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Graduate students in the University of California (UC) system have been on an official strike for the past five weeks. They are unionized by United Auto Workers (UAW). The union representatives have reached a tentative agreement with the UC representatives.
"Part-time work" here means 20 hours per week. That's the official cap for UC graduate students receiving stipends. Translating into hourly pay: the graduate students will go from earning $30/hour to a bit more than $43/hour.
So, culture war angle:
On the one hand, I don't trust government representatives negotiating with representatives of government-employed union members to fully represent taxpayer interests. In particular, I fully expect that everyone negotiating on behalf of UC was fully sympathetic with the striker's cause, and not strongly motivated to maintain low costs.
On the other hand, graduate student workers tend to provide specialized services. So a reasonable question (that I don't have an answer to yet) would be: how much would a professional grader of introductory writing courses charge? What about one for differential calculus? What about one for organic chemistry? From that perspective, $43/hour sounds like not such a bad deal.
For extra culture war angle, the LA Times quotes some tweets from graduate students unhappy with the deal. I will include one that does raise an interesting point:
I don't get why all graduate students need to be paid the same amount. (behind the scenes they aren't. Top fields and top students get external fellowships & endowments, but it's the exception) It makes even less sense for the entire UC system to negotiate together. The students at UCLA, UCI and Berkeley clearly have higher expenses than the other UCs.
It makes no sense that people in fields where they'd be completely unemployable are demanding higher pay, by holding more valuable STEM fields hostage. A STEM researcher at a top UC is foregoing a $100-300k salary to pursue their graduate degree. Most liberal arts students would struggle to make anywhere near the grad student stipend. Collective bargaining makes sense when there are collective risks. Eg: Line workers at a factory or screen writers. Research does not have that kind of uniformity.
I don't like how American Social-welfare continues to attend to the symptoms and never the causes. Most extra dollars given to a UC student, are going to go into them being able to finally move into livable houses. IE. This is a direct handout to local landlords and nothing more. (This is $7000/yr effective increase)
If a UC can get a subsidized student residential tower going, then the students might be able to have similar benefits as increased salary, all while getting lasting infrastructure, still contributing to the economy (let money go to real construction workers instead of a lazy bum sitting on his house), not eliminating their social-welfare by changing their tax bracket and saving a ton of money when amortized over a long time. Best part is, it might even force unproductive local landlords to finally enter the work force. (or more likely, it will eliminate their secondary vacation income. Neither will happen tho, politics always protects landlords)
California is a social welfare state, where all the handouts go to local upper-class landowners. Source
Amen. I wish this got more coverage especially with insane laws like Proposition 13. Literally just froze property taxes for everyone that owned land at that point - legally if you continue to own a property from when it was passed your taxable valuation just never changes. It's insane.
That's not insane, that's the way it should work everywhere. What's insane is that you could own some property, work hard to pay it off, and then be unable to keep it because property taxes went up/your income went down and you can't afford the taxes. That's insane.
Most states let a resident stay in the property and just put the taxes into a lien on the house, to be paid off by the estate after the death of the owner. (Sometimes via a forced sale if the estate can't cover the debt by other means.)
That is good to know, and I think a reasonable solution that addresses my concern. I was under the impression that the property would be seized if you fall behind on your taxes, but if I'm in error there then I'm glad to hear it.
It takes a long time but you can definitely lose your property in most states if you don't pay the taxes. In New Jersey the municipality will sell a lien on the property. The lienholder can then foreclose if the property owner doesn't pay it off within 2 years. If the lien doesn't sell, the municipality itself can foreclose if the property owner doesn't pay it off within 6 months.
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Why should new landowners subsidize lower property taxes for incumbent landowners who had some good luck in where they bought a few decades ago?
If somebody is truly worried about high property taxes, they should either accept that's the price for living where they want, or want more building to lower their property values. You can have high property values or low property taxees - not both, unless you want the current housing issues that California has.
If anything, one of the positives of Texas's tax laws that helps incentivize more building is a decent chunk of their income comes from property taxees.
Texas property tax rates are not set by the same organizations that make zoning laws. In general, an absolute majority of Texas property taxes go to the local school district, which has the right to set its own tax rates, within certain limits. It doesn’t take much imagination or specific knowledge to know why this tends to push Texas property taxes up very high in comparison to other states, but school districts do not set zoning or construction rules in Texas- that’s largely municipal governments, which earn the vast majority of their revenue through sales taxes and are more likely to cut their(generally much smaller- my itemized property tax bill from last year gave 23% of my total tax bill to the city versus 53% to the local school district. The rest was divided between county administration, community colleges, and hospitals in case you were wondering) property tax rate than raise it.
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I don't think anyone has the right to demand high property values, so I think you're putting words in my mouth there. I simply think it's a travesty that people can lose their property that they worked hard for, through no fault of their own.
It is, but the better way to deal with it seems to be through targeted property tax relief. For example, give credits to people who are above a certain age and below a certain income who have used the home as their primary residence for a minimum number of years. Yeah, some people can't afford it, and it's a shame, but it shouldn't be an excuse for people who can afford the taxes to pay below what's necessary.
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Okay, I see this kind of quote a lot, but nobody ever breaks it down concretely. I am a bright-eyed young college graduate with my nice new BSc, I'm twenty-two, I'm looking for a job.
Where do I go to earn $100,000 a year for my first job with no experience and only a bachelors? Can anyone say "If you apply to Muggins, Juggins & Co. they pay their QC lab people that amount"? I want concrete examples, no "in general the field pays this, according to Glassdoor and so forth".
The key is to work in a very-high cost of living area. IE. NYC or SF. Practically all tech jobs pay well above $100k in the Bay Area. Here are incredibly reliable exact salaries you'd get if you joined as a new grad at a tech company.
A moderately competent citizen in the bay area with sufficient math knowledge can wiggle their way into a Data Scientist job within a year of post-grad training. And those pay around 80% of starter software engineer salaries.
Similarly joining as a consultant with a big 4 / big 3 consulting company in NYC should put you around $100k (all included) for starters.
Those are the fields I know of.
To be clear, I am talking about someone who is smart enough to be accepted as a phD student at a top UC.
Healthcare startups are a good place for people with less mathy and more chemistry/biology oriented backgrounds. We are living through the golden age of health-startup funding. So there is VC money to go around.
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Quant Finance at a Prop Shop easily pays $300k these days for new hires. Get hired at Citadel (the process is easier than Jane Street) spend like 2 years there and then transfer to a better WLB shop.
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Software Engineering
In my experience, DoD contractors pay SWEs pretty terribly in comparison to the private sector. They're constrained by how the DoD itself ascribes value (e.g., credentials and YoE). That being said, a month ago, a buddy of mine with a 3-month bootcamp "degree" got an offer from Booz Allen Hamilton for 80k hybrid (3 days in the office). Granted, that's not 100k, but as I told him... just get 1 YoE and job hop for a monstrous raise.
My company is much more selective; but ~100k (fully-remote!) would reasonable for an impressive junior.
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Get hired at Google or Meta.
Sooooo... be really, really good and get hired at the top companies.
Well, that's so easy, isn't it? 🤣
I interviewed at Facebook (years ago) and got an offer (didn't take it). Wasn't something any competent programmer couldn't pass, maybe with some preparation. I am pretty good, but not on "really really good" level probably (I know a lot of people better than me in many aspects). So it's not exactly easy, but probably doable for a significant number of people. Especially now, when they are so big - not everybody needs to work on optimizing compilers and quantum computing, some people would also write scripts to parse logs, etc. And it won't get you the top range $500k+ salary, but getting over $100k shouldn't be a problem.
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I mean getting into research at a top tier University isn't exactly going to people with 2.1 GPAs. Unless they've got some identity boosters which would also likely help them a ton in the graduate hiring process.
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I get your point, but, with an ask of "Can anyone say "If you apply to Muggins, Juggins & Co. they pay their QC lab people that amount"", what else did you expect?
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Does depend how close those graduates want to stay to 'their actual field'.
Most quantitative-adjacent research fields can make the age-old choice between '60k as entry-level Astrophysics researcher' and '130k as entry level data scientist'
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Google, if you're the worst damn negotiator in the world. Actually that's not fair; their offer will be significantly higher, even just salary. Presumably all the other major tech companies as well.
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I mean, shouldn't the argument be that the students at UCLA, UCI and Berkeley produce more value than the other UCs? If they produce the same value but just happen to have higher living expenses, then paying them the same is broadly good for society because it incentivizes spreading out more, reducing pressure on limited housing.
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Well, as a tech bro I'll take my preferences and values over "old money". Whatever that would be in Irvine or Santa Cruz.
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“Too great” by what standard and to what effect? 2rafa’s aesthetic preferences and 2rafa’s idle chagrin? That’s the only explanation that seems forthcoming.
Tech people are terrible at creating cultural amenities, for whatever reason. SF and the Bay Area more broadly have terrible cultural amenities compared to New York or LA or even second- and third-tier American cities. Even tech people in New York instantly notice this when visiting SF. Old money, or lots of finance bros, or art hoes, or whatever population SF seems to lack, provide a real positive externality in creating good cultural institutions.
What does "cultural amenities" mean? Parks? Museums? Pretty sure the Bay Area has those, in addition to art hoes and finance bros. Is it because of the "yuppie fishtank" apartments? Pretty sure NYC isn't likely to build an apartment complex that looks like a medieval tower either.
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But tech people have only dominated SF for like 20-30 years, and it's been a pretty prominent city for at least a century, so it can't be that the techies are the sole issue. Most (all?) of NYC’s major cultural institutions are at least 20-30 years old.
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Naah, the people who control institutions and wealth operate at $$ magnitudes that far surpass that of the people stuck in these squabbles.
Not that I agree with your hypothesis to begin with. New England is quintessential old money, and the land use policies there are liberal enough to allow for lower rents and a lower influence of landlordism. The west coast is the worst affected and home to the 21st century's noveau-riche that's taken over.
Ironically, old money neighborhoods are rather averse to renters in general, so they dont do too much landlording. (Not colocated with the actual halls of power at least.) Their neighborhoods are almost 100% owner occupied and handed down over generations.
To a degree it is hilarious that west coast people even talk about old money and culture. The oldest money in california would be considered noveau-riche anywhere else in the US or the world. There really isnt much (white) history or culture here.
This is frankly untrue. The upper castes of India existed (and in many cases thrived) under British rule, under prior Mughal rule and beyond, and it still exist today. There is continuity. The elites of India were still mostly Indian, even if there was an obviously very powerful British minority at the political top. There wasn't millions of British people to wholesale replace the upper castes in India.
Brahmin's aren't actually that commonly found at the head of firms back home, those sorts of jobs are often seen as beneath them and the purvey of the Banias etc., see this article: https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/01/01/why-brahmins-lead-western-firms-but-rarely-indian-ones
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They aren't actual aristocrats because Republic of India has abolished any such titles or positions (with a couple minor exceptions). But this is not really that different from many (not all) European countries that abolished all official recognition of nobility or higher status. But the people themselves didn't disappear. And yes, the Brahmins of today are descendants of yesteryear. But the point is that there was no wholesale social upheaval and discontinuity in India elites, at least not to an extreme extent like the Russian or Chinese Revolution, or to be more 'positive' about it, the US where the nation was build completely from scratch.
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