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In San Francisco, Making a Living From Your Billionaire Neighbor's Trash
Three blocks from Mark Zuckerberg's $10 million Tudor home in San Francisco, Jake Orta lives in a small, single-window studio apartment filled with trash.
There's a child's pink bicycle helmet that Mr. Orta dug out from the garbage bin across the street from Mr. Zuckerberg's house. And a vacuum cleaner, a hair dryer, a coffee machine — all in working condition — and a pile of clothes that he carried home in a Whole Foods paper bag retrieved from Mr. Zuckerberg's bin.
A military veteran who fell into homelessness and now lives in government subsidized housing, Mr. Orta is a full-time trash picker, part of an underground economy in San Francisco of people who work the sidewalks in front of multimillion-dollar homes, rummaging for things they can sell.
One Zuck's trash is another man's "like new".
(Score: 3, Touché) by NateMich on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:15PM (5 children)
It must be all those billionaires.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:48PM (1 child)
That's precisely the problem.
In America, if you're working class, you can go off and put your life on the line for the interests of the billionaire class. Maybe you'll get free college out of the deal. If you get a limb blown off, get PTSD, get any number of things that happen in war, when you come home, the billionaires, as a thank-you for defending their imperialist interests, will tell you to FOAD. They don't care if you go homeless. They don't care if you're starving. They don't care if your PTSD goes untreated and is a significant barrier to entry to a McJob.
The billionaire class contributes nothing of value to society, and yet they believe they are entitled to the vast majority of the wealth the working class creates.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Gaaark on Sunday April 07 2019, @09:37PM
A. Men.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Touché) by sjames on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:34PM
The third world has it's share of extremely wealthy people. Many of them get that way by ruthlessly exploiting others unimpeded by laws enforcing fair play. Often it involves slipping some money under the table to make sure legislators and law enforcers don't notice. Is that starting to sound familiar?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 07 2019, @10:17PM (1 child)
Yup. Third world countries are characterized by a few wealthy dictators at the top with all the power and money, while everyone else suffers. I know what you were trying to do here, but it backfired and blew up in your greasy basement-dwelling face pretty hard :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday April 08 2019, @05:32PM
Another dumb Tweet by Muffin Girl. I'll tell you, I'm no Dictator. If I was, Jeff Bozo wouldn't be the richest "person" in the World, believe me. I would. And, I wouldn't be meeting with Mitch & Nancy, I'd just sign my name, so beautifully, to very special Documents and whatever I wanted would happen. Like it happens for President Xi of China.
And if you look at, how many Billionaires in the different countries of World. U.S.A. has the most -- by far. China is #2. #3 is Germany( Trader Joe's ) and #4 is India. And possibly Narendra's becoming a Dictator, Angela's becoming a Dictator. But, I really don't think so. I hear they have "democracy" there. In Germany, in India. By the way, California has more Billionaires than Germany, I wouldn't call either of them 3rd. World. And I got a great reminder about that on Friday when I did very successful Fund Raiser in beautiful Beverly Hills. In New York City we have the ultimate in luxury. But, Beverly Hills is 2nd.. Big bucks!!!!