

Airport Exposes Class Divisions in Silicon Valley - brd529
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/us/airport-project-reflects-a-changing-silicon-valley.html

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eldavido
SV transplant here. Grew up in suburban Chicago, now live in SF. Being
surrounded by rich people all day is nice -- low crime, good water-cooler
conversations with well-traveled, worldly, people, but there's a dark side:
I'm having a harder and harder time relating to my family back in IL as time
goes on.

In time, I imagine sociologists will study the affects of such insular
communities on empathy, happiness, and many other dimensions of the human
experience.

~~~
rdl
I live in Oakland and generally spend zero time here except either inside the
condo or in a car driving to anywhere else.

I went to a local optometrist (who is surprisingly good); as far as I can
tell, every patient who walked in was asking about Medi-Cal coverage or other
government subsidy for the poor (which wasn't accepted, so they left). I'd far
prefer to be around tech startup founders than the alternative, which is not
"firefighters and teachers", but the poor and borderline homeless, it seems.

(I plan to move to Seattle or San Mateo County later this year; unclear if the
benefits of Silicon Valley make up for the bogosity of California anymore.)

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steven777400
I don't appreciate the way the article vilifies the airport and its expansion.
Airports may be used by the super rich, but they are also used by middle class
workers as well. I make under six figures but still co-own a private aircraft
and enjoy flying recreationally.

Furthermore, the new FBO on the airport would not displace any current
residents (the displaced resident in the article lives in a complex planned
for conversion into a business center). Instead, the new FBO would offer entry
level employment, such as aircraft fueler and receptionist work, exactly the
kind of thing the non-tech residents of SV should be calling for.

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a3n
> “But I’m also going to try to talk to the guy at Facebook,” she said in the
> living room of her tidy two-room trailer, adding that she had read that the
> company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, had recently established a
> political action committee for immigration reform. “He’s trying to help
> immigrants, and immigrants are here.”

I'm not sure if she's being sarcastic. I'm pretty sure Zuckerberg doesn't care
about the immigrants in her trailer park. He cares about increasing the pool
of skilled technical works, which would bring his costs down.

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downandout
This type of thing is going on all over the country. If you play this out to
its logical conclusion, none of the people that wealthy households depend on
to maintain their lifestyles will be able to live near enough to the wealthy
to provide those services. I guess someone better improve the Roomba and make
a dish washing, laundry, and pool cleaning bot quickly.

~~~
tptacek
I don't even know where you'd go in Chicago to pick up a private jet, and
we're the third largest metro area in the country. Can you tell me more about
the lifestyle support workers who can't afford to live near rich people here?

The fact is that SF and, to a lesser but still significant extent NYC, are
hobbled in this respect by geography.

~~~
downandout
[http://www.chicagotraveler.com/attractions/palwaukee-
airport...](http://www.chicagotraveler.com/attractions/palwaukee-airport.html)

Next flight leaves...whenever you want it to.

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pat_punnu
I wouldn't describe most people who work at Facebook and Google as being upper
class. They may earn above average when you look at all workers, but I think
upper class is old money, privately education with independent wealth and
social power. I don't think that describes most geeks.

Edit: I think in the US a Senator would be upper class, some random Google
employee is probably middle-middle at best.

~~~
dragonwriter
If you are dependent on a paycheck from an employer to pay your bills (either
as a regular employee or a contractor), and your annual pay isn't enough that
you could, in principle, invest the surplus above the median income over your
expected career and be able to live indefinitely at near-median income off the
proceeds of that investment as passive recipient (IOW, if you work for a
living and aren't something like a top-rank pro athlete or someone with
similar pay), its probably safe to say that you are at best upper-middle
class.

The upper class are the people that live comfortably off of capital (or have
the resources where they could do so, in principle, even if instead they
choose to consume their seed corn and _don't_.) They are the people that, if
they have jobs, have no need to have fear of losing them, not because its easy
to find another one (as might be the case for many elite workers), but because
they don't really need the first one.

~~~
keenerd
There was a post last month where the comments went into how the wealthy don't
consider themselves "upper class". One fellow said he had $8M in investments
but did not feel "upper class" due to lack of influence/respect.

Completely oblivious to the fact that he could cash out the investments, never
work again and still be in the top 20% income bracket.

Here is how to become middle class. Go to school, get good grades, get a job.

Here is how to become "upper class". Get a pile of money. Stop working. Start
accumulating influence and respect.

The $8M dollar working man is like a grad student who never leaves school. He
keeps accumulating little bits of paper that say how awesome he is, but are
worthless in the larger game. He never moves onto the next step.

Oh, and if you can't figure out how to gain influence/respect, get out of the
Valley. You are a medium-sized fish in a giant pond. Find a smaller pond.
Throw a dart at a US map, move to that town. Buy every piece of land that goes
up for sale. Get involved in local politics, the Zoning Board will probably
have the best results. Hire people and build your dream.

~~~
derefr
By the traditional definitions, you have the lower class (proletariat), middle
class (bourgeoisie), and upper class (aristocracy). People who work for
someone else--in exchange for a wage meted out by that someone else--are
_lower_ class, no matter how high-up they are in their particular
organization. Business _owners_ (though this includes freelancers) form the
middle class. People who have enough power to control _the rules by which
capital is allocated in the economy_ (and thereby basically have unlimited
wealth, in a sense) are upper class. This used to be royalty, and those who
could afford to spend all day bowing and scraping to them; in the modern day,
it's congress, and the leaders of the industries who can afford to lobby them.

Interestingly, this class structure has been "rediscovered" in modern-day
discourse, in the form of the MacLeod corporate hierarchy. It's harder to
recognize within the context of a single corporation, but when you analyze,
say, all of Silicon Valley in those terms
(<http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/vcistan/>), the class-structure
leaps right out.

~~~
dragonwriter
> By the traditional definitions, you have the lower class (proletariat),
> middle class (bourgeoisie), and upper class (aristocracy). People who work
> for someone else--in exchange for a wage meted out by that someone else--are
> lower class, no matter how high-up they are in their particular
> organization.

The "traditional" scheme I'm most familiar with has the proletariat, the petit
bourgeosie, and the haute borgeoisie; that is, the post-aristocratic system
used in 19th century discussions of capitalist society. The petit bourgeosie
includes both what would, in modern terms, be elite and white collar workers
(technical experts, managers, etc.) and small business owners (who may
technically be 'capitalist', but are nevertheless are dependent largely on
their own labor for support even if it is not wage labor), while the haute
bourgeousie are the major capitalists.

Both the proletariat (lower class) and much of the petit bourgeosie (middle
class) work at wage labor, and the proletariat and the whole of the petit
bourgeosie are dependent on their ability to _find a market for their labor_
for their living. The haute bourgeosie corresponds very closely to how you
describe the aristocracy, but the distinction between the proletariat and the
petit bourgeosie is not at the point where your description draws the line
between the proletariat and the bourgeosie; business ownership isn't the _sine
qua non_ of the middle class.

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carsongross
Nope. Next question.

~~~
pat_punnu
The cheeky mods have changed the title, so your comment no longer makes any
sense.

~~~
brd529
The original title was: Is there room for a middle class in Silicon Valley?

I think it's an important question, and if the answer is "no" what can we do
about it? It was this line of the article that resonated with me: "We are
becoming a community where our teachers, our police, our firefighters, our
nurses, they can’t live with us. They have to come in from other places.
Healthy communities have all these people living together."

It seems terribly unhealthy to exclude the folks who provide vital and
valuable services to a community from living in it.

~~~
runamok
Use sacbee to look up how much police officers make in the area. Hint, a hell
of a lot more then I do as a programmer with 10+ years of experience. Hell,
that campus police officer that pepper sprayed those kids at Berkeley makes 6
figures.

~~~
rdouble
Back when SFPD was short staffed there used to be a billboard advertising
$91,000 starting salary for new recruits.

