Ted Rall for April 08, 2016

Public transportation in the Bay Area is a symptom of an even bigger problem in the Bay Area, the lack of affordable housing.It’s an unrealistic commute from the San Joaquin Valley to the Silicon Valley for starters, but the San Joaquin Valley is where the affordable housing seems to be.That commute from the Valley is terrible and can take up to 4 hours each way, and makes the commutes inside the Bay Area (especially from Livermore) even worse.Until there is affordable housing in the Bay Area, transit problems will continue to get worse and worse.

Well what do you expect ? The city of San Francisco has been dominated by liberal Democrats for nearly a century.

Pot is not legal in California.Silicon Valley is in San Jose area and there is a high speed train that goes there from the south.More people live in the greater San Francisco Bay Area than in the entire state of Washington.BART is receiving new train cars.Other than that, good toon.

But, but, but…we’re constantly told how San Francisco is all progressivey ‘n stuff. (News headline: S.F. votes for reparations for LGBTQ minority ex-North Carolinians who pay employees $15/hr. to make reusable hemp grocery bags, provided they use set-asides for undocumented aliens.)You mean it’s not paradise on earth?

San Francisco will become the first US city to guarantee fully paid family leave to almost everyone who works there. California will soon boost its wage-replacement level to 70% for people earning the minimum wage. Seems like they are getting things right as well.

My in laws bought their house in 1950 in San Mateo for $17,000, we sold it when they died 25 years later for $250K, it just sold again, for $2 MILLION, and that’s the new “median” price in the area. It’s called inflation.

Why does the tiny tract of land around the SF bay in California “need” to have affordable housing? There is affordable housing all over the country. If you don’t want to pay the prices, don’t. Seems pretty simple. I live in middle America, and that’s fine by me. Not everyone can live in Malibu, San Fran, and Manhattan!

Real estate in fashionable places like San Francisco and New York is inflated by funny money from the Federal government, which is available to the rich at near-zero interest. This is not going to go on forever.

San Fran is liberal, but it is also full of right wingers, remember Mayor Alioto? There is no lefty paradise without some righty group trying to bust it with drug wars and such. The hippies left The City because it was to expensive and to straight for them.When the property gets expensive, only the rich can afford it.According to the SF Chronicle, some guy is paying $400 a month to rent a closet to live in.

Ted, businesses of all sizes import cheap foreign labor, including in SF and the Bay Area.

And the reason they do so is mostly cuz people put up with it.