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Re:The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at ris... by mjfl on Thursday December 14, 2017 @03:34AM (#15920783)
That is economically illiterate. If it got to the point where there was not enough people to fill necessary jobs around the city the wages would rise to attract more people. Right now the opposite is happening: there are too many people.
Re:The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at ris... by d--b on Thursday December 14, 2017 @04:46AM (#15921051)
Too many people? Are you serious? San Francisco + Silicon valley has 3 million people. That's less than half of New York City.

The amount of money the region makes is more than enough to support that population over that area...

Re:The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at ris... by ratboy666 on Thursday December 14, 2017 @08:10AM (#15921957)
Yes... too many people. If a software eng or ceo wanted to eat out, someone has to prepare the food. The person, in turn, has to live there.

So, if 86,000 is "poor" (defined as the minimum needed to live in the area), the person doing the food preparation has to be paid at least that. The "burger flipper" has to be paid that.

If people moved out, quickly the "burger flipper WOULD be paid that". But that, in turn, would attract "burger flippers" who simply compare the money. Resulting in high unemployment, and the need for food banks again.

Its the concentration of rich people that is the problem.

Re:The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at ris... by closeparen on Thursday December 14, 2017 @05:34PM (#15927852)
Your claim is incredibly easy to verify: are there restaurants in New York and Paris?

Apparently so.

There are too many people to maintain our suburban character, sure.

Re:The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at ris... by seattle_spring on Thursday December 14, 2017 @09:51AM (#15922643)
The Bay Area has 7 million people. I'm not sure why you cherry picked a subset of the region to claim a low population, but it strikes me as intentionally misleading.
Re:The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at ris... by d--b on Thursday December 14, 2017 @12:08PM (#15924051)
I got the number from there: https://jointventure.org/news-and-media/news-releases/1260-s...

It's the top result from googling "silicon valley population"

Still 7 million people is not a lot density-wise, I'm just saying you just can't blame high prices on people density only...

At least you can blame it on "not enough housing". Which sounds weird to me, cause cheap housing is very quick to build.

Re:The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at ris... by closeparen on Thursday December 14, 2017 @05:39PM (#15927905)
Large-scale housing production is prohibited in the Bay Area as a matter of public policy. Reasons include honoring the “rights” of neighbors to be spared from unwanted changes in their neighborhoods, general anti-capitalist beliefs that markets are the wrong way to allocate housing or that private capital is the wrong way to build it, rejection of the idea that supply and demand apply to hosuing, and the simple observation that when new housing is built, it tends to be expensive.
Re:The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at ris... by nbtdev on Thursday December 14, 2017 @05:23AM (#15921209)
There are 7 million in the 9- county Bay Area, and having lived there for ten years, that is the stat that matters.

http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/

Cost of living on the peninsula has already pushed many people to the east and south and even then you don't get much of a break. Land use restrictions mean there is very little new land on which to build and having to jump through eleventy different legal hurdles to do so means that when built, it's already more expensive than many of those in need can afford.

I moved away after being there ten years as a software developer because the cost of living, level of congestion and crowding was obnoxious, and I have no intention of returning. But then, I had that option.

Re:The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at ris... by azernik on Thursday December 14, 2017 @08:35AM (#15922091)
New York City (the city proper, not including the suburbs) has that many people in a fraction of the area.