when I read these stories, I wonder what these people did in school? How could they spend all those years in a school and have no ability to function as adults? Were they the "cool" kids who cut class, smoked in the bathroom & never did their homework?

I´m pretty sure I know what the "ultra-rich" kids did.

We all have to live with the choices we make

Those left behind stood still and waited for a handout.

I would recommend to MS Carle that she get a different job, learn a new way to make a living, move, or all the above. Or, she can stay as she is and be a victim.... People who wait for someone else to make their lives better are doomed to be a peasant all their lives.

Let me summarize a (very) long AP article:

The rich are evil and delight in the plight of the poor down-trodden.

The AP just loves finding these sadsacks who made poor life choices, and especially if they look mournfully up to a gleaming skyscraper will holding an albino dog....geez.

The "left behinders" are the slow-witted ones, who are gobbled up by Reality, the beast always in hot pursuit. Always been that way, but those of us more "fleet of foot" are always being dragged down by the stupid or lazy. Not unlike lobsters clawing themselves out of the boiling pot, only to be dragged back in by the ones below.

Let me paraphrase Sam Kennison here:
"Move OUT of the blanking communist state"

The AP fails to make the distinction between a recovering stock market and recovering economy/jobs market, they´re not the same thing.

As for the people they focus on in this article, they don´t have tech skills so there is no need to stay in Silicon Valley. Why didn´t they move before they were down to their last dime? Why did that one woman spend $14000 on hotel rooms rather than find an affordable apartment or move in with family? Where are the two kids that the horticulturist raised? Why aren´t they helping their mother?

Move to East Texas.

Land is cheap.

We need welders and pipe fitters and truck drivers.

Mc Donald´s is hiring.

Work or starve, you dim witted commies.

1. The piece, starting with the headline, is founded on incredibly defective thinking. Such thinking, of course, is both defective and dangerous. Especially when gov´t policy is based on it.

In something like anthropomorphizing, Mendoza [as many others do all the time] sees this "Economy" entity as real, and capable of action, such as "leaving people behind."

2. FTA: [Kristina Erbenich asks]: "If everyone around here is so rich, why can´t they do something to help?"

Look at how bad that thinking is: not "doing something to help"? You mean, the creation of all those high-paying jobs their risk-taking, creativity, insights, courage, investing, tenacity, focus, adaptability, entrepreneurship, and meeting of customer needs doesn´t count as "helping"?

3. One particular problem we have to fight that arises from really bad thinking is a cornerstone of the Left -- "redistribution." The Left in part justifies this [at least to itself] with two steps: a. the zero-sum fallacy; and b. that what "The Wealthy" have they have taken from others. But think just a little: how could population explode while the standard of living rose so enormously unless free economic activity produced new wealth prodigiously?

The "rich people" in this story aren´t helping, that´s true, and I don´t think they have a responsibility to help.

However, many of these "rich people" are Leftist Dems who are all in favor of social programs and higher taxes to "help" these people. The point is more about the hypocrisy of the super rich in Silicon Valley, who talk a good talk, but don´t walk it.

You can see the same thing in San Francisco, where the Leftie elitists are obsessed with the newest restaurants and bidding wars on expensive homes in the "right" neighborhoods, while ignoring the homeless problem.

If you´re rich and want to keep your cash, go for it, just don´t talk the Leftist line if you aren´t going to live by it.

Google is not Silicon Valley. Sure they have their HQ here, but Google operations are world wide and the server farms are in low electric-rate states, not CA.
Same goes for Facebook, Yahoo and Apple. Anyone driving through the valley will note the empty buildings that have not been occupied since before the dot-com bust.

It´s hard to say what the point of this dreadfully written article is . . . make us all feel guilty, tax the rich more, the system is the problem, perpetual unemployment benifits, bring in them into our homes for the rest of their lives? Where does the AP find these writers?

#10: There´s "helping" and there´s "helping." Building a company or an economy that produces vast numbers of good jobs, IMHO, is a far better way to "help" than seizing what others own and just giving it to others in ways that suit the politicians in power.

"Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement."
~~ Ayn Rand [emphasis added]