No one becomes one of the 1%

[hunter]

30. "Gentrification" of neighborhoods destroys communities.

So does extreme poverty.

But it's not either/or.

Truth be told, I wouldn't piss on most affluent people if their faces were on fire and I AM MYSELF a somewhat affluent asshole who is creating this post on a table my wife and I bought at the East Palo Alto Ikea.

My great grandfather lived in San Francisco, building a big house there, before the Great Earthquake. The house still stands, now owned as an investment property, subdivided, each of it's rooms now housing entire families. Nobody among my great grandfather's descendants could afford to purchase the home now. We probably couldn't purchase the home if we pooled all our resources. The rent on my grandmother's childhood bedroom is greater than any of our mortgage payments, and some of us live in big houses. Just not in San Francisco.

A few years ago I was chatting with one of the tenants of my great grandfather's house who couldn't believe the entire home once housed a small family; mom, dad, kids, and an Irish cook/houskeeper Sundays her own who had her very own big bedroom and bath, which is now the most expensive "suite" in the house. I like to think there's some pompous tech executive living in that room, thinking he's hot stuff. The room of a maid. And she probably had a much more pleasant life than a guy attached 24/7 to a smartphone shock collar.



My great grandfather was a big dreamer who, in the 1920's, bet everything including that house on aeronautics, motion pictures, and mass market dairy products. Unfortunately he bet on the wrong horses. To a sickening extent the game was rigged in favor of bigger players.

Still is.