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The Silicon Valley Paradox: One In Four People Are At Risk of Hunger (theguardian.com)
Zorro shares a report from The Guardian: One in four people in Silicon Valley are at risk of hunger, researchers at the Second Harvest food bank have found. Using hundreds of community interviews and data modeling, a new study suggests that 26.8% of the population -- almost 720,000 people -- qualify as "food insecure" based on risk factors such as missing meals, relying on food banks or food stamps, borrowing money for food, or neglecting bills and rent in order to buy groceries. Nearly a quarter are families with children. "We call it the Silicon Valley paradox," says Steve Brennan, the food bank's marketing director. "As the economy gets better we seem to be serving more people." Since the recession, Second Harvest has seen demand spike by 46%. The bank is at the center of the Silicon Valley boom -- both literally and figuratively. It sits just half a mile from Cisco's headquarters and counts Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg among its major donors. But the need it serves is exacerbated by this industry's wealth; as high-paying tech firms move in, the cost of living rises for everyone else.
The scale of the problem becomes apparent on a visit to Second Harvest, the only food bank serving Silicon Valley and one of the largest in the country. In any given month it provides meals for 257,000 people -- 66m pounds of food last year. Because poverty is often shrouded in shame, their clients' situations can come as a surprise. "Often we think of somebody visibly hungry, the traditional homeless person," Brennan said. "But this study is putting light on the non-traditional homeless: people living in their car or a garage, working people who have to choose between rent and food, people without access to a kitchen."
The scale of the problem becomes apparent on a visit to Second Harvest, the only food bank serving Silicon Valley and one of the largest in the country. In any given month it provides meals for 257,000 people -- 66m pounds of food last year. Because poverty is often shrouded in shame, their clients' situations can come as a surprise. "Often we think of somebody visibly hungry, the traditional homeless person," Brennan said. "But this study is putting light on the non-traditional homeless: people living in their car or a garage, working people who have to choose between rent and food, people without access to a kitchen."
Silicon Valley has some of the most draconian development regulations in the US (part of it is a field used for grazing cows). And when you can't develop, you can't build houses and apartments to build up the existing housing stock, and people end up living in cars and garages. Silicon Valley won't become exactly affordable, but at least people will have more places to live at lower rents and prices.
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Itâ(TM)s not a liberal thing, itâ(TM)s a rich thing. People who are rich tend to want to stay rich and tend to want other rich people to be their neighbors.
That the Moore signing in the yearbook was forged was fake news that Fox put out and they retracted the story after they had spread it around. Breitbart and other news kept their copies of the stories even after Fox retracted the source story.
http://thehill.com/homenews/me...
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
I find it twisted that Republicans are the ones who complain about fake news the most, except the news they watch and read puts out much more fake news than most mainstream media. I guess it's the same as Trump having called Clinton a liar, when he's Mr. 5 public lies a day.
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Taxes don't matter because the money goes to government worker pensions.
Pensions don't build or repair roads.
Pensions don't teach schoolchildren.
Pensions don't put out fires.
Pensions don't solve crimes or keep the peace.
Pensions don't feed the poor or provide for the needy.
Pensions don't keep the air and water clean.
They do feed the poor. What do you think retired civil servants will be if they don't have pensions? Many of them worked below-market-wage jobs for decades, which means they won't have nearly as much saved up for retirement as their private sector peers. Compound interest means even a small difference in income adds up to a huge difference in the size of the retirement fund.
Not to mention what a dick move it would be to promise pensions then take it away when it's inconvenient.
Liberal and Conservative are just bullshit labels that the 1% uses to divide us. It's no accident either, this has been going on for a century with right wing radicals such as William Randolph Hearst controlling the media, rabid anti-socialist Fred C. Koch with his hand on industry, Thomas Mellon and sons running much of the banking in the new industries and many more.
You do realize people are born into widely different circumstances and those circumstances, both biological, social and economic have a huge impact on their capabilities to function in a modern society, right? I was born with cerebral palsy and the initial estimate of the doctors was that I'd likely never learn to read or write, yet I now do so fluently in 2 languages and less fluently in 2 others. Is this all because I'm some kind of a superman who beat all the odds with sheer willpower and managed to lift myself up by my own bootstraps? Well, yes and no. You see, my parents decided they weren't going to just give up on me and decided to try and put me into a normal elementary school, where I needed an assistant to help me. The first couple of years were hard and I took a lot longer than most people to master reading/writing, and almost gave up a couple times, but the encouraging support from my family as well as my then doctor kept me going. I also had to have several surgeries performed to hone out major physiological issues that were making my movement really hard, received physical therapy 2-3 times a week (still do) and had to spend quite a while learning basic motor skills with the help of a therapist. This all obviously took motivation and desire to progress from me, which I did have because as soon as I learned to read it became clear to me that the only way of getting on par with the rest of the people out there is to educate myself. However, it also took insane amounts of resources. The amount of money poured into me at an early age is staggering when you factor in the surgeries, the therapy, the costs for the assistant at school, my wheelchairs, mobility scooters, medication (I had to be injected with synthetic growth hormone because my body proiduced almost none of it naturally and synthetic human growth hormone costs a ton) and so on.
Lucky me for being born into a wealthy family right? No. My parents are firmly middle-class, so while we're never dirt poor, I have 2 other brothers so money was often tight, and there's no way my parents could have afforded all these things for me had it been up to them. Luckily I happened to have been born into a country (Finland) in which the constitution guarantees people certain rights, one of which is the right to social security and health care. This means that in fact the state paid for all of these things. All of them. Later on when I graduated high school, at that point having become quite good at studying once my biology was no longer in the way, I managed to get myself into a university here on my second attempt, and that too was paid for by the state as it is for everyone here, for education is also universal here and is a constitutional right, so I eventually graduated with 0 student debt. During my final year at the uni I happened to land an office job working for the health care sector which I stayed on after graduation for a while until a position opened up on the IT side and I moved there. Finally, with a steady income and no existing debt I was able to get a mortgage and buy myself an apartment and move out on my own. Now, at the age of 27 I live by myself still, but I have an assistant who comes by a few times a week to help with cleaning and other laborious tasks that are difficult for me to do, again paid for by state (as is my still continuing physical therapy that's a requirement for me staying functional physically) which is good because although I make enough money to pay my own expenses, I don't have the kind of excess income that would allow me to hire those people on my own dime. Last year I also started a small startup with a couple of friends from the uni that currently is still a part time thing as we've all got our day jobs but the hope is to one day be working for ourselves.
Now I agree w
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Ah yes, the USA, the richest country in the world. That Janitor should just live 40 miles from his job, bike to work, and live off lentils and splitpeas.
I'm not saying we should give everything to everyone for nothing, but when you have 0.01% of the population with as much wealth as the bottom 90%, placing the problem at the feet of our poorest citizens seems to be missing the mark.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a runaway problem with the way our system is currently setup that is allowing the richest of the rich to consolidate large amounts of wealth, damaging an otherwise healthy market economy. I'm sure that top weighted market is infinitely sustainable, we certainly don't need a strong middle class to drive our economy. And obviously those poor people are lazy and entitled. They have plenty of beans to eat. Ungrateful beggars.