hardcandy

Modern day Silicon Valley is built on somewhat of a gold rush mentality. Why do you think people move out here and put up with much of the locally curated insanity? Because they think they have a chance to strike it rich. Maybe even really, really rich. And they're right; they probably have a better chance here than anywhere else in the world. Startup equity is what keeps people plugged into this particular Matrix. I love Silicon Valley but I recognize it for what it is.

I just priced out a (non ACA) catastrophic insurance policy with roughly the same deductible as my ACA plan. It came in at $75/mo versus the low $300/mo for what I pay for my ACA plan. I assume this reflects the fact that I am being risk pooled with other non smoking healthy mid 30s males without any pre-existing conditions. By ''fraud'' I meant that I feel like I am being charged too much for too little, and those price points would support that. Of course it's happening in the context of a subsidy that society has determined it wants to create as discussed elsewhere.

The ACA provided over $2 billion in startup funds for about three dozen non-profit health care co-ops (new insurance companies) who were meant to provide competition, increased choice and lower prices for consumers. Almost all of these co-ops are now bankrupt thanks to a medley of fraud and incompetence. As noted elsewhere in the thread, Land of Lincoln in IL just publicly announced their dissolution today. What happened? Well, it turns out running an insurance company is hard, and in return for doing that hard job, the executives, even of these non-profits, want to be paid a lot of money. In many cases the Government allocated startup funds to politically-connected individuals who sucked it out of the system and into their own pockets. So no, the grass isn't always greener. You can't just slap a ''non-profit'' label on something and expect problems to be fixed. And to the extent you pay executives less money, they will work less, and in the absence of that leadership, systemic future risks start to accumulate. The selfish profit motive is still one of the core values that our society depends upon in order to function the way we expect it to. Gordon Gekko put it one way: ''Greed is Good!''. Milton Friedman another: ''Nirvana is not for this world.'' Not yet, at least.

I've been self-employed for about a decade. Prior to ACA I had catastrophic insurance with IIRC about a $10k deductible for 25% of the ACA cost. But I was a healthy, non smoking male in my mid 20s (back then) with no pre-existing conditions. If you had pre-existing conditions then it doesn't surprise me that your ACA rates were the same or lower, which illustrates what ACA really is: a subsidy (tax) helping out the (mostly) old and (mostly) chronically ill paid for by the (mostly) young and (mostly) healthy. I prefer not to think of it as red-versus-blue partisanship and instead in objective economic terms. Personally I have no problem subsidizing people who are born with chronic illnesses, or fall on hard times; I have a few cancer survivors in my immediate family and I've seen the impact it can have. But I don't think that we should be subsidizing people who have diseases borne of negligence (adult onset diabetes and other obesity related diseases) who refuse to do anything to help themselves and as a result consume extreme amounts of health care resources. It's becoming clear that for the time being at least demand far exceeds supply in the health care services market, and that means having to decide how and when to ration care. I can afford to pay inflated ACA rates and I can afford to pay for private concierge-style care in the face of a supply-demand imbalance in the market. But what about the middle class family making $50k/year who is now spending 20% of their net take home income on health care? Unfortunately there aren't many easy answers in this debate and it's especially difficult to even start the discussion given how polarized it has become.

As a self-employed developer I have an ACA plan and I can tell you first-hand it feels like a total fraud. I pay $300/month but also have a $6k deductible, which means the plan doesn't really pay for anything until I've already spent $6k out of pocket. I have no problem with a $6k or even $20k deductible because I work hard to remain healthy but then my premiums for what is essentially a catastrophic policy should be much lower (around $75/month). Fortunately I can afford the extra amount, but I can see how it would be extremely painful for a family at the median income. My MD friends tell me the economics are based on people who work diligently to improve their health subsidizing people who could care less and actively sabotage themselves (e.g. non-compliant diabetics who eat like crap and don't medicate...not even diabetics as a whole). Unless and until the conversation about personal responsibility starts it seems hopeless. Whatever Obamacare started out trying to be, it has been twisted into something else and badly needs reform.

Hasn't IQ been proven to be not just partly, but mostly genetic? Barring exposure to outright toxic environmental conditions.

Don't give up hope unless you're really quite sure there is none to be had. My freshman college roommate was the most stereotypical shy, hover-parented, second generation Indian immigrant you could imagine. He worked hard to understand social dynamics and improve himself (zxcvvcxz's posts hint at where to start). My roommate was naturally charismatic but it had been repressed by certain dynamics within his culture. I watched him work hard to develop his personality and become more charismatic. I watched him lift in the gym until he became a giant. It was extremely difficult and I doubt everyone is capable of this but from a sample size of 1 I can at least tell you that it's possible and possible in the people that others would least expect it from. By the end of four years my then best friend was the smoothest, most confident mother fucker in the room and enjoyed success in social situations that his high school self couldn't have even imagined and there's no doubt it changed and will continue to change the course of the rest of his life.

One of the happiest days of my life was when I finally migrated 100+ personal domains away from GoDaddy over to Namecheap and was able to close my GoDaddy account forever.

This applies to people who can and do continue to work. You just need an SSI status that isn't likely to be resolved within X period of time. I believe depression and anxiety disorders are the most common cause of lifetime disability. Here's a comment from a Reddit thread yesterday, which mirrors my experience:

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4eij5y/obama_to_forgi...

I have friends from high school who are on SSI for depression and continue to work for extra income. They're mostly lazy and none of them live what we'd think of as awesome lives. But I wouldn't in a million years think of them as anything close to permanently disabled. If someone put foot to ass they'd be capable of supporting themselves and probably better off and happier in the long run for it (which is a whole different discussion entirely).

You're missing the forest for the trees. What are ''the true costs of school''? Someone who loves to teach sitting in a classroom teaching. It can be dirt cheap or it can be very expensive. Supply and demand sorts out the details. As more money flowed into the system, administration bloated and became its own entrenched interest group, with very little connection to actual education.[1] Does the UC system need 500 administrators making >$500k year each?[2] As it stands, college for most of my friends was a 4 year social safari interrupted by infrequent periods of intense cramming in between high school and joining the work force. Do you think the average 18-21 year old at a state school is a scholar passionately indulging their love of learning? Almost all education is self education at the end of the day. As soon as we solve for the credentialing/pedigree/signaling problem, online education will destroy a huge amount of offline education and rightly so.

As for the mortgage interest deduction, how wouldn't it boost housing prices? It effectively lowers the mortage rate by your marginal tax bracket which is close to 50% in California. So instead of a 3.5% 30 year rate I'm now below 2%. Cheaper money stimulates borrowing. It doesn't matter how low NIMBYism pushes supply in the face of overwhelming demand, each individual still has a maximum price they can pay, and subsidized interest rates raise that price point.

[1] http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2011/09/senior-administrators-...

[2] http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-201...

I think he meant a loan secured by property that the kids would otherwise expect to inherit free and clear.

There is a growing theory that the majority of working middle class retirees will reverse mortgage their homes in retirement in order to supplement their cost of living (and pay inflated nursing home, health care, and end of life costs), leaving their kids with much less than expected inheritance. This would also exacerbate the inequality gap as wealthier families would have no need to go into debt and would rather continue to accumulate assets. Watch for Wall Street and associated marketing channels to put out financial products that make it ''stupid simple'' to qualify for and execute on a reverse mortgage as the start of this trend.

Either laundered foreign money continues to flow into the country and the bubble sustains itself, or the spigot is closed and there is a correction.

The only thing the Chinese respect is constant execution. You have to out execute them every day and constantly beat them in the market, in order to achieve a position of strength from which you can structure the deals you want. Despite what some other users have posted here, there's almost 0 respect for trademark or copyright law especially if you're a foreign company.

''you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!''

There's another issue created when companies issue debt in order to fund share repurchases. It may seem to make financial sense rates are so low but it's created a huge amount of additional leverage throughout the corporate world.

From my friends in Australia (academic economists) I hear that China's impact on housing now exceeds the impact on any other sector. Australia has effectively become mainland China's money laundering hub.

Australia is being fueled by huge external stimulus from China, which won't last forever. It's not the best example to use. Some of the mature European democracies provide much more useful data.

This tends to invite geographical arbitrage (not necessarily a bad outcome). As indicated in the article, some firefighters enjoy the high salaries coupled with a (likely) very low COL 2+ hours away. You end up with smart, clever workers commuting in, sleeping in chairs and vans, etc, but not necessarily moving there. Even if you made a rule that said the workers had to live within 20 miles, my sense is they would game the system. I'd do the same in their situation. Lots of places experience this same dynamic because similar to SV they are undesirable for certain groups. Saudi Arabia pays a fortune to import the majority of its surgeons, from the US, UK, and elsewhere, and those professionals tend to treat it as a temporary post in exchange for twice or three times what they would make elsewhere.

Keep in mind neither tech nor entertainment was ever California's main industry. It is and always has been real estate. Money from real estate flows down stream into MANY pockets.

If you want to understand the impact that the 'war on drugs' has had on inner cities check out Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon (http://fave.co/1p8kUh6) - an amazing read, and it's the book that the TV series The Wire is based on as well. I agree that these prohibitionist policies have done more harm to the people of the United States than just about anything else over the last few decades. There are also serious externalities, like Mexico becoming a failed state in part due to the narco cartels fueled by black market drug sales into the US.

Las Vegas is an awesome option for remote workers who want to be close to SV. It's a short, <$100 flight to SFO or OAK. No state income taxes. Fantastic weather (dry desert heat with almost no humidity). Very cheap housing and other COL. Access to the world's best entertainment. And pretty much wherever you live in town you're no more than 20 minutes from LAS which is an international airport serving tons of destinations.

I know of 3 SD4/principal engineers at Amazon who are making $1m/year. I believe there are only about 150-200 engineers at this level in the entire company, so it's obviously a hard position to get. Anyone with experience building out cloud infrastructure has been a hot commodity given all of the companies that are entering the market. Remember that you don't just get a great engineer but you also get the years of experience that person has gained actually building out what you yourself want them to build out for you. Some other company paid for all of the mistakes, learnings, etc. No trade secrets or confidential information but just a ton of valuable experience that the new employer benefits from day 1.

I don't know what you define as rich but if you can pull down $300k/year, keep your cost of living low, and save in a disciplined way, you will definitely retire with many millions of dollars in the bank. You will get rich slow, rather than get rich quick, which may be what you (and most other people) mean by 'getting rich'.

Since I am under 30 y/o I never really understood what AIDS meant to the generation that dealt with it head on. To me it was background noise of red ribbons, charity walks, and celebrity tributes on television. When I went to college one of my mentors (an immunology researcher) gave me a copy of And the Band Played On (http://fave.co/1LMbq5A) and it opened my eyes to the real physical, emotional, and political history of AIDS in the United States. I recently saw the movie adaptation and it was decent but the book is just incredible. It's one of those history books that reads like a thrilling work of fiction.

Apropos of the title, Dennis Prager's ''Happiness Is a Serious Problem'' (http://fave.co/1LPTkKH) is the best book I read in 2015. It was published almost 20 years ago but I think it might be even more relevant in today's pursuit of happiness obsessed world. It helped me understand why I have trouble feeling ''happy'' and why that is OK.

Vancouver and cities like it became popular because of the critical mass of fun, interesting, creative, hard working young people who moved there and created communities. Once priced out, they will just go elsewhere. Other young people will follow and recreate the same communities with a lower price tag. Depending on local land use restrictions, some amount of gentrification then follows. In other words, this is a problem that takes care of itself, to some extent. Visit Austin or Nashville today and you will see this in action.

San Francisco is an outlier given the extremely dense concentration of high paying jobs which drove housing into orbit. This makes it much ''stickier''. However, this entire model is dependent upon the public markets giving tech companies sky high valuations, which could change. Already I see many of the more proactive venture firms scouring outside of SF for deal flow, particularly in these gentrifying second tier cities like Austin, Nashville, Minneapolis, Kansas City, etc.

Do you realize that many hospitals and surgical specialties self-insure themselves? e.g. large groups of orthopods and neurosurgeons will get together and form a co-op with a few attorneys and operate as a self-insurance vehicle, because they are able to gauge risks better than others. Premiums and judgments are way more connected than you are implying.

Do you think we could maintain the current staffing level of nsx across the entire US with all their current responsibilities (level 1 trauma etc) if they averaged $200k/year each? How do you ask 2 or 3 surgeons to evenly share 24/365 call to keep a trauma center open at that comp level?

Malpractice insurance rates are not tied to malpractice award amounts? Unless rates were fixed by law and financially guaranteed by the Government, how on earth would that even be possible. Are you just a troll?