Slashdot Mirror
Even Apple and Google Engineers Can't Really Afford To Live Near Their Offices (fastcompany.com)
That's according to the Y Combinator-backed real-estate startup Open Listings, which looked at median home sales prices near the headquarters (meaning within a 20-minute commute) of some of the Bay Area's biggest and best-known tech companies. Fast Company: Using public salary data from Paysa, Open Listings then looked at how many software engineers from those companies could actually afford to buy a house close to their office. Here's what it found: Engineers at five major SF-based tech companies would need to spend over the 28% threshold of their income to afford a monthly mortgage near their offices. Apple engineers would have to pay an average of 33% of their monthly income for a mortgage near work. That's the highest percentage of the companies analyzed, and home prices in Cupertino continue to skyrocket. Google wasn't much better at 32%, and living near the Facebook office would cost an engineer 29% of their monthly paycheck.
So they can't survive with two thirds of a presumably good paycheck? What's the title on about?
They forgot to deduct all the California and local taxes before you ever see that amount.
California has the highest US taxes on everything.
The article assumes a single income household, that is no longer typical. Two engineers can afford these housing prices and there are enough two engineer households to support the prevailing house prices.
33% Of your monthly paycheck is easily affordable at their compensation. What people fail to realize is that when you are earning the $$$,$$$ the other necessitates become a microscopic part of your paycheck. Say maybe 10% at MOST. That still leaves about the other 50% for "whatever" money.
Why do you think those campuses let you keep pets in your 'office" and have huge multi cuisine cafeteria? You are not supposed to live near the campus. You are supposed to live in the campus. And work way more than 8 hours a day. Immerse yourself with so much of company amenities, and befriend other company employees you don't think of moving to a start up. duh...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I am making half as much, however I have a larger home, and it is only 24% of my income.
That said, other expenses are not proportional to the areas. So my 76% of my income will need to go more into other expenses.
So the difference between a 18k car vs a 25k car is a big deal to my budgeting.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Unfettered development
If housing is soo expensive the other developers (housing developers that is) would make a killing to build there until they returned to affordability (and then they would probably still fall some more).
Once you put the profit motive INTO the equation the affordability problem improves.
Other examples of sprawling government causing housing/affordability problems: Hawaii and Venezuela
I think there is an idea for a start-up. Autonomous campers which just drive around all night or find cheap parking someplace. Your camper could drive up to 4 hours away from work while you slept and get you back in time for work.
I can't afford to live close to where I work. I commute down backgrounds past 1 million dollar homes and horse farms. I choose to work here because it pays a good salary. How is any different than most places? You commute to work within your comfort level and live where you want to live. Ever talk to commuters to NY? They can't afford to live in NY. Lots of places are like this.
Sent from my TARDIS
Maybe you've heard of taxes? In a place like California, between paying local, state and federal income taxes, plus social security and medicare taxes, the government is probably letting you have only HALF of your paycheck. Perhaps 60% of you're lucky. So of the 50-60% you're allowed to keep, spending 28-30% of it on a place to live is going to give you maybe 20-30% for ALL other expenses. I certainly wouldn't want to live that way.
Those cities are expensive because the tech companies are there. Mountain View, Cupertino and Sunnyvale were orchards and farms with dirt-cheap housing before the rise of Google, Apple, Facebook, Intel, etc.
Anywhere the tech moves; high prices will follow. Just look at Portland and Seattle.
>> 20-minute commute in Silicon Valley
What is that, 4-5 miles?
I can get about 15 miles away where I live, and commute even further. I like it that way, because it means that I only rarely bump into coworkers (or bosses or employees) when I'm not actually trying to work.
If you find yourself at the top of an Insanely Great company, you're probably a go-getter extrovert who put himself "out there" and struck it big; your whole world view therefore revolves around the importance of being "where it's at", and where it's at is naturally the Big, Beautiful, Expensive city.
Duh.
Redirect your anger towards the incompetent governments of the cities around the Bay Area, and the already-got-theirs citizens of these cities who choose to do nothing about the growing numbers of people who want to move here.
/rant.
It's the inability of government to handle these problems (and the lack of leadership to tell citizens they're going to have to experience change) that you're seeing companies step in to take the role of transportation, education, social welfare for their employees. Where governments let their infrastructure and civic fabric fall apart because of complacent old people, companies have taken on the responsibility.
All the people who protest these giant companies causing traffic, gentrification, etc... Companies are providing jobs and skills and livelihoods to people, things that everyone wants. You should thank them and their employees for keeping our economy going. And criticize the people who refuse to admit change in their neighborhoods, saying that "we don't want displacement" or "we need to preserve the character of our neighborhood". Well, fuck that. Things change, and no one ever promised you that the place you moved into you'd never have to move out.
Everyone reflexively jumps on the bandwagon of displaced elderly or gentrified neighborhoods, because they're easy to see. But who advocates for the thousands of young people who come here and have to pay $2000 just for a single room? Your kids, your classmates, who come here in search of having the American dream too? Sorry if I don't have sympathy for the "locals". The lives of the young professionals who come here are far more impacted by the cost of living and lack of housing than anyone who's already been here for 20 years and got theirs (and pulled up the ladder behind them).
Figure out whose side you're really on.
I live in a van, and I kept my job. Works for me!
Is your job has "bear" as part of the title, and does your van has "Free Candy" written on its side?
It seems obvious that they need to upzone all arterial blocks to 65 foot Multi Family Home zoning. This won't force any rich executives to sell their single family homes, but will allow condos to be built for families with 2 bedrooms. If they make the parking optional and not required, this will increase transit and bike use (or electric scooters) and eventually stabilize prices. I'd recommend they rezone any SFH citywide, just to be on the safe side, and not subject to design review.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You are.... you're... duh. I get it.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
That may be true, but it was already expensive before Google, before Facebook, before a lot of the tech companies who still want to open their offices there because that's where the action is - only being a little bit farther away still keeps you near the action and lowers costs dramatically. Several of these companies recently opened NEW campuses in those expensive areas - it makes little sense.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
My wife and I do OK. Between the two of us, we make a good chunk of change. We also live in Pittsburgh. Now, while I grant you, Pittsburgh IS a shit hole, we're also only paying 6% of our (pre-tax) monthly income for our house payment (loan, property taxes, insurance). SIX PERCENT!! That leaves an awful lot left over for other things. There is NO WAY I would want to live someplace where we were paying 28% for a place to live - let alone 33% or whatever. That's just insane. There is NO amount of money that someone would ACTUALLY be willing to pay that would be sufficient for me to actually live in places like California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, etc. We will settle for our hum-drum, not-very-exciting jobs that easily allow us to live on one paycheck and bank the other one.
down by the river?
CEOs do. And they can afford to live in the swankest areas.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
To all of those two ask 'why don't you just move to where the jobs are'.. This is why! Why get a better salary if you just have to piss it away in a house and commuting time.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
You should try Vancouver. When I was there around 2010, average monthly housing costs exceeded 100% of median income. I hear it's gotten better and it's "only" 79% now.
Which brings up a important caveat to these type of stories. These home price to income ratios are assuming you just got a job there and need to move and buy a home in the area. If you've been living there for a while, you bought your home when the price was much lower, so it still makes sense for you to live and work there.
From what I've heard, it's more the CEO's and other rich executives that want to live out there, so they make everyone follow them.
And the sad part is a lot of the area actually does not even look upscale or expensive. If you look at a photo of a neighborhood with a $2M house in it for the Mountain View / Sunnyvale area, and stripped off the address, you'd probably assume it was a $200k (or less) place in a boring part of the country.
But they want that CA lifestyle I guess.
What is this CA lifestyle thing? Got to love living in poverty making $100+K/year. But hey, the sunset ocean view from the refrigerator box is stunning every evening it's not raining and the neighborhood isn't on fire...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That's why it needs to be citywide without design review.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I live in a van, and I kept my job. Works for me!
Apple and Google engineers should all be given shovels . . . dig your own Hobbit Hole!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
To some extent, it's a fire that feeds itself. A company starts doing well, starts attracting more and more talent. The talent wants a decent life, so they buy up houses close to work. Company continues to do well, more talent wants to live there. Nobody is building new houses, and no way in hell the people already there want more traffic, denser housing, etc. So the cost of living goes up. But also, the area starts going upscale since you have all this well paid talent in the area. After some time, you end up with this vast concentration of built up talent that has zero interest in moving because they like their life. So if you want to start a new venture, it makes a lot of sense to locate it where the talent is, as you can hire the people you want and they don't need to relocate.
Case in point: me. I started with the company I work with a long time ago. I bought a house in the area. Had kids. Kids are now in local schools. Company still doing well. I like my job. My job has a lot of in demand skills. When recruiters call if they can match my pay rate, the next question is about the commute length, third is amount of vacation time, then it's to the actual job description and duties. If I'm not going to make more, there's little point. If I have to double my commute, why bother? If I lose vacation time, why bother? The area I'm in has appreciated in real estate value to the point that moving to certain locations is just out of the question, even if housing were available -- and it's generally not, we are in the "10 offers accepted above asking, 5 are cash with no inspection" part of the stupid real estate market.
In the 80's I worked in the south bay area of LA (Manhattan, Redondo, Hermosa) and spent around 30% of my take home on rent so I could live in the area. I imagine NYC is also crazy expensive.
Isn't this exactly what you would expect from something pleasant and rare? If you just want to make an area more affordable, you should make it less pleasant.
make it less pleasant
This is Silicon Valley. We're all out of pleasant.
What's the big deal? To quallify for a loan, lenders generally won't quallify you if you're going to be spending more than about 38 - 40% of you're income on housing. people push right against that limit all the time. It seems like when people get to where they are spending less than 30% of their income on housing, they're looking to upgrade.
So if we think of purchases as [housing] plus [everything else] and we increase both wages and housing by $40,000/yr, the percent of money being spent on housing increases, but the ability to purchase everything else remains unchanged. In areas where wages and housing costs are high, the 28% metric is out-dated. People can and do spend far more on housing, in total dollars and as a percentage, without necessarily sacrificing groceries or prescription drugs or Netflix.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Before Google and Facebook, there was Ebay, Oracle, HP, Cisco, Sun, AOL, nVidia etc. (90's tech boom). Before them there was Intel, Fairchild, TI, Maxim, Analog Devices, etc.
Apple has always been there. Along with a bunch of others that are still around.
This area has had behemoth tech companies for a good 40 years now and each decade grows even more.
As to why they don't spread out? That's like asking why Wall Street traders don't spread out. Because information sharing and collaboration leads to much better results. And that is far more important than cost of real estate.
Everything from VC capital to talent hunting to investor meetings to office spaces where you can poach employees from the building next door happens in that 10 mile radius.
Modest minimally livable fixer-uppers within 20 minutes of Apple in Cupertino cost about $1.5M, with mortgage and property tax that's about $7,000 to $8,000 per month, or about 35% of your monthly income.
Several of these companies recently opened NEW campuses in those expensive areas - it makes little sense.
"nobody ever goes there, it's too crowded"
What is this CA lifestyle thing?
How many Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Californians don't screw in light bulbs; they screw in hot tubs.
Long-distance view from Maryland. Some artistic license applied.
Got to love living in poverty making $100+K/year
Eh, there are plenty of places you can live in California for less; they're just not places you'd want to live. From what I've been able to determine, all slums across the continental United States reflect about the same standard-of-living at the same income level. I've lived in the lowest income areas around Baltimore for nearly a decade now, and I've prodded at data around the country to see if I could live on the same minimum budget. I found several neighborhoods outside Seattle and down in California with comparable rent (about $1/sqft in 2014 for an apartment) and food prices (pretty much identical, sometimes a few pennies off).
I imagine such places are drug- and crime-ridden ganglands filled with rats and broken-down housing. That's okay: the majority of people in this rotting ghetto are good people, and the high crime rate is perpetrated by a few individuals who of course are constantly active and so cause a lot of trouble. It's probably the same out there.
I should get out more and see the city for what it is. These may very well be the last few years we get to see classic American poverty. I wonder what the next generation will think when we try to explain it to them...
Support my political activism on Patreon.
... but why do tech companies insist on building their work places in super expensive cities? How much money could these companies save by building in a nearby suburb where their employees could actually afford to live?
Many of the employees, especially younger people, want to live in or near a large city that has an active social life. Some engineers are perfectly happy to go straight home from work and sit in front of their computer for most of the other 100+ hours in the week. Other people, including many engineers, want to be able to go see an evening show on occasion.
Most of us can't afford a home on *ONE* person's salary. I don't see how this is a shocker. You mean it's tough to afford a home in a high demand area with high prices on one persons salary?!? You don't say!
SEE: http://www.pewresearch.org/ft_...
Cupertino/Sunnyvale/Mountain View/Palo Alto are not the only areas that have seen ridiculous housing price sky rocketing... Nearby areas such as San Jose, Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Milpitas, Fremont, San Mateo, San Carlos... they all got housing pricing so high that engineering jobs can no longer afford a house. The year 2007 was considered most expensive housing before the real estate market crash. But now housing is so much higher that I wish I bought a house back in 2007. If we look further into the past around 2002-2005, if I would have bought a home back in those years, I could now sell it now and have enough money to buy several
Oh, this really isn't poverty... I've seen poverty, this isn't it.
You want to see poverty? Try some of the third world countries I've been to... It makes "poverty" here in the USA look like a walk in the park..
I've also seen some of the poorest people in the USA too, it's just not as bad here. Take a trip on the back roads in and around the poor parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and surrounding areas. There are some seriously poor (for the USA) people living there.
I don't consider having to spend 30% of your income on housing to be poor, especially when someone is making more than $100K/year.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
But the ones who do push up property prices for everyone, not just those making a ton.
If your a direct consumer related business, like a branch of a bank, or even a sport stadium, I get why you want your location to be "in the thick of it," but why do tech companies insist on building their work places in super expensive cities? How much money could these companies save by building in a nearby suburb where their employees could actually afford to live?
First, I think the point is that these cities are super expensive because these businesses are here. This isn't downtown SF after all, these are/were the subrubs and if they weren't hiring people, there wouldn't be this huge demand for property. Second, the businesses have to go someplace the skilled workers they are trying to hire actually want to live. I bet if Amazon's second HQ got put in Boise, Idaho, they'd have a pretty hard time staffing it with the people they want. Third, if things are the way they normally are, these business HQs are within 15 miles of the CEO's house.
Apple engineers would have to pay an average of 33% of their monthly income for a mortgage
Most workers in most cities would consider that an absolute bargain - some of the most affordable rates there are.
For a short time during the early 1990's when mortgage rates doubled over 2-3 years, to nearly 15%, I was paying nearly 75% of my monthly take-home pay.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Is the percentage based on Net or Gross pay?
I spend 30% of my Net pay on my mortgage. I also work from home.
Maybe my perception of "normal" is skewed from growing up in Southern California. I now live in Oregon, and the fact that I can even afford a house in a good school district seems like a godsend to me. I do not feel like I am being taken to the cleaners spending 30% of my income on a mortgage. There is still plenty left over for bills, food and savings.
The governments valuation has nothing at all to do with house value on the market. That's just government greed.
The price of real estate is determined by what someone is willing to pay for it. Period.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Those estimates are crap. 200k nets you about 10-11k / month after taxes depending on where you live and what you claim.
Want to spend 5k on a median house in CA? Probably a crap 12-1500 sq ft ranch. Big shot engineers dont want that but then again, im not in their shoes.
Ok, I get that living and working in Silicon Valley and New York can be really cool but there are lots of desirable cities across the US that also offer very good engineering jobs, with really good pay, and a cost of living that will allow you to live close to your office.
Taxes there are $0.
Enjoy.
At least slow wage growth drops that % down a smidgeon each year.
California, like pretty much all progressive blue states, is a net 'giver' to the rest of the country. If brings in more federal tax revenue than it receives. The states which are net 'takers' are pretty much all red states, filled to the brim with illiterate morons like you.
Companies go where the talent is. Companies choose in Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin, etc. because those areas have large populations of potential employees. Why do those areas have large tech populations? Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, UT Austin, etc., etc.
Applying for jobs there, I have to offset my requested salary by at least $40k just to account for the astronomical rent. I'm not sure how anybody could afford to live there or how any business could afford to employ there. Every other major metro area on the west coast is significantly cheaper. I only apply to places in Silicon Valley or SF if they offer 100% remote anymore, with the added advantage that they don't have to pay me as much since I don't need $1000 extra every month to pay for my housing.
Real estate is driven a lot by government policy. Zoning laws establish how likely the neighborhood is to change. The Fed setting interest rates drives prices pretty directly. Property tax rules encourage or discourage turnover. Tax incentives drive how likely people are to buy a house. etc. etc. etc.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
at least, as progressive as you can get in America. Property taxes are regressive. They do two things:
a) Keep the poors out of your neighborhood. Since they present an additional barrier to entry in well to do neighborhood
b) Keep the posh people from having to fund schools and parks for the poors.
Lower property taxes and higher income taxes allow for wealth redistribution. This is a good thing, no matter what anyone tells you. Money tends to collect at the top if you let it, and before you know it the folks at the top get real, real conservative as they struggle to hang on to more and more money while the rest eat cake. Eventually you get dark ages when progress is halted rather than risk disruption to established powers.
Google's a good example of this. Thanks to a public works project (the Internet) they now compete head on with Microsoft & Apple as one of the largest software companies in the world. That wouldn't have happened if wealth redistribution (e.g. taxes) hadn't allowed the Internet to become a global phenomenon.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
right here
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yes - near. Not "in," but "near." The reason people live in subburbs is because it's less expensive, but they still have access to sporting events and concerts and stuff that the city offers.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The market is highly saturated, and what is offered is sub-par compared to other areas of the country. If you're lucky to own one of these "median" homes, it would probably be built around 1960s, and not upgraded since then. The A/C may or may not be there, the plumbing will suck (or not suck, depending on how you look at it), and you'll be far away from any viable public transport.
There is a lot of resistance to building new structures, and this is all across California. According to one study the entire state of California issued less single family housing permits than a single city (Houston) in Texas: http://www.aei.org/publication...
And do not let me start about the state of the infrastructure, power costs (i.e.: pg&e), traffic and roads, etc.
Do not get me wrong, I still prefer Silicon Valley, however housing is one of the worst aspects of it.
Wall Street traders don't spread out because of the speed of light. It's literally worth billions a year to them to be a nanosecond closer to the exchange. Before HFT, they had actually begun experiments moving to other cities.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Hmm... no, I ride a bike and the air's quite nice here.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
I work in a city center. It takes 10 minutes to get out of the parking. It takes 10 minutes to get from my desk to be on a moving bus. 20 minutes would mean walking distance and nobody wants to live there.
My travel time from door to desk is about an hour. The average is around 45 minutes. Almost nobody moved for the job.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Eh, there are plenty of places you can live in California for less; they're just not places you'd want to live.
Because they're IN California.
You couldn't pay me $1M/year to live anywhere in that state. Or New York, for that matter.
Or any state in this list: Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Maryland.
I will have to tell my old man that he is full of crap next time he tells me about working at HP in Santa Rosa in the 70s. Turns out they didn't come to Silicon Valley until after Ebay made it popular in the late 90s.
What makes matters a lot worse when it comes to supply and demand, is that "being close to work" has a pretty high value to you when you have everything else.
I don't live in California, but I do live in one of the other big tech centers. Same deal, housing prices out of control.
Which isn't too surprising: when talking to most of my teammates, a good chunk of them don't want kids (so more disposable income), want to live by the subway (no car payments), and put an extremely high value to short commute (many live a block from the office).
When you're making 150, 200, or 300k a year on your own, and your significant other may also be in tech and make the same amount, who cares if 50% of your income is going to housing (especially if you bought). Quickly enough, half the money you're putting in is going to you anyway (equity), and a tiny fraction of your income is more than enough for food, utilities, insurance, and saving for retirement.
That means anyone NOT in that situation is completely hosed, obviously. That's the problem.
Go back to /pol/, creep.
I live in Manhattan and ride my bike to work. It's expensive to live here but it's worth it to me.
Bay area is crazy. Austin is nice, but getting crazy - er. My next move is to San Antonio. Low cost of living, beautiful suburbs, and more tech then anyone knows about.
Fixing poverty in third-world countries is hard. You have to bring their technical progress up to a level at which they're reasonably-wealthy before you can even attempt it. Things like Fair Trade try to accelerate this (I see Fair Trade as a step to Free Trade: once the other trading partner is above a certain level of economic development, all of the provisions of Fair Trade set minimum standards which are below anything which would be freely negotiated), although even blunt free trade creates an opportunity for a poor nation to produce (apply labor) beyond their carry capacity by selling to a wealthy nation. People talk about the US exploiting China for wage-slave labor or some such while ignoring that Chinese wages, social insurances, working conditions, and levels of poverty have improved dramatically and rapidly since they started selling for cheap to the rest of the world.
Honestly, if you're trying to rebuild nations, it takes more than free trade or fair trade. You want direct intervention. Such policies are vilified today because, out of $2,700 billion spent by our Federal government and over $6,800 billion spent by governments in total in the US today, we spend around $0.6 billion on other countries instead of thinking about our own problems. If we would just help bring Mexico more in line with our own economy, we could have an open border policy without much inflow of immigrants looking for work (because Mexico would be wealthy enough that coming to America isn't insanely attractive). Saves us on lots of inefficient border security spending (tens of billions per year if you actually want it to barely work).
The most ridiculous part is you can put an end to poverty in the US without even raising taxes on anyone. It's weird. Mainly, that's an artifact of poor structuring of the Social Security retirement and disability pensions programs: you can fix those so they're solvent without cutting benefits and end up with an additional, separate benefit that pays out when you turn 18 (retirement and disability top this up, so those particular programs pay less, while the total pay-out to people receiving those benefits is the same as the unmodified programs--i.e. if you were going to get $1,200 retirement, you instead get $700 dividend and $500 retirement, totaling $1,200). The dividend essentially makes people less-poor and thus allows other anti-poverty programs (housing assistance, SNAP, etc.) to actually lift everyone out of poverty, while the extra consumer spending drives job creation (increases effective demand) around the poorest especially and thus further alleviates poverty.
This only works if your level of technical progress allows production of the basic means of economic equity for some reasonably-small fraction of your GDP. In total, that's pretty close to 15% in the US, so you can imagine how quickly this fails in e.g. Mexico; on the other hand, that 15% number is an overstatement (I'm thinking this might work around 8% or 6%), and is really derived from an economic fairness measure (that being that a full-time working individual is 3/8 of the way to our per-capita income, and a two-adult household with one worker as such is halfway there, at the very least). It's probably not as difficult to pull off as I frequently portray.
Bonus points: you can fit universal healthcare in there and still barely avoid raising taxes, if you do it right.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Government is the least efficient way to do ANYTHING you can name.
Not really. It's shocking how inefficient Social Security is; then, you realize that private business is even worse. Social Security has staffing issues--too much staffing doing nothing much of the time--yet they're insanely-capable of getting things done when they have a new initiative. When I moved to private business, I immediately noticed they over-utilized staff, and yet they're also overstaffed: much of the work being done was waste, hardly organized in an efficient manner and with a lot of rework, resulting in nearly 80% of the expense in IT being stuff that didn't need to be bought or didn't need to be done. It's still like that, but much less bad today.
Implementing universal healthcare involves a stronger ACA mandate and a public healthcare option run by a highly-efficient Federal fund. Negotiation is bounded by pulling data from the private market (remittance rates between each insurer and each provider, using the statistical low rates as the rate per-provider in which the government will negotiate), and standards of fairness in each market are published so that the overpaying private insurers (most of them, oddly enough) have a better time negotiating closer to the mean.
Don't forget that the Federal government's own Medicaid system pioneered the use of bundled service negotiation to cut costs dramatically. Private insurers implemented that later, following Medicaid's example. Rather than handle billing for a thousand line-items, a particular medical operation such as a gall bladder surgery is analyzed for mean cost and statistical risk of complications and thus deviations, giving a properly-adjusted price basis which includes cost-of-risk. The insurers and providers negotiate over that price, and the whole thing is billed as one line-item, dramatically cutting down BIR overhead.
Operating the public healthcare option would cost less than $200 billion additional spending in 2016; and we can reduce those costs by a few other efforts, including the matter of driving private market costs down via published market standards. In the end, the public option becomes the foundation of medicaid, medicare, VA, and CHIP, spreading those savings across over a trillion dollars of current spending. There's a small chance the combined effort could result in net-lower total government cash outflow for public healthcare.
Sure such programs treat the symptoms, but it doesn't cure the illness that created poverty in the first place. So I ask you, what IS the solution? Because what you are suggesting has historically NOT helped.
Actually, paying out a cash benefit as the Dividend would create a dramatic increase in effective demand, so long as you're not doing it by deficit spending or other money creation schemes. This creates jobs directly in impoverished areas, increasing production, production-per-capita, and income-per-capita. It also reduces the number of households poor enough to receive benefits, and reduces the amount of benefits for which the remainder are eligible, reducing the cost of welfare.
The solution is moving money into impoverished local economies. You can't create jobs by supply side--by going out and working, or cutting taxes on business incomes. Workers are only profitable when they cost less than the revenue stream they produce, and that means consumers around those workers must be capable of purchasing at prices which create such a revenue stream. Stabilizing that is the only way to achieve such goals; elevating the impoverished directly moves them from non-employable (unwashed, smelly, no-fixed-address homeless folks) to employable, while also putting the spending power into their hands which creates jobs allowing them to be employed.
Running electricity through a wire doesn't produce light, unless you use a tungsten wire in a vacuum, which involves finding a way to make a glass-metal seal. Sometimes you find a thousand wrong ways to reach the right result, and nothing works until you find a right way.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Wow.. The public school system has failed you... Or you are really a socialist at heart.... Or both...
Look, socialism doesn't work. History is full of attempts to make it work, but it ALWAYS fails. Why? Because it's fundamentally flawed. How? It ignores human nature.
You keep basically saying, "if you do it right..." as if you or folks you can find are somehow better able to implement your governmental principles than the hoards of very bright historical people who have already tried. Has man somehow gotten brighter, more intelligent? I don't think so. Therefore, I think the record of history speaks truth and your ideas will continue to fail. It doesn't matter how big you go, how all encompassing you make your socialistic utopia, it's going to fail.
So single payer health care will not be cheaper, it will be more expensive, or it will be rife with rationing of care. There is no other possible outcome, no matter how bright the people are who run it.
Your economic theories don't work, despite your belief they do . The solution is individual responsibility and equal opportunity (not outcome) and LESS assistance which builds dependence. We MUST address human nature and use it to enable people to be successful on their own and stop this culture of dependence we've created by handing out stuff. You don't do that by redistribution schemes... You just make EVERYBODY equally poor. But that's the end state of socialistic programs from history, everybody is poor, everybody suffers. Don't believe me? Venezuela did all the things you suggest in principle and went from a vibrant economy to a desperate third world failed state in less than a generation.
I'm not going down that path willingly....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Look, socialism doesn't work.
This is capitalism.
it's fundamentally flawed. How? It ignores human nature.
The plan I designed is based on human nature to economize--to seek the most ends by the least means. It's based on the idea that people will inherently try to do as little as possible to get as much as they can.
So single payer health care will not be cheaper
A public option isn't a single-payer system.
Your economic theories don't work, despite your belief they do.
These economic theories are historically-proven, and are Keynesian in nature. They're based in the ideal that jobs won't exist if nobody is there to buy--that is: you can't just "create a job" if you can't make a profit selling something.
The solution is individual responsibility and equal opportunity (not outcome) and LESS assistance which builds dependence.
In areas with more need for jobs than spendable income to create all of those jobs, it is impossible to create equal opportunity. People will be left behind, because there are five barrels of apples and sufficient people that you need six barrels.
We MUST address human nature and use it to enable people to be successful on their own
That's the whole point: people have enough such that they aren't dropped out of the system, and they seek to improve their lot to end the struggling and improve their luxury. Because they can pay, landlords can profit, so they can get housing. Because they aren't troublesome to employ, employers will hire them. Because they want life to be better and easier, they seek employment. Because there is spending, employment opportunities exist.
It's all driven by human nature to seek to maximize the profit of oneself, rather than the feel-good ideals the Republicans push about how businesses will create a non-profitable job out of the goodness of their hearts to help their downtrodden comrades in the community.
You just make EVERYBODY equally poor
Actually, this program doesn't remove the social hierarchy. You can only get somewhere around the midpoint by working; you can get to the top by getting lucky enough to have a rare opportunity and being capable enough to exploit it. People at the top tend to have something like $100 or so per year for each of thousands of folks in the hierarchy below them, which is why hierarchical systems produce so few rich (they have to: it's mathematically-impossible for everyone to be the rich 1%).
Venezuela did all the things you suggest in principle
Actually, I'm the first person in history to ever suggest these things.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I earn several times 6 figures in a stronger currency and a simple one-person apartment is half my salary.
California is cheap.
Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, whomever; They should just build complexes to provide housing for their employees. This would have the effect of killing any speculative increases in the housing markets. When the market bubble bursts it would also be extremely punitive towards anyone (foreign investors especially) who were using those housing markets as investments and artificially inflating prices to increase the value of their investments.
Even if each company only added housing for 20% of their employees the effect would be dramatic.
So I did some work with a spreadsheet. Here is what I found concerning where our income goes, living in a relatively "cheap" city and state:
27%: TAXES! That's federal, state, local, social security, medicare and property taxes. Doesn't include sales tax.
7%: Daycare (one child).
7%: Food (family of 3).
5%: Mortgage payment
5%: Utilities, HOI and Cell Phones
That is 51% of our income. Everything else scales down from there.
Taxes are our biggest expense, BY FAR. They're a bigger expense than our daycare, food, mortgage, utilities and such COMBINED!!
California? Not for any amount of money. Not for $200K/year and a FREE FUCKING HOUSE 20 MINUTES FROM WORK. No thank you.
What is this CA lifestyle thing? Got to love living in poverty making $100+K/year. But hey, the sunset ocean view from the refrigerator box is stunning every evening it's not raining and the neighborhood isn't on fire
It's where the high paying jobs are, especially in tech.
Then I suggest that they don't pay enough and if you are measuring "standard of living" and not just dollars there are MUCH better places to live and work as an engineer. How do I know? I've lived and worked in a number of them. Yea, I get paid less in dollars, but I live better.
The other options are Seattle, New York, Boston and maybe Austin. All very expensive. Sure, we could live somewhere else and get paid 1/3 as much as we do here in California. I swear whoever invents the transporter from Star Trek in RL is going to be the richest person who's ever lived.
I've lived in Austin, it's not that expensive if you don't mind a bit of a commute. It's a nice place if you don't mind the "Keep Austin Weird" thing and I would highly suggest it over San Francisco where I've lived too and where you simply cannot commute far enough to make it livable on what they pay.
The rest of the places you mention are off the charts expensive and I'd not live there for love or money anyway... Well, maybe if there was enough money...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101