Slashdot Mirror
In Costly Bay Area, Even Six-Figure Salaries Are Considered 'Low Income' (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: In the high-priced Bay Area, even some households that bring in six figures a year can now be considered "low income." That's according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which recently released its 2017 income limits -- a threshold that determines who can qualify for affordable and subsidized housing programs such as Section 8 vouchers. San Francisco and San Mateo counties have the highest limits in the Bay Area -- and among the highest such numbers in the country. A family of four with an income of $105,350 per year is considered "low income." A $65,800 annual income is considered "very low" for a family the same size, and $39,500 is "extremely low." The median income for those areas is $115,300. Other Bay Area counties are not far behind. In Alameda and Contra Costa counties, $80,400 for a family of four is considered low income, while in Santa Clara County, $84,750 is the low-income threshold for a family of four.
When I was out of work for two years (2009-2010) and underemployed for six months (working 20 hours per month) in Silicon Valley, I couldn't qualify for food stamps because I made too much money (20 x $16 = $320) as a single adult. After I filed for Chapter Seven bankruptcy in 2011, I still didn't qualify for food stamps. You have to work 20 hours per month at minimum wage (~$160) to qualify for food stamps. I ate a lot of rice and beans during that time.
Better yet - don't move to Silly Valley in the first place.
There's lots of places (Austin, Portland, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Southern Florida, Chicago, Atlanta, etc) where you can find lots of quite decent tech jobs. They don't pay a glamorous salary and don't have pre-IPO stock options per se, but the cost of living won't break your financial back. As a bonus, you don't have to put up with snobby California politics, people, etc. ;)
Also of note, many big-name corps (e.g. Intel) have offices, labs, etc in out-of-the-Valley places (Intel has fabs and sites in Chandler, AZ and Hillsboro, OR, among others.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Oh, you want to live in some of the most desirable real estate in the country, but you want to do it on a non-billionaire income? Sorry. You don't get to. Why on earth should the federal taxes of someone making $80k in Tennessee subsidize the housing of someone making $80k in SF? The first one doesn't get to live there; the second does. They're free to move any time they like if the housing situation is suboptimal.
make the H1B minwage $150K then
Do you really need to turn this into a rant about a 'liberal wasteland...'. San Francisco is expensive because people want to live there. Period. Democratic controlled governments have nothing to do with it other than either
1. contributing to the desirability of the places - whether you care to believe that or not.
or
2. being elected by the people who chose to live there for some other reason - which is more or less the same thing.
Now it's quite possible that the residents of San Francisco and New York are deluded about how desirable those cities are. And maybe they'd all be happier in the sun belt - though I doubt it.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
yeah, it really sucks the way people want to live in the places where their employment options are the greatest. What a bunch of entitled assholes
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
which will drive more people out and will make the housing market more affordable
Salaries in general are too low. If you're an engineer in the Bay area, with at least 10 years of experience, in 2017 dollars you should be paid at least $500k.
Liberal or Conservative doesn't matter, many places put up barriers to more affordable housing, high rises and the like. The affluent like their views and large estates and will put up regulatory barriers to prevent the hoi pollio from moving into "their" neighborhoods. See Cape Cod residents fighting off shore wind generation because it will mess with their precious view or Gated Communities etc.
The Hamptons make it almost impossible for new construction due to minimum lot sizes and other methods to keep out affordable housing.
I know I've seen the idea of taxing wealth commonly derided in the past seemingly with mountains of evidence of why it's worse than taxing income. That said I'm not an economist and can't remember much about why so I'll just point out what I can think of off the cuff.
1. Taxing wealth directly makes it much harder for people to actually build wealth over time as eventually significant portions of your income will be eaten up by it if you're trying to build enough wealth for retirement.
2. Such a policy might encourage people to save even less than they do now and instead fritter away income on intangibles resulting in more rapid accumulation of wealth in the pockets of fewer individuals who can afford to buy their way around the wealth taxes and or have the income to support just paying it.
We do actually already have some wealth taxes implemented, property and estate taxes come to mind. I'd rather see the tax code simplified by just eliminating the special treatment for edge cases, and treat all income as income regardless of its source. Rebalance the tax brackets accordingly and move on. The income tax code that most people actually deal with isn't that bad. I file an itemized return every year and it only takes about two hours to sort out when I actually sit down to do it. I'd prefer a system that just presents me with the pre-filled forms and asks for me to file an objection or sign off on it, but what we've got is tolerable for individuals.
What we need to do is somewhere in between: tax income from wealth, minus expenses on lack of wealth. That is to say, tax based on your borrower/lender (including renter/landlord) status. If you're getting free money just from already having money, you get taxed for that; meanwhile if you're paying money just because you lack money (like because you don't own a home, and you can't exist nowhere, and wherever you do exist someone is going to charge you for that privilege), that counts against your taxable income. You're free to make whatever money you can make from your own labor and to save as much of that as is personally useful to you but as soon as you start turning your accrued wealth toward generating an unearned income they you get hit with taxes.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."