even on monopolist salary it's still hard to buy a home in SF without hereditary wealth
Average down payment on a home (all of which are 7 figures+ unless you want a ridiculous commute) is ~50%. How long's it gonna take you to save up a few hundred grand when you're paying ~30k/yr in rent, even on that salary (now imagine not making google tech salary and living there)?
it's why there's stories about techbros getting the google job and living in their car in the parking lot in order to keep living expenses low
Sure, I'd say SF isn't a relatively expensive area, it's a ludicrously expensive area. Regardless I'm not really trying to have a debate about whether a quarter million a year counts as rich or not, just trying to argue that there is some utility in recognizing that there are people who benefit from capitalism more than others, within the working class, and some people call some of those "PMC". These people are invested, in various ways, in how All This Works in capitalism and are likely to see their position degraded if we ushered in a more egalitarian system, and so from a material standpoint they're less likely to have revolutionary potential and are more likely to defend capitalism than other workers - even if they're technically in the same position in terms of their relationship to the means of production as other workers. Even if you're not responsible for assigning tasks to other people who answer to you as their boss, that quarter million a year came from somewhere, and at that point it's not just the value of your labor - someone else's labor somewhere else in the system has been exploited to get to that point. And you know, no ethical consumption employment under capitalism, you could say the same about most jobs in the imperial core or whatever but there's SOME utility in analyzing people's motivations with this relatively nebulous "PMC" concept. I think. Probably. I could be wrong.
even on monopolist salary it's still hard to buy a home in SF without hereditary wealth
Average down payment on a home (all of which are 7 figures+ unless you want a ridiculous commute) is ~50%. How long's it gonna take you to save up a few hundred grand when you're paying ~30k/yr in rent, even on that salary (now imagine not making google tech salary and living there)?
it's why there's stories about techbros getting the google job and living in their car in the parking lot in order to keep living expenses low
housing commodification's a fuck
Sure, I'd say SF isn't a relatively expensive area, it's a ludicrously expensive area. Regardless I'm not really trying to have a debate about whether a quarter million a year counts as rich or not, just trying to argue that there is some utility in recognizing that there are people who benefit from capitalism more than others, within the working class, and some people call some of those "PMC". These people are invested, in various ways, in how All This Works in capitalism and are likely to see their position degraded if we ushered in a more egalitarian system, and so from a material standpoint they're less likely to have revolutionary potential and are more likely to defend capitalism than other workers - even if they're technically in the same position in terms of their relationship to the means of production as other workers. Even if you're not responsible for assigning tasks to other people who answer to you as their boss, that quarter million a year came from somewhere, and at that point it's not just the value of your labor - someone else's labor somewhere else in the system has been exploited to get to that point. And you know, no ethical
consumptionemployment under capitalism, you could say the same about most jobs in the imperial core or whatever but there's SOME utility in analyzing people's motivations with this relatively nebulous "PMC" concept. I think. Probably. I could be wrong.