(Part 3) Top products from r/bayarea

You're doing great you now have a very good emergency fund but you need to change where you are putting the money you save moving forward. Change your 401k contributions to 22%, this is about 18k/year (the yearly max contribution). Then open a ROTH IRA and contribute 5.5k annually. These are tax advantaged accounts, make the most of them. For both of these investments and your age you want about a 80:20 stocks:bonds ratio, you can use a target retirement date fund to get this ratio but make sure the fees are low (<0.2%). You mentioned you wanted something more liquid than a ROTH IRA elsewhere but the ROTH is the most liquid tax advantaged account available (You can withdraw your contributions tax and penalty free at any time. Your earnings need to meet certain criteria to not be penalized when withdrawn). Any remaining savings should go into a money market account where it can mildly/safely grow and become a downpayment on a house. If after all this you find you still have extra savings start a taxable investment account that is well diversified. Individual stocks are little more than gambling, sure you might hit it big but you may also lose it all. You're young, play the long game to get rich and you'll maximize your chances to do so.

Also read this book sometime before you are 30, https://www.amazon.com/Allocation-Second-Professional-Finance-Investment/dp/0071700781

Revenue that goes to an ''org'' not a ''.gov''.
No tolls in the United States go into any municipality's ''revenue''.
This is a little known fact.
What exactly is the VTA?
The government can ''appoint'' people? Just like the Federal Reserve, a private bank. How nice.
Where does the money go when tolls are collected? Follow the money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_Valley_Transportation_Authority
I know. We aren't following the money yet. With no sarcasm involved, I wish you luck in following the money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_district
Who owns the Federal Reserve? That seems to be shrouded.
The VTA's money goes into the ''VTA transit fund''.
Anyone who wants to try and verbally simplify what I am talking about, should read this book about the revolution of ''Transportation Authorities'' in the US. You will never find a book more critically acclaimed.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Broker-Robert-Moses/dp/0394720245
Amazing reading.
A review excerpt: ''As time wore on Moses became less and less the man of the people and more and more the man of the system of his own creation, and that system was the toll-gathering mechanism of New York's bridges and tunnels. He invented that peculiar institution, the "authority" (as in Port "Authority" or Tennessee Valley "Authority") that is neither wholly governmental nor wholly private, and so lacks the restraints of either; Moses' cash cows kept him in power and gave him an antidemocratic arrogance that is truly breathtaking and, one hopes, will never be duplicated.''
A must read, if one wants to know what they are looking at, while enjoying any city's roads or public transportation. Man oh man is the public in the fucking dark about Transportation Authorities.

For mushrooms in general (not specifically psychedelic ones) I recommend All That the Rain Promises and More by David Arora. If you like that then check out Mushrooms Demystified which is his famous tome. Two newer books with beautiful color photographs are Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast by Noah Siegel and Christian Schwarz, and California Mushrooms by Desjardin, Wood, and Stevens.

The best way though is to go foraging with someone who knows what they're doing. Check out MSSF or one of the other clubs in the area. If you join MSSF now, you can still get a spot on the Mendocino Woodlands camping trip, which is an absolute blast.

We really liked Jack London state historic park. http://www.parks.sonoma.net/JLPark.html

You'll find there are a huge number of day trip worthy things in the bay area.

Great bunch of day trips in this deck thingy.
http://www.amazon.com/Bay-Area-Backroads-Deck-California/dp/0811834360

It's great. That trail should have lots of people on it. I would just suggest sending a text to a friend/relative to tell them where you are going, just in case something happens. A tip for you: buy this book and this [map] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566955769/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1). One of my favorite parts of Friday night is getting them out and mapping out our weekend hike. The trail profiles are VERY helpful.

There's a great book on interesting geological sites that you can visit by public transit. Even if geology is not your thing, a lot of them are just pretty places to go for a walk/hike.

https://www.amazon.com/Streetcar-Subduction-Transport-Francisco-Publications/dp/0875902340

Just FYI, the "Streecar Conspiracy" is really a myth. GM might have helped to put the nail in the coffin of street cars in some places (namely LA), but there is virtually no academic analysis that supports the conspiracy. The streecars were pretty much doomed already by that point. Even on the wikipedia page you linked to it mentions alternate explanations and other factors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy#Other_factors

If you want a really good analysis of why so many cities switched to cars, this is an excellent (if academic) book: http://www.amazon.com/Los-Angeles-Automobile-Making-Modern/dp/0520073959

The core issue is about what gets subsidized by whom and what doesn't. If we want to learn from history it is important that we get a good understanding of what actually happened.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I highly recommend this book on the subject esp. Fremont's rise. I thought it was very balanced: https://www.amazon.com/American-Babylon-Struggle-Postwar-Politics/dp/0691124868

> Well some renters will tell you they pay property taxes indirectly, but I guess you don't buy that.

Let’s skip the part where you put words in my mouth.

> Your disdain for private windfalls is cute

I think identifying private windfalls in order to design progressive taxation is more than “cute.”

> Everything you're talking about would kill Development, btw

All I have described in this thread is how property taxes work and why I think they should be higher. While it’s true that very high property taxes can discourage development, there are ways of encouraging development even when the property tax is high (e.g. tax the land at a higher rate than improvements, or exempt new construction).

> Not all land has value. Not all land increases value. In SF, we presume these things to be true, but no, they're not always true, and the assumptions your making require us to be talking about cartoons instead of real life

None of these are assumptions that I made.

> Linking to the assessors handbook is meaningless. Quote the section you think is relevant.

See, for example, the section “Economic Concept of Use Value” which describes how the market value continues to exist (and you continue to pay property tax) even when a house is owner-occupied or vacant.

> The assessors themselves can be idiots, which is why Prop 13 exists. Value isn't set by rumor or your opinion of how hot the market is, and there's limitations on when you can assess for a reason.

In The Permanent Tax Revolt, Isaac William Martin argues the exact opposite: Proposition 13 passed because assessors became too professional, and politically powerful neighborhoods who had previously been given artificially low assessments revolted rather than pay the calculated taxes.

Agreed. Prop 13 is like a curse to most Californians.

Speaking of taxes, I like Richard Florida’s idea: tax land based on a a formula that benefits dense housing. His book:
New Urban Crisis

Bay Area Bike Rides Deck: 50 Rides for Mountain, Road, and Casual Cyclists https://www.amazon.com/dp/0811865266/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_95lmDbB9GTS1W

If you want to dive deep into irl breadmaking check out the Tartine recipe book!

Do you know why PG&E exists at all? What's the historical reasoning behind the quasi public/private monopoly? We wanted efficiency of larger power plants and no rat's nest of power lines across the city from competing power companies. If the city owns and maintains the power lines, there's no rats nest. And we're at a point now where power generation through means of solar and wind allows individuals to set up solar and wind farms however big or small as they can afford. The need to consolidate power generation into the hands of one giant is unnecessary, and all we need is for a public entity to facilitate the infrastructure and transaction between the sellers and buyers.

Each city builds and maintains their own power lines and facilitates the marketplace between buyers and sellers. Then people can build solar and wind farms wherever, sell their power to cities who then sell it to buyers at whatever markup keeps the power lines maintained and pays for regulation of the sellers.

Try reading: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Switch-Rewiring-Edison-Google/dp/039334522X

https://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/comparing-death-rates-from-mass-public-shootings-in-the-us-and-europe/

A book and this and other aspects of gun control from an economist/statistician perspective
https://www.amazon.com/More-Guns-Less-Crime-Understanding/dp/0226493660

basic economics

I doubt any Bay area politician has any grasp on the matter.

Yeah, the students get unfairly scapegoated, and are without a doubt not to blame for the bad decisions by the city. If anything, I wish the students would get far more involved and have their voices heard, because far too many of the problems with the city is from the city trying to just ignore or harm the students out of their spite for daring to cause Santa Cruz to change at all. UC Berkeley and UCLA students are starting to have really positive impacts to counteract the regressive policies of the surrounding city councils, and I really wish UCSC students would step up to that. Of course, when such a large percentage of them suffer from housing- and food-insecurity, it's much harder for them to speak up for themselves.

I think the university influence comes more from university employees than from students, as the university is the largest employer in the region, the university employees own homes, whereas students have to go to great effort to vote and young people generally don't vote. There's a great book on this called The Leftmost City, and while I find the attempts to force events into an overly simplistic business-interests-vs.-progressives-narrative somewhat comical, the actual history parts are much more enlightening. City council positions don't take a majority of votes to win, so smaller numbers of people can have big influence, especially on these elections where there's so little information about who knows what.

So in the 80s, the "progressive" side gets a majority on the council, and then there's infighting between the anti-growth faction that just wants everybody to go away and no newcomers and the socially progressive faction which wants to use tax money to improve social services, and not much progress is made, because, spoiler, the "anti-growth" side wins in terms of stopping "development," but it also loses because it doesn't stop people from actually coming. So everybody is worse off!

Blame Chevron / Peoplesoft for building sprawling campus headquarters out in San Ramon / Pleasanton.

But the answer isn't that simple. SF in the late 70's was becoming increasingly a hellhole of shit and piss, and with rising rents large companies sought to build their headquarters sideways, rather than vertically since they were much easier to manage and easy to get to with the new highways being built (I-680, I-580, etc).

Suburban Nation has a section on the sprawl in the east bay:

https://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Nation-Sprawl-Decline-American/dp/0865477507

You aren't standing up to them. You are driving moderates who sympathize with them into extremism and radicalization. You are making it harder to implement the solutions that actually reduce the number of extremists. You are increasing the chances of minorities being targeted in the future.

We know that inclusion and community-building reduce the rates of radicalization

There are guides for how you can actually help solve the problem of extremist violence.

Scientists who study genocide and mass political murder have noted that escalating ethnic violence leads to more genocides and ethnic cleansings, not fewer

You are helping the nazis. You are putting me and my family in danger. Will you please grow up and start doing something productive?

>The US has a minority rule in the sense that the constitution protect the minority from the decision of the majority. Context? Give some examples.

Where in the Constitution supports your argument? Cause if you did know you would have posted that section of the Constitution rather than link to Amazon.

What is your argument again and what section is it? https://constitutionus.com/

>We have an example of limited government. It’s ours. You and people like you have and are changing that by confiscating lawful property to give to others whom you deem more worthy of it.

Your answering an argument I didn't make. Changing zoning laws isn't taking away any ones property. Having affordable housing that allows all San Franciscans to raised and die isn't some fantasy, like ending slavery, protection of indigenous Americans, women's right to vote, civil rights, disabled rights, and rights of gays. The right to affordable housing is civil right considering the importance of ones home.

>Throwing out feel good platitudes doesn’t change 1. The constitution. 2. Basic laws of economics and 3. Human nature.

• The Constitution has 27 Amendments the Constitution changes over time.
  
• There is no such thing as "Economic laws" there is no courts, no legislation, no enforcement. But there are "Economic theories,
  
  
• Libertarians have no clue on human behavior, they are isolationists, loners, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-fair-society/201108/what-s-the-matter-libertarianism
  
  Thomas Sowell the Libertarian, would rather read "Economics for Dummies,