conversation in the media and
online. If people don't see the problems of the rest of society or only
are dimly aware of them in an abstract way, I'm not optimistic that much
progress can be made.
I see where J is coming from on this - I think on matters of economic
policy the 1% have the resources to really get whatever they want.
But
I think one of the under-appreciated developments in American politics
is that, in previous historical periods, when you had this unbalanced of
an income, populists would rally the poorer classes to demand change.
That's how they broke up the robber barons (see Teddy Roosevelt), and
that's how the back was broken of European nobility.
What's happened this time is that many of the people
that might have been expected to join this populist coalition against
the rich and powerful are instead diverted by issues of "other" (i.e.
race). How else do you explain the fact that West Virginia, one of the
poorest states in the nation, voted overwhelmingly for Romney? Or
Kentucky? They're afraid that moochers (of course, moochers from out
groups; in group moochers are fine) and immigrants and gays are wrecking
America. These are precisely the people that Democrats ought to find
common cause with (and previously did, against the Robber Barons and
again during the Depression), yet our politics that are focused on race
and religion and culture have them voting against their economic
interests.
------
Thanks, A. It's ludicrous that there is any opposition to these
youth programs, as the research indisputably shows that the ROI is huge.
So the expenditures are actually cost saving measures in the long run.
There should be no conservative opposition, but of course
there is.
Is it just a philosophical/political impasse (block ANY new gov't
programs, even helpful ones), or is it the elites lashing out because
they don't want poor, colored folks to succeed and compete on a more
level playing field with their privileged kids? Sure the rich would
rather have tax breaks now than more education spending, but as I said
these programs save $ in the long run and make a stronger society, which
will reduce the rich people's future tax burden and probably result in
more capital gains for them, as these kids grow up on a better
trajectory and become valuable consumers/workers.
The data suggests that Millennials are more tech savvy,
more socially aware, and more into volunteerism than previous
generations. As you said, they are worldly, and with the internet at
their fingertips, they are on average much more cognizant of global
social issues than their parents and grandparents at that age. So really
there is no excuse for them to turn their back on social problems, even
if they can't fully "relate" to the needy. But residential and
workplace segregation is a terrible problem, because if you don't see
diversity and the struggles of others each day, you are less likely to
do anything about them. I believe that most young adults (and most of us
on this email) would vote for policies and leaders who want to make our
society fairer. The problem is no one is putting such debates up for a
vote (probably because most of the political system is co-opted by the
elites as J said). I think the youth are in the right place morally, but
they just need a spark or a dynamic figure to lead them, like a modern
day "Ask not what your country can do for you..." or "We hold these
truths to be self evident..." We don't have that unfortunately. All our
brightest young people are going into the private sector, where they
can't "do good" because they are beholden to shareholders, and fighting
for their lives against cutthroat competition. Only when they're super
rich and semi-retired like Gates will they hopefully give back. Look at
us; we have money and are well aware of the problems out there, but we
don't have the time or courage to advocate for the causes (many
self-imposed or social barriers stand in our way). We will vote the
"right way" if the occasion arises, and maybe even give some money, but
we aren't able to put in the hours (not to mention blood, sweat, and
tears) to lead the populist charge as you said. I admire the few folks
who do.
But maybe all is not lost and there are some leaders with potential. Here's a Fresh Air
interview
about Pope Francis, and of course the main theme of his papacy so far
is social justice and critique of global wealth inequality (and the
institutions that perpetuate it). Europe is a powder keg of discontent
regarding gov't corruption, voiding the social contract, and widespread
unemployment. I will give Obama credit too that he has raised the issues
of race and inequality (maybe not by choice) more than any other
president since LBJ. Maybe he hasn't moved the needle on the debate in
America, but he isn't letting us sweep it under the rug. So we are
seeing some top-down emphasis of the race and wealth issues, but
unfortunately that hasn't manifested itself into new laws and reforms
(the plutocrats can control lawmaking bodies a lot more than individual
executives).
Re: the US history of populism, you are right that
conditions were a lot different when labor was stronger and the working
white poor were a major Dem constituency. But the party made a decision
in the '60s to fight one injustice at the expense of the other. They
fought against racial discrimination, which lost them the Southern white
vote. And in order to make up for it, they had to go more corporate and
turn their back on labor too. So the Dems are more elite than ever,
even if the GOP is really struggling with key demos like single women
and non-whites. But I don't think that racist whites in the US hate
colored folks just because they bought into the economic propaganda of
the elites. They had those prejudices already, and the elites just
fueled the fire with scare tactics relating to black uprising/crime and
immigrants taking jobs/services. We also have to address the
non-economic drivers of modern racism (I am not quite sure what they are
but I could speculate). I agree that the GOP is using religion as a
wedge issue to keep its base from turning populist, which is of course
ironic because Christian values are clearly misaligned with the modern
GOP.
--------
As A pointed out, "
But
I think one of the under-appreciated developments in American politics
is that, in previous historical periods, when you had this unbalanced of
an income, populists would rally the poorer classes to demand change.
", I find it interesting that at that time, communication between groups
was limited by lack of technology. Now we have instant communication
with anyone in the world. You would think that it would be easy to put
all of the pieces together for the oppressed to rise up. But, these
same lines of instant communication are also used to manipulate us in
ways we'd never seen before, essentially keeping us divided, blaming one
another for our lot in life instead of seeing the real picture.
-----------
http://www.insidepolitics.org/ps111/riseofinternet.html
http://gnovisjournal.org/2010/04/25/media-fragmentation-and-political-polarization-how-high-choice-media-environment-leads-great/
Thanks, L. Yeah media fragmentation in the US can be a big
problem. Families don't tune into the same 3 info sources around the
radio or TV set anymore. So of course FNC says that everything MSNBC
says are lies, and vice versa (and CNN just talks about the Kardashians)
- adding to distrust, misinformation, and most harmful... polarization.
Plus we are blitzed with too much info now on our multiple devices
(especially entertainment/time-wasting content), which distracts us from
thinking, collaborating, and rising up together.
Twitter and Facebook helped the Arab Spring gain momentum, but sadly
it can't really do the same for us (even though we invented those
services). Well, when commercial crap like Bieber and Coke are the most
liked/followed entities on social media, you know we have a problem. It
seems US social media is (deliberately or not) functioning to prevent us
from mass political debate and assembly, whereas it has the opposite
effect in repressive/dysfunctional foreign countries (which is why their
state security services try to block/monitor it)?
