
The Growing Divide Between Silicon Valley And Unemployed America - jdp23
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/16/tale-of-two-countries-silicon-valley-unemployed/
======
grellas
_Maybe something is missing in the Valley and surrounding tech communities and
that’s a stronger sense of responsibility to make sure that the vast majority
of the country isn’t left behind by all this cool technology that we’re
building._

And just how does one build a startup with all that such an effort normally
entails while factoring in the need to make sure others aren't "left behind"
as that startup pushes on toward a hoped-for success? This issue can't even be
discussed in meaningful terms. We all, of course, share in the problems of
society and we all do our bit in trying to help with such problems - and who
can help but feel for those who are suffering. That is a given for most
people. But what then? Do I operate my business so that it doesn't eliminate
any competitor in hopes of saving that competitor's jobs for its employees? Do
I refrain from introducing disruptive technologies because they might actually
disrupt the lives of others? Do I ask my representatives to enact laws
granting permanent subsidies to companies such as Border's, Blockbuster, Tower
Records, and so many others so that they can continue in business offering
products or services that people more and more don't want? Or how about
passing an innovation tax to capture the all the profits of the successful
tech companies so as to level the playing field? Or how about a law banning
all disruptive technologies so that we can all enjoy a world that resembles
the one we knew a few decades ago?

The point, I think, is that startups exist on their own terms in a free
enterprise system. The goal of a business venture is to succeed in a
marketplace, not to ensure that others aren't affected by one's activities.
Nor is the goal of a venture to give away what it earns to salvage the
prospects of others who are failing. _Individuals_ can do that if they like,
and that is an issue of private conscience on what one does with private
wealth. But it is not meaningful, in my view, to tell entrepreneurs to run
their ventures with the aim of solving social problems as opposed to that of
succeeding in a marketplace. When you try to do that, you wind up mixing up
the goals of private venturing with those of broader social institutions such
as government or those of private charitable impulse. That is why even to pose
the question first stated above is to expose this as flawed thinking about the
legitimate business concerns of a tech company.

This piece is a variation on the lament expressed in the piece from a few days
ago about how Silicon Valley founders and entrepreneurs are (in effect)
shallow, self-absorbed types who can't think beyond the next trivial
innovation in hopes of gaining a quick-kill exit even as they neglect a slew
of problems that beset humanity and are crying out for solutions if only these
narrow types just had a larger vision and greater sense of social
responsibility (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2760540> \- of course,
the piece had not put it in those exact terms but I hope I captured its flavor
even as I used license in recasting its claims).

I hate to come across as narrow-minded but it really crosses a line to lecture
the tech startup world about its moral responsibility as if "it" were a
monolithic entity that had responsibilities beyond those that define what a
given business venture is supposed to do. At best, this amounts to discussing
the important issues in confused terms; at worst, it amounts to an author
smugly claiming more refined sensibilities than the mere grubbers upon whom
the author is passing a misdirected moral judgment.

~~~
jonbischke
Thanks for this commentary. My thinking when writing the article was certainly
not that startups should, to use your words, give away what they earn the
salvage the prospects of those who are failing. My personal feeling is that
tech entrepreneurs should be less encumbered and more free to innovate and
anything that remotely approaches turning the tech sector into something that
resembles a welfare state is anathema to me.

What we do in the Valley (using that as code for tech hubs) though does
reverberate around the country and world. The types of startups we create
affect people we'll never meet in places we'll never go (one of the
potentially wonderful things about technology). The conversation that I'd love
to see more of then is should we in the Valley care about what's happening
elsewhere in the country.

But I deliberately wanted to stop short in the article of making any
judgments. I think it's a perfectly rational approach to say as a tech
entrepreneur that as long as I'm not breaking any laws in the process, any
negative externalities (or lack of positive externalities) associated with the
product I'm building shouldn't be my concern. I don't believe that personally
but feel everyone has the right to their opinion on that matter.

~~~
grellas
Thanks for the gracious reply. In looking at my original comment in light of
your reply, I do think it was a bit harshly worded and for that I apologize.
Entrepreneurs, as a matter of conscience, ought to be more socially aware
about what effect their activities are having and your piece does a good job
of reminding them of that. Didn't mean to engage in a "legalistic" mugging, as
we appear to be of the same view on all fundamentals. Harshness aside, I can
only hope that my comments nonetheless help to bring added clarity to the
discussion.

~~~
invalidOrTaken
I'm certain they did, and any serious discussion must proceed from the points
you mentioned. At the end of the day, the problem is one of better education
or tool-making, because those are what will allow the unskilled to do
something worth paying for.

Startups excel at tool-making. Building better mousetraps is often seen as
purely destructive to jobs, but it also creates jobs like crazy when a
formerly-unavailable tool suddenly becomes available and lower-priced demand
can be satisfied. The availability bias works against us here because although
it's easy to see that robotic factories destroy textile-worker jobs, it's hard
to realize that cheaper computer costs will mean companies won't mind hiring
for data entry, as now they only have to pay $400 a box as opposed to $1
million for a mainframe.

In terms of creating jobs, the most saintly of tech people are probably the UX
designers who can take something a layman normally couldn't grasp, and put it
within their reach. Solar panels don't create jobs for the uneducated. Solar
panels so easy to install that you can hire minimum wage workers to install
them DO create jobs for the uneducated.

For whatever reasons, startups have not had similar success with education.
But this will undoubtedly be a hot space for the next few years, because
though the growing divide isn't the Valley's "fault," modern education is a
real problem and needs addressing.

Startups, you want to create jobs while still making a killing? Take something
hard and make it easy, or take clueless people and make them smart.

------
matwood
The divide isn't between SV and the unemployed, but between the educated and
uneducated. From politifact:

[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2010/aug/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2010/aug/17/laura-tyson/laura-tyson-says-college-grads-have-
just-45-percen/)

 _For those with less than a high school diploma, the seasonally adjusted
unemployment rate was 13.8 percent during July. For those with a high school
diploma but no college, the rate was 10.1 percent. For those with some college
experience but no college diploma, the rate was 8.3 percent. And for those
with an undergraduate degree or better, the rate was 4.5 percent. That's less
than one-third of the rate for high-school dropouts -- and it's exactly as
Tyson said it was.

...

These aren't exactly comparable, since BLS does not release seasonally
adjusted figures for those with advanced degrees. But we'll provide them
anyway. The unadjusted July rate for those with masters' degrees was 4.9
percent. For those with professional degrees, it was 2.0 percent, and for
those with doctorates, it was 1.9 percent._

Technology has always disrupted the low end of the workforce. The big
difference this time around is just how fast the disruption has occurred. It
took years for farm equipment advances to remove the need for farmhands or
cars to remove the need for people who do horse shoes. The internet and
computers in general have put entire types of work seemingly out of business
overnight.

The 'new' economy is one where everyone will need to take control of their
careers and constantly be thinking long term. The downside of this sort of
economy is that the people who have no ambition will suffer. The upside is
that those with ambition have an easier time than ever to try out their ideas
and have huge upside potential.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
_The divide isn't between SV and the unemployed, but between the educated and
uneducated._

And educational status is strongly predicted by IQ in the U.S. EDIT: And since
IQ is strongly influenced by genetics, this latest data suggests the U.S. is
creating a genetic underclass. Taken far enough, this is the death of the
republic.

Under IQ 90, 40% drop out of high school. Above IQ 110, less than 1% drop out
of high school.

    
    
      Percent with bachelor's 
      degree by IQ (ignoring
      family wealth)
    
      IQ     %
      ---    --
      85     2
      100    10
      115    30
      130    75
    

Family wealth has a modest effect. For IQ 100, coming from a super-wealthy
family boosts bachelor's degree attainment to 30%.

Source: NLSY project, early 1980s, as analyzed in _The Bell Curve_ in the mid
1990s.

~~~
cjy
The NLSY doesn't include a test of IQ. It includes an AFQT test. That stands
for Armed Forces Qualification Test. The NLSY tracks young people who are
between 14-22 in 1979 through time. Therefore, they take the AFQT test when
they are at least 14 and often older. The AFQT test isn't designed to measure
intelligence per se. Your argument is pretty much that students who score well
on standardized tests in high school and college are much more likely to
graduate (or to have graduated) from high school. There are all sorts of
correlation/causation problems there.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
_The AFQT test isn't designed to measure intelligence per se._

Yes, but as the source explains, the AFQT has several sub-tests, and most of
them are highly correlated to IQ. (A few, like the automotive knowledge test,
are uncorrelated with IQ.) They claim that appropriate analysis of results on
the sub-tests allows a reasonably accurate measurement of IQ to be made.

EDIT: Re-checking the source, they mention that in 1989 the armed forces
rescored the AFQT to make it more _g_ -loaded and repeatable. The first draft
of the book used the 1980 scoring, but they redid it all using the 1989
scoring because it was superior.

------
Spyro7
I don't understand the point of this article (or why so many people are up-
voting it).

The article says that unemployment is high and then it says:

"Maybe something is missing in the Valley and surrounding tech communities and
that’s a stronger sense of responsibility to make sure that the vast majority
of the country isn’t left behind by all this cool technology that we’re
building."

I'm curious, what should the technology communities do? As far as I can see,
by expanding their firms and hiring additional employees these companies are
already doing the responsible thing for the national economy.

I realize that TC is not an economic journal, but I think that it is
reasonable to expect a slightly more informed discussion of this issue without
so much hyperbole.

The currently high unemployment rate is not due to the technology industries
growth, and, as a matter of fact, it is the expansion of the technology
industry that will likely provide one of the avenues that will assist in
dealing with the high unemployment rate.

Just a few references:

\-
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/03/how_much...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/03/how_much_unemployment_is_here)

\-
[http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1928261,00....](http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1928261,00.html)

~~~
erikpukinskis
_I'm curious, what should the technology communities do?_

The implication I read into it was that technology companies should be aware
of the plight of the poor, and try to help people out (AirBnB, Google, etc)
and be careful not just to exploit them (Zynga). But maybe I'm just projecting
my own beliefs. :)

~~~
rbarooah
How does google help the poor?

~~~
fleitz
By providing everyone with free search to locate information, providing them
with free high quality email, adwords to market their wares/services, adsense
to monetize their traffic.

~~~
rbarooah
Fair enough, but by that logic you can say any business that provides services
that the poor can afford is 'helping the poor'. Bing helps the poor the same
way google does, Apple helps the poor by selling music by the track, etc.
Zynga helps the poor by providing cheap entertainment, etc.

I thought there was the implication that google did something specific.

~~~
grogs
It's not just that they provide free services, it's that those services are
beneficial to society. Obviously this is very subjective and complex.
Wikipedia would generally be regarded as good for society - removing the
barrier to obtaining knowledge. However, if Wikipedia details how to make a
bomb, that's regarded as bad for society.

Google helps society. They provide good search. What separates then from Bing
is that they operate with the idea of "do no evil". Bing are seen as copying
(an idea - stealing) which is bad in society.

Zynga provides cheap entertainment, but that's not good for society. TV isn't
seen as good for society anymore - it's passive. There's an opportunity cost
to being entertained - you could be productive - learning on Wikipedia.

------
jonkelly
I didn't realize the full impact of the financial meltdown until we posted on
Craigslist for an office manager last month. I received 110 applications in
less than 24 hours. 75 were highly qualified and the 14 I interviewed all had
deep experience across the disparate functional areas we needed help in. I was
stunned at the difference between that experience and our attempts to find
more Java developers, where we've heard crickets.

~~~
klbarry
That's pretty sad to hear, in a societal sense. What kind of work does an
office manager at your company do?

------
byrneseyeview
One thing this article is missing is that lots of technology innovation is
deflationary. As _The Great Stagnation_ points out, lots of people are
substituting $1 plus two hours of Farmville for a movie (and dinner out, and
gas to get there). As more forms of entertainment and social status are
available to the unemployed, the pressure to get a job lessens. You may not be
employee of the month or drive a nice car, but if you have lots of free time
you can get a pretty good mount without affecting GDP.

There's an assumption that a growing middle class with an increasing standard
of living is the norm. From what I can see, it's been the norm for a pretty
short period, in a pretty small part of the world. There are plenty of reasons
to think that the New Deal plus the GI Bill plus the Great Moderation was just
a weird, aberrant part of human history.

~~~
nostrademons
Would you consider a growing middle class with an increasing standard of
living to be desirable, though? If it's a good thing, then it doesn't matter
whether it's been the historical norm, we should work toward it.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Not especially. I prefer one more Zuck or Gates or Jobs to a million more
middle-class whoevers.

~~~
jleyank
Fail. The whoevers pay most of the taxes in the US and are the ones who
purchase your products. One "killer elite" just isn't making that much $$ for
Facebook, Google, ...

~~~
ams6110
Actually the well-off pay most of the taxes. And Zuck would not have what he
has without the company he built, and I'd reckon that pretty much every
employee at Facebook is at _least_ earning what would be considered
comfortable middle-class money.

~~~
jleyank
Middle-class < well-off <<< Gates et al. I can concede the "who pays the
taxes" point to a good argument. I think we're in general agreement that the
unwashed or partially-washed masses purchase a whole lot more stuff from high-
tech companies that the aforementioned luminaries.

Unless there's way more HN companies making carbon-fiber racing yachts that
I'm aware of.

------
irrelative
It's certainly true that the job market is going crazy in silicon valley, but
the complaints in this article go against some pretty fundamental economic
principles - namely that more efficient use of capital results in
unemployment.

Disruptive technology often results in unemployment in the short term because
it cleans up inefficiencies -- look at the industrial revolution. I think it's
fair to say we're richer as a society because we can automate production of
goods. Yes, it put a lot of craftsmen out of work, but it was a hugely
beneficial change.

And so these days we have itunes putting record stores out of business. And
amazon shutting down book stores. There's plenty of nostalgia for these
establishments, but the things that have replaced them electronically give us
incredibly better selection at less of a cost.

~~~
vannevar
We're nearing a point where we might question whether efficiency as a goal in
itself has ceased to be beneficial to us. After all, we begin as dust and end
as dust; why not make things more efficient by eliminating all the messy life
part in between?

Maybe we should be less concerned about efficiency and more concerned about
our quality of life. And not just we the wealthy (and everyone reading HN is
much, much wealthier than the average human being), but everyone. Because if
there is one thing history demonstrates, it's that when wealth becomes overly
concentrated, grief is sure to follow for everyone.

~~~
dantheman
By improving efficiency we are improving the quality of life of those around
the world. Due to rapid improvements in technology those in the poorest
countries can now easily access information, entertainment, books, knowledge
from anywhere in the world at remarkably low cost -> Greatly improving their
quality of life (if we agree that life like we have in the west is the goal).

~~~
dreamdu5t
What's the point of completely automating everything if you still have to work
40 hours a week?

~~~
nostrademons
Why do you still have to work 40 hours a week once everything is automated?

~~~
robryan
The problem there though is that those working have little interest in paying
say 50% tax to support those who they have put out if work with increased
efficiency.

------
rphlx
The displaced worker at the bookstore/recordstore becomes a Farmville-loving,
unpaid-content-producing, at-home-living, virtual-goods-buying, ad-viewing
serf, kept alive by a wealthy technical elite merely to keep the system
running. Welcome to The Matrix!

~~~
paganel
I don't know why you've been downvotted. Anyway, I said it before, the
question remains: with which money will these unemployed people buy shiny new
things? Because Government handouts won't cut it.

~~~
rphlx
To me, that is the real business model innovation of social/web2.0 - college
students will just move back home, saddled with debt, and entertain each other
on a site you control, generating revenue for you.

Their parents will fund their basic needs, at least until they themselves die
or run out of credit, government subsidies, etc.

It was not designed to be sustainable -- it was designed to extract as much
wealth as possible for its founders, as quickly as possible, before war/peak
oil/or whatever hits.

------
commanda
At one point, I (naively) thought that by starting a company, I would be
helping to alleviate unemployment in the US because I would be creating jobs.
Now I realize that the programmers and designers I employ are/will be people
who could have their choice of jobs, because I'm only hiring the smartest and
most skilled. I'm effectively not altering the unemployment rate by adding
jobs for the sector of the population that is in the least need of work.

So, I don't think it's possible for us (people who work at companies whose
product is technology) to help create jobs for people without tech skills.

~~~
gaius
You kinda are tho', because those "smartest" people working for you are no
longer competing for jobs at Starbucks.

------
daimyoyo
I've been seeing this trend first hand. That's why I am learning how to code.
The fact is that the jobs that provide a living wage today are based on
knowledge. So you can retrain yourself, or you can be left behind.

~~~
GrangalanJr
I am retraining myself, too. By inclination I am a liberal artsy guy with only
a slight interest in technical stuff, but I've seen the writing on the wall
and am learning to program. Turns out that it can be quite fun anyway. :-)

~~~
tomjen3
Indeed it can.

But don't discount how much people who can do graphical design are needed too
-- the projects advertised in the Weekend Hacker newsletter -- need a
graphically skilled person over a programmer at a 3 to 1 ratio.

------
skarayan
While the overall unemployment number is a good indicator for the economy, it
is far from the best indicator. Instead of looking at an overall "jobs count",
perhaps we should be looking at how the state of technology (or the job
market) is improving the overall efficiency in the economy. After all, our
lives improve as technology becomes more efficient.

For example, while Amazon may step on the shoes of the likes of Borders, look
at what it is doing for consumers. On a global scale, we should be focusing on
improving the lives of people, but at the same time we should continue to
promote competition.

The unfortunate consequence of competition is that some people lose out. To
rectify this, perhaps we should focus on creating the right types of jobs and
promoting constant education. In addition to the unemployment number, I wish
we could see some additional metrics.

At a previous job, I was responsible for data management and business
intelligence. My team basically looked at the company's numbers and sliced and
diced it every way possible. I would love to see some more metrics from the
government. I would also love to see some better tools developed by the
government to help us visualize the data. (One tool that comes to mind for
this sort of stuff is an OLAP cube)

Without going too far away from the point, a simple "unemployment number"
isn't enough. Let's look at some more data and see where the problems are.
Also, let's make this transparent so that people start talking about the
details instead of one number.

~~~
_delirium
I agree that overall efficiency is important, but in terms of a reasonably
coherent society, the unemployment number also seems pretty important. In the
long-term, either almost everyone needs _some_ sort of job, most of the time,
or we need a plan B to accomodate a large portion of the population being
long-term unemployed.

If, say, we have long-term 20% unemployment, _even if_ the economy was
otherwise booming, this 20% of the population with no real source of income
poses a big problem. Either we have to figure how they can participate in the
economy somehow (which would mean the unemployment rate would go down, solving
the problem), or, if long-term there is going to be a persistent higher
unemployment rate, then we have to do something different about it (perhaps a
guaranteed-minimum subsistence income along the lines that Friedman and Hayek
advocated).

~~~
skarayan
You're right, but we need more transparency. What are the skills of the 9% or
so of people that are unemployed now? Do the majority of the unemployed people
work at similar types of jobs? What was the reason they lost their jobs?

These are all important questions for reducing that one overall number, but
everyone seems to be just focusing on the total number.

------
bugsy
The article's analysis is severely flawed, and I suspect intentionally so. It
tries to lay the blame on inventors, innovation and technology workers for the
unemployment of unskilled workers.

We don't have enough manufacturing jobs in the country _not_ because
technology has made it so that everything is made by robots in gleaming
factories.

We don't have enough manufacturing jobs in the country because we have zero
import tariffs for countries that use slave labor and have no enforced
environmental regulations. This is a situation created by globalist bankers,
not inventors.

------
rdl
The long-term structural fix is probably that "industrial" value creation
(manufacturing, tech R&D, etc.) will be concentrated in a smaller and smaller
number of people (essentially, Silicon Valley plus robotic factories), and
that everyone else will have some kind of job which is either a service job or
an artisan manufacturing job (i.e. if you can have 1k farmers with agritech
produce ~1% of the world's industrial corn, you might still want to support
small farmers growing heritage/etc. crops which are more labor intensive). A
combination of "personal service" services jobs (while automation can reduce
headcount in services too, e.g. recorded video lectures, it's a lot less
effective than in manufacturing or pure information goods) and intentionally
labor intensive manufacturing is a much better alternative than mass
unemployment and welfare, or mass unemployment and death.

The funny thing is this world almost ends up like a computer RPG; you can give
away mass-produced n00b gear to everyone for free, but then the specialty
stuff becomes even higher priced. It's pretty easy to argue that no one in a
rich society should starve to death, but it's a lot harder to argue that the
poor have a right to purely luxury versions of basic goods.

------
gdilla
I transitioned from a tech company to a traditional media company. I consider
myself an avg engineer at best. The shit that I can pound out (self taught)
like wireframes, flowcharts, product plans, marketing plans, automating data
collections, in house wikis, usability reviews, is orders of magnitude more
productive than the PR person sitting next to me. And these are the people who
have jobs. In otherwords, being skilled, at least techincally, really deserves
to be in demand. We can always make things more efficient. That's always going
to be in demand.

My advice is to always think about your career a little strategically. Your
skills should transcend your company and your vertical. Never give up looking
at ways to be better and always be willing to learn. I see very little of that
from coworkers. And after a while, those types of employees build up an
impedance to being an autodidact, which imho, is career suicide. That's why I
love meeting coworkers who are interested in the stuff I do and want to learn.
I show them how easy it is to learn new things, and that there's tools that
always make your life easier. Then their eyes light up. love that.

------
tobias3
It's funny that this article appeared simultaneously with this german article:
<http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/siliconvalley100.html> (Well... it's in
german)

It says that one in ten people goes to the Second Harvest Food Bank for meals.
Living costs are very high and that unemployment is increasing in Silicon
Valley.

Can somebody tell me what's true?

~~~
alain94040
What's for sure is that the tech economy is booming. If you can code, people
would stop you on the street and offer you a job. I'm only exaggerating a
little.

In the last 6 months, "we are hiring" signs have started to pop up in many
stores. So the boom is not just for developers, it's also for retail
positions. To me, that's the #1 proof that the economy is great
([http://blog.foundrs.com/2011/04/26/the-sure-tell-sign-
that-s...](http://blog.foundrs.com/2011/04/26/the-sure-tell-sign-that-silicon-
valley-is-booming-again/)).

------
orofino
While I understand the 'negatives' the article mentions, it doesn't provide
much in the way of helpful insight as the the alternative. Sure people are
losing jobs to automation, does that mean we should stop moving forward? This
isn't just isolated to silicon valley or even the tech industry though. My
wife is a pharmacist and to get jobs in desirable areas is highly competitive
at this time. I'm sure there are other areas where this is true as well.

~~~
code_devil
I think this also holds for any other country as well. Say, if you go to
India, you will see a vast disparity between Mumbai and some small remote
town. In Mumbai/Delhi a mechanical machine would be used to mix the cement
material for construction whereas in the remote cities you might see labours
manually mix the contents of cement.

------
RuadhanMc
Perhaps what we need is a radical shake up of our schooling system, but also a
re-evaluation or how we raise our kids. Chew on this:

"Nearly 6.2 million students in the United States between the ages of 16 and
24 in 2007 dropped out of high school..."

[http://articles.cnn.com/2009-05-05/us/dropout.rate.study_1_d...](http://articles.cnn.com/2009-05-05/us/dropout.rate.study_1_dropouts-
enrollment-graduations?_s=PM:US)

Yikes. Something stinks. In this day and age unemployment is going to continue
to be really high if there are 6.2 or so million students dropping out of high
school / university per _year_.

America (and other western countries) are not creating labor intensive
industries anymore (with the exception of wars -- sad, but true), so these
drop-outs are going to have real employment troubles for the rest of their 50+
years of life.

Something's gotta give.

~~~
khuey
Where did you get dropouts per year from? The article is saying that in the
year 2007 of the cohort of individuals ages 16 to 24 6.2 million were
dropouts. 16% is far too high of a dropout rate ... but 6.2 million per year
is clearly impossible in a nation of ~300 million.

------
blumentopf
For those interested in an outside view and capable of German, "tagesschau"
(flagship news programme on German TV) today aired two stories on this topic:

Die Verlierer im Silicon Valley (The losers in Silicon Valley)
<http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/siliconvalley100.html>

Erst ist das Haus weg, dann der Job, dann die Kinder... (First they lost their
house, then their jobs, then their children...)
<http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/weltspiegel382.html>

------
Vivtek
Balderdash. There's no _responsibility to go slower so people can catch up_.

If there's honestly a cultural divide between Silicon Valley and Unemployed
America, then there ought to be some serious money to be made on things that
help Unemployed America that people in Silicon Valley aren't going to find
(which is good news for me, if I can just figure out what those things are).
Expect this to be one of the things that ends this recession/depression - but
blaming macroeconomic screwups on the only people around _not_ screwing up is
not the answer.

------
martinshen
This article I feel simply explains that advancement in technology could be
hurting America. Yes, change can cause damage... but change will happen no
matter what.

I think that the current divide is simply a educated/uneducated. Or it could
be the market simply rewarding certain professions as they do with investment
banking. However, it just so happens that the majority of these jobs are in SV
as they do on Wall Street.

Yet, I don't understand the issue the author is laying out. Is he suggesting
that San Francisco and the bay area is strictly a wealthy area? Is he implying
that SV is so different from other cities employment wise? Has he seem the
number of homeless in San Francisco?

------
ericd
The comments on this article on TC seem like a pretty strong argument for
disabling Yahoo as a way to comment.

------
estrategy
The fact is there is 1000x more VC and angel capital in the Bay Area willing
to fund "any idea". This does not exist anywhere else and startup money does
not travel.

------
rorrr
It's all about education. We just got lucky that we picked IT when we were
young.

My wife always laughs at me when I refuse to take a job, because "it only pays
$60 per hour". Her friends and her don't have any high tech education, and
$20-30/hr is their ceiling, most of them making less, and at the same time the
jobs they do seem so much more boring than creating websites or building apps.

We are truly lucky, guys. Enjoy the ride it while it lasts.

~~~
emmett
Programming isn't that hard - why don't any of them want to join us? You could
become a passable programmer in 3 years and there's no school admittance board
you have to impress with test scores!

~~~
patio11
So I periodically think this is true, and wonder "Why do I get paid so
fantastically well for just drizzling some AJAX goo on top of pre-existing
APIs?", and then I actually talk to Real People (TM) and remember that I
inhabit another planet from them.

On their planet, being able to calculate the area of a rectangle reliably, the
first time, makes you anomalously good with math. The notion of programs as
long strings of instructions, followed sequentially, with predictable results
is a fantasy: computers are observed to operate mostly randomly, all of the
time. Some days I go to my Googles and it's the Googles with the box in the
middle,a some days I go to my Googles and it's the Googles with the box at the
top. Why does Microsoft keep changing the Googles? THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING.

You and I might think there is a distinction between programs and data, and we
could describe how these exist in different places in a hierarchical file
system on a computer, which is an abstraction over sectors on a hard disk.
Every technical word in that sentence is _scary juju_ to most of the
population. There are many otherwise intelligent people who _cannot open MS
Word_ without a document emailed to them first. If you took away the document,
they wouldn't know how to open Word and _wouldn't know how to correct that._

In addition, many folks who are unemployed or underemployed in the United
States either cannot read this post or cannot understand enough of it to
answer simple questions like "Does Patrick think that programming is hard?"

You can certainly become a passable programmer in 3 years starting from being
well-educated, intelligent, and reasonably skilled at knowledge work in the
information economy. If you're 3 for 3 on those, you _don't have a problem
right now_.

~~~
ams6110
_Every technical word in that sentence is scary juju to most of the
population._

This is why I hate to get into small talk with someone I've just met. One of
the first polite questions I get is "so, what do you do?" and to judge by
reactions its as if I immediately start talking like the adults in a "Peanuts"
cartoon. And even if I try to be as nontechnical as possible ("I do website
work") you can see they just don't want to continue the conversation at that
point.

~~~
jasonkester
"I make websites. No, not the pretty graphics and stuff, the bit that make
them do stuff. You know that little "e" up in the corner? Whenever that's
spinning around, my stuff's happening."

"sound exciting"

"Yeah, it's almost _exactly_ that exciting. So what do you do?"

------
dublinclontarf
I'm not liking this bullshit of "were automating all the jobs away" that I've
been hearing a lot of lately. People have unlimited wants, so it's just a
crock.

This is going to turn into an excuse to put a boot on the Valley's neck.

~~~
nkassis
I don't understand why you think it's all BS. People might have unlimited
wants but they have a limited amount of ressources to obtain those wants.

The reality is, there hasn't been a real labor intensive new thing in the past
30+ years. What new thing requires massive man power to do? Even programmers,
our job go easier with time. A programmer today with tools today is much more
productive then he used to be. Same for most professions.

Companies are outputting the same with less employees now. Productivity
measures are up. That just means a more efficient society that requires more
and more complex jobs that haven't yet been automated. Some people just can't
do those jobs.

(Now I'm going to go buy me this shirt from ThinkGeek:
[http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-
apparel/unisex/frustrations...](http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-
apparel/unisex/frustrations/374d/))

~~~
mahyarm
One place we could start is to create an over supply of medical doctors,
pharmacists, nurses and medical researchers to reduce the cost of healthcare.

