From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Fri Sep 08 2000 - 23:10:50 MDT
> Brian D Williams wrote: ... and a third class
> who are truly bums, unwilling to work because most can scam better
> in a couple hours, than they can earn working a whole day at minimum
> wage...
The latest societal convulsion in the SF Bay area has created
some oddities. During the bad old days of the late 80s, we
had a great number of signers: these guys holding signs insisting
that they would WORK for FOOD, etc.
Well, unfortunately for them, prosperity intervened (Clintonomics?)
and even they must have recognized the absurdity of the notion,
holding such a sign on the street corner, when all the local fast
food places had *permanently mounted* their HELP WANTED
signs in the window.
Last year, the government issued a very large number of visas,
to pretty much anyone who could pay taxes on 60k, which is
just about the starting wage around here for anyone who can
place one line of code in front of another, so as one might
suspect we had a massive influx, which caused the apartment
vacancy rate to drop to a few parts per million, which caused
the rent prices to skyrocket to the point that the "homeless-
will-work-for-food"ers were in danger of actually becoming
literally without a home.
All the local fast food joints have raised the starting wage to
about $9/hour, still not really competitive with what the
signers can earn, but as high as they can pay selling 3 dollar
hamburgers, but at $9/hour a person would need to work
60 hours a week to cover the rent alone on a typical studio
apartment in Sunnyvale, consequentemente...
the employees leave.
Then, the fast food joints start asking their employees to
work longer hours, forgetting why people take those jobs
in the first place: they allow people to work part time. When
they are asked to work full time, they figure they might as
well get a *real* job, which they do, and now the Burger
King is in even worse straits.
The will-work-for-fooders stand out there on the corner,
with all limbs in apparent working condition, while Burger
King is *crying out* for someone willing to just push a
mop and wipe tables. And they will hire *anyone* no
questions asked, dog kickers, mass murderers, whatever.
They hire the mentally retarded, but oddly enough, there
arent enough of them either. And the fast food gets steadily
slower, because there arent enough people working the
kitchen. Meanwhile the floors and tables get ever dirtier.
Engineering teams dissolve because the young PhDs
cannot afford the rent. Those who argue that National
Missile Defense is an impossible task never do site the
*real* most difficult hurdle facing it: keeping teams together
in areas that are too expensive for those working the project.
For those who have managed to acquire a home, of course,
it is like winning the lottery in slow motion.
So here in Silicon Valley we see a foretaste of a future
in which wealth is distributed ever more based on technical
ability and insight, steadily less on the number of hours worked.
I can see that what must happen here is that the techno-have-nots
must abandon the valley, being replaced in the short run by
commuters from the outlying areas, these being replaced in
the long run by androids. All this looks great from the point
of view of a techno-have, but I can scarcely imagine the
anguish of the other half. My solution is to not be one of
them. Other ideas? spike
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