Report: Income Gap in Silicon Valley Widens

As high-tech billionaires push for more guest-worker visas, the income gap between the elite and the rest of Silicon Valley is widening. 

According to The Wall Street Journal, an “analysis of U.S. census data” by the “non-profit think tank Joint Venture Silicon Valley” found “a significant increase in Silicon Valley households earning at least $150,000, up by 25,000 between 2012 and 2013.” Additionally, “the increase in the number of high-income Silicon Valley households was nearly five times greater than the increase in households overall.”

Russell Hancock, the chief executive of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, told the outlet that “the middle class is disappearing, and the service sector is stuck there with no growth.”

“The income gap is becoming more sharply pronounced at a faster rate,” he said. “Silicon Valley is becoming a different place, a place of haves and have-nots, and there are signs of unrest.” 

Yet, even as high-tech giants like Microsoft are laying off 18,000 American workers, Silicon Valley titans–the so-called “Masters of the Universe”–are pushing for comprehensive amnesty legislation and massive increases in guest-worker visas that would lower the wages of American workers. 

But the “Masters of the Universe” are realizing that American voters are not on board with them on massive amnesty and increases in guest-worker visas.

When Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) recently urged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to hire workers that Microsoft was laying off, Facebook board member Marc Andreessen went ballistic, calling Sessions an “odious hack” and implying that he was “clinically insane” for supporting American workers over foreigners. A few days later, the president of Zuckerberg’s pro-amensty group was “forced” out for failing to move amnesty legislation that the American public has successfully resisted for nearly 30 years.