Google's fucking Eric Schmidt should change his name to Scrooge for the holidays (rant)

[Starry Messenger]

ERIC SCHMIDT: We Don't Talk About Occupy Wall Street In The Valley Because We Don't Have Those Problems

http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-we-dont-talk-about-occupy-wall-street-in-the-valley-because-we-dont-have-those-problems-2011-12#ixzz1hSWvUcOk

Google chairman Eric Schmidt says that people in Silicon Valley don't talk about the concerns of the 99% because a lot of them are immune to those concerns.

He told Brad Stone at BusinessWeek, "Occupy Wall Street isn’t really something that comes up in daily discussion, because their issues are not our daily reality."

He also said "We live in a bubble, and I don’t mean a tech bubble or a valuation bubble. I mean a bubble as in our own little world.... Companies can’t hire people fast enough. Young people can work hard and make a fortune. Homes hold their value."

<snip>

The unemployment rate in Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, is 9.5% -- more than a point higher than the U.S. rate. It peaked near 12% in Jan. 2010, and has been consistently higher than the U.S. rate ever since the 2008 collapse. (You can check rates yourself using Google's public data service.)

He really does live in his own little world. Here's an article on poverty in Santa Clara from 2008:

Struggling to make it in Silicon Valley
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/south_bay&id=6529932

In Santa Clara County, 25 percent of families do not meet the self-sufficiency standard, United Way of Silicon Valley CEO Carole Leigh Hutton said.

"That jumps to 40 percent if you just look at single head of households, 40 percent of female heads of households don't make ends meet," Hutton said.

Here's an article from just nine days ago:

The sad lives and deaths of homeless on the streets of Santa Clara County - a continuing tragedy
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_19556513

On any given night, according to the 2011 Santa Clara County Homeless Census and Survey, in one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, 7,045 people are homeless.

That number is virtually unchanged from 2009, but the number of chronically homeless -- people who require about 70 percent of the system's resources -- has increased 11 percent in the same period. Rules on sobriety and health often determine who is admitted to shelters or who gets left out in the cold.

We somehow have decided," says Loving, "it's OK to ask if people have the right to be housed."

But maybe those people aren't really people, Eric. You seem to think that they don't really exist. Their issues are not your daily reality? Look out of your bubble, sir. It's right on your front yard. I live here in Silicon Valley, and I definitely exist.

I exist in the place where my students tell me in whispers that they are living with relatives because their family lost the house. Dad hasn't had a job in months and things are getting weird in the place they are staying. They can't turn on the heat. There are fights. But what do I know? I'm one of those worthless teachers that all the Silicon Valley 1%ers hate with a passion. I just need to shut up and teach to the test.

Well Eric, you took my test and failed. Merry fucking Christmas.

-Starry

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[Loge23]

2. Sick of tech everything!

How did we manage to grow up and live well before all of this crap!
I'm getting to the point where I'm just sick of computers, cell phones, i-crap, etc., etc.
I know, I'm using one now - I can do without it and hopefully soon will.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. Pick and choose what works for you

Only 4 wheel transportation I have is an ancient truck. My kitchen is a throwback to the 60s. Yet I teach geek stuff.

[Starry Messenger]

10. If it wasn't tech, it would be something else.

California was practically founded on corporate rapacity from early days. In fact, Santa Clara was the birthplace of the ruling that corporation are considered people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. He is speaking for the tech community there, not the county

He is also correct in that context. Geeks get hired there, and they make money. Nice houses there are expensive but they can afford them. Unless you are a high tech position or support a high tech company, life there is no different than other areas in CA

This is also not news. All my graduating students have well paying job offers. Then again, I teach geek stuff.

[Starry Messenger]

4. How nice for you.

Thanks for the kick! Bless your heart.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Many fail to realize that the digital divide is quite real

Not in the terms you often hear about (who has computers or satellite dishes) but in terms of education and future earnings potential. Kids fresh out of school with a masters in CS are making a higher salary than most people will ever see in their lives. People like Schmidt live in that world and really do not understand the reality that drives the Occupy movement. Throw rocks at him is easy, dealing with the divide is not.

[Bluenorthwest]

9. The thing is, that mind set is their own choice....

My career is in entertainment, so I started making large money quite young, grew up with plenty and then got more.
Earning money in some cush industry is not a reason to lack concern for the larger culture
What he is saying speaks to their state of being human and it is not a predetermined result of earning, nor of young success. Those who adopt that mindset do so by choice, and it is just the classic 'I got mine' mindset, which is not new at all, it is the oldest bullshit on the books.
All he is saying is 'we got ours, so we don't care'. If Schmidt does not understand, that is a lacking on his part, a failure.
I know people with a billion that care and discuss OWS. This is a function of who they are, not what they own.

[cascadiance]

7. I remember when he was an exec at Sun Micro when I worked there...

I think he also missed that Silicon Valley is in its own world too when it comes to the economy. A lot of their messes started a decade earlier around the dot com bomb, where the unemployment rate, etc. was masked when many people, including myself vacated the bay area when it went through that implosion instead of staying there to endure that mess then.

Back then when that crisis struck along with a lot of the laddering schemes on Wall Street that triggered it (much like Wall Street's mortgage scams started the current mess for the rest of the country on a whole a decade later), demand locally for high end housing plumetted. No housing was built for lower or mid level salaries then as builders were trying to maximize their profits to appeal to millionaires, which took a big drop when people stopped becoming millionaires when their investments went south then. Then the rest of the market got crowded, and people had to line up to get rental units which were hard to get as a result of that collapse, and rents skyrocketed then to be much higher than usual. I went through moving twice within six months to try and avoid it, and the second move was to Southern California to avoid it happening again and to get something cheaper when it was clear that those in the middle and at the bottom where going to come out way behind when it came to any decent jobs to pay for the increased costs of housing.

So the huge exodus of people might have made it seem to people like Schmidt that there was no crisis if he didn't count those that just "disappeared" then. Even if they might have a number of job openings now, there's no way I'm moving back there to a place where the housing market is still a mess. So from his perspective, those left with a lot of family money and inherited housing might appear to be "successful" and their unemployment rates low. It is an artificial sense of self worth Eric! That situation is unsustainable with that cost of living there. Values stay high amongst those that own property, because they don't want to take a huge loss to sell their houses at what they are truly worth on a nationwide basis. So as long as they find another that owns property there to sell to who's willing to pay above its value because they think they can get payment for their own housing they'll do it and keep the value of housing up. But for the rest of us that don't own property there or don't have significant personal wealth, there's no point of considering moving there then. We've left and aren't coming back.

[Starry Messenger]

8. I remember all that too, it was happening to friends of mine.

You are right, the Wall Street mortgage scam has a lot of resemblance to the earlier dot-com "gold rush" that happened a decade earlier.

One friend of ours is living in one of those high-value houses, and she is a Google employee right now. They are in foreclosure because the house went underwater on an ARM mortgage and they couldn't afford the monstrous house payments anymore. So, the family is basically squatting in their own home, just waiting for the day the bank throws them out. It was their parents' old home that they purchased and put in tons of work on to fix up. Yes, the value is just great. I wonder how many others are in the same horrid mess.

[Starry Messenger]

11. More school-age California children are living in poverty

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19443440
Posted: 11/30/2011 05:22:14 PM PST
Updated: 12/01/2011 06:54:23 AM PST

The economic downturn has hit children hard. New estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show the number of school-age children living in poverty in California swelled by 30 percent from 2007 to 2010.

<snip>

The trend could have far-reaching and long-term effects. Educators and researchers say that when children come to school hungry or without a stable home, they often struggle to focus on their work and fall behind. Some kids, after a prolonged period of instability, develop what early childhood experts call "toxic stress," which can trigger long-term memory loss and other cognitive problems, as well as hypertension and other stress-related diseases.

<snip>

In 2010, the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa
Cruz and Solano were home to nearly 137,000 poor children between the ages of 5 and 17 -- roughly 28,600 more than in 2007, before the recession began, according to the estimates.

<snip>

Alameda and Santa Cruz counties had the highest school-age poverty rates in the Bay Area, at 17 percent and 18 percent, respectively. In Santa Clara County, the number of poor schoolchildren grew by 40 percent in just three years to just more than 38,000.

[Karmadillo]

13. What kind of incredibly wealthy country allows children to live this way?

[Starry Messenger]

14. Is that question on the test?

Please answer to the best of your ability, as your answer will determine your future success as a wage earner and your teacher's next raise. Thank you!

"What kind of incredibly wealthy country allows children to live this way?"

a) America. USA USA USA!

b) an incredibly heartless one

c) a capitalist country that doesn't count children as people since they don't work. But we're fixing that by weakening child labor laws.

d) a sociopathic imperialist country

e) where is your flag pin, buddy? vote and shut up citizen.

[Karmadillo]

18. f) busted! The correct answer(s) go beyond permissible thought as defined by approved state

standards of learning. While you must be reported for failure to conform, we will seek leniency on your behalf as you placed the illicit information in a multiple choice format.

[Starry Messenger]

12. Don't forget, Google is a massive tax dodger as well.

http://news.techeye.net/business/tech-industry-accused-of-hmrc-cosy-relationship-tax-dodging

In fact, such is the perceived leniency that Google boss Eric Schmidt made a mockery of UK tax laws, publicly claiming he would be willing to pay more corporate tax if existing rules didn’t prevent him from doing so. Google is in fact one of the companies which has drawn attention of its tax avoidance strategies, sometimes based around profits being diverted through subsidiary companies in Ireland.

Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html

Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.

“It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,” said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. “We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent.”

<snip>

Google, the owner of the world’s most popular search engine, uses a strategy that has gained favor among such companies as Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The method takes advantage of Irish tax law to legally shuttle profits into and out of subsidiaries there, largely escaping the country’s 12.5 percent income tax. (See an interactive graphic on Google’s tax strategy here.)

[phleshdef]

15. He didn't say anything like what you are accusing him of saying.

He definately never said anything remotely close to "these people aren't real" or "they don't exist" or "their issues are not a daily reality".

He has a point.

I'm a business applications developer myself. I've had my most recent full time job for over 2 years. Before getting this job, I applied with several recruiters and I'm still getting 2 or 3 calls a month from those recruiters asking me if I'm interested in positions they have. Even at the worst of the recession, this was the case for me. For my current job, I telecommute and work from a home office every single day (in a home that I pay a decently priced mortgage on, and one that has not lost any significant amount of value since I got it). I get paid a pretty decent salary, definately above the national average. I'm by no means wealthy, but I live comfortably, with my only me, my wife, my 3 cats and 2 dogs to look after.

If I wasn't a political junkie, I'd probably be pretty out of touch with the concerns brought forth by the occupy movement myself. I seek out this kind of information on my own, every day. But if I lived only the realm of my work and the people I work with and the industry I work in, things would seem pretty rosey.

I think all he is saying that, in his everyday world, in his line of work, people are doing a lot better than the norm, so it creates this sort of shield that prevents one from facing the realities that apply to the rest of the normal American world.

[EC]

16. Hum...

Didn't Scot Olsen work in silicon valley?

[Starry Messenger]

17. Yes indeed.

"Olsen moved to the San Francisco area in July and works for Opswat, a software company, living with Shannon in Daly City, just south of San Francisco."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/26/scott-olsen-occupy-oakland-review

[maximusveritas]

19. I think you're misinterpreting his comments as well

It sounds like he was making a valid point about them being in a bubble where they don't realize how much people are struggling. He obviously wasn't speaking for all of Silicon Valley as a land mass, but Silicon Valley as in the tech industry.

[Starry Messenger]

20. I disagree.