Why Some Cities Get All the Good Jobs (chicagotribune.com) 226
New submitter Ericmesrr writes with a link to a Bloomberg story (as carried by the ChicagoTribune) about geographic trends in job creation in the U.S, from which he excerpts this quote from U.C Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti: "A handful of cities with the 'right' industries and a solid base of human capital keep attracting good employers and offering high wages, while those at the other extreme, cities with the 'wrong' industries and a limited human capital base, are stuck with dead-end jobs and low average wages. This divide I will call it the Great Divergence has its origins in the 1980s, when American cities started to be increasingly defined by their residents' levels of education. Cities with many college-educated workers started attracting even more, and cities with a less educated workforce started losing ground."
Technology Paradox (Score:5, Interesting)
I find this trend quite strange as well. In the late 90s everyone was going on about how technology would allow us to work from anywhere so we could spread out around the country. Things like cramming into an urban area, and flying to conferences were going to become unnecessary.
Instead what I've observed is that the rise of 'thinking' jobs, which only require a desk, have made it more and more viable for people to live in concentrated urban centres. Contrast this with industrial jobs where you needed large amounts of land for a factory which naturally led to suburban developments. Similarly the rise of cheap air travel has raised the expectation that you'll just turn up at a conference, so I find I have to attend more now.
I think this trend will continue until driverless cars are ubiquitous. These will open up huge amounts of land around urban centres (it will be like adding tube lines everywhere), and will probably cause a significant decline in central city density as people are freed from existing rent/transport monopolies.
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The thing is, unless a company is paying very differently depending on your location, they'd rather have you work where everyone else is, unless the company has no office whatsoever. Thinking jobs are remote sometimes, but they really are remote when there's scarcity, and that's not at the beginning of careers. And after you start your career somewhere, to work 'out there' you have to want to move.
I for one am working remote for a Bay area company, but that's because I have skills in demand, a lot of experi
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Remote does not offer the communication bandwidth that being on site does. An experienced person can get around this because a lot of context has already been built up and they often don't require as much chit chat. Newbies though? Another story.
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Yeah.... What I've found is in many cases, a company feels compelled to justify the money it's shelling out on leasing its office space. EG. Where I work now, they have a pretty "prime" street address in a major city and I don't think they want to give that up, since it helps from a marketing standpoint. (People see the physical address and know we must at least be somewhat successful....)
But upper management seems to find it painful to let too many people work from home (even though 90% of the time you can
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The job postings for a company will show you most of what you need to know. Are they hiring for Project X? Then they actually believe in Project X. Are they hiring in GA? Then that's where they plan to be. The job postings reveal the truth.
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That's why, as soon as you see signs of this, you update your resume and start looking for a new job pronto. The best time to get a new job is while you are still employed; employers don't want to hire someone who's unemployed for some odd reason. So don't wait around until your present employer cans you; jump off the sinking ship as soon as you see a small leak.
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My company has locations in texas, california, and more rural areas, and the starting pay is such that the rest of us never seem to catch up with cali
As another poster mentioned, the difference is the cost of living. I can have a pretty good life in San Antonio making 50 +
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I can have a pretty good life in San Antonio making 50 +
I make a good life in Silicon Valley on $50,000 per year. But some people consider me "poor" because I'm not competing with them for outward wealth. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning that neighbors of a lottery jackpot winner are more likely to go bankrupt because they're going into debt to keep up outward appearances.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/02/16/why-you-might-go-bankrupt-if-your-next-door-neighbor-wins-the-lottery/ [wsj.com]
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It hard to finance even a fixer-upper on $50k/yr when the vacant lots are going for $250k+ in the area. I've seen a few dilapitated buildings going for more than $400k in santa clara county. That's not to say there aren't deals to be had, but it's going to be a challenge.
Renting isn't so bad, but $2k/month is going to be a pretty big chunk of your take home pay. (more than 50% of it). So you'll probably need a roommate or a partner that works.
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Renting isn't so bad, but $2k/month is going to be a pretty big chunk of your take home pay. (more than 50% of it).
Rent and utilities is 40% of my monthly pay for a studio apartment. I'm socking away 20% for savings and retirement, and living off the rest. Some people consider me "poor" because I don't want a big house, fancy cars or designer jeans.
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Just so you know, even very nice jeans cost less than a house or a car.
I pay $20 for jeans and wear a pair for five years. My older brother pays $200 for designer jeans and buys a new pair every year. In a five year period, I would have spent $20 on jeans and he would have spent $1,000 on designer jeans.
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Just so you know, even very nice jeans cost less than a house or a car.
I pay $20 for jeans and wear a pair for five years. My older brother pays $200 for designer jeans and buys a new pair every year. In a five year period, I would have spent $20 on jeans and he would have spent $1,000 on designer jeans.
To be fair, the same criticism you are giving to spending $200 per year on jeans could be given to someone living in an area where a studio apartments costs $1300 per month. I lived one zip code away from a large group of affluent Chicago suburbs for $700 monthly rent in 2010, which would have allowed me to buy 2-3 designer jeans per month for the cost of rent in your area.
I'm not saying you are living too lavish of a lifestyle, but you seem to harbor some resentment for people "wasting" money on luxuries.
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I'm not saying you are living too lavish of a lifestyle, but you seem to harbor some resentment for people "wasting" money on luxuries.
There are two sides in my family, both responding to the Great Depression and World War II. One side lives a modest lifestyle, including the proverbial three-foot ball of aluminum foil saved during the war. The other side lives an luxurious lifestyle, spending every paycheck and going into debt. My father and I are quite content to live modest lifestyles, and could care less about the what the world thinks. My mother and older brother were never happy with their luxurious lifestyles, as someone else always
Cost of living is a real factor (Score:2)
Median rent for a 1 bedroom in silicon valley is $2200/mo. (and literally half are paying more than that)
Rents in SF are have moved to around $3800/mo.
The people who make out like bandits are the folks who already have a home in the area and are paying a relatively small mortgage payment, not counting the principal.
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don't forget prop 13 and your unsustainably low property taxes
i'm guessing about half the homeowners in california cannot afford to move within the same county
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Median rent for a 1 bedroom in silicon valley is $2200/mo
Depends on what commute you want - that sounds quite high, unless you're close to SF, or in one of the fancy neighborhoods. A few years back I had a 2-bedroom with garage for ~$1800/month in Fremont, which isn't a terrible commute to much of Silly Valley. There were reasonable 2-bedrooms near work for ~$2300 (unfashionable parts of town, no doubt, not that I cared).
SF is nuts, but I've never understood why anyone would want to live there.
Re:Technology Paradox (Score:4, Interesting)
Those people in Cali make considerably more but they have to as their rent/mortgage, food, utilities, and everything else cost so much more than it does in Texas (or those rural areas especially.)
I live and work in Silicon Valley, making $50,000+ a year. This is only possible by living a modest lifestyle that doesn't include a big house, brand new cars, and designer jeans. I gave up on the American Dream of having it all and learned how to be content with what I have. Some people consider me to be "poor" because I'm not spending money on the outward appearance of wealth.
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I get a good 60 to 70 pct more than that and I live outside of Silly Valley. Which means a lower cost of living. I have a great life style which includes a short work commute.
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Silicon valley is not the center of the universe.
I was born and raised in Silicon Valley. This is my home. People are always surprised that there are natives still left in the area.
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Silicon valley is not the center of the universe.
I was born and raised in Silicon Valley. This is my home. People are always surprised that there are natives still left in the area.
I am one of the few native Nashvillians. People are always surprised there are natives still here as well. They always want to know where I am "from".
Sounds like you have achieved the American Dream to me, contentment.
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You seem to be under the impression that people's votes have some influence on who rules over us. Money is power, and those who have it get what they want (more), and the rest of us are screwed. Elections are held periodically to perpetuate the illusion of democracy. No one's vote that is unaccompanied by a check is worth the paper it's marked on.
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You seem to be under the impression that people's votes have some influence on who rules over us. Money is power, and those who have it get what they want (more), and the rest of us are screwed. Elections are held periodically to perpetuate the illusion of democracy. No one's vote that is unaccompanied by a check is worth the paper it's marked on.
Lets see what happens in this primary. If you ignore the primaries, you allow the wealthy to choose the candidates on both "sides", so of course you're screwed. But Bernie is doing well, and Trump is doing well (he may be rich himself, and his sanity is dubious, but he's not at all aligned with the current DC/donor establishment).
American democracy is all about the primaries.
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If the rural folks didn't cling to religion so much, and insist on their "right" to discriminate against blacks and gays because it says so in the Bible, then maybe our elections would turn out differently.
Also, those rural people happily vote for Republican politicians who push "free trade" which results in their jobs going overseas. So they really only have themselves to blame.
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I'm pretty much on the same page as you; the idea that we'd all be contractors telecommuting from any old place ignored a lot of things about people and organizations, including the fact that people have a life outside of work that makes a big difference inside of work. It ignores things like job and investor networking, which of course can be done on social media and LinkedIn, but the fact that so many people are doing that only makes face time that much more of a competitive advantage. Do not underestim
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but Apple jumped the gun in 1993 with it's tablet
FTFY [wikipedia.org]
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The problem with "work from anywhere" is that only a small percentage of the workforce can be effective working remotely. Many (probably most) aren't able to communicate and stay focused when working remotely, so management insists on having everyone in the cubical farm together.
Having a skilled workforce and jobs in an urban center helps both the employer find staff and the employee find jobs. I don't see that going away anytime soon. Driverless cars won't have any impact, it really doesn't matter to mos
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The problem with "work from anywhere" is that only a small percentage of the workforce can be effective working remotely. Many (probably most) aren't able to communicate and stay focused when working remotely, so management insists on having everyone in the cubical farm together.
Statistics, please?
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He doesn't need to provide statistics to back that assertion, and it doesn't even need to be true.
The only thing that matters is that companies have been shying away from remote work (rather than adopting or allowing more of it). So even if their reasoning is faulty or the underlying premise (that too many people are unable to communicate and stay focused) is incorrect, it's irrelevant: perception is the only thing that matters, not reality.
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I don't think cheap and available driverless cars are apipe dream, but I do think it will not be available in any Slashdotter's working lifetime so its a bit of a moot point unless we want to pontificate on life more than 50 years from now.
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I find this trend quite strange as well. In the late 90s everyone was going on about how technology would allow us to work from anywhere so we could spread out around the country. Things like cramming into an urban area, and flying to conferences were going to become unnecessary.
This happened, except that instead of the jobs going to Kearney, Nebraska, they went to Bangalore, India, when management sorted out they could amplify the savings by hiring even cheaper workers in even cheaper locations.
Re:Technology Paradox (Score:5, Informative)
Well, int the 60s, everyone was going on about how the increased productivity automation brought us was going to have us all working 3-hour work days.
Productivity went up, the work week went up, the profits from increased productivity went into someone else's pockets.
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Have you been to Kearney, Nebraska? I think I'd choose Bangalore on food alone.
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I think this trend will continue until driverless cars are ubiquitous. These will open up huge amounts of land around urban centres (it will be like adding tube lines everywhere),
What? No, no it will not. Trains have massively higher densities than automobiles. They only work economically when you have lots of passengers, but when you do, they transport them far more efficiently than do cars.
and will probably cause a significant decline in central city density as people are freed from existing rent/transport monopolies.
It will be nice to let the car commute for you, but it's no substitute for not having a commute.
Underestimate Value of Skill Concentration (Score:5, Insightful)
I get you on the whole driverless car and hyperloop thing, but people really are very localized, and unless you can make both so fast that the thought of going to another city for drinks is no different a time and energy commitment than going to the bar a couple blocks away, it's not going to really work.
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I remember when there was a "buzz" about how the internet would allow technology workers to work from anywhere, etc; And yes, I've known devs who have worked from their rural locations far from urban areas. In my experience however, the only time its ok for someone to work remotely is if they are in a country with a significantly reduced payscale than the US...
However, as you say, what has come to pass is the concentration of tech workers in a few urban hotspots.
Sad, but ultimately t
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10 minutes bouncing back and forth on an IM
5 minutes talking on the phone
Walk over to their cube and in 10 seconds fully understand the issue.
There is a lot of information that is lost when not in person.
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Similarly the rise of cheap air travel has raised the expectation that you'll just turn up at a conference, so I find I have to attend more now.
That's strange, I've seen the exact opposite. I used to get sent to a bunch of conferences right around 2000, before the dot-com implosion. After that bubble burst, I never got sent to another conference.
Air travel cost isn't the problem, it's the cost of the conference itself. I remember the tickets for those conferences costing $2500 each, back in 2000. Throw
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That makes it sound like driverless cars will be a disaster. We will have a nightmare ahead of us already when it comes time to clean up after the last century of suburban sprawl - why on earth would we want to double down on disaster by encouraging even more of it?
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It turns out there is a large amount of slippage when people work remotely. Nothing is more efficient than face-to-face communications. Direct communications is a central tenant of the Agile processes, which why I do not think it ever really works with large far-flung projects.
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Trendy is fickle, but... (Score:2)
It's pretty straight forward. Places with established infrastructure in related industries tend to attract start ups and industry leaders alike.
Major industries rely on scores of subcontractors and anc
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Washington DC.
(New York City would be a candidate too, but it's got too many other things to be famous for.)
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Places with established infrastructure in related industries tend to attract start ups and industry leaders alike.
The only reason that Microsoft got started in Albuquerque is that the company owner of the Altair computer insisted that Paul and Bill come from Harvard to work on Microsoft Basic under his supervision. The two local boys were from Seattle. When the contract was over, they went home and built out their company. Seattle didn't become a tech hub until after Microsoft became big enough to affect the local economy.
Kids (Score:4, Insightful)
Awe, thats cute.
You've just discovered something thats been happening since civilization started.
Cities rise and fall based on their usefulness at the time, not your nostalgic feelings about them.
The universe does not play favorites and isn't a fanboy, it doesn't artificially prop up things that should cease to exist, like worthless cities.
Its not just American cities, its all cities, across the entire world.
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Cities rise and fall based on their usefulness at the time, not your nostalgic feelings about them.
I bet Paris has profited considerably from nostalgic feelings over the last couple of centuries.
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I bet Paris has profited considerably from nostalgic feelings over the last couple of centuries.
That is kind of hilarious. Paris has been a city/encampment since around 9800 BC. It was nostalgia before nostalgia was a thing.
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Hell of a trick to move Anaheim from Cali to Florida. Disneyworld is located in Florida.
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It's not just their usefulness, but also their political power and ability to engage in rent seeking. That is, a large part of the wealth of cities is not due to their contributions to society and the economy, but their ability to impose costs on the rest of the country and create trade barriers and monopolies protecting their interests. That's also nothing new; Adam Smith already discusses these mechanisms
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Exactly. Amtrak's schedule effectively is "whatever the freight railroad that owns the tracks decides it will be", because the freight carriers really could not care less if they delay an Amtrak train. It's not uncommon to have waits of several hours as the passenger train sits on a siding waiting for a freight to pass, o
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It's not uncommon to have waits of several hours as the passenger train sits on a siding waiting for a freight to pass, or for whatever other reason the railroad decides.
I once spent most of the day before Thanksgiving Day stuck on an Amtrak train to Sacramento. Repairs on the track initially caused the four-hour delay. When the repairs were done, the train couldn't move because the engineers and conductors have finished their shift for the day, and, under federal law, couldn't finish the 30 minute trip to Sacramento. It took three hours to get a new crew to drive out from Sacramento and find the access road to the train that was outside of Davis.
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[...] but what the US needs is high speed freight trains
There's a box car shortage as many are near the end of their 50-year lifecycle and newer boxcars are so expensive that they're not economical for the railroads to put into service.
The number of boxcars in service in North America fell by 41% in the past decade to just under 125,000 last year as 101,600 cars were scrapped and only about 13,800 replacement were added. That downsizing accelerated a decadeslong shift by railroads to more specialized railcars and intermodal carriers that allow shipping containers to hop from trucks to trains.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/shortage-of-railroad-boxcars-has-shippers-fuming-2015-06-21 [marketwatch.com]
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European rail system are inefficiently utilized for passengers, that's why European highways are clogged with huge trucks hauling large loads long distance.
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You beat me to it. Trains were supposed be the great equalizers of work opportunities and look how that turned out.
How that turned out is that auto companies bought up profitable public transportation systems and shut them down in order to increase demand for automobiles. They also did the same thing with some freight lines! Of course, they didn't interfere with the freight lines which fed the auto plants...
Remote (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe it's non-Euclidan geometry?
No, the real issue is that no employer wants their employees remote - communication still just isn't that good. But if the board says outsource, you outsource. And you keep the few you can still see around you in an even tighter grip.
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Remote working from India doesn't work well. The end result is a disaster in quality of the product. But it is a CHEAP disaster. MBA types like cheap (except for themselves).
I've had friends who sent software projects to India that were complete loses, years spent on software that turned out to be completely unusable. Since it was relatively cheap it didn't break their companies, but it would have been better if they had spent more locally and got working products.
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Remote working from India doesn't work well. The end result is a disaster in quality of the product. But it is a CHEAP disaster. MBA types like cheap (except for themselves).
I've had friends who sent software projects to India that were complete loses, years spent on software that turned out to be completely unusable. Since it was relatively cheap it didn't break their companies, but it would have been better if they had spent more locally and got working products.
lol. You two are obviously ignorant tards. If you had an MBA, like me, you'd know why the cheaper option was the better option. I don't need a "working product" to get a big raise. I only need a good press release and numbers in the black on the day the press release comes out. As a wise man once said "Delivery has nothing to do with the delivery business. Image, people, image! Scope out this new ad." If you had an MBA, which you don't, you'd know that business isn't about selling things to consumers only t
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This actually is the way things work at a lot of places. I remember a couple of years ago when I was talking with one of the front-office folks a
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No, people might actually do that.
In India, $5/hr is a decent salary for a software engineer.
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Its about low cost, union free, interchangeable workers until robotics can be used for more and more in any nation.
What needs to be kept in the USA? A few people with security clearances for the no bid contracts or US only paperwork, lawyers and public relations.
If a product needs to be
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Local resources (Score:5, Interesting)
Most American cities were established based on a local resource: mining, hydro-power, farming, railroad junctions, or a harbor. So many northeast cities declined when the manufacturing tied to those resources moved on. The same thing with the midwest steel towns, and the further midwest railroad towns. Look at some of the boomtowns of the last 30 years. What local resources do most cities in Texas have, or Las Vegas, or Silicon Valley? They basically have nice climates, and the ability to quickly support a new population of people.
The American economy is much less based on manufacturing now, so the jobs can go anywhere. Even a large manufacturer no longer needs 5000 people working in one valley because the river provided the power, the mines provided the ore, and the railroad provided the transportation. They can move that factory to New Mexico because trucks and rail can bring it all in and out. The tech companies can go absolutely anywhere. The only resource they are tied to is the educated workforce, which I agree with the article is a self-manifesting destiny. Success brings more success, and the opposite happens at less fortunate cities.
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What local resources do most cities in Texas have, or Las Vegas, or Silicon Valley? They basically have nice climates, and the ability to quickly support a new population of people.
Wrong. You've obviously never spent a summer in Las Vegas (or Phoenix, which has basically the same climate). 120F is not a "nice climate".
The only thing Las Vegas has going for it is gambling: before the Indian reservations got involved in gambling, Vegas was the nearest place people from Los Angeles could go to go gambling.
Outsource management to AI (Score:2)
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so then I just need to login and space out at my desk and be ranked as a good worker and not have to deal with the 6 bosses.
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Eventually, people will outsmart themselves. This will likely affect management roles first, as management is currently based on employee metrics. With current technology, people working remote, working flexible hours, etc. Workers are less likely to interact with management, so management has had to rely on metrics to judge employee productivity. Hence AI will likely replace managers first.
Only middle management, if at all. Low level management will still be needed to interface with employees and basic customer (internal or external) contact. Middle management would be replaced by the AI which sends the reporting and metrics straight to the upper management, who will of course have their own AI to interpret these metrics for them so they can spend more time on "business" golf outings and "working lunches".
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With current technology, people working remote, working flexible hours, etc. Workers are less likely to interact with management,
So how does management know that they are real workers? Perhaps they are a few instances of code writing AI hosted on some cloud service. Each with its own phony name and social security number, cranking out code and collecting a salary.
cities don't hate people (Score:2)
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start ups need people of different backgrounds to work together. in a lot of places people hate anyone of a different color, name, nationality, who they have sex with, etc. only a small number of people are "normal". so all the mutants left to the cities to make money
Did you start your day with diversity training ;-) I'd love to see the citations behind your reasoning
Job diversity? (Score:2)
So, should some businesses be forced to move to other cities to even things out?
Counter Intuative - Raise Taxes To Grow Locally (Score:2)
Unenforceable Non-competition in California (Score:5, Insightful)
really, this is a question? (Score:2)
Why Some Cities Get All the Good Jobs
Follow the money...
(then.... follow the weather)
Mandatory College Education (Score:2)
This divide — I will call it the Great Divergence — has its origins in the 1980s, when American cities started to be increasingly defined by their residents' levels of education.
Mandatory high school is great, but is not enough. College should be mandatory.
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This divide — I will call it the Great Divergence — has its origins in the 1980s, when American cities started to be increasingly defined by their residents' levels of education.
Mandatory high school is great, but is not enough. College should be mandatory.
High school isn't mandatory. It is effectively required for many jobs, but not mandatory.
Frog-marching people through "education" isn't a solution. It is actually part of the problem. It used to be that only people who were motivated by a desire to be educated completed college. It is no surprise that such people went on to be successful.
The response has been to interpret a college degree as the cause of success. Thus, people who are motivated by the desire to make money go to college, regardless of their d
Garbage (Score:2)
And what about the politics of buying legislators? Primo example: Boeing moving its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, and based on media reports, it was pretty openly about getting tax breaks from the city council.
And how about the companies that move to break their unions? Hell, the steel plant my father worked at in the fifties ran away to the South for just that reason, along with cheaper labor.
mark
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The level at which minimum wage would need to be set to allow people to enjoy a life outside of poverty (I would say $25/hr)
I was living quite comfortably on half that. In fact, I now make just over that and am living a decidedly middle class life while still living within my means and saving money. You don't need $50k a year to enjoy life outside of poverty. In fact it can be done in many places for under $30k. You just have to be smart and not take out a $300+ lease on a new car, insist on buying a 2500 sq ft house, or live in a 2 bedroom apartment at $1300 a month rent.
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What part of the word "cities" do you not understand? The correct comparison would be Silicon Valley vs. Huntsville (i.e., good city to good city) or Fresno* to Birmingham* (bad city to bad city).
(* I'm guessing; I'm not familiar enough with either California or Alab
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Detroit had the 'right' industries until Asia started making steel better and cheaper than the USA.
The reason why Henry Ford set up shop in Detroit was because land was cheaper as it was rocky and unsuitable for farming than other parts of the East Coast and Midwest. If the price of steel was a major factor, the Big Three should have built smaller cars with less steel. But that wasn't the issue. Like the rest of America, they sat on their fat asses and built bigger cars.
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My industry is 90% based in Los Angeles and New York. If I moved to a city in Mississippi, that would be fine for now, but if I lost that job I'd need to relocate, along with those costs.
Thus those cities never get a critical mass of jobs in my industry.
Poor schools are not the problem. Los Angeles and most of the Bay Area have horrible public schools in general. People either cherry pick the few quality independent school districts in expensive areas of town (like Beverly Hills) or send their kids to pr