Gross receipts tax of 0.69% plus 1.5% payroll tax [1]. $20,000 trash cans [2] and arcane permitting processes for brick and mortar businesses. The city's leadership has their head so far up their ass about going after rich techies that they proposed a tax which was intended to target Amazon, but was so poorly written that they asked to retract it off the ballot because Amazon wasn't subject to the tax but small businesses were [3].
Not to mention allowing camping and undesirability, and property crime like smashed windows and stolen bikes, open air drug use, just to name a few. Source - lived in East Bay, worked in SF for almost a decade.
$20,000 for a pilot trash can is pretty ridiculous, however.
$20,000 was for a one off (well, each of the three custom designs cost about that much) garbage can. The off-the-shelf models cost between $600 and $2,800 and the city budgeted no more than $3,000 per can.
Not to press this point too hard, but "no more than $3,000 per can" is still ridiculous. They're $175 apiece here[1].
I can understand spending $20,000 (or even $60,000) on the pilot designs. But TFA makes it sound like the city was billed $20,000 just to fabricate it.
A substantial amount of housing, especially on East and West Coast, was built prewar or only just postwar. That housing has the potential to have toxic chemicals like lead and asbestos, poor plumbing, lack of insulation, and poor ventilation. It almost certainly doesn't have AC/central heating in places that don't require it year-round to be livable.
How is that garbage? That license is part of the original SD repository, the creator Emad even talks about it in his initial post, about the OpenRAIL M License [0]:
> i) The model is being released under a Creative ML OpenRAIL-M license [https://huggingface.co/spaces/CompVis/stable-diffusion-licen...]. This is a permissive license that allows for commercial and non-commercial usage. This license is focused on ethical and legal use of the model as your responsibility and must accompany any distribution of the model. It must also be made available to end users of the model in any service on it.
It’s worth to point out that there’s no consensus yet on whether ML models (as in the weights) are actually copyrightable. If you’re using them, you should probably assume that they are. If you’re distributing them, you should probably assume that they aren’t.
they mean the entire thing has been run through some sort of "beautifier" so there are thousands of irrelevant whitespace changes across things unrelated to the commit, which itself is around 6 lines.
You're still able to run it locally even if the license change prevents it from being merged, and it seems to be a proof of concept that may inspire other people to optimize it in different ways
> And non-FAANG type IT worker are also paid relatively high at the cost of other workers living perilous lives.
Those workers live perilous lives because cities refuse to build enough housing, not because a few workers have it good.
> those outrageously high FAANG salaries occurs because of
4) Much more generous VC funding leading to more competition between firms for SWEs, as a result of a more risk seeking / risk tolerant culture with stronger work ethic
Also you're ignoring that even SWEs at companies like Walmart Labs make much more than SWEs in Europe.
> SWEs at companies like Walmart Labs make much more than SWEs in Europe.
Good. Find out how Walmart retail workers are doing. And Housing in US is lot cheaper for majority of people.
> ... risk tolerant culture with stronger work ethic
Yup, from Uber to Wework and dozen more food delivery service did awesome job with generous money in creating enduring businesses with strong work ethics.
> Good. Find out how Walmart retail workers are doing.
Plenty of other examples of well paid workers and US SWEs paid more than EU SWEs. UPS teamsters are unionized. AT&T technicians are unionized. Both pay their SWEs more than EU companies by a substantial margin.
> did awesome job with generous money in creating enduring businesses with strong work ethics.
You could name companies which are actually changing how (European) companies operate. Zoom, Slack, SpaceX, Figma, the list goes on and on. None of which were started in Europe.
32 hours a week and 60k EUR/year doesn't cut it in a competitive market, and any founder will tell you that.
> And Housing in US is lot cheaper for majority of people.
Not in any major city. Clearly you don't live in the US.
> Not in any major city. Clearly you don't live in the US.
Huh, lived in upscale DC suburb for many years, now moved to different city. Housing seems lot cheaper here when I checked with some friends based in some London suburbs. Another one with house in Amsterdam almost sounded same price for half size house than I bought. But yeah, no public transport for me and I am like 10 miles from downtown :(.
You're not serious? DC looks pretty expensive for an average worker, from a quick look at apartments.com. Housing is cheap in the South and in rural areas for sure, but any West Coast/northern East Coast city is very expensive. Suburbs used to be cheap but now are not so cheap after COVID+inflation.
Perhaps your expectations are calibrated based on European cities which also have housing shortages, like Berlin and London.
Usually what happens is landlord offers the underwater tenant a cash payment to get them to agree to move out. Ends up cheaper than going through the courts.
This is just supply and demand though, rents will hopefully be on the way down as a result of this.
Can confirm. I had an uncle a retired minister turned slum lord who told me he could pay the city police a large fee to come out and enforce an eviction or he could offer a tenant to have all their stuff to the curb by 5 o'clock for a hundred and most of them would happily take the hundred. This was about 20 years ago.
> rents will hopefully be on the way down as a result of this.
There's a pretty strong upward trend and very low vacancy rates. This will obviously create some vacancy, but I think we're talking about some of the upward pressure being removed, but not necessarily rents falling.
And the landlord charges the next tenant significantly more, if they can, to cover losses from this tenant and the now apparent potential of losses from future tenants covered by evicition moratoriums.
They likely can raise the rents for new tenants, because tenants in process of being evicted (formally or not) may rent a new unit with a longer overlap than usual before relinquishing the new unit, and often there are lengthy repairs necessary on units where the most recent tenant was evicted, keeping that unit off the market for even longer. 'Cash for keys' can often get the unit rentable faster, the departing tenant will leave on a schedule and hopefully take better care during the move, or at least allow for inspection prior to moving out to allow for scheduling of necessary repairs and maintenance.
The tenant, if any of this goes on their credit report (or they have to use the landlord as a reference) even if eviction doesn’t happen, will also find it almost impossible to rent anything else in the near future. If they are evicted, then forget about renting for however long the eviction stays on their record.
"a reason to decline taking a free-speech case “the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values." In selecting speech cases to defend, the ACLU will now balance the “impact of the proposed speech and the impact of its suppression.” Factors like the potential effect of the speech on “marginalized communities” and even on “the ACLU’s credibility” could militate against taking a case." [1] [2]
And yet you still haven’t provided any cases this organization has pursued that would further non-right-wong causes. Here we compare sizable number of cases to… zero.
I never said this organization is neutral. Merely that if you criticize this organization you should also criticize the ACLU for the same lack of neutrality.
It's well-known that ACLU has changed its freedom of speech stance recently, which greatly disappointed many long-standing members, and definitely had a negative effect on its reputation.
However, that was a very specific and rather recent change. ACLU before that change can still be seen as a model organization that threw its weight behind causes regardless of whether they were "left wing" or "right wing", so long as one of its principles were affected.
I've had Cherry switches fail right as the keyboard's warranty was up. The switch feels soft after wearing out, it gets dust in it and starts double typing, etc. Pacemakers need to be 100% reliable, not 99.9%.
> Why has the US minimum wage only barely begun to budge past the $7.25/h it was set to in 2009, despite that being below poverty lines for most of the country?
Nobody actually gets paid $7.25/h. Amazon pays $15/h or more nationwide. That's a baseline. In HCOL areas shitty big chain jobs like Target/Chipotle/Starbucks pay $18-22/h and restaurant servers make 25-30. Making those numbers bigger just enriches landlords unless you vastly increase the amount of housing in HCOL areas.
This simply isn't true. The Taco Bell nearest my house is paying $7.25/hr for kitchen staff (more for front-of-house), even though they've had to cut hours and are now "drive-through-only" for big chunks of every day.
If nobody got paid $7.25/hr, then there would be no problem raising the minimum wage. As it is, almost nobody in HCOL areas gets paid that, but enough people do, especially outside HCOL areas, that companies spend a lot of money lobbying to ensure the minwage isn't raised.
Then the people working there aren't rational actors. Amazon is paying $15/h nationally, why would anyone work for $7.25?
> even though they've had to cut hours and are now "drive-through-only" for big chunks of every day
And when everyone leaves for the higher paying jobs (as they should), they'll raise wages. That's how a market works.
> almost nobody in HCOL areas gets paid that
No, nobody in HCOL areas gets paid that, not only because state and local minimum wages are higher but also because the market price for unskilled labor is way higher than even local minimum wage. And if you're getting underpaid you should quit. There is plenty of access to market wage unskilled jobs, if those people are staying despite being underpaid that's on them.
20 states (out of 50) either do not have minimum wage laws, or have set their minimum wage to the same as the federal minimum wage: $7.25/hour[0]. Since those states include Texas, which alone has 9% of the national population, I continue to feel like "almost nobody" is a better descriptor than "nobody.".
One of my daughters was recently looking for unskilled work, and interviewed for several positions paying less than $15/hr, even worked one for two days before quitting, so I could ask her why she is such an irrational actor, but you've already stated that you know my own history better than I do, so maybe you can tell me why she bothered. Why anyone bothers.
You seem incredibly sure that the market is more rational than I think evidence suggests. I almost begin to think it's an article of faith, and I'm already over-quota on faith-based arguments for the month.
I surrender! Nobody in this country is working for less than $15/hr, so it's completely incomprehensible why so many people are still fighting for a $15/hr minimum wage. Those people must not know what you know.
Compare the Chinese household savings rate to the American one, and I think you'll find people in the US do indeed spend frivolously. Note that living in HCOL locations beyond your means is still spending frivolously. You don't have a right to live in NYC or SF. If more people realized that, then supply of low wage workers would drop in these places and wages would go up.
The Chinese public have invested in quicksand represented as a low quality housing stock pyramid scheme the CCP is barely holding together with control economy duct tape. Perhaps domestic consumption is lower than the US is due to this higher savings rate, but lets not pretend that savings is going into productive enterprises.
With China aging very rapidly and a total fertility rate that will decline below 1 in the next 2-5 years, doesn’t make much sense to save for a future with limited returns (time value of life vs money and so forth).
> Home prices in China have been falling since September, Chinese stocks and mutual funds aren’t great bets these days either, there’s little access to international markets and cryptocurrencies are officially illegal. Instead, people are increasingly shelving their money in savings accounts, despite benchmark deposit rates staying at record low levels.
> “No matter if you’re high net-worth or not that rich, the golden time of parking your money and letting your wealth grow, it’s gone,” said Wei He, an economist at Gavekal Research Ltd. in Beijing.
> “There’s no other investment options,” said Clawde Yin, a 45-year-old Shanghai resident. “I’ve got no choice but to wait and see.”
Chinese savings are dumped into housing because the stock market isn't trustworthy there, not because everyone decided housing is the most productive enterprise.
Also, dumping your money into savings accounts is definitely better than dumping it into 30% APR BNPL offers for designer clothing and electronics. Or gas guzzling, expensive SUVs and trucks. Ask yourself why Apple has a 50% market share in the US.
> doesn’t make much sense to save for a future with limited returns (time value of life vs money and so forth).
Saving doesn't mean saving until retirement, it just means not spending beyond your means.
Well, saving is a virtue in itself (a virtue that most Americans don’t have I agree). But it’s really a separate issue. Suppose all Americans suddenly started saving 10% of their income. That would just establish a new standard of living, a new equilibrium.
The point is, though, that the population level class structure and socioeconomic mobility/opportunity would remain. As would the fact that the current generation cannot (as a whole) afford housing the way two generations ago could.
The narrative of “the individual” encourages non-elites to compete amongst themselves for a progressively shrinking portion of the pie. From the perspective of elites it has a twofold benefit: discourage worker solidarity and encourage productivity. From the perspective of workers, the latter benefit is good (we all should strive for competence and contribution), but the former is not good (even just in terms of life enjoyment). Also, at some point the pie needs a drastic and more balanced reallocation.
Is a burger flipper or barista serving the same number of customers in four days as five? No? Then where are the diminishing returns there?
Pretty much any reasonable white collar job already lets you work however many hours you want as long as you get the job done and you show up to meetings.
Interesting. In your answer, you focused on the stream of customers walking in the door, rather than on the welfare of the burger flipper or barista. Do I expect a burger flipper working at a hot grill to be just as safe in hour ten as hour eight or hour six of a given workday? No, I expect that burns, for example, are more likely at the end of long shifts than the beginning.
In addition, since humans are not machines, I expect that an extra day off might make workers more prompt and less likely to take six days at the beginning or end of a workweek.
At the time the trade unionists were fighting for our rights, the question wasn't burger-flipping, but generally factory work. The speed and accuracy at which a person working in a factory could produce goods safely diminishes beyond a certain point, and while it's probably closer to five or six hours for peak efficiency, employers were demanding ten- or twelve-hour days at the time, so a 50% reduction was a bridge too far. Still, through a combination of many different kinds of protest and some documentation that safety incidents climbed dramatically as workers grew more tired, they managed to get hours pushed down to no more than eight as "normal," with anything beyond that requiring overtime pay.
Henry Ford took the reasoning of the trade unionists, who had successfully pushed him into eight-hour days already, and took it farther. He reasoned that giving workers two days off instead of just one would enable him to push them harder, and get just as much work done while making happier employees, more loyal to him. Which worked out well for him, and 13 years later became the norm by law.
If you're talking about work which requires workers to be physically present for a set schedule, then yes, clearly capping each worker at 80% of hours would mean needing to increase staff by 20% to achieve the same result. But most businesses in which physical presence for given hours is important already have flexible scheduling to handle days of the week and times of the day at which business is busier.
If you're instead talking about, as you say, "any reasonable white collar job," then rather than letting only bold or clever people to get their work done in 32 hours while attending meetings to avoid raising eyebrows, it seems more reasonable to make that the norm, so that everybody can do the same. Then the receptionist can also work four days a week, with someone else filling in, rather than only those less visible.
> Do I expect a burger flipper working at a hot grill to be just as safe in hour ten as hour eight or hour six of a given workday? No, I expect that burns, for example, are more likely at the end of long shifts than the beginning
This is completely unrealistic - you clearly have never worked in food service or any sort of low wage customer facing role. There is a rush for each of the 3 meals of the day, and in between your volume is pretty low. And you never work a 10 hour shift, if anything they don't give you enough hours and you work 3-4 hour shifts.
> Then the receptionist can also work four days a week, with someone else filling in, rather than only those less visible
The difference is that the clever people who get their work done in 32 hours are still giving 100% output. The receptionist obviously cannot give 100% output if they are only present for 80% time.
> He reasoned that giving workers two days off instead of just one would enable him to push them harder, and get just as much work done while making happier employees, more loyal to him
No, it was not because they got just as much work done, but because it would reduce turnover [1]. It was a calculated economic decision. And in the real world, corporations have done that analysis and either decided on Ford's approach (as Costco has) or on the minimum pay possible approach (like Walmart). As a worker, you have the choice of going to Costco or Walmart to work.
I'll remind you that factory jobs needed a lot more training than fast food, which meant turnover cost had a real impact for Ford.
> But most businesses in which physical presence for given hours is important already have flexible scheduling to handle days of the week and times of the day at which business is busier.
But each worker still serves X customers per hour and works Y hours per week with flexible scheduling. If you suddenly have 20% fewer hours, then the worker has to get paid 20% less, else the business now pays more for labor. Considering a lot of restaurants operate on razor thin margins, this doesn't work out as well as you think.
> you clearly have never worked in food service or any sort of low wage customer facing role
Weird that you know more about my life than I do, I wonder how I made up those memories of working at Carl's Jr as a young person. Tell me, what else have I done or not done, contra my own lived experience?
>> He reasoned that giving workers two days off instead of just one would enable him to push them harder, and get just as much work done while making happier employees, more loyal to him
> No, it was not because they got just as much work done, but because it would reduce turnover [1].
Weird that you started with "No," and then went on to say the same thing I said? "happier employees, more loyal to him" vs "would reduce turnover" seem like the same thing. You linked to an article covering almost exactly the same ground I did, and thought that represented disagreement? So, so weird.
> And in the real world, corporations have done that analysis and either decided on Ford's approach (as Costco has) or on the minimum pay possible approach (like Walmart).
I'm not sure the last time you checked in with "the real world," but these days Walmart isn't paying minwage any more, at least not where I live. That extreme turned out to be unsustainable in today's labor market--again, at least where I live--so "the market" and "the real world" seem to be moving on.
> But each worker still serves X customers per hour and works Y hours per week with flexible scheduling. If you suddenly have 20% fewer hours, then the worker has to get paid 20% less, else the business now pays more for labor. Considering a lot of restaurants operate on razor thin margins, this doesn't work out as well as you think.
I have a child working in food service today, right now, in 2022, in America, in the real world. So I can tell you that many employers already flexibly schedule their workers, especially their front-of-house workers, and in some cases get closer to 32 hours than 40 already, specifically ensuring that they're not paying employees to sit idle during slow times. Most restaurants don't have 40 rush hours per week. That was my point--businesses that require physical presence are already scheduling as needed. I then contrasted that by shifting to "office jobs."
But yes, costs rise. Industry-wide, chains which had locations paying federal minimum wage and other locations paying local wages as high as $15/hr had menu price differences ranging from 4-10% for the same food at the same chain restaurants. While restaurant margins are thin, many chains find that location rental costs dwarf even labor costs when determining prices. A McDonald's in Manhattan has menu prices higher than a McDonald's in Pocatello, Idaho, not only because they pay their employees more.
Still, yes, part of this popular push at the low-end is alongside a $15 minimum wage. Either way, labor costs are rising. Some fast-food restaurants in my area have resisted the push for higher wages, and have struggled to find workers, with several (Taco Bell, Wendy's, Dairy Queen) reducing hours of operation, or switching to drive-through-only until they could staff up. Many (including a local McDonald's franchisee) had no trouble with hours because they raised wages to $12/14/15/hour. How much of the subsequent rise in menu prices is due to higher labor costs, and how much is due to international shortages affecting everyone, is unclear. Either way, I'm happy to pay even 20% more for my hamburgers if my kids can get better treatment as workers.
> That extreme turned out to be unsustainable in today's labor market--again, at least where I live--so "the market" and "the real world" seem to be moving on.
Yes, the minimum possible being the minimum market wage that they can hire workers for (even if turnover is high). I don't mean they pay $7.25...
> So I can tell you that many employers already flexibly schedule their workers
Yeah, but those employees get paid only for the time they work, not 100% pay for 80% time. That's the point I was making.
> Either way, I'm happy to pay even 20% more for my hamburgers if my kids can get better treatment as workers.
What actually happens is those jobs get replaced with automation and your kids can't get fast food jobs in the first place. Order taking gets replaced with kiosks and things like fry production get automated [1]. It might not happen overnight but the tech is basically there already with computer vision and robotics.
My local Walmart is already 50% self checkouts (advertising $18/h wages, btw). Amazon has licensed their Amazon Go tech to 3rd party stores. If wages go up 20% overnight the impetus to buy that tech goes way, way up.
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco,_California,_Propositi...
[2] https://sfstandard.com/politics/heres-what-a-san-francisco-2...
[3] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-activists-wanted-...