hellogoodbyeeee
hellogoodbyeeee on Hacker News
Is $800 a year a lot? Invested for 30 years with a 8% return it will be $100k or maybe $300/month in safe withdrawals. Im not trying to beg a question here... Really is that a lot of money? $300 isn't enough to live on but it's maybe a quarter of the poverty line? I guess that would be significant when added to social security.
Is that per capital lottery spend just total sales divided by population? The more interesting statistic would be average spend by people who buy at least a ticket a month. I'm sure the $761/month is brought down by people who buy 0-5 tickets a year.
We are not back in a yo-yo compared to the 19th century. We are two recessions apart from the longest period of continued growth in US history (1990's). Then there was a recession in 2001, and then another in 2008-2009.5.
You should check out the Wikipedia article for "list of recessions in the United States." It spells out recession duration and time since previous recession.
My personal pet peeves with HN is that there is a vocal minority that is completely dismissive of the entire field of economics. Obviously, the field has pluses and minuses, but it's nuts there are people that completely think the whole field is useless or harmful. Economics didn't become a major academic field studied in every college in the country (world even?) by being a bunk science.
Actually, Keyenes correctly predicted some of the main reasons WWII happened. If more world leaders had listened to him, then we probably could have prevented world war 2.
He predicted that after WWI that the reparations required of Germany would be too burdensome on their economy which would in turn lead to another war.
Recessions have become increasingly less frequent since Keyenes.
I think there may be an argument around the US experiencing fewer, but greater in magnitude recessions, but im not sure of the specifics.
Does this work for your entire career or does it only work until you hit some kind of "salary cap" for your local market? I've had a few good raises in a short period of time, but I'm scared I can realistically only get one or two more in before I reach the top of the market.
I'm not a lawyer, but I think this highly depends on the state you are in. From my googling, judges in my Midwestern state are very reluctant to strike down any kind of contract made between two adults.
I agree with everything you just said, but its also an average across age groups. It would not surprise me to see many 40year old workers getting 1% yearly raises for the rest of their career. What would surprise me is if there are a significant number of 25 year olds only making 1% raises until they are 35. Most industries will pay a premium for an individual with ten years of experience over someone with no experience (a recent graduate).
Those wage growth numbers discussed are an average. It would be very strange to have someone not have any significant raises between year 0 of their career and year 10.
All I can say is that my repayment plan is speeding up and not slowing down.
Minimum student loan payments are fixed while your income should grow. What starts out as 20% of your first paycheck won't be 20% by year five.
Who are you angry at? My loans will be paid off in less than four years from now (7 total) and possibly as little as two more years (if I can figure out how to not eat out so much...). My college education was a fantastic investment.
Funny, no one has ever asked me whether or not I own a brand new car or own my own house in a job interview. However, every interview has asked me about my college education.
Maybe you are the one who needs to reevaluate their priorities.
I'm sorry I wasn't clear. You are making the world out to be a false dichotomy, either you spend $100k or 0 for a college education. One means you are broke and the other means you can buy a fancy car and a house. My point is that it is a spectrum. My schooling cost me $50k. I got a small, liberal arts environment in a cool city with access to a variety of internships. State schools around me did not offer that combination.
A) I enjoyed my schooling and I don't mind paying $500/month in loans for it and B) it didn't cost $100k and C) I find it nuts that you are bragging about the fact you got to buy a car because you didn't have student loans.
I take a lot of pride in my liberal arts education and how it shaped my world view. I would never in a thousand years trade it in for a car and a house... And it cost less too.
It's silly to say that a student should only go to college if they can afford to do it with no loans. I think a large part of the "student loan" problem is that we don't talk about income enough. It is completely reasonable for a comp sci major from a good school to graduate with $75k in loans ($900 payments). That will not be a burden for them. Likewise, a $20k student loan ($300 payments) should be manageable for someone who makes $40k a year. The issue is when the person who only real prospects pay $40k a year and they have $75k in loans.
I think it is important to work for as many different companies as you can during your twenties so you can figure out what is important to you. Then spend your thirties trying to find your way back to your favorite environment so that you can spend your forties in it.
You want utility companies to be a regulated monopoly because of their economies of scale. Consumers would be worse off with two small electric companies because their per unit of electrical price would be higher. Competition can't price away the fixed costs of building a power plant or stringing electrical wires all over town. However the monopoly has pricing power and needs the government regulation to prevent it from unfairly raising prices for consumers like they would to maximize profit without the regulation.
Natural monopolies are bad because they can use their market position to unfairly prevent new entrants to the market. For example, Amazon may buy all of a key supplier's product and prevent the upstart from even having a chance because they can't buy any of that product. The monopoly can raise prices to whatever level they want, despite what the market would dictate because the consumer doesn't have another alternative.
I think you have formed a bit of a strawman argument here. Monopolies are never good for markets, pretty much but definition. Regulated monopolies, such as utility companies, are sometimes good for consumers though.
I don't exactly know what you mean by irrational actors are good for overcoming a market crisis, but I'd probably say that the market isn't functioning in a crisis and that irrational actors might put it back in a normal state, irrational actors are not good for functioning markets.
I'm sympathetic to people living near where they grew up or where there family is at. I live where I live because of family. If it weren't for them, I would have left after college and never looked back.
Cities are inherently expensive. The more people you have wanting to bid up the limited amount of real estate in a city, the more expensive it will get. This pressure could be alleviated with higher density housing, but no one has a right to that.
Maybe it is time to leave Seattle? It is pretty entitled of you to say that it is your human right to have a house in one of the most expensive metros in the country.
The economy is booming. Go find a new job. You will be able to and you'll get a pay raise.
What scares me worse than finding out about a mother's actual infidelity is the test, due to statistical variation, falsely reporting infidelity.
Could that happen? Or are the DNA tests correct 100% of the time?
>if said tools and research are bunk
They aren't though. Also, it's a bit rich to blame economists when all they do is advise politicians who very often throw all the advice out the window.
Do FAANG companies train software developers? I think they are big enough and opinionated enough organizations that they might be better at training a "FAANG quality developer" in a year or so than current University system can in four years.
I wish companies were more willing to train willing applicants instead of trying to interview for capabilities.
Right, so the "AI" is not finding the best candidates, but instead finding candidates that succeed in the old hiring process. What I'd like to see (though I'm sure this would get me laughed out of a manager's office) would be a certain fraction of random hires. Then we could train the model on success statistics based on 60,90,120 day performance (or longer!).
At the least, they should interview a certain subset of randomly chosen applicants or else the feedback loop from the interviewing process and the AI is going to grow tighter and tighter.
Was the 5x thing Google's fault or LG's? I blamed LG and I won't buy another one of their phones for awhile.
I was going to put up with my 5x until the pixel 3 came out, but it became unbearably slow to use as of this spring. So I bought the Motorola x4 under the Android one banner and I couldn't be happier. I think I paid $150 for it after getting $100 for my 5x. The battery life lasts all day and I can use Snapchat on the phone. I regret not upgrading to a "budget" phone earlier.
I loved using Mathematica in college. It was the first programming language I ever really used to make some cool things. I wish it was more accessible. I think one of the requirements of my dream job would be a work place that uses Mathematica.
It's really fun reading through "code golf" challenges where other languages take 10-15 lines for something that Mathematica has a built in for.
They gave you two weeks to become a data scientist and implement a working solution? That's nuts. I'm still pretty early career, but I have done data science work for about four years now and I wouldve quoted at least two months to figure out data, clean it, feature engineer, run models, compare results, and then deliver the best performing solution.
The 7% is referring to the rate of return on your investments. He is making the assumption that if you invest $100 in the stock market on January 1, then on Dec 31 your account will have $107 in it. This assumption is an average over many years.
There is a common rule of thumb in the investing world that you can safely remove 4% a year from your investments and they will continue to grow. (7% return minus 4% withdrawals means you have 3% more in the account each year)
It doesn't matter what your lifestyle is. If you are a junior developer who makes 80k a year and spends 50k a year, then you should save 25x50k=1.25mil and then you no longer have to work for a living. This process will take years or decades.