Taking a subset of statistical average income is not the proper way to define the "Middle Class." It's better defined by what you can achieve with a specific income. Can you afford higher education both for you and your offspring? Can you afford to own your home? Can you afford reasonable and convenient means of transportation for your area (multiple family cars in rural areas, but maybe one or even none in urban ones)? Can you afford occasional leisure activities? Can you afford to have a savings and retirement account? Do medical expenses not worry you?
Meeting most or all of these requirements is what sets people into the middle class. I agree with the article that this number is different as you need to take into account local cost of living, but a lot of these requirements are not tied to local costs. I also think this probably puts this number at a higher point than many people think. I have many friends that think, "Oh, I make $20/hr. I'm middle class now!" And I don't agree. You're still going to struggle with bills at that level of income. Middle class is about being above that struggle most of the time. There's a freedom that comes with not having a loan for your education, vehicles, emergency spending (credit cards), etc. And a middle class family should have that freedom.
I don't know that I can see $250k being middle class still, but I do think in the SF Bay area, a family making $150k is quite reasonably still middle class. The upper bound of the middle class is I think harder to define than the lower bound. Once you always have the option of not working for long stretches of time (more than several months) that might be a good indicator of upper class.
I think throughout the last 40 years or so we've gradually become so accustomed to the diminishing size of the middle class. We don't realize what it used to mean. We forget that a time existed where a family with a good budget could live on one income and still afford a house, two cars, college funds for the kids, vacations, and savings.
I think throughout the last 40 years or so we've gradually become so accustomed to the diminishing size of the middle class. We don't realize what it used to mean. We forget that a time existed where a family with a good budget could live on one income and still afford a house, two cars, college funds for the kids, vacations, and savings.
The middle class has "diminished" in large part because more households rose into higher income levels[1][2].
Many households could still live on one income, but choose not to because the opportunity cost of not working is too high: Mom and dad would both rather have the money, go on international vacations, eat out more often, take yoga classes, buy more gizmos... All stuff that people did much less of 40 years ago.
I believe that's actually their third location. The one on Riverside has been open for a couple months as well -- and even (surprisingly?) annoying neighbors with BBQ smoke[0].
I'm not an expert, but I've had both (and dozens of others), I smoke my own brisket, and I feel like I have a decent understanding of it. Salt Lick mops their brisket with a mustard based sauce. They smoke their meats indoors over a direct heat, open pit. Franklin uses a "domino rub" of just salt and pepper (for brisket). They're dry smoked (no sauce) in closed, indirect heat, offset smokers (the wood is in a chamber to the side of the grills). Franklin can control the temperatures of his smokers MUCH better than Salt Lick can. You can taste the meat and smoke better on a Franklin brisket. Salt Lick has a lot more sauce flavor though, and the mopping does add moisture but not tenderness. I have a very strong preference to Franklin's. I think his is the best brisket I've ever had, but that being said, it's not so much better that I want to wait in line for 4 hours (It's a guaranteed wait of 4 hours whether you show up at 7AM or 10AM, but show up after 1, and they're sold out) more than once a year or so.
From what the article says, the city fears losing control over its local government because Google employees would outnumber the rest of the voting citizenship. They seem to want to handle this addition of houses and infrastructure slowly, but if Google employees have a majority in the vote for local issues, they could move ahead as fast as Google wants, since it's in their best interest to keep their employer growing.
Good. Most of the peninsula is currently held in the grip of NIMBYs who hate trains, hate dense housing, and love freeways and environmentally damaging sprawl. Part of the reason SF costs so damn much is because it's so hard to have an urban lifestyle anywhere but those 49 square miles (and Berkeley and Oakland, which I quite like)
There is a reason to hate "trains" when it's fucking Caltrain with at-grade crossings and retarded federal rules about fucking horns all night long. Half the fucking Peninsula is unusable for sleeping as it is.
Perhaps people who are driving could consider not driving around the railroad gate (which was working when the idiot in that article decided to commit suicide).
There are remarkably few good ways out for humans in our society, so this kind of spectacle is often what they end up resorting to.
You're assuming that a lot of Google's employees live in Mountain View, and that "a lot" is potentially a political vote majority. I'm not convinced it's a valid fear, if what that councilman said is a generally held sentiment. I've only lived in the bay area a few years, but it seems to me people commute quite a lot, and it's not unheard of for San Jose residents to work in S.F. or any point between, in the east bay, etc.
Even so, the other fear, which I distill to a sentiment of fear that Mountain View will become a city that is more business and less residence/public space, is one that has more merit.
This is a good thing. Maybe if there is a google voting block, they can build high density housing, and extend BART into San Mateo County and make BART ring the bay.
This is true of any small town near a giant corporate campus. Look at Fayetteville AK and WalMart - the old town is a few broken-down houses and shops, next to rows of 1500-person condo units that march across the corn fields like dominoes.
What to do about it? Sell out, move I guess. Google wants your land after all.
My understanding is that the densely populated cities are the most sustainable form of living we do. It reduces carbon emissions because we need don't have to drive so far to get to the shops or work, and we can use public transportation, further reducing the carbon emissions. The housing gets expensive, because of demand, but it reduces destruction of wildlife habitat. http://www.citylab.com/work/2012/04/why-bigger-cities-are-gr...
And TWC upgraded most of the city while keeping prices the same (for now at least, since at least on my bill they credit the difference in plan prices). They started the same process in San Antonio around the same time SA started wooing Google Fiber as well. Definite win for consumers at east.
At least parts of SA had competition, since there were neighborhoods served by both TWC and Grande. Long before Google Fiber I remember actually getting better speeds than I paid for on Grande. I think I was paying $25/25mbps and seeing 30-35 on a regular basis.
Does this mean that one neuron can carry a signal that is more dense in data than a 0/1 binary spiking signal? Like a single neuron can transmit a complex feeling instead of just if it's touching something or not?
It can transmit continuous variable state rather than discrete state in pulses.
Of course you can still transmit continuous variable state indirectly using pulses (for instance, using pulse width modulation or frequency modulation) but it requires a bit more hardware.
Probably there is some kind of cross-over in complexity of the neural structure (density, length of the individual neurons) where it makes more sense to switch to a digital mode (cross talk for instance).
But, have we (the US)? We're a good solid decade or two into the age of free-flowing information, and we are trending the other direction in a frighteningly fast pace. The middle class is gone. More wealth is getting concentrated to the top than ever before in our country's history. And all the while, we have the least productive congress in history whose re-election is entirely dependent on the handouts given by those corporations that Abraham Lincoln warned us about. The few bills that are being passed are often written by those very corporations. We've lost the representation in our government. The Republic is no longer for the people by the people. The Republic is lost.
I have the impression that we (humanity) have just gotten our feet under ourselves in terms of how to utilize technology and the internet to really make a difference and make real progress in fighting back against these kinds of things. 20 years is only a tiny blip on the map of the entire history of civilization. Unfortunately that probably means you and I will maybe only see the beginnings of what the world will be like 1000 years from now, but the initial signs (to me) are very encouraging.
