Increasing wages will not help as they will be captured by rising rents. I hate to get all Georgist here, but landowners are not creating economic value. In fact, by supporting zoning laws they are vastly worse than landowners historically. They are leaching off the productivity of the city. The moustache-twirling villains are not the business owners nor even the corporations, it is the land owners who created nothing yet receive most the value these workers generate. Just because this is a tyranny of a majority who owns, this does not make their yoke any less evil.<p>From a policy perspective, I like federal land-value taxes that tax based on the counterfactual value of the land absent zoning restrictions, which would internalize the costs of zoning on landowners.<p>But almost no common law jurisdiction has escaped the zoning-law trap, save for Texas. So I don't see it getting better any time soon.
Many restaurant owners in the bay area are annoyed at Google and Facebook, because they keep on hiring away their line cooks and other staff with higher pay and better benefits.<p>I suppose this article is on the front page because it bashes tech companies though.
The bay area Housing situation is hopelessly screwed up. There's no way in we're going to be able to undo 50 years of political insanity and build enough housing for everyone in just a few years. It's time we accept that hiring in the bay area is no longer feasible. Right now, this isn't Facebook's problem. As long as there's still desperate people to hire, then they'll always be able to hire more.<p>We (the people that work for these companies and the voters within the city) need to take a stand, and start lobbying these companies to get out of the bay area. Or at the very least, we need to start asking for much higher salaries. 600k to 800k needs to be the norm to live in palo alto to afford an average house (2.5M - 3.5M).<p>Personally, I don't think people are going to be able to do it. There's such a vast oversupply of labor, that the employers have a much stronger bargaining position.<p>There's still many other cities with plenty of tech people to hire. i don't see why all tech companies have to be in the 1 place where local voters don't want any residential growth.
I hope these people manage to get better pay. I hope the same thing happens all across the Bay Area in all service jobs, and I hope the pressure trickles up until the tech employees feel the squeeze of $25 burritos, plus even worse rents as the people making their lunches can afford to live in the city and compete for housing. Then I hope people either stop accepting tech jobs in the Bay Area, or companies decide it's a losing proposition to set up shop in a place where you have to pay $250k a year to a new grad.<p>We've got better communications and networks than any time in history. Why do software companies, which consume no raw materials and produce no physical product (both good reasons for setting up in a port city), all need to cluster in half a dozen spots? Think how much more runway you could get out of your seed funding if you set up shop in Missoula or Albuquerque, where you can rent a whole house for $1500/mo, can hire from the local university, and have beautiful outdoor recreation within a 15 minute drive?
The answer of course is to distribute. Silicon Valley has an echochamber problem already, maybe it's time for these companies to spread out/move their HQs across the US. There's plenty of room.<p>What's so special about the bay area? Surely if FAANG move somewhere else their employees will follow.
I have a huge amount of sympathy for these people. Clearly something is going wrong and they shouldn't be the ones dealing with it. That said...<p>> "When a company is trying to pay you the same rate that they pay in other cities, we can’t accept that." [said a line cook]<p>If it works for other cities, the problem clearly isn't the rate of pay. The problem is probably local politics of housing. Demands like that are not completely reasonable.
I was kind of shocked when I saw the $23/hr, because that's a pretty high wage for a line cook. Like I could not imagine anywhere else except for maybe NYC where a line cook would protest with that rate.<p>According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, he would be able to support himself on that but it'd be difficult if he had any dependents. <a href="http://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/41860" rel="nofollow">http://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/41860</a>
Its quite daunting that the employees find it easier to compel facebook to increase their salaries, maybe 10%, than to complain on city hall that puts the rules that made their rent 300% of what they were.
On an economical level, what's a better solution? Facebook paying their kitchen staff more (than the current $23/hr), or SF taking steps to lower its cost of living so that "one job should be enough" to get by on minimum wage (currently $15/hr)? Or something else?
Isnt this the common situation in most of Bay Area for service workers? Im in no way associated to Facebook, but I think its a bit unfair to call them out just to make the headline sensational. They're just another tenant in the Bay Area.
The truth is that the only way to increase wages is to protest or to quit their jobs en masse so I support these workers protesting. The problem with low-skilled jobs is that there's probably someone waiting to take their job at $23/hr, but that's how the system works and unfortunately low-skilled jobs don't have a tremendous amount of value. This is the counter argument to allowing illegal immigrants - they are more willing to take these low-skilled jobs and to suppress wages much longer.
Instead of creating a useless currency, Facebook should of allied itself with 20 other tech companies and created a brand new city, in the middle of nowhere. One that was built from the ground up to be sustainable and affordable where everyone can walk or scoot to work. A city unhindered by zoning or burdensome regulations. Then connect it to some of the existing cities with high speed trains or helicopter buses. It would be a win win situation for everyone involved.
I've recently reached a personal finance threshold where I'm making a substantial return e.g. enough to live on on a relatively "low risk" mix of index funds/stock investments. It made me realize that being in a position where your money is "working" for you is really the starkest difference between the rich and the poor.
San Francisco city council wants to solve this problem by banning corporate cafeterias:<p><a href="http://www.ktvu.com/news/sf-city-leaders-push-to-ban-company-cafeterias" rel="nofollow">http://www.ktvu.com/news/sf-city-leaders-push-to-ban-company...</a>
This housing crisis is going on for long time. I was wondering why don't these tech giants build housing complex for their employees.<p>It would definitely solve a lot of issues, including controlled and balanced housing cost for the employees, group/public transport, and above all a vibrant community.<p>Is it a permit issue? Or something else?
When you live in a city/state that is pushing out the middle/lower classes through increased government regulations and taxes, this is what happens.<p>This is not a blueprint for the rest of the US. I hope voters take notice.