California's skyrocketing housing costs, taxes prompt exodus of residents - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_30037774/greener-pastures-beckon-some-beleaguered-residents <comment><USER2> There's some sort of Stockholm syndrome prevalent among too many Bay Area residents that compels them to accept the lower quality of life. I lived there for several years until recently, and it was a surreal experience to hear others discuss the sacrifices they were making just to have a roof over their family's head, to provide a half-decent education for their children. And these were well-payed folks at the brand-name companies! Those that took a tech job straight out of college and had never lived anywhere else seemed the worst affected. Not enough realized that they deserved more then they were getting back from the Bay Area.

<comment><USER3> Having lived in Long Island, NY and Boca Raton, FL I gotta say... I don't think I could leave the Bay Area.

The weather, the geological features, the schools, the meetups, the job opportunities... all factors.

But the biggest is that the people are truly interested in intellectual matters in a way that was not extant in the other places I've lived. My son is a programmer and nobody had a clue what he was talking about--which is fine-- but they also couldn't care less to even try to understand.

And also, there is a lot of prejudice that I am glad my kids will not grow up in the milieu of.

<comment><USER4> >But the biggest is that the people are truly interested in intellectual matters in a way that was not extant in the other places I've lived.

This is the way I feel in Boston. The cost of living (mainly housing prices) gets more ridiculous every year, but the intellectual and cultural environment make me want to stay. Most of my friends back home (deep South) are easily able to afford to buy decent homes, while I'm stuck renting a tiny apt. Still, this feels like a worthwhile material sacrifice given the culture of this city. Then again, if I had kids, I might feel differently ...

<comment><USER5> Boston is an amazing city in terms of intellectual capital, no doubt due to its rich history and many universities in the area. The brutal winter and steep cost of living are what make it difficult for me to see myself living there long term; unlike NYC or SF where tech salaries tend to be at least somewhat adjusted for the cost of living, I noticed Boston tech salaries were only marginally higher than Atlanta's, while Boston has the third highest CoL after SF and NYC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I spent most of my childhood in California. Real estate is and always has been the number one industry in the state. The majority of my childhood friends' wealth seems to derive from houses their families bought in the early 80s or earlier. Prices have benefited from a stable of one trick ponies - fixed low property taxes (prop 13), massive population growth (net domestic migration is now negative), job growth from the tech sector, the cultural shift to assortive mating of dual income white collar professionals, and the drop to near zero interest rates. I thought for sure that prices had hit the mathematically inevitable plateau - and then came tens of billions in foreign capital fleeing China. Is there another unpredictable one trick pony waiting in the wings? At some point it seems like prices would have to hit a ceiling reflecting the fact that all future appreciation and demand has been pulled forward, at which time the great financial machine grinds down to a much slower pace, if not a halt. It will be interesting to watch and see what happens.

<comment><USER7> The price will hit a ceiling at the exact time demand = supply, and not a moment before.

A worldwide markets for these homes now exists, which means the number of people who both want and can afford them is huge, and therefore the price will rise until that condition is no longer true.

Also, I believe we are again seeing signs of loan company shenanigans which, if so, will allow easy-to-game capital to continue to chase prices upwards as well.

<comment><USER8> The "demand=supply" argument doesn't exactly explain why a foreign billionaire would want to own an appartment _exactly in_ San Francisco. Personally, I would buy a flat in Ibiza, Barcelona or Hawaii way before even considering SF.

<comment><USER9> I suspect it is less about the "foreign billionaire" and more about the single-digit millionaires worldwide looking for an ostensibly safe place to park some money and be assured of a healthy return (or at least not a loss).

It's a self-perpetuating cycle¹: people invest in real estate; prices go up; it becomes a more attractive investment.

¹Sometimes known as a "bubble"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Heh, funny to read this on the day my moving van arrives to get my things outta here! It's a little sad, but we simply got fed up with the standard of living here. And, the Bay Area just feels mismanaged.

Getting around is a royal pain. After living in Vienna, I was amazed at people who thought Bart was great. Really? I found it dirty, slow, and crazy expensive.

Of course everything is just crazy expensive. A beer garden opened up nearby, with a few nice tables and some decent beers. 2 beers will cost you about $16. It's like the entire economy is about paying rent. I remember going to heuriger in Vienna and grabbing a bottle of totally decent wine for about 8 EUR.

I'm not sure 64k people out of 38 million counts as an exodus, though. There's a whole lot of immigration going on.

<comment><USER11> I don't know when the wave actually broke but I was very disillusioned by the vibes of the bay area when I stayed for GDC in 2009. It seemed like they drove out most of the hippies a long time ago, more often than not people were just _acting_ , very superficially and with a creepy adherence to a lost cultural heritage that felt more like selling out ( _get your shrink-wrapped Jerry Garcia T-shirt and GTFO_ ).

To make things even more depressing one could feel the omnipresence of a rampantly ignorant / myopic tech monoculture.

I remember that I felt very relieved when I got back to Vienna.. :/

<comment><USER12> The hippies either aged out or bought property decades ago. They were a real thing for a couple of years at most. The rest is myopic and ignorant nostalgia.

<comment><USER13> Boulder seems like this, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We've lost most of our friends now, and the roots we were putting down over the last 7 years are eroding a bit. For the record our household income fluctuates between 300 and 400k and we live in a microhouse (500sqft) in Berkeley. Expanding is a difficult proposition.

Its an interesting set of factors that lets me buy a Ferrari far easier than a house. First lifestyle money, then tech money, now foreign investment.

And there are a lot of subtle changes neighboorhood to neighboorhood. Mission was once the most expensive in SF, now Berkeley is surpassing even them. Hayes Valley becomes hip, and Precedio Heights becomes more affordable because of the lack of public transit.

For the most part i've surmised that the city is full of smaller town transplants who graduate and think their 120k offer is the greatest opportunity of their lives. They shortly find out it barely gets them a toilet with two roommates and end up leaving for Seattle, Portland, etc while staying with their company. This cycle repeats over and over

Meanwhile, this engine extends the SFBay problem to the B and C cities -- leaving fewer places to run to.

<comment><USER15> What am I missing -- rent for large houses in nice East Bay suburbs seems to be around $3500-$4000 a month which is easily less than a third of your take- home income. I'm not sure about Berkeley proper.

<comment><USER16> Yeah. I don't know. We bought a real house on the Peninsula on far less income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, "exodus" is used to define a mere outflow of 60K residents ? That is less than 0.05%. Also, this article makes no sense. If California was losing people for the last 22 years, how come it's population went from 29 million in 1990 to 40 million in 2016 ? I hate how none of these "exodus" articles are data centric and explain these two discrepancies. Is the population growth then due to birth rate ? or due to immigration ? Also, interestingly the same article notes that job growth in Bay Area has been at it's highest point ever

<comment><USER16> Yeah, they used outflow numbers for the entire state to "prove" that there's an exodus from the Bay Area. Here's your hint:

"California has seen negative outward migration to other states for 22 of the last 25 years."

Obviously the Bay Area does not have negative outward migration, or the traffic and housing issues would be solved.

Another interesting quote cites a man inexplicably commuting from SF to the East Bay which is not something you'd do if you were trying to optimize your housing costs.

A third cites a woman and her sister moving from The Villages in SJ to Dayton, Ohio. Not mentioned is the fact that The Villages is a retirement community on a golf course (you have to be over 55 to live there).

<comment><USER17> Ha ha ha. These anecdotes prove the level journalism have fallen due to clickbait. The commute from SF to East Bay is pretty easy during rush hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the local public radio stations had a show this week about how well San Francisco is doing budget-wise. Apparently, the San Francisco budget in the last decade has been growing much faster than the local economy, and it's been all going towards paying pension obligations, assistance to homeless and low- income people etc. Talk about killing the golden goose.

<comment><USER19> Being from Chicago I say it's a good thing to pay down the pension obligations. Pension obligations can cause a lot of problems in the future. Although I don't believe governments should be growing their budgets aggressively, squaring gov obligations is a good thing.

<comment><USER20> Why do government pensions even exist anymore? There is absolutely no reason for them and they need to go. The government can pay a reasonable salary if they wanted skilled workers.

<comment><USER19> I agree with you. I think pensions are a mistake in general, however, many municipalities, counties, and states are locked in to existing pensions schemes. I am for doing away with pensions in the future, but the existing obligations need to be funded appropriately.

<comment><USER21> Doing away with pensions? Huh? How would that work? What would everyone do when they got too old to work? Do you think people should just build up a savings account? Without an annuity what would they do if they live longer than they planned and run out of savings?

<comment><USER22> You mean what would all the government workers do when they get too old to work? I don't know but I don't get a pension so why should I pay for theirs?

<comment><USER21> I don't understand (and I'm being down voted so I must be saying something stupid) but why do you care if government workers get a salary and a pension bought for them, or a bit more salary and buy their own pension?

And don't most most jobs still include a pension as a standard benefit? I'd say you were in the minority if you're a full time tech worker and have no pension at all.

<comment><USER23> The problem with government pensions is that the work of today is paid for with money today and a promise of money in the future for an undeterminable number of years. Many governments have not saved prudently for their future obligations and the result is current taxes going to support past workers, which taxpayers don't appreciate when it gets extreme.

In the private sector, pensions have been going away -- I've worked for about nine employers in the last 20 years or so, only one had a pension plan, a public school district. (I wasn't eligible to participate because I held a part time position)

Many (most?) private sector employers offer participation in defined contribution retirement plans such as 401(k), some with employer contributions -- those are much simpler to manage, today's work gets paid for today. There are some government plans of this type, and taxpayers don't get upset about them, generally.

<comment><USER21> Ok, so my ignorance was that when the parents said 'pension' they didn't say that they really meant 'defined benefit pensions'.

A 401k and other defined contribution pensions are still a pension.

<comment><USER24> In colloquial American English "pension" nearly always means defined benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The work environment is really great and I'm glad I can quickly drive out into the countryside, but the overall environment is pretty terrible: there's inadequate investment in infrastructure leading to crummy roads, crummy schools, essentially no public transport, slow internet (in Palo Alto of all places), and the like. Taxes need to go up a lot and the whole NIMBY thing has to go.

California used to be a progressive place and we are still living off that investment. But like any extractive economy we are unsustainably mining the investments of the late 1940s to the early 1970s.

I must say I really enjoy tech so the Valley is the only place for me to work. It was fun living in SF but the companies up there aren't tech focused to the same degree.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nobody lives there anymore, it's too crowded.

<comment><USER27> Population density doesn't indicate anything about migration or wealth distribution.

<comment><USER28> It's a play on Yogi Berra, a recently deceased baseball player, quote:

'Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As someone who enjoys being outdoors, I love CA and the Bay Area especially. The weather is great year round, and there is so much spectacular and wildly different areas to see within a relatively short drive, it's amazing.

But the cost of living is completely insane. It doesn't help that I moved from one of the cheapest places to live (Gainesville, FL), but my salary just about tripled when I made the move, and it's still a struggle. My $650/mo mortgage for a 1200 square foot house that seemed expensive and kinda small at the time is replaced by a $3k/mo rent for 930 square feet. Then state income taxes take a huge chunk where FL had none, yet FL's sales tax is the same or lower...

CA is roundly better than FL in just about every other way so it's worth paying a premium for now to be out here but it's pretty clear that it's not sustainable long term. I'm also happy to be paying much higher taxes if the money is being used responsibily but it is incredibly frustrating to see the government continually make no progress on solving the affordability and traffic problems of the area.

<comment><USER30> I'm a Florida transplant as well and I agree with you 100%. Used to live on the beach for 1/4 of what I pay here to live 2 hours from work. I'd love to go back, but the "opportunity risk" is real. You lose your tech job suddenly in the Bay Area, and you might spend 3-6 months and you're back at work. You lose your tech job in Florida, and you're probably going to be moving out of the state.

Tons of people have already popped up in these threads saying things like "But Austin!" And "What about Raleigh-Durham?" etc. While there might be greater than 1 tech company in these areas, they still don't hold a candle to the Bay Area when it comes to where you best mitigate the risk of job loss.

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Anyone else alarmed that a _doctor_ was leaving because the rent was too high?

A doctor is one of the jobs that is expected to pay top dollar in American society.

If a doctor can't make it in the Bay Area, who's going to cut your hair, serve your beer, or mow your lawn?

If wages don't rise in line with skyrocketing living costs, then the only alternative is a permenantly impoverished underclass.

People of the Bay Area: are you ok with that?

<comment><USER31> Recently took a trip out to the Bay Area, and when I did the back-of-the- napkin calculations, I figured it would actually be cheaper to fly from the Midwest and stay in a hotel every other weekend, than it would be to live there. Really neat place to visit, but I can't understand how anyone in their right mind would live there.

<comment><USER32> Just like people from the city might say "I can't understand how anyone in their right mind would live in the midwest"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> All control of Bay Area housing should be put into the hands of a single "housing czar" with absolute authority to rezone. Usually democratic methods are preferable, but in this case it's clear they've failed in an absolute sense, and a new approach is needed.

<comment><USER15> Same with transportation. The reason transport is such a mess is because of all the different municipalities involved. To continue to think of the Bay as a group of totally independent cities is ridiculous.

<comment><USER34> I get what you're saying, but what's the alternative? Go back to the first half of the 1900s where San Jose was annexing everything?

<comment><USER15> Transportation handled on a state level with total authority by the state to place tracks and stations wherever they want. Certainly consultation should take place but ultimately state decides.

And yes, forced municipality amalgamation should take place. Enough with all the small villages that want to be their own city with their own rules to keep others out. Take a look at what Sydney is doing right now with council amalgamations to override NIMBY power. Melbourne did this a long time ago and as a result has been able to effect a lot more urban planning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm fine here. I have a job in tech and I'll be able to put down roots and buy a home, Etc.

However by virtue of living here I basically force all of my children to do the same or move away. it's simply too hard to live here unless you're working in tech.

<comment><USER36> To enjoy a halfway decent life in the Bay Area (to not require roommates to meet expenses, own a car, and not have to commute from the Central Valley everyday) I'd say you have to make 6 figures. Or be married to/BFF with someone who does.

Moving from the Bay Area to Portland, my salary increased by 8%, but I can afford my own apartment and s brand new car, middle class hallmarks that were way out of my league in Sunnyvale or Fremont.

<comment><USER34> Six figures is a huge exaggeration. You can reasonably find a one bedroom apartment for yourself in west San Jose for $2000/month, likely less if you shop around or are willing to live in a studio, and live off $1000-1500/month for everything else. Even if you're making payments of a few hundred a month on, you don't need to be anywhere close to six figures to have that lifestyle.

Granted, the level of income you'd need for this is still hard to achieve without a tech job. But you don't need six figures.

Unless by the Bay Area you meant living in San Francisco. Then all bets are off.

<comment><USER36> In order to be able to afford 2K for a one bedroom apartment (definitely on the low end for Santa Clara County) you're going to have to save up at least that much for moving expenses. Want to try doing that on a less than 6 figure salary (I'd say 85K maybe if you want to stretch it). 60K could've landed you a cheap apartment in 2007, but not anymore.

<comment><USER34> As I said, apartments are easily found for that price: [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sby/apa?max_price=2000](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sby/apa?max_price=2000)

But anyways, $3500/month (what I mentioned above) is 42k/year in take home pay. Doing some very rough back-of-the-envelope math, that would be a pre-tax salary of about 50k. Obviously that's not reality, but 60k is definitely livable around here. You'd drive a cheap used car and you wouldn't save anything, but you'd be comfortable and wouldn't have to worry too much about frugality.

Someone making 85k would be more than okay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have literally never heard anyone cite California taxes as having any contribution on them leaving. The _only_ people I've heard mention 'high California taxes' are people who are explicitly trying to solicit Californians to move to wherever they are ('come to Texas! We have way lower taxes than you!').

<comment><USER34> Agreed. It seems odd to harp on that, especially for a Bay Area newspaper. Also, it's not at all specific on what kind of taxes it's talking about and it makes it sound like taxes are higher in the Bay Area than the rest of California.

Local income tax is more or less nonexistent in California (and the US in general, really). Property taxes are some of the lowest in the country. We do have a high state income tax compared to other states, but it's still negligible compared to federal income taxes.

I guess your federal income taxes will be higher in California because you'll make more money here than in most other states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't know if reading this makes me feel better, as in, at least everyone else around me is getting fucked. Or if I'll soon feel worse for having accepted an offer to stay, even after 2 shitty years. I didn't harbor any fantasies of owning in New York but at least it was more fun and cheaper by far than Menlo Park

</comment><comment><USER39> Come to Boise, Idaho (USA). We need high tech people. Excellent quality of life, low commutes.

[https://www.tsheets.com/living-in-boise/](https://www.tsheets.com/living-in- boise/)

(I don't work at T-Sheets but they have a great page on living in Boise.)

Also in Boise: Micron, HP's laser printer division.

<comment><USER40> Craigslist shows about a half dozen jobs, just like it always does when I look. Other sources have similar results. Where might one find these companies that "need tech people"? Because I'm seriously looking to get out of the Seattle area, and Boise would be a first choice, but for the lack of available jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> These people who sold their Bay Area homes and moved somewhere else to pay cash for a house seem to gloss over the fact that they were able to do this because they struggled in the Bay Area for so many years and became real estate wealthy. They won't see this kind of real estate wealth growth in their new communities.

<comment><USER42> That's kind of the point, you can get more for less struggle elsewhere. They are giving up the wealth growth.

<comment><USER16> Right, but it glosses over the fact that they were not able to afford their lifestyle 'organically' in their new place. It only seems awesome because they're going in with huge wads of California cash.

<comment><USER42> Only if you are focusing on "wow they bought a lavish mansion with fifty acres and a stable". If they move to Ohio and buy a house- guess what, property ownership is very normal and attainable in Ohio by relatively ordinary people. Mega California bucks aren't necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> My wife and I spent a year in the Bay Area (San Mateo), and there was a lot to love. Great weather, awesome farmers markets, plenty of work, etc.

But holly cow was it expensive! My rent was around $2000/month. I had a co- worker living in SF proper who's apartment was $4500/month. And that was 4-5 years ago, it's probably gone up by now.

After a year, we moved back to Ohio - I now have a good-sized house on nearly an acre of land, and my 15-year mortgage is just over $1000/month.

The difference is going into my retirement savings: I'm on track to have enough to retire at around age 45.

<comment><USER44> Yup, rents have gone up approx. 50% in the last few years. A 1 BR in SF is now averaging $3200/mo. I believe. AVERAGING.

The secret killer behind these prices is that only newcomers pay them. Most renters who have been in SF for more than 5 years are in a rent-controlled building, which means their rent is basically locked in, which is good on one hand but on the other, you can never move out. Black mold? Leaking roof? Rat infestation? Illegal units stealing your electricity? It creates a situation where people will deal with any and all hazards and illegal situations just to maintain their low rent because they know if they move they have nowhere else to go.

<comment><USER45> Yep, rents have doubled since I moved here.

I moved to the bay area about 8 years ago. In that time, the house in Seattle that I lived in doubled in value, the equivalent of about 50k/year. Since I have lived here, the rents have also doubled, the equivalent of about 25k/year. I'm actually paying about the same (mortgage there vs rent here). I could have parked everything in AAPL and made about 5x. There are opportunity costs everywhere.

Money is only part of the equation but I'm making more than that difference in salary and I'm a LOT happier in SF. Being closer to friends and family and having a better work/life balance, being able to ride my bike to work, makes a big difference for me in overall happiness score. YMMV of course.

The building I live in used to be a terrible slum situation, and the new owners have renovated it (of course, living here during the renovation wasn't fun). I feel lucky there. Friends of mine have also been evicted and moved to other cities or other countries as a result of not being able to afford anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is happening almost everywhere, but at a less frightening pace than CA. And we are told continually by the chattering class and politicians that skyrocketing real estate prices - asset inflation - is a good thing. Since forever a stable residential real estate market was the goal and people understood its value. Now we're all gamblers, meaning losers. When the hedge funds and REIT's stop speculating in residential real estate and pull out, there will be a deafening crash.

<comment><USER47> Why would they stop and pull out?

<comment><USER48> Why did they in 2008?

<comment><USER46> The hedge fund buying spree happened after 2008.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I live in the Bay Area. I have been able to make it work for me and love it here, though I do understand some of the reasons why others may not. Cost probably tops that list. But, the complaints about traffic should not be focused on California. In my experience most of the cities I have to travel to (Seattle, Phoenix, Atlanta) have much worse traffic issues. My colleagues in those cities spend 5-10 extra hours driving during the week compared to what my coworkers and I spend.

<comment><USER16> I moved from Seattle to the Bay Area about 15 years ago, and at the time, Seattle traffic was far worse. Of course, the metro Bay Area is physically larger, so it's possible to conjure up a worse commute involving more miles, but for the same number of miles, at the time, Seattle was worse.

Traffic in the Bay Area has gotten quite bad of late, but I know Seattle has done the same.

I live 7mi from work so it hardly phases me. Particularly when I bike in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I just visited some friends in southern California and the possibility of me moving out there came up in conversation. So, I used a cost of living calculator to figure how much more I would need to make to be at the same level... 60% more. Definitely not going to happen.

<comment><USER51> I visited a few times in the past. Spent a large part of the day stuck in LA traffic. It wasn't even morning or evening community, it seems it is an all day kinda thing.

There was a metro / subway there but it never seemed to go where we wanted to go.

<comment><USER16> Traffic in LA _is_ an all day (and all night) thing. But, like anywhere else, you can choose to live close to work -- or not.

The light rail is actually a huge success story in LA right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Just wait until enough democratic voters are imported to overturn Proposition 13 (caps property taxes at roughly what they were when you bought the house, and requires 2/3 vote in the legislature for tax increases).

California is trying so hard to go full Venezuela, and the only buffer they have are the three or so major industries that are doing well (agriculture, entertainment, and tech). If there's a contraction in those sectors, expect a death spiral.

</comment><comment><USER53> Anyone happen to know what is the definition of "middle class" for the Bay Area? Given the higher incomes amd cost of living, I have to assume the range is higher than most other regions.

</comment><comment><USER54> Then they move to another state, and drive up the housing markets, and vote for all the same stuff that made California untenable, and wonder why the natives are hostile.

<comment><USER55> I doubt the newcomers will be voting for NIMBYist ordnances though; that tends to be something existing owners do.

<comment><USER56> jff is referring to the exportation of left leaning voters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I went the opposite route as most. I was remote for 3 years from Texas and then moved to the Bay Area for work. And I have a family of four.

Key aspects that make it work for me are the following:

* Accept a long commute to a more family-friendly community with good schools.

* Live near BART and use it everyday.

* Work in the city, not the South Bay.

* Make sure you have two strong professional incomes.

* Pay for good quality child care and/or after school care.

* Pay the high housing costs and accept that you will redirect a good portion of your investments towards housing here. And it won't be as nice.

All in all its been worth it for me. I am working with extremely smart, driven people who I am learning a ton from. I don't have to hide my political views, and everyone has been open and accepting. It has been very easy for us to make great friends in a short time.

<comment><USER58> "I am working with extremely smart, driven people who I am learning a ton from."

This is something being overlooked completely. There aren't a lot of other places that have this concentration of progressive minded bright (tech and non-tech) individuals. Great things will come out of this density. It sucks that the non-techies are being pushed out, but that should accelerate the need for housing reform. This density must be maintained and made widely accessible.

Vote. Call your rep. [http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/trailer_bill_language/local_...](http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/trailer_bill_language/local_government/documents/707StreamliningAffordableHousingApprovals_000.pdf)

<comment><USER59> At the risk of the grossest generalisation, the Bay Area has worked because it's combined two very different types of people. On the one hand, the engineers/techies (with roots in the defence industry and conservative midwest backgrounds) and on the other, the idealists/utopians (with roots in the counter-culture movement). Strange bedfellows, but a world-changing combination back then. I don't live in the Valley now, so can't comment on the situation, but I hear it is far more of a mono-culture now.

<comment><USER55> If it is a monoculture now, it's because the engineer culture took on counterculture values while pricing the actual counterculture out of the region. The engineers still have their conservatism in that they tend to think of as many possible failure modes as possible and try to address then when they can. It's just not recognizable as such because the rational, cautious, establishmentarian 1950s conservatism has been almost completely replaced by emotional, religious, populist conservatism.

<comment><USER58> It doesn't need to be. If all the tech companies are experimenting with ways to up-end different industries and ways of doing things. The municipality should also invest in experimenting with how to maintain affordability and accessibility and therefore diversity. Currently, the municipality, is geared to just make sure real-estate investor values are maintained. Therefore, the bill mentioned above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'll read the article later, but this sounds like a replay of about twenty years ago. Articles in the WSJ, NYT, et. al., about how CA's high housing prices and taxation are causing an exodus to such places as Las Vegas (and we see how that turned out). I was too young to have paid attention at the time, but I wouldn't be surprised to go back to the archives to the 70s, where one might find the same articles.

I know, this time it's different $BECAUSE_REASONS. No, it's not. Some individuals and companies will leave, but CA will continue to be crowded in some areas, heavily taxed, and costly, just like it's always been.

<comment><USER60> Yes.

Also, tax rates are higher today than they were in the 1970s.

One data point: California statewide sales tax base rate was in the 3.75% to 5.0% range in the 1970s. Today it's 6.25%.

[https://www.boe.ca.gov/sutax/taxrateshist.htm](https://www.boe.ca.gov/sutax/taxrateshist.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> NB: net _domestic_ migration. Population still increasing.

</comment><comment><USER62> I left NYC for the Bay Area two years ago and just moved back.

A lot of it was for personal and career reasons, a lot wasn't. At a certain point I couldn't justify paying oodles for a dark 1BR in Mountain View when that same money could get a better apartment in the West Village.

</comment><comment><USER63> No interest to move to the Bay area. You could work literally anywhere else and live like a millionaire on their salaries but by the time you've paid for a house and car there you might as well live in a VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER.

<comment><USER64> There's no river, but I found this. [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sbw/5642724453.html](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sbw/5642724453.html)

<comment><USER56> Oh wow only 900 a month? finally something I can afford to live in!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> It also seems like there's no push from the buy side, in CA we're all sheep. likely b/c there is no community so the rent-taking can wratchet up all day long.

I think if people en masse began to reject extortion rent we could have a situation. This never seems to happen but it would be a spectacle: thousands of 160k/yr workers decide to camp in tents until rents subside, all camped out in the streets in a section of Sf.

</comment><comment><USER66> Atleast california state or San Francisco city don't yet claim a cut of your intellectual property. After all you use their land and infrastructure. Also, the state and city governments don't yet have their own firehouse of data collection into your communication.

I wonder if some enterprising landlord will put in a clause into the lease to own your intellectual property and communications while in your residence. Would people sign the lease for a 20% rent discount ?

</comment><comment><USER67> When people saying housing costs are out of control in California, really they mean the bay area. Every other part of the state is no worse than anywhere else.

<comment><USER68> This is objectively not true [1] and has the same sort of arrogance that frustrates people who live in other areas of the state. Is the cost of living ridiculous? Absolutely, but the higher-than-average salaries at least help compensate.

Consider, for example, San Diego [2], which is considered the worst city for long term wealth accumulation in the entire USA.

1\. [http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/](http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/) 2\. [http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/oct/26/san- die...](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/oct/26/san-diego-worst- building-wealth/)

<comment><USER69> Hard to believe this article when it says Detroit is a better place to earn wealth than NYC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> It's unfortunate, California is such a beautiful place. But it's turning into somewhere to visit, and not live. See you soon Sierra's!

<comment><USER71> I move around and travel a lot for work - I've lived in 4 states in the last 2 years (CO, WA, CA, TX) - and one of the universal things across all the midwest and west coast that I've found is that while most people like the weather/scenery in California EVERYONE hates people from California, except for the people in California.

I've heard the saying "California would be great if it wasn't for the people" in literally every state I've spent significant time in when they find out that I lived in the Bay.

<comment><USER70> Is there anyone FROM California anymore? I'm guessing that sentiment comes from the type that are attracted to the entertainment industry.

<comment><USER60> Yes. Millions and millions.

Just curious: if you work in the tech industry, is your impression that the tech industry in CA is populated mostly by people who came from outside the state?

<comment><USER70> From and outsider, yes, that is the impression a lot of us get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Is the salary of remote employees working for Bay Area companies the same as for local employees, or do they differ based on cost of living?

<comment><USER73> I have worked at two separate companies where they differ, typically 10-13% delta from what I remember...

<comment><USER74> Which makes the remote position much higher paid basically.

<comment><USER73> Yeah, cost of living in the bay area is likely much more than 10-13% of other places.

<comment><USER74> I live in FL currently. Just the income tax jump alone is about 9%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Hoo boy, these articles make the rounds every couple days.

People live in the Bay Area because of: professional opportunities, culture, weather, and social network. If you value those things more than high cost of living then you stay -- you either have the privilege of money or the tolerance of being financially stretched and not have all the nice things.

</comment><comment><USER76> Could there be a brain drain here? I see these people as being the smart ones - those who realize they're in a losing financial situation, and have the motivation to do something about it, even though in the short term it's painful for them (leaving friends & uprooting their family).

<comment><USER77> I had it easy - moved to CA after college, stayed 10 years, then moved back _to_ friends and family. Used the increase in my CA house to fund a farm in Iowa. Still work on startups, but remotely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> The bay area is just awful, do not move here^Wthere!

</comment><comment><USER3> print view

[http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/pr...](http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?articleId=30037774&siteId=568)

</comment><comment><USER79> People are considering killing Prop 13, which will make more residents leave.

<comment><USER80> In my personal fantasy, killing Proposition 13 would be done in a progressive manner. Grandma who has paid off her house in Westwood Park and is now a paper millionaire would still keep her 1975 property tax level, but Disneyland would be taxed at currently prevailing rates.

[http://www.ocregister.com/taxdollars/strong-477502-ownership...](http://www.ocregister.com/taxdollars/strong-477502-ownership- property.html) [http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/jun/29/convers...](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/jun/29/conversation- prop-13-taxes/)

<comment><USER55> In my personal fantasy, Grandma would keep her 1975 property tax level, as long as her municipality allows her and her neighbors to build or convert her house into apartments. Low property taxes should be rewards for a lack of NIMBYism.

<comment><USER80> Yeah, I'm not so heartless. Attitudes like that are why pro-development people have attracted a reputation as bullies and villains. Grandma wants to live out her days in the small house and quiet neighborhood where she has lived her life? Too bad, her land is more useful to society being consolidated into a tower full of "luxury" apartments.

That may be true. Especially in San Francisco, where grandmas and older gentlemen form a voting bloc that have delayed construction all over the Bay Area. But that doesn't make it right in my mind to force grandma to either expand her property or get out. Now, zoning laws: That's another injustice that should be corrected.

Proposition 13 has the additional perversity of discouraging repairs and improvements, because "new construction" [0] triggers a reassessment and a huge jump in property taxes. However, it's a small step between letting grandma fix her house, and letting her rich developer son replace her house with a 4-story apartment building, pocketing the difference between the market rate rents and the low 1975 property tax, and starving the school district of funds.

If we don't want to kick out fixed-income people, then we should simply tie the reassessment to the person's ability to pay the higher tax.

[0] [https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/faqs/newconstruction.html](https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/faqs/newconstruction.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Reading the comment section of that article is quite a bizarre experience

</comment><comment><USER82> Seattle is tempting as a SF resident but I think Seattle tech scene is much more risk-adverse (i.e. AMZN, MSFT employees) and not as entrepreneurially minded as in SF.

<comment><USER83> You are right. Seattle is the bay area for people who have kids they want in good schools and to have a decent upper middle class lifestyle with cars/large house/lawn. With that comes risk adverse big-tech-co jobs that pay high but steady.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> even with good salaries, I would move away from California at the first chance I get.

</comment><comment><USER85> California today is the United States in a decade or two: its dysfunctions are the product of decades of poor policy decisions (often, the poor decision was to _have_ a policy in the first place) by voters and their elected officials alike.

A huge problem is that people move from California to other states in order to escape Californian problems, but once they get to their new state they miss a few things about California, and agitate to make their new state more Californian in those few aspects. Multiply that across all the Californian emmigrants in a state, and suddenly that state has California-style problems again.

The only solution I can see is to amend the Constitution (specifically, the Fourteenth Amendment) to provide that people who move to a state must be naturalised into it rather than immediately gain citizenship. Perhaps a decade-long waiting period would give folks time to acculturate. An advantage of this would be that Californians who have escaped to other states would still be voting in California, even as they are acculturating to a saner state government system: in effect, California would get wiser voters for free.

You can substitute 'New Jersey', 'Massachusetts' or 'New York' for 'California' above and get much the same effect.

<comment><USER17> This makes no sense. Because people who move to California also move from other states.

<comment><USER85> > This makes no sense. Because people who move to California also move from > other states.

But California (like Texas) is large enough that a uniform sampling of Americans from other states injected into California is like adding a drop of water to the ocean.

The Californian exodus to smaller states, OTOH, is more like dumping a #10 can of ketchup into a hot tub.</comment></comment></comment>


Monitor Your Startup's Growth in Slack - <AUTHOR> https://growthreport.co/ <comment><USER2> Alex from Growth Report here, thanks for posting @nikolay.

I'm running a closed beta right now without about 15 teams. Hoping to add more this week and go live to the Slack app directory by the end of the week. Happy to answer questions here on HN or by email (email@example.com).</comment>


Airbus buys majority stake in Bombardier CSeries passenger jet business - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bombardier-airbus-c-series-1.4357567 <comment><USER3> This is an interesting hack. According to sources Airbus gets 50.1% of the Class C jet's "business", in exchange for building them in a pre-existing plant in Alabama so that they are immune to the 300% tariff that the US was planning to impose (considering to impose?) on them.

The hack allows Bombardier to recoupe its design costs by selling planes. They will no doubt get less margin selling them through Airbus but it is better that having to flush that investment down the tubes.

<comment><USER4> It might benefit Bombardier and their investors, but if the C series jet was going to be manufactured in Canada by Canadian workers, this ends up harming those (potential?) jobs in favour of American workers who previously never had any sort of relationship with Bombardier.

To me, the whole situation is a schoolyard example of "having your cake and eating it too".

<comment><USER5> A Guardian article [https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on- finance...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on- finance/2017/oct/17/airbuss-ingenious-bombardier-plan-is-comeuppance-for- boeing) says:

> Arch-rival Airbus has swooped from the wings to grab majority control of the > C-Series and proclaim that the 300% tariffs can be side-stepped via the > simple remedy of conducting the final assembly of planes destined for US > customers in Alabama.

So, how much of a final assembly counts as final assembly? I remember a story of how Chinese shirtmakers circumvented tariffs against Made in China shirts: they sent the body of the shirt and sleeves to Hong Kong, workers in Hong Kong sewed the sleeves onto the shirt, slap "Made in Hong Kong" on it, and problem solved...

Apparently I'm not the one asking this question: [http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-airbus- bombard...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-airbus-bombardier- deal-20171017-story.html)

> "There is a legal question of how much of the parts and components and > value-added needs to actually happen in the U.S. for tariffs to no longer > apply," said Chad Bown, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for > International Economics. "You can't just fly an airplane to Alabama and say > it's made in America."

<comment><USER6> Mexico has been an avenue for this, for the Chinese. Parts/assemblies shipped to Mexico for final assembly -- perhaps, in some case, as I understand it, in an extreme bending of the... "rules", simply for packaging.

Then, over the border the finished, packaged products go, tariff-free, under the auspices of NAFTA.

Separately, I'll mention that I've heard commentary on Canadian news to the effect that the Provincial and perhaps National governments provided assistance -- not taking an ownership stake; rather, direct financial assistance -- to Bombardier to aid in development of the jet.

To the extent that expected returns, financial and employment and whatever, are now leaving the Province and Canada, this leaves those governments out in the cold and deprived of expected returns. I don't know all the details of this, and perhaps what I heard was biased, but it was described at length and very critical e.g. of the governments not having built greater assurances into the aid they provided.

<comment><USER7> The province did take a stake when it provided assistance but the stake taken was on the CSeries program end not on BBD itself. And hat stake just got diluted a while lot by the deal with Airbus (going from 49% to less than 20%).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll post what I did earlier:

This is a huge blow for the Canadian aerospace industry, but the best that BBD could do in a bad situation.

The plane itself is great, but management incompetence and customer worries about the company's long-term prospects made it a hard sell. Then, when BBD did make a sale to Delta, Boeing's naked politicking and the current administration's unreasonable duty made the situation untenable. BBD is essentially handing over the keys to the kingdom here: Airbus gets control of the program for nothing (they only have to allow the C series to be manufactured at an existing plant in Mobile) and if the program is successful they have the right to buy out the entire partnership; if it's unsuccessful they can walk away. Plus, it's unclear to me whether it's a way to actually push the C-series or a way to start conversations around it and then upsell customers to one of Airbus' existing narrowbodies. Again, not a good situation for BBD.

Airplane manufacturing is a heavily political, heavily subsidized business, and since Canada is much smaller than the other players on the stage (US, EU, China, Russia) with a non-existent defence program it doesn't have the money or the weight to effectively compete.

<comment><USER9> While I agree with everything you said, I would add that I think the US government is being anti-competitive here and a bit underhanded. Boeing has historically got a pretty sweet deal from the US government [1] in tax breaks, $8.7B worth! Not in the form of R&D grants like BBD get from Canada, a similar approach they take to other industries such as software development [2]. The outcome here is virtually the same, it's just an alternative approach.

This to me is pretty absurd show of irony and somewhat provocative move by the government.

On the plus side, my BBD stock jumped 20% today, so I unloaded it. Not all bad news I suppose...

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wto-boeing- idUSKBN19029Q](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wto-boeing-idUSKBN19029Q)

[2] [https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue- agency/services/scientific-...](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue- agency/services/scientific-research-experimental-development-tax-incentive- program.html)

<comment><USER8> Oh, definitely - I t's a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Not only does the US give Boeing huge tax breaks, but the defense expenditures are calculated to subsidize the commercial aircraft program.

Unfortunately for us Canadians neither BBD or the government has the means to take on Boeing and the US respectively. My only hope - and a slim one - <USER2> that Boeing is permanently frozen out of defence procurement here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A good friend worked at Bombardier until recently and I got the full sales pitch and walkthrough of a model of one of these planes a couple of years ago at an overseas airshow. They were really nice and had some innovative features. Unfortunately, this was a big bet by Bombardier and it failed. "They are fucked" were his words, when I asked him about it today.

Not sure where people discussing this as a US vs CA or that this is somehow a win are getting those ideas from.

<comment><USER11> Is it too much just to ask why anyone cares so much? I mean, this was a "big bet" by Bombardier to enter a market dominated by an aircraft _designed 49 years ago_. I mean... it's a mature market. You don't make plays for a mature market unless you have a clear value advantage, and I don't see that Bombardier does in any real sense.

No one gets upset when agricultural products (many of them, frankly, more high tech than these things) get caught up in similar trade disputes, which happens regularly too.

I can't help but think this is driven in large part by a perception of this as a US assault on Canadian innovation, when it's really just another corn war.

<comment><USER12> The CSeries is a regional jet. The market it's aimed at is serviced by aircraft like Boeing 717, BAe 146, Embraer E-jet, Fokker F100 and Bombardier's own CRJ700.

Most of those are now out of production or nearing the end of their production run, which is why new, cheaper to operate designs for this category are being developed (Embraer and Mitsubishi are also developing new regional jets).

The funny thing is that Boeing doesn't even have a competing product in this market!

<comment><USER13> Boeing isn't fighting the CSeries for what it currently is. The CS100 and 300 in themselves don't directly complete against any Boeing planes. Their worry is that a successful CSeries could spawn a stretch CS500 that would be begin moving in on the 737.

Boeing underestimated Airbus in the 70s and 80s, and they're trying not to make the same mistake again. They were trying to head this off before it gets that far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is pretty big news for people living in Québec, as the Québec government invested heavily in the C-Series last year. At the time, the move was criticized as a big gamble and an irresponsible handling of taxpayer's funds because the C-Series' success was far from guaranteed and there were legitimate concerns about Bombardier's leadership.

With this move by Airbus, the government's stake in the project was reduced from 49% to 19%. I'm no economist, but it seems that the crisis was avoided?

<comment><USER15> According to the article, Airbus bought the stake "at no cost". Unless I'm misunderstanding something, shouldn't this be a loss for Quebec?

I guess the Airbus/Boeing duopoly is here to stay. Bombardier looked like a promising future competitor... They still have their rail business, so all is not lost.

<comment><USER16> > shouldn't this be a loss for Quebec?

Agreed. It's a loss for Quebec, Bombardier, Canadian workers (who lose jobs to Alabama), Canadian taxpayers, and most importantly, for free trade and free markets - this will only establish anti-competitive policies as an accepted norm, a dangerous precedent.

Not that anyone cares about economics any more; it all seems political.

<comment><USER17> How is it a loss for the free market?

Now Bombardier doesn't have to pay the ridiculous 300% tax. They are subject to less regulations and more free market.

<comment><USER16> The 300% tax still distorted the market by pushing Bombardier into a deal they otherwise might not have taken, into investing resources in a location (Alabama) that they might not otherwise have chosen, and by taking a competitor out of a marketplace with very high barriers to entry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bombardier is hugely popular in Québec. The press coverage here has been so anti-boeing they have launched a PR campaign. Any politician that signs any military contract with Boeing is going to pay a huge price in Québec; maybe high enough to lose an election.

Boeing likely mis-calculated the politeness of their neighbors.

<comment><USER19> Boeing now trying to fix this PR disaster and airing ads on Canadian TV saying how much they love Canada.

<comment><USER8> Yeah. I don't know many people (outside of Manitoba, maybe?) who are buying that load of bovine feces. No one liked the BBD bailout, but we can all see a 300% duty for what it is: naked politicking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And Boeing issuing statements like it's kindergarten.

[https://twitter.com/Boeing/status/920373843142864896](https://twitter.com/Boeing/status/920373843142864896)

<comment><USER21> Boeing is a bunch of idiots, the C series didn't compete with them at all. A company like Boeing that gets massive government contracts and depends on free trade shouldn't be shitting on free trade.

<comment><USER22> > A company like Boeing that gets massive government contracts and depends on > free trade shouldn't be shitting on free trade.

Opposed to all the other airliner manufacturers that don't get government contracts? From the article:

> The Quebec government invested $1.25 billion in exchange for a 49.5 per cent > stake in the CSeries last year. The federal government also recently > provided a $344-million loan to Bombardier, which struggled to win orders.

And of course Airbus is partially owned by France, Germany and others. Everyone in this story has deep government ties.

<comment><USER23> I presumed the parent meant huge non-airplane military contracts. Airplanes are 69% of revenue but just 54% of profits (now that the dreamliner is in production)[1]. The rest is defense were margins are higher.

I was working years ago at a defense contractor who was a sub on a Boeing radar project. The running joke was the Government was giving Boeing work to let it capitalize the design of a new plane.

[1][https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/01/30/boeing-earnings- th...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/01/30/boeing-earnings-the-defense- edition.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Buys" is a strong word for "gets for free". From the article:

Bombardier Inc. announced Monday it has sold a majority stake in its CSeries passenger jet business to European aerospace giant Airbus for no cost.

<comment><USER25> Isn't the proper term gift?

<comment> nv-vn No. The cost just wasn't monetary. If I understand correctly, Airbus gets the CSeries and Bombardier no longer has to make a profit out of their debts. So basically Airbus paid for CSeries by taking on CSeries' debts. Also, Bombardier still owns stake in CSeries, so any profit from CSeries is still positive for them. Since Airbus can provide the manufacturing in the US, this seems like a net profit compared to the alternative.

<comment><USER24> This is incorrect. Airbus does not share existing debt, but may contribute up to 300M per year to new debt for the next 3 years.

From the article: "Airbus is not assuming any debt as part of the deal."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Quality journalism

"The current Airbus A320, a rival for the CSeries, is for 180 passengers or more and Airbus hasn't sold an A320 in three years."

A320neo (the "current Airbus A320") orders:

        2015: 583
        2016: 343
        2017: 47

~1000 orders in the last three years, with 5000 orders all in all.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320neo_family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320neo_family)

<comment><USER27> That should probably read A319 - several other more reputable aviation sources mention this (for instance: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardaboulafia/2017/10/17/bom...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardaboulafia/2017/10/17/bombardier- airbus-cseries-boeing))

According to this list: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A320_orders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A320_orders), the A319ceo (current) has a backlog of 50 orders and the A319neo has just 20.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for catching that!

Technically "Airbus hasn't sold an A320 in three years." isn't right about the A319 as there have been orders the last three years, agreed no one wants it though.

Most A319neo orders look to be modified to be A320neo orders, so customers moving to a larger jet - perhaps it's cheaper than cancelling and buying Bombardier/Embraer. Or there is no demand for small planes in the ~120 passengers class.

<comment><USER28> There is huge demand, but the higher purchase and operating costs of the 320 family compared to the 737 family and C series make the 319 uncompetitive.

<comment><USER26> "[...] compared to the 737 family [...] uncompetitive."

No sure where you've got that from, the A320neo has 5000 orders, the 737Max has 4000 orders with the MAX7 not selling well (same size as A319neo).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sounds like Airbus is getting parts of Bombardier for cheap and Bombardier is getting the clout to fight Boeing and the US's patently obvious, possibly illegal, trade protectionism.

And this should further endear Canada to the EU over the US, and probably make the Brits also happier about the EU (The British jobs were most at risk).

I am no expert but that's what it looks like to me. Nice move if so.

<comment><USER30> What? Boeing's claim is that Canada illegally subsidized Bombardier which seems to be true. But yes it's the US's fault that happened

<comment><USER31> We're just more clever at subsidizing Boeing in ways that don't look like a subsidy.

For example, the Air Force bid that was about to be won by Airbus got re- spec'd in order to match the requirements with what Boeing happened to provide (number of engines, iirc).

<comment><USER32> I believe athenot is referring to the KC-X program in which Airbus definitely got screwed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A shrewd move by Airbus. It's likely they could have gotten the EU to enact a large tariff against the CSeries in Europe too, but instead they're getting a 737 MAX 7 competitor for free and getting to avoid political fallout in the process.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a clever resolution to a dispute that was going to hurt everyone involved. There was quite a scary trade war brewing.

<comment><USER35> What makes you think this is a resolution ? I've followed this story closely and I think it's far from the end of the dispute.

<comment><USER34> Just misplaced optimism. I'm a little less hopeful now, having seen Boeing's response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Boeing is playing an extremely dangerous game here and they just keep on doubling down. They have an awful lot to lose if other countries, especially the EU, start to think they've crossed the line.

A lot of people think their management decline started when they moved their HQ to Chicago, away from their R&D and manufacturing. But prior to this incident they demonstrated not only how much influence they can wield in the US Govt, but their willingness to use it whatever the appearance, with the KC-46A contract - the US Military had already decided to buy Airbus's a330-derivative tanker aircraft, but Boeing managed to get the decision overturned and their objectively inferior tender accepted instead. From the press coverage at the time the unfairness, and near-corruptness, of this manoeuvre was not lost on other governments.

And now this - again they have demonstrated their hooks into government at the highest levels and willingness to use them for dirty tricks, in this case an outrageous 300% tariff on a tiny non-competitor based on absurd arguments about healthcare costs. Literally no-one in the aviation community thought it was even slightly reasonable.

So now they've driven that tiny company and its airline program (and to be fair, they made a lot of their own mistakes) into the arms of their biggest competitor and by extension the EU. The biggest strategic blunder imaginable. Now the C300 is an EU program. And yet they just keep upping the ante:

[https://twitter.com/Boeing/status/920373843142864896](https://twitter.com/Boeing/status/920373843142864896)

Last week they were trying to dare the governments of Canada and Ireland to start a trade war. Now it's the governments of France and Germany as well. And yet they continue to just hold down that accelerator. It's not lost on anyone that their theme of "america first no matter what" and hardball negotiations/threats by twitter seems eerily reminiscent of the current government in DC.

So yeah. Boeing, and by direct extension the US Government, seems intent on playing an ever more dangerous game of Trade War Chicken with an ever increasing list of opponents. If they win the battle but lose the war, like they did with BBD, the solution is to start a bigger war. It's shocking, it's arrogant, and America's biggest exporter has a lot to lose should anyone decide to call their bluff.

The geopolitical implications of this are interesting too. Just like there's no way Boeing is acting like this without assurances from the government that it's got their back, there's no way Airbus would have moved without assurances from its own member governments. The speed of the action was breathtaking - negotiations only started in August. This can only mean that the EU feels it has the upper hand should any real dispute arise. It's pushed Canada closer to the EU too. I wonder what's next.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is fairly predictable. With a hostile Trump administration towards Canada, we're losing influence with Canadians so they will continue to cozy up with Europe.

Not sure what Trump's endgame here is other than alienating once allies and economic partners. Trump went instantly to nuclear and Trudeau was forced to respond in kind. This is what happens when diplomacy is little more than namecalling and 'my way or the highway.' The USA isn't this unstoppable juggernaut everyone must bow down to and accept being bullied from. Europe, China, Japan, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, etc are all vying for influence and will take advantage of our every misstep. Europe certainly did today.

<comment><USER38> It's still a win for Boeing and Trump. Bombardiers plans to enlarge the CS series to compete with the 737 will not happen as Airbus already has the Neo. The threat of a new entrant is gone, jobs move out of Canada to the airbus plant in the US, and the CS stays at a size below the prime markets Boeing and Airbus compete in. While I am sure Boeing would rather have the program killed entirely this still works out very well for them.

<comment><USER39> The A319neo is as good as dead. According to [https://www.ft.com/content/201bf186-b350-11e7-a398-73d59db9e...](https://www.ft.com/content/201bf186-b350-11e7-a398-73d59db9e399) , the A319neo hasn't had a sale in over 4 years. Airbus previously passed on this Bombardier deal several years ago because of the market segment conflict with the A319. Given there have been zero sales in the interim, I think it's a safe assumption that Airbus has decided to throw in the towel on the A319 and embrace the C-Series. Not just for the product but also for the strategic multinational relationships. Maximizing those relationships requires committing to the C-Series. The deal doesn't make sense unless Airbus is all- in.

Your point about a stretched C-Series being off the table stands, but that's very different from Airbus suffocating the C-Series altogether. With the A319 out of the way Airbus would have every incentive to position the C-Series against the smaller 737MAX variants.

<comment><USER38> The current C series does not really compete with the 737MAX for most routes, that is one of the absurd things about Boeing's trade dispute. Boeing does not have a 737MAX small enough to overlap the CS is a 717compwtitor which they don't make anymore anyway. It was all about what could be, not really about the CS as it is available today.

<comment><USER39> According to Wikipedia the CS300 has the same seating capacity as the 737MAX 7. The CS300 has a shorter range--3,300 nmi vs 3,825 nmi. OTOH, I imagine it's a lighter plane and much more fuel efficient.

Is the range a big deal for most customers? Or are the CS300 numbers not realistic to put it in the same class as the 737MAX 7?

<comment><USER38> You are right the high end of the CS300 competes with the low end of the 737. I was thinking of the actual trade dispute Boeing filed which was over the sale of CS100 aircraft to Delta, which actually does not compete with the 737.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> For a split second I read "Airbus" as AirBnB and I was like "whaaaaaat?"

<comment><USER41> I read it this way too. Seems my brain is working on auto-complete...

<comment><USER42> damn you, autocorrect!!</comment></comment></comment>


The One Thing That Made Me Switch To Vim - <AUTHOR> http://marcgg.com/2012/09/04/one-reason-to-switch-to-vim-editor/

<comment><USER2> A quote: "It felt terrible to be so lost with a task as simple as editing a file ... This is why I decided to use Vim as my primary editor. It already had enough qualities to be a good choice, but the fact that it is set up on most servers was the final selling point for me."

The above sounds like one of the most peculiar reasons to settle on an editor -- however difficult to use, it's likely to be installed. Pico and/or Nano are also likely to be installed on most servers, and they're much easier to use.

This explanation sounds a lot like George Mallory's reason for climbing Mount Everest -- "It was there." But using an editor shouldn't require an epic struggle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Vim is a good editor in itself. People have debated for ages about why, and how it could be better than others. I didn't want to do that in this article. Here I just explain the final selling point for me (might not be for most people).

Also Vim is not as complex as it seems. It's just very weird at first because of the fact you have to change modes - hence the struggle, but you feel a boost in productivity after a while.

<comment><USER2> > It's just very weird at first because of the fact you have to change modes > ...

Yes, but do avoid mentioning "modes" to a true Vim fanatic. I've watched Vim true believers gradually grow cherry red at mention of "modes", which they insist aren't really modes, just extra keystrokes.

The modes in Vim are inherited from vi, because vi was originally used on mechanical paper-roll terminals (as I did while working for NASA in the 1970s) -- in those days the mode switching saved both time and paper.

It's funny to think that Vim users still have to switch modes, to save nonexistent paper on a nonexistent roll, while the rest of the world has moved on. In fact, my now-ancient word processor Apple Writer, first released in 1979 for the Apple II, did away with modes entirely, while running on a processor so slow that it would be put to shame by a modern pencil sharpener.

Different strokes.

<comment><USER3> What happened gradually between then and now is that Vim's authors and users somehow rationalized that whole "modes" thing and built a very effective text editing machine on top of it.

Sure, modes may look old and weird when you are used to more "normal" paradigms but "normal" programs also use modes heavily: search/replace, open/save, preview… Vi[m] is just a little bit more extremist.

In my opinion, Vim's _normal_ , _insert_ and _command_ modes (the main ones) are very beneficial.

One of the benefits is that it removes the need for chords almost entirely for the most basic text editing tasks. In a modeless editor, moving to the next word requires to hit at least one modifier and the right arrow while in Vim, thanks to its modal nature, you only need one keypress. Selecting word by word would require chords and many keypresses. What if we have 6 words to select? We have been trained, somehow, to keep the left hand on the two necessary modifiers and hit the arrow as many times as needed. How could we make it faster? v6e is Vim's answer: because it's modal, typing 6 won't input 6 in your text but how could we tell our "normal" editor to execute the next operation 6 times without altering the text? The obvious answer is "modes".

The main problem with conventional multi keys shortcuts is that a lot of tem are already taken by the OS or the windowing system or the GUI toolkit. A lot of Ctrl+[a-z] are reserved, same for their Ctrl+Shift variants and so on. If you want to provide "advanced" capabilities to your users you are forced to invent weird shortcuts with limited meanings and mnemonics. A nice and quite funny example of this limitation is Sublime Text 2: it is a very powerful "normal" text editor in its own right but it is also MORE powerful when you enable vintage mode. Liberated from the limitations of conventional shortcuts, ST2 is able to show its true capabilities.

<comment><USER2> > In my opinion, Vim's normal, insert and command modes (the main ones) are > very beneficial.

You mean, compared to not having the modes, as is true for all modern editors? In a normal editor, to put it in the simplest terms, I enter content with the letter keys, I delete content with the backspace key, and I navigate with the arrow keys -- no extra keystrokes required. If we count keystrokes, to put this plainly, a modern editor is much more efficient, and requires much less time to learn. If we count the time required to learn how to use an editor from a state of perfect ignorance, a modern editor is clearly more efficient.

When I designed Apple Writer in the late 1970s, I knew about vi and I knew what I didn't like about it. Even then, it was accommodating a nonexistent roll of paper, and its superfluous keystrokes were my primary target. I designed an editor that didn't follow vi's model, didn't have modes, and every editor since then has done likewise (except Vim).

If someone told me in 1977 that, 35 years later and counting, people would still be using vi's descendant with its modes unchanged, and explaining how beneficial it is, I would have laughed out loud.

<comment><USER3> Well, there's nothing stopping you from entering the content with the letter keys, deleting it with the backspace key and navigating with the arrow keys in any editor, Vi[m] included. If that's all you do when working with text, Vi[m]'s modes won't bug you at all. Stay in insert mode as long as you want: you can even use <C-o>… to execute normal mode commands while staying in insert mode or consider the command mode exactly as you would consider the menus of any GUI editor.

But that's not all of what I do when editing text and I need more than those basics.

What's special with Vi[m] is that it offers me modes that make it possible to do more advanced stuff or the same stuff in a smarter way with a very simple and easy to learn language.

Do you always move character by character and line by line? How do you paste something 12 times? How do you delete a block of code? How do you type over the current word? How do you open a newline below the current one if you are somewhere in the middle? Don't you ever think "this task is too repetitive or involves too many steps, I'd like to do it more efficiently"? Because of its modality Vi[m] has you covered. In style, with a simple vocabulary and an expressive grammar while other normal editors only offer a comparatively smaller feature set and horrible Ctrl+Sift+Alt+Char combos.

That's what makes Vim, and modality, special, in my opinion. And still extremelly useful, 30+ years after.

But I may be wrong. The incredible productivity boost I had in the last 2 years may completely be a construct of my imagination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny, as a long time Vim user I still feel this was about certain Vi configurations. I guess that means I'm not yet far enough along to know all the keys that I should know, but even then, certain setups with Vi can be really painful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, some people really go overboard when it comes to Vi configs! I still find most configs to be at least usable though.</comment></comment>


Merge tag 'inclusive-terminology' into Linux kernel - <AUTHOR> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=49decddd39e5f6132ccd7d9fdc3d7c470b0061bb <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23801134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23801134)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd recommend a title change here, for editorialization: the name of the merged branch is "inclusive-terminology" and most of the recommendations appear to be close to those in the Knodel draft[1].

[1]: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-knodel- terminology-01](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-knodel-terminology-01)

<comment><USER2> I've changed the title above. Submitted title ('Linux kernel now recommends politically correct terms') broke the site guideline against editorializing.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good. Cost is low to make these changes, even if they have "little real impact" (a common complaint), they're worth making to demonstrate exactly how arbitrary language is to change.

Ten years from now no one will even remember or care that master/slave was a term in computing.

<comment><USER5> > Ten years from now no one will even remember or care that master/slave was a > term in computing.

I don't think it will take them that long to regret this change. Now that everyone knows linux will just roll over, they'll push for greater changes to the "Code of Conduct." Then developers will get deplatformed at an alarming rate. And I'll have my popcorn ready. It'll be quite the show.

<comment><USER6> It seems like nowadays that's where concessions on visible efforts the likes of the Linux kernel go, inevitably.

<comment><USER5> It's not inevitable. It can be resisted. It takes a leader who can stand up to the pressure and say no. That's not a trivial thing. The pressure is considerable, especially these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if people suggesting we change how we speak are also willing to give up vulgarity which is also offensive.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why this headline instead of what is actually posted on kernel.org?

Dang...</comment>


Turn your Android device into a life saving tool in an emergency - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.medicalid.free&hl=en <comment><USER2> This might get more interest submitted as a "Show HN" since you seem to be the author. :)</comment>


Microsoft is already looking for Don Dodge's replacement - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/07/microsoft-looks-for-don-dodge-replacement/

<comment><USER2> It's questionable. There are a ton of "evangelists" at Microsoft. It's just another way to say "technical salesperson".</comment>


SOPA is back - <AUTHOR>

Guess what folks SOPA is back!
Reports are surfacing that Hollywood is lobbying EU countries to put  SOPA rules into their laws..
Currently, Canada and Ireland but expected to reach others..
Now what? <comment><USER2> Spain has already passed theirs:

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/4/2681818/spain-approves- sind...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/4/2681818/spain-approves-sinde-law- anti-piracy)

Awareness must be raised globally against this, otherwise if MPAA and RIAA see they can't win in US, they'll just move the fight over there first, win it there, and then come back to win it in US after there is already a "working model" in Europe and other countries. Heck, Chris Dodd even tried to use China as a working model. Saying "it already works like this in Germany or UK" should be a lot more powerful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like a job for eternal vigil.

Bummer. That's usually kinda tiring.</comment>


Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/02/why-the-iphone.html <comment><USER2> Created accounted just to say this:

Titles like this are not only terrible generalizations, but they are completely misinformed (the 2 not being mutually exclusive).

I live in Tokyo, and I can tell you, more than a few people have an iPhone. It's popular to the point that its ridiculous. Now you may wonder why are the sales are so poor. A casual walk into a mobile shop will show you. It's variety. There are too many phones to choose from. While the iPhone still wins hands down in sleekness, there are a host of other decent phones (with greater capabilities) to choose from.

So there is no 'hate' involved, it just boils down to market saturation of comparable phones. Apple took a piss in the sea...no surprises on the results.

<comment><USER3> Indeed.

Plus, any "Japanese hate American products because they're cultural elitists" meme needs to minimally pretend that the freaking _iPod_ doesn't exist. iPod had something like a 60% share within months of being launched while competing against like likes of Sony on their home turf.

<comment><USER4> Is it true that Korean brands like Samsung don't sell at all?

<comment><USER3> Samsung's problem is not that they are Korean, it is that they are Samsung.

I'm looking at the top selling MP3 players on Amazon.co.jp right now. There are products in the top 10 from Transcend (India?!), Creative(Singapore), Cowon (Korea), Apple (USA), and Toshiba(Japan).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Linkbait article title about an Apple product at wired.com? I'm guessing it's another Brian Chen troll.

</comment><comment><USER6> This makes me wonder: what are the most popular phones (especially "hip" smartphones) in Japan?

</comment><comment><USER7> The question is: should we adapt technology according to national characteristics, Technology seems to make cultural borders disappear, but sometimes these borders are very strong.

<comment><USER8> > Technology seems to make cultural borders disappear, [...]

Can you expand on this? I'm uncertain as to what you mean.

<comment><USER9> I think the gist of what he's saying is that no matter where you go (caveat: cities or suburbs), you can find a cell phone with reception, electricity, television and so on. The products may be made by a local company, but they're clearly identifiable and not limited to one particular civilization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find the minimalist lines of the iPhone much more pleasing than the Panasonic P905i, which except for the colour perhaps, looks pretty commonplace: [http://www.feelphones.com/2008/01/02/panasonic-p905i-picture...](http://www.feelphones.com/2008/01/02/panasonic-p905i-pictures/)</comment>