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Slobjob Zizek posted:$1000 a month for a 1 bedroom in CA is fine. The real issue is that grad students in the UC system without extra grant funding make like $18K a year. The solution is to not become a grad student unless your employer pays for it or you have a guaranteed job offer for when you get your degree.
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Nov 6, 2014 06:35
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enraged_camel posted:The solution is to not become a grad student unless your employer pays for it or you have a guaranteed job offer for when you get your degree. No, the solution is for the UC to stop loving us in the rear end during contract time and for our union to not fold like a cheap loving lawnchair when probed even slightly. Not that I'm mad about how the last contract negotiations ended, when we could have called a strike during finals and crippled the admins, noooooooooooooo sir.
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Nov 6, 2014 06:39
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SporkOfTruth posted:No, the solution is for the UC to stop loving us in the rear end during contract time and for our union to not fold like a cheap loving lawnchair when probed even slightly. I don't think any of my peers would have bothered with that had the union actually called for it. I certainly wouldn't have. Slobjob Zizek posted:$1000 a month for a 1 bedroom in CA is fine. The real issue is that grad students in the UC system without extra grant funding make like $18K a year.
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Nov 6, 2014 06:41
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etalian posted:while SJ still has a decent number of tech jobs. Where? I know of Paypal and Adobe. Is there anything else big in San Jose (like, the downtown area)? I could do with a shorter commute.
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Nov 6, 2014 06:45
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redreader posted:Where? I know of Paypal and Adobe. Is there anything else big in San Jose (like, the downtown area)? I could do with a shorter commute. Most tech jobs "in San Jose" are actually up in Milpitas, or down in Mountain View & Campbell. I hear you on the commute though. The freeways are so hosed here. I'm only 15 miles from my work, and it can take me up to an hour in traffic to get from south SJ to Milpitas. Some days depending on traffic, it's actually quicker to take the light rail, which is also about ~50 minutes.
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Nov 6, 2014 06:50
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Bizarro Watt posted:For one bedroom with a shared bathroom in a four bedroom apartment? For the most part, no it isn't. Don't know the Santa Cruz market, but I went to school in LA and Berkeley -- $800-900 a month was the norm for such a set up. So, sure, maybe $1000 is pushing it a bit. enraged_camel posted:The solution is to not become a grad student unless your employer pays for it or you have a guaranteed job offer for when you get your degree. I don't really get this sentiment. As far as I know, no situation other than being a PhD student fulfills these requirements. Employers pay for tuition but not cost of living, and jobs are never guaranteed.
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Nov 6, 2014 06:52
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Sydin posted:Most tech jobs "in San Jose" are actually up in Milpitas, or down in Mountain View & Campbell. The caltrain from downtown SJ to downtown Mountain view takes 13 mins for the fastest, 15ish for most bullets, and 17-19ish mins for the limited express. Once I stopped driving my life really improved a lot. The drive is 1 hour to get in by 9am, and 45 mins to get back, unless I leave before 6:30am for work and leave work at 3. I interviewed at adobe and they said "well, this is the head office in san jose. You will be travelling by caltrain to san francisco once a week though". That's not really how head offices work though is it? They should come here, wtf.
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Nov 6, 2014 08:51
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Random anecdote from a UCSD student: Two (apparently Student Council) kids by the Burger King were very sure that San Francisco was going to undergo "hyper-inflation" because of the new minimum wage passed. All of the restaurants and such are apparently going to move to Oakland or something. It was very weird to listen to.  In all seriousness, CA itself didn't seem to do too badly this election... but I hear something about the super-majority being broken?
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Nov 6, 2014 09:55
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kurona_bright posted:Random anecdote from a UCSD student: Lots of folks misunderstand economics. You (not specifically you, but "you" in general) can't blame them though, there's much more disinformation than accurate information floating around. Re the Dem supermajority being gone: yep, that's about what happened.
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Nov 6, 2014 10:02
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Shear Modulus posted:Re the Dem supermajority being gone: yep, that's about what happened. It could be worse. My folks are out in Illinois and they're drinking themselves stupid at the prospect of four years of Governor Rauner. redreader posted:The caltrain from downtown SJ to downtown Mountain view takes 13 mins for the fastest, 15ish for most bullets, and 17-19ish mins for the limited express. Once I stopped driving my life really improved a lot. The drive is 1 hour to get in by 9am, and 45 mins to get back, unless I leave before 6:30am for work and leave work at 3. I wish caltrain stopped even remotely close to where I work.  Also, welcome to San Jose. Don't buy into that whole "heart of Silicon Valley" crap, any company that means anything is in an outlying city of San Jose, or up in SF. I'm sure even Adobe realizes how dead downtown SJ is, and anybody who's important is probably spending the majority of their week at the SF office. I lived in downtown SJ for four-ish years, and it was actually kinda eerie to see so many shops close down one by one. Don't worry though, I'm sure our new mayor Sam Liccardo will get things back on- hahahaha, SJ is so hosed.
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Nov 6, 2014 11:14
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Shear Modulus posted:Re the Dem supermajority being gone: yep, that's about what happened. Sydin posted:Also, welcome to San Jose. Don't buy into that whole "heart of Silicon Valley" crap, any company that means anything is in an outlying city of San Jose, or up in SF. I'm sure even Adobe realizes how dead downtown SJ is, and anybody who's important is probably spending the majority of their week at the SF office. Death Of Retail is a real thing, though. Even in rocket-fuel-powered Silicon Valley, you see a lot of empty storefronts and strip malls. I've noticed a lot of buildings are now being used for things that take up a lot of space but can't make much money, like martial arts dojos and dance schools and gymnastics classes. The last couple of times I've visited enclosed malls (Hillsdale, Valley Fair, etc.) I've been amazed at how little traffic their was in them and how low-end some of the stores were. I can't imagine what the retail industry looks like in a place where the economy is flat or struggling.
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Nov 6, 2014 14:16
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FMguru posted:Even in rocket-fuel-powered Silicon Valley, you see a lot of empty storefronts and strip malls. Empty strip malls are different from empty storefronts. Strip malls are notorious for being same-y (the cell phone store, the grocery store, the Starbucks, and so on) while storefronts are more likely to have violin repair stores, electric razor repair stores -- I think that one must be some kind of front, but it's right there in San Mateo -- German delis, and so on. On some parts of the Peninsula, admittedly not all, downtowns are booming. Check out Redwood City, San Mateo, San Carlos, and of course the Menlo Park/Palo Alto/Mountain View aristocracy. In the mid-Peninsula, where I live, older and thus affordable retail space doesn't stay empty long. Redwood City has managed to turn its downtown around in the ten years I've lived here.
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Nov 6, 2014 17:05
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The only use of having a supermajority is to pass tax increases without bargaining for Republican votes, and to overturn a veto, right? Have they bothered trying to do either since Prop 30 passed?
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Nov 6, 2014 17:44
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The Dude posted:The only use of having a supermajority is to pass tax increases without bargaining for Republican votes, and to overturn a veto, right? Have they bothered trying to do either since Prop 30 passed? Actually, the supermajority applies to not just tax increases but any appropriations bill of any kind (other than public schools).
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Nov 6, 2014 17:47
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The peninsula basically has good access to both the south bay (Campbell/MV/PA) employers and SF, and no room to really grow west or east, obviously. Older tech workers tend to live in San Jose, from what I've seen; at one point all of my co-workers lived in "South San Jose", and basically bought around the time of the last bubble. San Jose is so large geographically that most people can more quickly drive to an outlying city if they are going to go retail shopping, or just buy something near where they actually work. San Jose is mostly a commuter town, while the richer and (in this economy) more prosperous areas are elsewhere. Areas that were home to the former industrial workers or the actual factories/industry themselves have tended to remain slightly poorer/cheaper, from what I've seen. I agree on the Death of Retail bit. There's a slim age range or social status that has enough disposable income to support mass retail right now. If you don't have kids or are a DINK couple you probably have some disposable income, but outside of that the economy has been crap over the long-term since ~2000 so the masses are stuck in the never-ending debt (Credit Card, Mortgage, Student Loan) cycle. Even in the Bay Area. The Silicon Valley, while paying substantially better on the surface, still shows the same general income/wealth inequality rise of the overall country. As goes California, so goes the nation, or something.
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Nov 6, 2014 17:52
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nm posted:I would have saved that one for murder [187] Everyone who listens to Dr. Dre should know that one.
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Nov 6, 2014 19:09
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Oh hey speaking of the UC's
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Nov 6, 2014 19:21
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Actually, the supermajority applies to not just tax increases but any appropriations bill of any kind (other than public schools). Didn't this get changed in 2012?
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Nov 6, 2014 19:39
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They can only jack these up so much before the majority of students can't afford university or to pay back their staggering student loans. I swear it's like they want the student loan bubble to burst so hard it tanks the economy again.
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Nov 6, 2014 19:42
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Sydin posted:They can only jack these up so much before the majority of students can't afford university or to pay back their staggering student loans. I swear it's like they want the student loan bubble to burst so hard it tanks the economy again. Don't you know, only the wealthy and connected should go to college? I don't care if you were born on the wrong side of the tracks, you'll probably waste your education on a useless Humanities degree  How much of this can be blamed on budget mismanagement?
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Nov 6, 2014 19:55
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Sydin posted:It could be worse. My folks are out in Illinois and they're drinking themselves stupid at the prospect of four years of Governor Rauner. Two years. That's when the rest of the country is introduced to President Rauner.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:00
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Forceholy posted:How much of this can be blamed on budget mismanagement? Well I can't speak for the UC's, but I worked for SJSU for the better part of three years. All I can say about that is our administration bungled the budget so badly that the student council went over the University President's head and appealed directly to the CSU Chancellor, who had to order an independent auditing firm come into clean the mess up. So my stab in the dark would be a 50/50 split between budget mismanagement and ever increasing administrative bloat.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:03
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GrumpyDoctor posted:Didn't this get changed in 2012? Ah you are correct. But it applies to fee increases as well as tax increases.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:05
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Sydin posted:They can only jack these up so much before the majority of students can't afford university or to pay back their staggering student loans. I swear it's like they want the student loan bubble to burst so hard it tanks the economy again. The student loan bubble will burst. It is inevitable. The difference is that, unlike with banks and car companies, students will not be bailed out by the government, and their debt won't be forgiven.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:17
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Forceholy posted:How much of this can be blamed on budget mismanagement? Well UCB just spent ~$400M on renovating a stadium for a football team that's so lovely they can't sell the seats so if that's any indication... Shear Modulus fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 20:19
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SporkOfTruth posted:No, the solution is for the UC to stop loving us in the rear end during contract time and for our union to not fold like a cheap loving lawnchair when probed even slightly. I remember the Grad Students Union at UCI striking last spring quarter during Week 2. There were like two dozen people tops near Langson and nobody paid any attention. It was kind of depressing to watch, to be honest 
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Nov 6, 2014 20:31
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Schools nationwide charge more because they can, because every student can get a loan (because all student loans are now essentially guaranteed for the lender (because student loans cannot be discharged even in bankruptcy)). State budgets cut funding for higher education and get away with it because of the student loan effect. Articles about student loan interest rates etc. sometimes mention the 4-5% default rate, but rarely mention that due to the undischargeability, student loan debt that goes into default is still 100% recoverable unless the student is actually dead, or never earns money again. The government can and will seize tax refunds, garnish wages, etc. to recover that money. There are administrative costs involved, of course, so in a sense a defaulted student loan is worth less than one that hasn't gone into default, and that's probably justification for some amount of charged interest. But ultimately the problem is that schools are charging more because A) they have to, due to spiraling expenses and slashed state budgets, and B) because they can: no amount of raised tuition actually cuts applications enough to cause these schools to run low on enrollment applications. Taxpayers are effectively shifting the burden of paying for higher education onto student borrowers, and doing so in a way that allows a gigantic middleman market to take a hefty profit margin from them. enraged_camel posted:The student loan bubble will burst. It is inevitable. I don't see how the bubble bursts. Mass refusal of students to repay? The government can ensure that the only way to avoid payment is to be permanently unemployed. Until that happens, the banks are guaranteed their money one way or the other. Drop in enrollment? Despite the popular outcry about worthless $100k degrees, on balance it is still worthwhile to get a college degree: lifetime earnings go up on average more than tuition costs. With the housing bubble, the collapse took the form of banks defaulting due to lack of sufficient capital to absorb the losses from defaulting borrowers. This bubble has the built-in guarantee that prevents defaulters from actually defaulting on a permanent basis. Perhaps just a whole lot more colleges being founded, to saturate the higher education market's capacity enough that schools actually see drops in enrollment when they raise tuition? That seems like something that would come in very gradually, rather than a quick bubble-bursting event. Congressional action to remove the bankruptcy-protection of loans would do it, but I doubt Congress's bank lobbyist masters would ever allow such a thing.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:34
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Leperflesh posted:I don't see how the bubble bursts. Mass refusal of students to repay? The government can ensure that the only way to avoid payment is to be permanently unemployed. Until that happens, the banks are guaranteed their money one way or the other. Drop in enrollment? Despite the popular outcry about worthless $100k degrees, on balance it is still worthwhile to get a college degree: lifetime earnings go up on average more than tuition costs. They may be guaranteed their money, but if enough students can't pay enough of their loans back in a timely fashion, for one reason or another, it would still cause the same cascading effect. I mean, if you were a bank and you lent someone $100,000, them paying back $100 per year doesn't really help you. Sure, you make a ton more money over a period of one thousand years due to interest, but that's pointless. Because when you lent that money, you did so with the expectation of getting it repaid before civilization collapses.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:41
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Leperflesh posted:I don't see how the bubble bursts. Mass refusal of students to repay? The government can ensure that the only way to avoid payment is to be permanently unemployed. Until that happens, the banks are guaranteed their money one way or the other. Drop in enrollment? Despite the popular outcry about worthless $100k degrees, on balance it is still worthwhile to get a college degree: lifetime earnings go up on average more than tuition costs. Leaks of internal school graduate data that shows, by comparison to other forms of investment, getting a college degree in most disciplines on average loses you money, and the changes in that data over time shows that it's an across the board change (except for like, CS). I'm reasonably certain the current graduate salary and placement numbers are being manipulated heavily, but actual data that comes out and says that it's not in your financial interest to go to college would be a moment like no other to the older generations who have no idea what's going on and how lovely things are getting. Most of them aren't outright evil enough to basically go "well too bad for you!" when faced with the reality that our generation is getting hosed by the shift in how college is funded. Obviously if tuition keep rising and even degree-holding wages continue to not rise with them, there is a point at which this is true and most, if not all degrees are financially worthless to the individual, ignoring the overall benefit to society in having an educated workforce. Who knows how our country will react though. We're not exactly in the position of talking about education as being an investment in to the countries future, one that pays off with higher tax collection over time from the degree-holders.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:52
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Leperflesh posted:I don't see how the bubble bursts. Mass refusal of students to repay? The government can ensure that the only way to avoid payment is to be permanently unemployed. Until that happens, the banks are guaranteed their money one way or the other. Drop in enrollment? Despite the popular outcry about worthless $100k degrees, on balance it is still worthwhile to get a college degree: lifetime earnings go up on average more than tuition costs. My understanding is you'd get a scenario kinda like this: 1. The market crashes again for any one of a million reasons. 2. A sizable percentage of debt-shouldering degree holders - a demographic that has boomed big time since the last 08' crash - find themselves out of work. 3. All of those people default on their student loans. Yes, they can still technically be collected on, but many of these people have no income whatsoever, so the point is moot. 4. Banks are suddenly getting far less money from their student loans. Yes, in the long term they will theoretically get it all back since the debt can't be discharged, but with $1 trillion or whatever it is now tied up in student debt, even having 10% of that return nothing for 2-5 years would be debilitating to a lot of banking institutions and could potentially tip us into another 08' style crash.
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Nov 6, 2014 21:03
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So you're saying stuff like this is inflated, or based on faulty data? I mean, I think that's possible, but I haven't personally seen much that's convincing me that in aggregate, college degrees now cost more than they're worth. I haven't been studying it though, so I certainly could have missed some studies or reports to that effect. e. Actually that first link is really old data, this is much more recent. Here's another one, by Pew Research. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 21:04
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Leperflesh posted:So you're saying stuff like this is inflated, or based on faulty data? I mean about recent graduates, not in aggregate population #'s (Full-time, year-round workers aged 25-64 make up 20 million individuals..) like the Census data talks about in those articles. I'm talking more about http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-state/bachelors/california although I can't really tell if there's data on a per-year basis. We know that the generation that comes of age during a depression suffers a lifelong earnings hit, and we know that past college graduates did in fact make more money on average compares to their non-degree holding compatriots, but if the median degree holder from say, 2004-2010 or something is not making enough money to pay off loans and still come out ahead, then there'll be hell to pay. Given the rate of tuition increase, and the corresponding lack of a similar increase in pay (and continuing downwards pressure in may disciplines from abroad), at some point the two lines on the graph will cross.
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Nov 6, 2014 21:17
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Keep in mind that the reason student loans can't be discharged is because of the implicit assumption, backed by reams of post-war data that probably no longer holds true, that a college degree results in higher lifetime earnings, some of which the person can and should use to comfortably pay back the loans. The average debt of college graduates continues to increase because even if they are lucky enough to find jobs, they end up underemployed and/or significantly underpaid at lovely administrative-type office work. It's all going to blow up soon. Just a matter of time.
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Nov 6, 2014 22:59
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enraged_camel posted:Keep in mind that the reason student loans can't be discharged is because of the implicit assumption, backed by reams of post-war data that probably no longer holds true, that a college degree results in higher lifetime earnings, some of which the person can and should use to comfortably pay back the loans. Its even more true now that college graduates make far more than those with only a high school diploma. The well paying factory jobs are gone. That's part of the reason why demand is so inflexible. It doesn't matter how expensive a degree is now, the earning gap is only increasing.
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Nov 6, 2014 23:03
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Trabisnikof posted:Its even more true now that college graduates make far more than those with only a high school diploma. The well paying factory jobs are gone. The power dynamics between worker & employer have also shifted more and more in favor of the employer over the years, and now that there's a huge glut of unemployed labor on top of that, they're able to slap a degree requirement on every single job posting from CEO down to desk clerk and still get tons of demand. These days the only way to get a non-minimum wage job - outside of nepotism - is by having a degree on your resume.
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Nov 6, 2014 23:09
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Pervis posted:I agree on the Death of Retail bit. There's a slim age range or social status that has enough disposable income to support mass retail right now. If you don't have kids or are a DINK couple you probably have some disposable income, but outside of that the economy has been crap over the long-term since ~2000 so the masses are stuck in the never-ending debt (Credit Card, Mortgage, Student Loan) cycle. Even in the Bay Area. The Silicon Valley, while paying substantially better on the surface, still shows the same general income/wealth inequality rise of the overall country. As goes California, so goes the nation, or something. It's just so striking to see it in action in one of the few places in the country that has a booming economy, and I can't imagine what it must look like in less economically vibrant places around the country. If I'm noticing empty storefronts and boarded-up mimi-malls just a couple miles from Facebook/Google/Apple, what must things be like in Youngstown, OH or Scranton, PA?
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Nov 6, 2014 23:30
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Sydin posted:It could be worse. My folks are out in Illinois and they're drinking themselves stupid at the prospect of four years of Governor Rauner. Mass transit is pretty horrible in the Bay Area due to all the standard problems like lack of good central planning e.g office parks in the middle nowhere and also inadequate investment in mass transit.
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Nov 6, 2014 23:54
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etalian posted:Mass transit is pretty horrible in the Bay Area due to all the standard problems like lack of good central planning e.g office parks in the middle nowhere and also inadequate investment in mass transit. The light rail is fairly comprehensive in terms of transit service, it's just slow as hell. There's a station not even two minutes away from my front door, and a station more or less on the doorstep of my workplace. The problem is that despite this it still takes about an hour all told for me to commute to work by light rail, because the thing has to slowly lurch its way through downtown and all the way up 1st Street. It also comes at pretty awful intervals (15 minutes even during peak commuter hours) so if you miss your train you're waiting a while when most metro subways run every 5-7 minutes or so. Of course the solution to all this would be to have the light rail change into a subway when in the more heavily urban areas like downtown, but that's a huge infrastructure project and they'd have to tear up tons of major streets in the downtown to even get started on something like that, which is obviously out of the question.
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Nov 7, 2014 00:18
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Sydin posted:The light rail is fairly comprehensive in terms of transit service, it's just slow as hell. There's a station not even two minutes away from my front door, and a station more or less on the doorstep of my workplace. The problem is that despite this it still takes about an hour all told for me to commute to work by light rail, because the thing has to slowly lurch its way through downtown and all the way up 1st Street. It also comes at pretty awful intervals (15 minutes even during peak commuter hours) so if you miss your train you're waiting a while when most metro subways run every 5-7 minutes or so. Elevated rail would be easier to integrate while maintaining existing service and surface streets, but lol at that ever happening in the land of height-restricted zoning
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Nov 7, 2014 00:21
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H.P. Hovercraft posted:Elevated rail would be easier to integrate while maintaining existing service and surface streets, but lol at that ever happening in the land of height-restricted zoning Elevated rail is also incredibly more expensive. But still cheaper than tunnels (usually).
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Nov 7, 2014 00:23
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