Astrology has officially infiltrated work culture - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90398481/from-tarot-readings-to-gemini-memes-astrology-has-officially-infiltrated-work-culture <comment><USER2> This idiocy is an absolute epidemic amongst my well educated late 20s early 30s friends

<comment><USER3> There's nothing idiotic about it, astrology is a simple computer: a set of programmable timers. Tarot is also a simple computer for presenting the user a series of choices and (not quite random) dice rolls. Both of them need to be programmed and the programs are of varying use. YMMV but it's no more idiotic than Pivotal Tracker.

Which is to say, can be quite idiotic depending on how it's used.

Tarot is probably the easier to get into since the programs are published as a card game with a simple rule book. There are quite a lot of different programs written for the platform.

Generally speaking the programs span the deck, the rules, and the user. The final bit of programming you do yourself by having reactions to the cards and training consistent, personal responses in yourself. Of course the actual source of any situational information is your subconscious mind not the cards. The cards essentially provide you a structure through which you search your subconscious beliefs.

It's similar to neural nets in that way... the program starts off with random activations ("how could it know anything about anything?") but via training you give the network meaning.

<comment><USER2> This is totally incoherent.

<comment><USER3> The idea that astrology is a computer?

Astronomic bodies act as timers, yes? Does that part at least make sense to you?

Are you confused about how they are programmed? It's the same way you program the alarm on your phone, you choose a cycle and you attach a label to it.

I'm not trying to propose anything too controversial here.

<comment><USER2> "The idea that rainbows are a computer?

The molecules have chemical reactions which function as flux capacitors yes?

Are you confused by how the astral planes vibrate? None of this is controversial."

Maybe that was a cheap rhetorical tactic but just squashing together words next to assertions does not constitute an argument.

This sounds more like something I'd expect to hear from some college freshman who's strung out on too many psychedelics.

I'm not even saying whatever your saying is wrong, I'm saying it's not coherent enough to figure out what you are saying.

X is a computer. What does that even mean? Let's Google the definition of computer:

"an electronic device for storing and processing data"

Surely astrology fits that reasonable definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> JP Morgan: "Millionaires don't use astrology, billionaires do."

Donald Reagan, formerly Ronald Reagan's Chief of Staff: "It's common knowledge that a large percentage of Wall Street brokers use astrology."

Albert Einstein said : "Astrology is a science in itself and contains an illuminating body of knowledge. It taught me many things and I am greatly indebted to it."

[https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/astrologicalmusings/201...](https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/astrologicalmusings/2010/04/ronald- reagan-and-other-famous.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Such synchronicity for me considering I decided to learn tarot two days ago!

</comment><comment><USER6> "From tarot readings to Gemini memes, astrology has officially infiltrated work culture Peak Astrology means your millennial coworkers probably have a Slack channel for horoscopes"

Did this even need an explanation for why this article is complete nonsense?</comment>


Can the Asian Miracle Happen in Africa? - <AUTHOR> https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/How-Asia-Works <comment><AUTHOR> This was probably the best book I read in the past year. It's not very long, so it's worth reading if you're interested in the topics discussed. If you don't have time to read it. Gates' post does a good job of describing the main arguments.</comment>


Ask HN: Math courses for a self taught web developer? - <AUTHOR>

I have a degree in Political Science. I've been out of school for nearly a decade now, and in that time my career has transitioned to web development (and some backend systems work as well but not a lot).<p>I hear over and over that math is important for Computer Science[0][1] (not saying that web development is Computer Science). I have no interest in going back to school as a full-time student and I think it would likely only hurt my career. So what are my options if I want to increase my math skills in a way that will help my day-to-day life? The only college math I've taken was linear algebra, which I did poorly at but I was a different person then and did not care. I have a basic understanding of algebra, geometry and trigonometry. I have never taken a Calculus class.<p>[0] http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-importance-of-mathematics-courses.html<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9308595 <comment><USER2> [https://www.khanacademy.org/math](https://www.khanacademy.org/math)

Has classes on Stats, Calculus and a few other higher-end subjects.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some basic linear algebra (vectors and the like) is quite handy. I'd start with the basics useful for game development:

[http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game- deve...](http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game-developers- part-1/)

The concepts generalize decently, and if you already know trig than you'll find this helpful.</comment>


Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703293204576106164123424314.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth <comment><USER3> I don't think the rich really get anything out of it, but in the Nordic countries, fines increase in proportion to your wealth. I remember reading about a Nokia exec getting pulled over for speeding. His ticket was like $75,000! <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1670583>

I've often thought some fees should be adjusted for wealth. For example, a quarter a day isn't really enough to get me to take my library books back on time. Maybe for me it should be $2 a day.

<comment><USER4> In Sweden many fines are defined in "dagsböter" or literally "day fines" as opposed to an actual amount. Basically one "dagsböter" is equivalent to one days wages. So the judge decides that you should pay 60 days wages, without actually have to take any stance to how much you actually pay.

<comment><USER5> So Eric Schmidt would pay some pennies? (Since he is paid $1 a year :) )

<comment><USER6> One might assume that the system has a way of establishing the true magnitude of an individual's compensation.

<comment><USER7> In Sweden equity compensation is made so prohibitively expensive it ensures that everyone gets paid more or less appropriate market salary.

Of course very rich guys have their workarounds anyway, for example I recall reading that Ingvar Kamprad pays himself avg IKEA worker salary. Still better than those ridiculous $1 salaries of SV execs.

<comment><USER8> Ikea is the most notorius tax avoider in the world.

The great swedish furniture company is actually a dutch charity.

<comment><USER7> Bill & Melinda Foundation?

<comment><USER8> They do actually give away money - although with some strings attached (like your government not using open source!)

IKEA itself - not the owner - is a charity, registered in Holland to be in the Eu but actually in the Dutch antilles so they don't pay Dutch tax and they can keep secret any donations

<comment><USER9> Do you have a reference to back up the OSS prohibition? It sounds like an urban legend and I couldn't find anything searching, but I've seen weirder things before.

<comment><USER10> <http://www.economist.com/node/6919139?story_id=6919139>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The hole is too big to plug with cost cutting or economic growth alone."

Say's who? Take a look at the 2011 budget: <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html>

The biggest pieces of the pie are things we are UNWILLING to cut (not incapable of cutting)! Its time for us to make some difficult decisions about what cuts we should make instead of relying on other peoples' money to solve other peoples' problems.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. If we rolled back overall spending to where it was in 1999 and curtailed the military (stopping the two big wars, closing assorted bases).

A decade without real economic growth should be matched with a decade of no government growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing that at least some rich people will pay for is status symbols (expensive watches, sports cars that will never exceed 100mph, mansions with rooms that are used only a couple of times a year, $500 t-shirts). Status signaling is ultimately a zero-sum positional arms race that can lead to some pretty ridiculous conclusions(1) and doesn't really leave anyone better off (other than, perhaps, luxury goods suppliers).

The bad version of this idea would be a special ID card and/or bumper sticker or t-shirt or watch that was given to top-bracket taxpayers. It would have to be reasonably hard to forge (or at least as hard to forge as, say, a Rolex) and able to be either displayed publicly or flashed discreetly in situations where one wants to assert status.

Another variation could be some kind of property tax where certain sub- neighborhoods would have exceptionally rates, say 100x what the ordinary tax on the land and improvements would be. Then people could signal status by living or staying in those areas. (This is actually not too different than somewhere like Manhattan or San Francisco currently, except the windfall is going to existing property owners rather than the government).

The nice thing about status symbols is that, like fiat currency, they can be rather cheaper to produce than what their value to the status-seeking public is. That is the government could potentially retain a very high seignorage, as it were, on this stuff.

Ultimately it would have to be determined whether the status symbols could be legally transferrable, and what, if any, penalty there would be for forging them.

As an aside, it strikes me that this sort of thing would be extremely similar to fiat currency, maybe identical.

[1]([http://www.google.com/products/catalog?client=safari&rls...](http://www.google.com/products/catalog?client=safari&rls=en&q=watch+winder&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=15774647568013127762&ei=8U5ETfn9LpL2swOnueCSCg&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CF0Q8wIwAg#ps- sellers))

<comment><USER14> The problem is that it's hard to create a high status item. Say you invent the "US Govt. Certified Top 0.1% Badge" - do you really think Peter Thiel, John Paulson or Alex Rodriguez will really give a crap?

Taxing existing luxury status symbols could work, and is very likely a good idea. Creating new status symbols is likely to fail horribly.

Also, the tax on certain neighborhoods neglects the very large non-status reason why those neighborhoods are valuable: proximity to something cool. Manhattan is expensive not just because it raises your status to live there, but also because if you work at Goldman Sachs, you are willing to pay $3000/month rent + ridiculous NYC income taxes to avoid a 1 hour commute.

I suppose we could also bring back the Sumptuary laws:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law>

<comment><USER15> My tax plan is to eliminate income tax up to $90,000. After that, income is taxed at 100%. The government awards tax credits for everyone making less than that, so that everyone's salary + tax credits = $90,000.

"But wait," you say "How will we incentivize entrepreneurs if they can't earn more money?" For everyone making over $90,000 (approx. 11% of the population), their pretax salary is used to assign them national ranking that's publicly available, much like a ladder tournament, which could be subdivided into regions, industries, etc.

The rationale for this system is that we use one system - money - for two unrelated social purposes: reducing suffering and establishing status which incentivizes production. In my system, these purposes are less coupled.

The $90,000 number was calculated by dividing the total US income by the number of workers, so this would need to be adjusted yearly. If this system was applied globally, the average salary would be $25,000 which is quite a step up for billions of people. It means that today, humans create enough wealth annually so that every two-parent household on the planet could live like the American middle class.

<comment><USER14> Ok - if your system is ever enacted, I'm cutting my work hours back by 50% or more.

I'm also hoping that not everyone does this, because if everyone did, there would be far less than $90k/person floating around. But that won't happen, right?

 _It means that today, humans create enough wealth annually so that every two- parent household on the planet could live like the American middle class._

This assumes that the total cost of providing the same middle-class resources to everyone in the world is equal to the present marginal cost of doing so.

<comment><USER16> Sounds a little bit like the NFL: <http://www.realfootball365.com/articles/nfl/14905>

The major sports leagues in the U.S. (football/basketball/baseball) are definitely an interesting microcosm of various economic systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Scott Adams, like the politicians in Washington DC, is living in a dream world.

Cut all discretionary and defense spending to 0, and we would still be running a deficit due to entitlements. Tax "the rich" at 100%, and we would still be running a deficit. Tax corporations at 100%, and we would still be running a deficit.

On the left, politicians make it sound as though we're just a few tax hikes and some defense cuts away from a sound federal budget. On the right, they make it sound as though all we need are some cuts to programs like the UN or foreign aid and some tax cuts to spur economic growth.

They are both in a DREAM WORLD. Some taxes will have to go up, but most importantly, Social Security and Medicare will have to be substantially reduced. Whether it means privatization, defined contribution, or some combination of solutions, no one in my generation (I am currently 24) will see either of these programs as our parents did. In fact, current retirees and soon-to-be-retirees will also probably need to have their benefits reduced. There is just no way around it.

<comment><USER18> > Cut all discretionary and defense spending to 0, and we would still be > running a deficit due to entitlements. Tax "the rich" at 100%, and we would > still be running a deficit. Tax corporations at 100%, and we would still be > running a deficit.

Do you have some numbers for this?

<comment><USER19> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget>

In 2010 Total income was about 2.1T and total expenses were about 3.5T. Defense was about 23% of spending and discretionary spending was about 12%.

3.5T * (100% - 23% - 12%) = 2.275T

So thats still about a 175 Billion dollar deficit.

Admittedly 2010 was a below average year in terms of the US economy. In better years things might not look as bleak.

<comment><USER18> OK, so that covers the first sentence, except maybe "because of entitlements." (Although you'll note that without TARP we'd be just about breaking even in that scenario.)

It doesn't cover the second half, which claims that taxing "the rich" at 100% wouldn't cover the deficit even though the total income of the richest 1% of Americans is almost as much as the entire federal budget. (23.9% of income, GDP is 14.27T, 14.27 * 0.239 = 3.41T)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Scott Adams is just talking about moving towards a visible aristocracy. These are the first baby steps.

Soon the rich will have special privileges just like the old days.

<comment><USER21> Aristocracy is different from this. Generally, aristocracy is both hereditary and disconnected from actual wealth.

In the UK, JK Rowling, even though she is richer than the Queen, is not an aristocrat. She is, in fact, upper middle class. Someone who's born into the aristocracy, even if they're not especially wealthy, is an aristocrat.

<comment><USER22> I wonder if we're headed towards a hereditary aristocracy as well, because of assortative mating. People tend to marry others in the same social class; rich marry rich, smart marry smart, and highly-educated marry highly-educated. And then they tend to pass on those advantages to their children. It doesn't take all that many generations before that becomes entrenched and it becomes impossible to jump from one class to another.

<comment><USER21> People can move up or down a social class or two. I know people who came from fairly little wealth who earn decent urban-professional six-figure salaries, and people come out of families in the upper-middle professional class and become multimillionaire entrepreneurs. (Likewise, other people move down.)

Entrenched aristocracies happen when you have old money that looks down on the "nouveau riche". Every country _has_ an old money class that considers itself more elite than the nouveau riche, of course, but they aren't really an entrenched aristocracy unless the rest of society agrees with them.

<comment><USER20> >Entrenched aristocracies happen when you have old money that looks down on the "nouveau riche".

That's not the cause of aristocracy, that's the effect.

<comment><USER21> It's neither. It's just part of the aristocracy (the other part being the willingness of the rest of society to humor old money in their self-perception as being aristocratic).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think several of Scott Adam's proposals would be more palatable if we avoid the T-word. Giving high tax payers an express lane at the DMV smacks of elitism and pandering. But, giving an "express process" option for $1k doesn't sound so bad to me. Someone else mentioned auctioning off carpool-lane passes, it's a similar principle.

More importantly, it directly ties the cost to the reward. The biggest problem with Adam's system is that if you don't directly tie revenue to entitlements, then the rich would still push for lower taxes, while also wanting to keep the corresponding entitlements. The connection between the two has to be strong enough to resist politics.

</comment><comment><USER24> The best ideas in this framework would use sliding rewards. But they will never happen.

Take the HOV lane idea. Giving the top 1% access to HOV lanes is political suicide. But awarding hours for a special fast lane, linked to the infrastructure-based taxes you pay, sounds fairer. The family of 4 making $60K a year gets a few hours they can use when they need them, tax-exempt employees get nothing, and a CEO gets more hours than she can realistically use in a year.

But opponents would say you're giving advantages to those who are "ahead." Talented-yet-poor people have less time to strike it rich. It's a Catch 22 - you need time to make money, and money to get more time, and you have neither when you start anew.

This cuts to the heart of optimizing nations for the individual, versus optimizing for the nation as a whole. I'm not sure the answer is straightforward, or if the two answers are mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER25> The HOV-lane idea starts out in the wrong place. If you want to raise money from apportioning a scarce resource (in this case space on the road), you use prices, not taxes.

Congestion charges have become very popular and successful in London—it's too bad Bloomberg's attempt to install them in New York failed.

<comment><USER26> > Congestion charges have become very popular and successful in London

Popular and successful with who, exactly? I don't know a single person that likes it. Traffic was reduced for a few years but now it's just as bad as ever. And the cost of public transport continually rises above inflation. At least they recently shrank the chargable area.

So what has it done, exactly, except raise income for the city and raise prices for businesses on the border and those who need vehicles to function?

<comment><USER27> I like it, lots of my friends like it as well.

If they did not enact it, things on the road would be worse. They just need to make it more.

The cost of public transport is ridiculous, London has to be the most expensive city to travel around.

<comment><USER28> Really?

You think £1.30 to get a bus as far as you like is expensive? and £4 to get as many buses as you like in a day is expensive?

<comment><USER26> Maybe not for you. I did a little calculation at <http://listentotaxman.com/> and put in the minimum wage for a 37.5 hour week. If you need to take a few buses to get to work, over 10% of your £190 weekly pay packet gets eaten up on travel.

It's definitely cheaper (though less flexible) than running a car on your own, but some of the costs of a car can be spread between more than one person, which isn't the case with public transport.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that teenagers now get free bus travel and discounted Tube fares. I could've done with that a few years ago!

<comment><USER29> London doesn't allow you to tranfer to another bus with a single ticket? Here in Ottawa busses are $3.25 and about to go up, and I think that's more than fair.

(I suppose pun intended)

<comment><USER30> Yeah, London doesn't have transfer tickets. It's annoying.

At any rate, if you take more than 2 buses per day then getting a monthly bus pass/travelcard is cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's a potentially dangerous line that the US is approaching where, factoring in all the exemptions, credits, and deductions, a majority of the population will not be paying income taxes at all. Thus, a majority of the population will be deciding (via their votes) how much and on what the taxes of the minority will be spent.

The only saving grace, if you can call it that, is that the people who actually place the votes (senators and reps) are themselves almost exclusively from that well-off minority.

<comment><USER32> This is pretty disingenuous. I've held low-wage jobs, and so have most of the members of my immediate family, and taxes took a serious bite out our paychecks. You are referring to the federal income tax, as many people do in debates like this, but lower-middle class people pay a much greater percentage of their income in payroll taxes than do wealthy people; the "income tax" debate is misleading.

<comment><USER33> A person making $20,000 pays the same US federal payroll tax rate as a person making $100,000 (7.65% in 2010, 5.65% in 2011). This tax pays for Social Security and Medicare (retirement income and retirment healthcare). Federal income tax pays for most of everything else: national defense, public safety, infrastructure, education.

In 2009, 47% of US households paid zero federal income tax. We are close to the point where the voting power of non-tax payers exceeds that of tax payers - the point at which people can make decisions they don't have to pay for.

Name your issue: foreign wars, Wall Street bailouts, universal healthcare, bridges to nowhere, prescription drugs for seniors, cash for clunkers. I don't know about you, but I want the people making those kinds of decisions to have some skin in the game.

It is not at all disingenuous to have concerns about this.

<comment><USER32> First, payroll taxes cost twice as much as that.

Second, payroll taxes are capped; you stop paying them after ~100k.

Third, your overall point is bankrupt. Regardless of what particular bucket of money their taxes are paid into, working people at all income levels are stung by our tax rates, which are in turn lower than virtually every other western industrialized nation. It is simply not the case that the working class has no skin in the game.

<comment><USER33> One: right. The employee pays 7.65%. The employer pays the other half.

Two: right (the rate is actually 1.45% on wages over $106,800 in 2010) - <USER2> idea being that you shouldn't have to pay in infinitely given that the benefits are capped.

Three: it is ironic that you mention bankruptcy... that is what tends to happen when the people making spending decisions face no direct consequences.

Let me give you a scenario for the sake of discussion. Suppose everyone paid a 10% federal income tax rate. Now suppose the government said, "We are considering a trillion dollar war, a trillion dollar bailout, and a trillion dollar stimulus package. You, taxpayer, can have all of the wonderful benefits of these things for the low cost of changing your federal income tax rate to 30% for the next 10 years. How about it?" You might have more people questioning these decisions.

<comment><USER32> I don't know what point you're trying to make. You cited a payroll tax rate that was half what people really pay in, and implied that it was the same rate that wealthy people paid. Of course you were wrong on both counts. It takes no great insight to notice this; the same observation is at the center of Warren Buffet's complaint that his tax rate is effectively lower than his secretary's.

Your analysis is just dead wrong, and no hypothetical digs you out of it.

<comment><USER33> So far, my "overall point is bankrupt", my "analysis is just dead wrong", I am in some kind of hole I need to dig myself out of, and the point I attempted to defend is "pretty disingenuous". Ok, may we proceed?

The original point is this: "There's a potentially dangerous line that the US is approaching where... a majority of the population will not be paying income taxes at all." That statement contains two contentions: 1) the US is approaching the line where 50% of the population will be paying no income tax at all, 2) this is potentially dangerous.

The first contention hasn't been disputed. The second is what I believe we are debating.

You interject that the whole discussion ("the income tax debate") is "misleading"/"disingenuous" because it doesn't consider payroll taxes - something that "lower middle-class people" pay a disproportionate amount of (relative to their income) compared to "wealthy people.'

I attempted to point out that payroll tax isn't really relevant to the question because everyone pays the same rate up until the point that the tax is capped, which is commensurate with the point at which the benefits are capped.

I will give you that $100,000 per year isn't all that "wealthy." And I'll give you the following: A person making $500,000 will pay 2.77% of wages in payroll tax (6.2% of the first $106,800, plus 1.45% of total wages). A person making $200,000 will pay 4.76% (same rules). People making $20,000 and $100,000, will both pay 7.65% (same rules).

If I am wrong that the employee pays half of the payroll tax (7.65%) and the employer pays the other half (another 7.65%) please let me know. However, I don't feel it is relevant to the central question under debate.

I don't feel your point about payroll taxes is significant enough to dismiss the question about income taxes. Is the 50% threshold "potentially dangerous" or not?

<comment><USER34> The person the government sends the tax bill to is rarely the person whose wealth is reduced by the tax. Since all employers must pay payroll tax, there are few practical alternatives for earning a living (inelastic supply of labor), and employers are price-sensitive and will employ fewer people if they cost more (elastic demand for labor), even the employer's portion of the tax comes from wealth that would've gone to the employees.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The problems of the world summed up in a thread: the average IQ of hacker news is way above average and yet people feel the need to: comment on issues when they have no idea of the underlying numbers, use terms that they clearly haven't bothered to even look at on wikipedia or a dictionary, repeat fallacies that any undergraduate econ student knows is false, propose vast social engineering schemes with no regard as to their unintended effects.

I mean if we're the smart ones and we're pulling this bullshit what hope does the world have? engineers are supposed to know better. :(

</comment><comment><USER36> My idea along these lines, which I may have explained in this forum before, is to replace one of the houses of parliament (or congress, or whatever you call your local bicameral legislature) with the "House of Taxpayers", where representatives are elected by taxpayers whose vote counts _in proportion to how much tax they pay_. The other house remains a "House of Commons" where the one man/one vote rule applies.

The point of this idea is that every new piece of legislation must be approved (in effect) by two groups: the people who are affected by it (everybody) and the people who have to pay for it (disproportionately the rich).

</comment><comment><USER37> His idea about a 10% cut across the board is so common-sense - I've heard it before - yet we never ever hear this from anyone in Washington (not that I've heard, anyway). Why not?

10% may seem extreme - fair enough - but why not 2%? Could we try _one_ year where _every federal department_ has 2% less to spend than they did the year before? 2% isn't a lot, and would go a long way toward each dept rooting out their own 'waste/fraud/abuse', instead of making govt larger by adding oversight processes and staff.

And I _do not_ mean "2% less than what we'd projected to increase our budget by next year". I mean if your department had a budget of $1,000,000, you only get a budget of $980,000 this year. Shaving 2% off a 3.5 trillion budget would be - what? - 70 billion? While that doesn't quite get us out of the mess we're in, it's a good start.

<comment><USER38> > Why not?

You're asking the people who are receiving the money to make the rules that they get less of it.

I think it's fairly obvious.

<comment><USER37> sort of, but not really. the people making the rules - proposing and approving budgets - don't _get_ the money themselves. They do get power by apportioning it out though.

BUT... if _everyone_ had their relative power reduced equally by truly 'across-the-board' cuts, there would't be any real change in the 'my budget is bigger than yours' contests that undoubtedly go on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Taxing the rich (even more than they are already which IMHO is a _lot_ ) is just punishing success and rewarding failure.

<comment><USER40> Of all those that agree with such argument, I'd like to get an answer to these questions:

1) have you traveled to a developing|third-world country? 2) if you haven't, you should. if you have... 2a) what price tag do you put on first-class infrastructure that makes your business run smoothly, not to mention make it safer to deliver? 2b) what price tag do you pay to ensure that you have a well-nourished and healthy work-force that is more intelligent, stronger and efficient? 2c) what price tag do you pay to ensure that everyone has access to a world-class education (again, compare to a third-world country, I know ours sucks compared to others') that is again, more knowledgeable, more creative, etc and will one day help you boost margins, compete globally, etc?

And I could go on...

You see.. safety goes hand in hand with: 1) economic stability 2) health (ever wonder why some people risk their own lives to cross borders? their families are starving/dying!) 3) education 4) and much more than just a strong military, uncorrupt/just police/court system

And those things cost money. If you'd rather grow wealthy in another country, I dare you to try! And if you're already wealthy and you think taxing you more is unfair, I dare you to move to countries like Mexico where many business owners now have to pay "taxes" to drug gangs or else, they just don't go to prison, they get killed!

I'm not arguing that our tax system doesn't need reform or that current rates are fair, I'm arguing that if you want to be wealthy one day or are already, it's in your best interest to contribute more. Consider it an investment where you can. Yes, surely there is waste, but focus on that, don't whine about the fact that you're getting punished because YOU ARE NOT... you were rewarded with all these great opportunities and public goods and services you seem to take for granted, that's all (again, see my first question above).

<comment><USER41> You're arguing that education, infrastructure, and a non-corrupt court system is responsible for this country's success, which may well be true. However, only a tiny amount of spending is on those things. 85% of spending is on social security, the military, and medicaid. We could cut all of those things dramatically without a corresponding decrease in the country's economic output.

<comment><USER42> Preventing old people and sick people from dying in the streets is just one of those costs you're going to have to pay for, like it or not. Raise Social Security to 68, maybe. Cut it off, though, and you'll find that the country will still pay, one way or another. (Maybe force kids to support their parents - it could be a completely different solution from Social Security, but that money is going to get spent.)

<comment><USER40> I'm glad you bring up that idea out at the end (by now, few will read it, but that's okay). It pains me to learn that some people in this great country (for cultural reasons?) don't do this. It's a "crazy" idea, but one that works very well in other countries. Latin Americans, Indians, and others will attest to that. I wouldn't call for forcing families to take care of their elderly, but I'd find ways to motivate that because it's simply sad that _we_ have to take care of others' parents.

And yes, the whole problem with our health care system isn't so much that we're paying (we have to no matter what, either by premium increases or footing the bill for emergency patients). The problem is that it sucks at preventing major health problems that later cost more if undetected and not treated early.

<comment><USER43> The problem with that system is that it incentivizes overpopulation. If your retirement plan is your children, you have a lot of children.

<comment><USER40> Perhaps. But grandchildren, brothers, sisters, etc can all help, not just children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The best way of taxing the rich is producing luxury goods. The fact that you can buy food, transport, housing, clothing at a magnitude or two (or more) higher cost is a sort of volontary tax. When you buy a $1000 bottle of champagne instead of drinking water, a large part of that money takes a pretty short path to pay the wages of people that never would buy the same bottle themselves. And would maybe be out of a job if they didn't take a small part in producing that bottle of champagne. So the fact that luxury goods exist is a sort of tax that spreads the wealth of the people that choose to afford it.

<comment><USER43> Yes, luxury goods amount to a tax on the status-conscious who can afford them --but the problem is that they send a price signal that more luxury goods are needed, when what we really need is investment in infrastructure, basic and applied research, etc.

<comment><USER44> That's a really good point. As always, balance is called for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> _In reality, fairness is not so much about the actual distribution of loot as it is about the psychology of how you feel about it. That's important to understand because the rich won't give up their cash unless they feel they are getting something in return._

I appreciate his attempt at a nuanced view of the subject, but I can't see taking your possessions under threat of violence as anything other than reprehensible.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think most of the rich people as described in the article (top 2%) already get most, if not all, of the perks he lists. It may not be in the law, but make no mistake. These people don't go to the DMV (who cares about the express lane), don't read their own mail (so much for gratitude letters), often don't drive their own car (carpool eligible in most places), don't care about social services and how much they cost and already have a large influence on the election process.

Scott feels as if he's "on a path toward certain doom" when paying attention to news. In my case it's when I think about how little hope there is to radically change the system considering that the people in charge are the ones who profit the most from that system, by a long shot.

</comment><comment><USER47> Eliminate all federal taxes and print the money needed for government operations. Effectively this becomes an inflation tax. Automatically it affects the wealthy in direct proportion to their wealth as opposed to their most recent earnings. No loopholes, no games, no misallocation of resources for tax breaks.

<comment><USER48> This would hit people with savings in cash (or bonds), i.e. the middle class. The rich tend to have assets (or foreign holdings) which should be largely inflation-proof.

<comment><USER49> ..and old people on fixed income.

<comment><USER50> If you work for the post office or are a teacher, for example, your pension adjusts for inflation. Other govt jobs are similar?

So, inflating out of the problem won't help here.

<comment><USER51> Not true. Your pension adjust for OFFICIAL inflation, I invite you to make a simple shopping cart on Excel with your most important expenses and compare with official figures. Official's is allays less(all govs massage the numbers as there is so much money at stake).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I like the "rich" driving lane idea - put up X licenses for auction in each city, let people bid up the price, let the market decide how much time is worth.

<comment><USER52> These were kind of proposed in DC (I think they may actually exist in San Diego or somewhere), where you pay a variable rate to use the carpool lanes based on demand. So during rush hour it would cost $6 and 11am on a saturday it would cost $.50.

People didn't like the idea because they would be "Lexus lanes" giving special privileges to the rich. Scott Adams is right that if we really want to solve the budge problems we may need to accept that the people who can help the most may need some sort of special privileges.

<comment><USER53> "we may need to accept that the people who can help the most may need some sort of special privileges."

Because no-bid contracts, not going to jail when they commit crimes, real education for their kids, not living in crime zones, food that isn't poison, actual health care, living an extra three years, etc. aren't enough already.

<comment><USER54> To some extent... no, they aren't. They're the status quo. If you change nothing, the rich will still get them. That was the big point really. If you want to share some of their money, propose something else in exchange.

It will only change during an actual complete crash of the value of money. And even then it's not guaranteed, because they will still have access to an extensive network of influential people, while "we" won't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> A low-hanging fruit would be to retool Social Security to be relevant to the needs of more affluent contributors; they might feel better about paying in if they are assured a payout that might actually support what they would consider to be a reasonably comfortable retirement. As it stands, Social Security is pretty much a total loss for higher income brackets.

As for a power incentive, the only one I might envision is to create a public forum where the public and their representatives can debate how their tax money is being spent, and a user's "karma" or default visibility bonus on the site would be based on their tax contribution.

<comment><USER56> You only pay SS on your first 105k or so of income (indexed to inflation).

<comment><USER55> A cap which would presumably be raised along with the payouts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Recall that uber-rich Steve Jobs has an annual salary from Apple of $1, wears black turtlenecks and jeans (ever anything else?), and is building a modest 5000 square foot home on property he owns outright. What to tax?

<comment><USER58> In that case, also recall that the "net impact" that he has already had on the world economy in terms of jobs created, sales taxes on products sold etc. is probably much larger than whatever you would tax his income "fairly".

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I think the best solution would be to get rid of income taxes and just have sales and property taxes.

Taxing the rich a higher rate is always going to seem unfair to them because the only way those taxes can be lessened is by making less money. Taxing $2 million house at a special rate is a different story, it seems fair because if you don't want to pay the tax you live in a more modest house. Luxury cars, fur coats, yachts, etc. can all have different sales tax rates and they still become a status symbol many of the rich are willing to pay for but not being forced to pay for.

<comment><USER14> This is considered by many to be unfair because consumption inequality is not as large as income inequality.

Peter Thiel may be 10,000-100,000x richer than me, but I'd be very surprised if he consumes even 1000x more than I do.

<comment><USER59> The consumption tax doesn't have to be a flat tax. You pay more tax for a pack a cigarettes than a pack of paper.

Peter Theil makes about 200x more a year than the average person, but he doesn't have to consume 200 times more than the average person if all the items he wants to buy are at a much higher tax rate. They only way to avoid the tax is to not buy luxury items, and if a billionaire wants to live the life of a guy making 50k a year, let him have at it.

<comment><USER60> You're taxing the wrong thing. Your idea would be great if we wanted billionaires to act like regular joes. But generally, in North America, we don't care about that. The problem was about fixing the deficit.

yummyfajitas was right: consumption taxes are generally considered regressive. Also, the rich, or even the professional class, have many more options to disguise their consumption as business expenses.

<comment><USER59> The point is billionaires won't live like regular joes. You think just because the tax is higher they will start purchasing a Timex instead of a Rolex?

Even now it would be hard to justify a $100k car as a business expense, with a simplified sales and property tax code it would be even easier to stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Don't we already have this? If you have lawyers, accountants and possibly lobbyists, you have an entirely different relationship with the gov't than normal people.

</comment><comment><USER61> I reject the premise of the entire article that "The hole is too big to plug with cost cutting or economic growth alone." The hole was created by increasing spending, it can be closed by reducing spending.

</comment><comment><USER62> A salient note about how government austerity works: the Department of Energy labs have decided that as a cost-cutting measure, they will enact a 2-year pay freeze for all employees (except the top-level managers who work for Lockheed, not DoE). Hail the great cost-cutting measures! Except the government will still be putting the same amount of money into the labs andyway; we've been getting emails talking about how they're now trying to come up with ways to spend this windfall of excess cash. So far it sounds like they're going to go for some pseudo-green initiative; maybe we'll just get a new Greenification Department, which inspects all of our workspaces and penalizes us when we're not green enough. (This particular pay freeze is because Dr. Chu wants to make Obama look good. Good policy for a Democrat, screw the researchers but keep the $2 million salary for the head of the lab... wait isn't that what Republicans are expected to do?)

The talk about an across-the-board 10% cut made me think of that--unless it's specified that employee wages and benefits must not suffer, such a cut will probably just end up boning the minions.

</comment><comment><USER63> _The bad version is that anyone who pays taxes at a rate above some set amount gets to use the car pool lane without a passenger. Or perhaps the rich are allowed to park in handicapped-only spaces._

This is all over the place: e.g. London congestion fee (rich have no trouble paying, and it clears the lanes for them as an added bonus). Same for all other: parked in the wrong place? The secretary will send off the fine.

IKEA: Kamprad insists, that he and his family have no control over Ikea, which went entirely to Stichting Ingka Foundation and its subsidiary Inka Holdings, based in Liechtenstein. Billions are spread through Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Virgin Islands (travel Branson :) and Cyprus. When confronted, Kampard has declared, that Ikea respects the law and pays its taxes, but he added that it doesn't want to pay too much (GOOG comes to mind with Irish- Dutch-Bermuda triangle money laundering scheme).

It is just a structure optimisation, which gives the possibility and flexibility to use capital towards new markets to develop business without the burden of double taxation ...declared Kamprad. [src: SVT]

</comment><comment><USER64> The US Government could give out badges for every $1m in taxes you pay... then the rich could level up every April 15th.

<comment><USER5> This is not bad at all. I feel like the government should use game theory everywhere - for the poor they want to succeed and teach themselves, for the rich paying taxes, etc. It's proven to work in so many situations.

<comment><USER21> Quibble: "Game theory" refers to scenarios like prisoner's dilemma and so forth, not to gameplay mechanics.

<comment><USER5> Accurate quibble, my apologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> There's certainly a lot of merit to this article. I think it's important to remember that the "rich" aren't necessarily people as wealthy as Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. Moreover, while there are many people born into wealth, there are many who make their own wealth through earnest work and frugal investments. They're the ones who are likely more outraged than "taxes on the rich," and it's a very valid argument.

If we look to how the private sector handles this, we see that airlines have their own VIP status system. You might have "Elite Access" status on Continental Airlines, you might have an American Express Platinum card, you might be an HHonors member at Hilton. These companies offer loyalty incentives to hold onto customers, and I think it's a model that the government could eventually adopt.

</comment><comment><USER66> Some of these already exist

1\. Time: e.g There are already carpool lanes where you can ride by paying an extra fee. Even otherwise, if you are rich enough, you can just pay the fine, which would be the added tax.

5\. Power: Rich people already have power by having access to lobbyists or to the appropriate media. If you are rich enough, you can fund a movement on your own.

Others don't make sense in a democracy where everyone is presumably equal, e.g. writing thank you notes to richer people for being kind enough to participate in the functioning of the country. As another comment said, this is like moving toward a visible aristocracy.

Also, it is mostly not true that the country doesn't go to war unless the middle class majority is on board.

<comment><USER65> "Just paying the fine" undermines the entire argument about saving time. When a cop pulls you over for illegally driving in the carpool lane, he's not going to run out of his car, hand you the ticket, and run back. He's going to keep you there for fifteen minutes, because he wants to waste your time. It's just not worth it.

Regarding power, I think you're overestimating how rich these people are. The people in the highest federal income tax brackets aren't making over a million a year. For 2010, the highest federal tax bracket is 35% for above $375k/year. It's 33% for over $170k. Just for reference, if you're married, filing jointly, and you're both engineers making $90k or something, you would be in the 33% tax bracket. Certainly these people don't have access "to lobbyists or to the appropriate media."

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Lots of gems in here. My favorite line: "They also know that any project can get by with 10% less money if there is no alternative."

The world would be a much better place if there was less quibbling overall.

</comment><comment><USER68> Let's say there are ten people in a room and they each give five dollars to an "elected" member who gets to redistribute that money, after which all the members re-vote on the next elected member. A savvy elected member would redistribute the money to five members, plus himself, thus perpetually stay in power and continue to receive the majority of votes.

I use this illustration to show that as long as one official or group gets to continue in power, they don't have incentive to do right by everyone; rather, they are incentivized to do well to only a slim majority.

The short-term problem this article presents is that our country's budget crisis demands a surplus contribution from the wealthy. For argument's sake, I'll admit it does.

The understated, long-term problem is that elected officials are personally motivated to spend their political power on getting re-elected, which only requires making a little more than half of their constituents satisfied.

My suggestion would be to stop allowing anyone to be re-elected. Once they know that their decisions don't have to be popular, they're free to make decisions that help long-term, even at short-term discomfort or dissatisfaction. There are obvious problems (how this reflects on their party, for example), but I think that there's a solution embedded in this line of reasoning.

</comment><comment><USER69> 1\. Fix healthcare costs: single-payer.

Really. That's it.

$600B in administrative savings alone, which doesn't take into account the cost reductions that the system will achieve by negotiating rates downward.

</comment><comment><USER70> Why have the rich suddenly became a bunch of babies? What's with all the whining? Having money isn't enough, now they want to be worshipped like feudal lords.

<comment><USER71> Do you similarly decry the people who spend extra money at amusement parks to skip lines? Seems like exactly the same thing as this. You pay more: you get more.

<comment><USER72> By skipping the lines at amusement parks, those who don't pay extra have to wait even longer for their turn than they would if that system wasn't in place. So in effect, those who pay more benefit and simultaneously penalise those who do not.

<comment><USER71> That wasn't my question. My question was do you similarly decry those people for being "a bunch of babies"?

<comment><USER72> If there was no fast pass system and people were saying "I'm rich, I'm entitled to a system where people like me get to the front of the queue," then yes, suck it up.

<comment><USER73> That's the whole point of the article; the rich must perceive that they'll get additional value (ie., no waiting in line) before they'll voluntarily agree to pay additional taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> He(Pres Obama) said that it doesn't make any sense that people who have accountants and attorneys can get away with not paying taxes, while the rest of the ppl get stuck with the bill. This translates to, "bye bye middle class." The Pres was put in offc by the richest men in the world, he is not going 2 make them pay more taxes, hell, they benefit from taxes, especially the biggest of all(inflation). The way to level the playing field is not by stopping tax cuts to the top 2% in income, the way to level the playing field would be to extend tax cuts to the bottom 98% in terms of income. Bigger government won't solve anything. If you look at world history, you will notice that any government that tries to do too much, does not do anything well enough..

</comment><comment><USER75> The ultra wealthy have done a great job of engineering the system to control how much they pay in - so why do we think incentivizing them would work? It may take time, but every perk that could potentially be offered at a premium would be just one more race to the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER76> How about just let the rich be rich and get richer, but making it very hard to pass on inheritance. So their kids would be on equal playing field with everybody else. That would make it their vested interest to improve conditions in that field for all.

<comment><USER77> Except why is it any business of anyone else's whether one wants to spend one's money or save it and pass it to one's children?

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I think the "power" category is best, but obviously a sensitive topic. What we need is a layered democracy, where the smart people who understand a field and have power to influence laws there (with the advice of experts in whatever fields those laws have side-effects on), but not in a selfish way.

The way congress works now, it's the people with money who influence law, and some of them are doing it either out of self-interest, or in the short-term financial interests of their institutional shareholders (401(k) managers, for example), who don't understand anything about the domain.

<comment><USER79> But Congressmen and the executive honestly think that they're listening to "the smart people" right now, for the most part. When they consider copyright issues, they listen to the smart people who run record companies and movie studios. When they consider energy policy, they listen to the smart people who run oil companies. (Big oil was in charge of the Gulf oil spill cleanup because the government genuinely didn't have the expertise.) When they consider finance, they listen to the smart people who run the banks. And so forth. Or so they say --- and you can call it rationalization for cashing their lobbyists' large checks, but I think they honestly believe it regardless. After all, these folks do have a record of achievement in their fields, and how else is a Congressman to judge?

What we need is a better answer to that question, which has measures for expertise other than "they made a lot of money at it." Unfortunately, it's hard to see anything like Adams's proposal, of explicit preferential treatment for the rich, as being a step in that direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> The rich and their tax situation is really only part of the wider picture of how to govern an economy in a sustainable manner. It's my opinion that we need to take more of a systems approach, making use of lessons from cybernetics.

It's pretty obvious now that the economy is not like an ecosystem with multiple more or less autonomous agents acting independently, but is instead more like a machine where information flows are centralised and significant components of the system can act in concert.

</comment><comment><USER81> Deliberately proposing bad solutions sounds fun, but wow could that backfire. Applied to software projects, the "bad" version will get the go-ahead, and we'll be stuck maintaining it forever.

You could argue that this is already happening, but the difference is I think the people proposing bad solutions are usually not aware their ideas are bad. I'm sure I've been guilty of proposing and implementing bad ideas in software myself.

</comment><comment><USER82> (after reading through that 340 comments)

So no hope for America! At least not from hackers. Thanks God!

Solving the tax problem by hackers has a probability like RIAA solving the ilegal file sharing problem.

Instead, as engineers and people thinking is systems and infrastructures hackers should reverse-engineer the problem. That would be a success!

Hint: Ask yourself: "How Rich Are Looking At Taxpayers?"

</comment><comment><USER83> We live in a society that uses fiat currency so why does it matter how much we're in debt? Why can't we simply say "that $12,000,000,000,000 we owed? We just hit a triple word score and we have it in the bank now." The USA has carried a debt for the last 190 years and we haven't gone bankrupt yet.

<comment><USER84> Because Fiat currency is a representation of a promise that is paid for with human life, rather than a precious resource. Our debt is a guarantee that american tax payers have to pay OR the government will need to declare bankruptcy of sorts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> My bad idea: Taxes and number of votes both increase on how "gifted" you are - smarter people would therefore have more say in the government, and have more incentive to make it more efficient and do it's job better.

I have no clue how to measure or implement this.

<comment><USER86> Not to criticize but I think you missed his point. The way I read it the point of the article is this...

We can't force the rich to pay more because they always find a way out of it. We know this because there were days when upper tax rates were 90% but tax revenue was roughly the same because the rich can lobby for loop holes and pay people to exploit those loop holes. The rich will find a way to keep from paying too much in taxes even if they have to buy some backwards little country and form their own nation.

So the only way to get rich people's money is to find something we can give them which makes them feel like they're spending their money for something rather than giving it away.

So the stupid ideas are in the context of "how can we make the rich give us their money?"

<comment><USER87> Who is John Galt?

<comment><USER88> I very nearly fell for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> If I could, I would link tax paying to the National Lottery. The more tax you pay the bigger your chance of winning big.

It would make a refreshing change to see people queueing up on a Saturday night, desperate to pay their tax.

<comment><USER87> I would have an emotional reaction from seeing that sight but I wouldn't call it "refreshing".

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Here's a good video on the topic: "Warren Buffett's Tax Rate is Lower than His Secretary's" - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu5B-2LoC4s>

</comment><comment><USER90> Actually, every rich tax payer should be given a free trip to developing countries where poverty and crime is rampant, and the rich are forced to live in gilded prisons because it is so unsafe outside.

</comment><comment><USER67> My "bad" thought: The rich work hard because they're running out of time. The poor work less because they have too much time to waste.

<comment><USER67> Disclaimer: I am poor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> How about land ownership being allocated according to the size of your tax bill?

</comment><comment><USER91> In India Govt is auctioning _street names_. You can grab one.

</comment><comment><USER92> Tax the rich too much and then they stop creating jobs for all you whiners who can't hold on to your money. The whole notion of taxing the rich more than the poor seems unfair, what makes you worthy of benefits and him worthy of a penalty? Just because he was more responsible and hard working than you were? Americans are not broke, it's the government that is broke and instead of take the negative consequences, they would rather have someone else do it.

<comment><USER93> > Tax the rich too much and then they stop creating jobs for all you whiners > who can't hold on to your money.

This is true. You're essentially increasing the tax burden on the entrepreneur class. This means less money spent on business formation, job creation and capital investment. The last thing that the US Economy needs right now. Not only that, but many "rich" might just decide to leave the country and go somewhere where they are allowed to keep the money they earn. What will you tax then?

Taxing the rich is a stupid policy. Look at the unintended consequences. There are two sides to every coin.

The problem with the US economy is simply that there is too much government and it's choking the private sector like a giant parasite killing it's host. CUT GOVERNMENT SPENDING.

<comment><USER94> Or the problem might be that wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few who are vulnerable to groupthink and consequently triggering financial disasters with their incompetence. DISTRIBUTE MORE OF THE WEALTH.

<comment><USER95> "Or the problem might be that wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few who are vulnerable to groupthink and consequently triggering financial disasters with their incompetence. DISTRIBUTE MORE OF THE WEALTH."

"distribute more of the wealth" sounds so clean and nice. What you are really doing is taking this money away by force, which is anything but.

Here is a scenario: Let's say you are a senior developer for a company and you make $90,000/year. A new guy joins the company with almost no experience and your boss tells you that he needs to "distribute more of your wealth". You will make $60,000 so he can make $30,000 more. He is putting in much less effort than you. This is okay, right?

Everyone that wants wealth redistribution should be put into the same situation. I think we would have much less people out there interested in taxing the rich to death.

"consequently triggering financial disasters"

What about the people that took out loans they obviously couldn't afford? It's the same with credit card debt. People blame the credit card companies for giving them the loans in the first place, yet they keep putting themselves into more and more debt buying things they don't need. We need more personal responsibility.

<comment><USER94> _"distribute more of the wealth" sounds so clean and nice_. Indeed. Much like 'cut government spending'. My point is that slogan-based solutions are unhelpful.

You sound like someone who takes Ayn Rand seriously as an economist, as opposed to a philosopher. The truth is that most of the wealthy were born into the upper classes of income, and further that wealth tends to create wealth quite apart from the physical or mental effort of the owner. And in all cases, both chance and social institutions that have been built up over centuries contribute disproportionately to becoming wealthy.

So let me give you a counter example: you work very hard in your company as a senior developer. Once day the boss comes and tells you you're fired because he's hired his son to do your job. Now you're on unemployment for months due to an economic downturn, but because there are no income taxes you get no unemployment benefits. To top it off, you lost your health benefits when you lost your job, and now you find you have cancer (33% of us will get it at some point). The good news is, it's curable. The bad news is the treatment is prohibitively expensive, so like all of the losers in society's Randian economic game, we're going to expect you to simply die gracefully in a cardboard box somewhere out of sight. Thanks for playing, though.

<comment><USER95> "Much like 'cut government spending'."

So..why did you say it in the first place? It's obviously something you believe.

"You sound like someone who takes Ayn Rand seriously as an economist, as opposed to a philosopher. The truth is that most of the wealthy were born into the upper classes of income"

Define wealthy. You are going to the extremes. Wealthy to me might be $100,000/year if I'm living in the mid-west. You also need to back up that statements with some citations/sources.

Here is a list of wealthy people that were born poor: <http://www.intelligenius.net/rich-people-who-were-born-poor/> There are countless others that may not have billions, but still live very comfortable lives.

I'm really tired of people that don't want to put the time and effort into becoming successful trying to knock the actual successful people down a notch by saying it was luck or they were born into wealth (that must be the only reason they have money).

I have a quote for you:

"Chance favors only the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur

I have felt this way for years. There are opportunities all around us every day. If you aren't educated enough to act on it, it will pass you by/you won't even be able to recognize it as an opportunity.

With Internet the being so prevalent, you could easily learn a new skill online, without ever having to pay exorbitant education fees. (MIT has free coursework available). Every city I've lived in has had free Internet access through the library. There are no more excuses. If you aren't physically or mentally incapable, you can succeed if you put in the effort.

"so let me give you a counter example: you work very hard in your company as a senior developer. Once day the boss comes and tells you you're fired because he's hired his son to do your job."

The boss owns the company. If he wants to hire his son, it's his freedom. If I was a senior developer, I probably would have the skills to easily find a job somewhere else. In a few months, when the boss realizes his son can't do the job, it will be too late. If it isn't, I will need a much higher salary to come back.

"Now you're on unemployment for months due to an economic downturn, but because there are no income taxes you get no unemployment benefits."

So when did I say we should have no taxes? You are once again taking things to the extreme to further your point. Sounds like a red herring to me.

"To top it off, you lost your health benefits when you lost your job, and now you find you have cancer (33% of us will get it at some point). The good news is, it's curable. The bad news is the treatment is prohibitively expensive"

Treatment is expensive no matter what. The difference is that either the government pays the cost (IE: the tax payers) pr your insurance company pays for it. My problem with all of the current universal health care advocates is that they propose plans that assume medical care is an infinite resource. There needs to be some way to limit doctor visits or people will be coming into the office many more times than they should (because hey, it's free I'm paying for it). There needs to be overall limits in place and after those limits are hit (maybe a yearly visit limit), you need to pay out of pocket. If we got rid of the insurance companies altogether, the hospitals wouldn't be able to charge $100 for a bottle of aspirin.

Another point I would like to make is that in pretty much all countries with socialized medicine, there are long waiting lines for things like cancer treatments. I have many older relatives that live in Canada that have had to come over to the US because they weren't able to get treatments in time.

"so like all of the losers in society's Randian economic game, we're going to expect you to simply die gracefully in a cardboard box somewhere out of sight. Thanks for playing, though."

red herring #2. Your post is filled with them.

<comment><USER95> "A problem doesn't have to have a single cause; in fact, most real world problems don't. I think it's a good idea to cut spending. I also think it's a good idea to distribute wealth."

We are already redistributing wealth through taxes and social programs.

"But the fact is that most of them started well-off and got richer."

Citation?

"And it's also a fact that it is easier to earn a million dollars if you already have a million dollars."

It's also easier when you have the mindset of someone that is successful. Poor parents pass on poor decision making to their kids.

"So you don't mind if they take 35% by force, but 39% is looting?"

When did we ever talk about percentages? I seriously doubt that all of the social programs you are talking about would only be a matter of 3%.

"As for your anecdotal long lines in Canada, I'm guessing that option would look pretty good from your cardboard box, dying slowly of liver failure."

I guess it gives them hope. If the waiting lines are so long that you die before you get care, it doesn't really matter.

"But you've indicated you're immune to bad luck, that you could always find a place willing to hire a good developer even in the middle of major layoffs and even if you need to take time off every day for chemo. Good for you. But what do we do with all the people who don't have your skills, training or work ethic? What do we do with the losers? Let them die in the streets? What do we do with them?"

How do we stop our hospitals from being flooded with people that don't really need care? There needs to be some system in place to force people to only go to the hospitals when they absolutely need it, or the system will eventually collapse. Nobody seems to want to think in the long-term, which is dangerous.

<comment><USER94> I'm well aware that we're already redistributing wealth, I'm simply advocating we do more of it by raising taxes on the wealthy.

If you Google 'economic mobility' you'll come up with a lot of citations supporting the idea that most rich people come from families in the upper reaches of the economic spectrum. Here's a particularly good study that got a lot of press a couple of years ago: [http://www.economicmobility.org/reports_and_research/other?i...](http://www.economicmobility.org/reports_and_research/other?id=0004) . Keep in mind that I'm not saying no one goes from being poor to rich, only that it's a minority of the wealthy. One reason that it may seem like there are more is that those stories are more compelling and so get more media attention (who wants to hear about the upper middle class doctor's kid who became a millionaire?), and because Republicans focus on those stories in their campaign rhetoric to deflect taxation on the wealthy.

It would be terrible to die waiting for treatment; fortunately that doesn't happen any more often in Canada than it does in the free-market US (where, until the recent health care reform, insurance companies could arbitrarily drop sick patients altogether).

And contrary to whatever ideas you may have about hospital life, they're really not all that pleasant. Most people stay away from them unless absolutely necessary, to the point that a lot of people (heart patients in particular) don't go when in fact they should. No doubt there are some hypochondriacs who waste doctors' time, but they are hardly justification for throwing up our hands at helping the truly sick who greatly outnumber them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> Communism sucks, so there's no alternative to the 0.1% (winner) takes all (80%) system that we've got.

Of course we have a "vampire squid on our face" (GS) but it seems to be necessary to allow technological progress and the industrialisation of the rest of the world

We have scarcity now, but it won't last. Money will be abolished. The question is how do we spend money now to bring about the end of scarcity sooner. Well conspicuous consumption and luxuries are probably no help.

<comment><USER97> >Communism sucks, so there's no alternative to the 0.1% (winner) takes all (80%) system that we've got.

Wow, thanks for making things so clear. I had no idea that the alternative to our emerging world of total corporate feudalism was straight-up dictatorial Stalinism! Who'd-a thunkit?</comment></comment>


Universal Cloud Backup - <AUTHOR> https://www.rsync.net/products/universal.html <comment><USER2> >>> ## [https://www.rsync.net/pricing.html](https://www.rsync.net/pricing.html)

>>> ## price per year for 2 TB:

>>> ## 2000 GB * $0.025 GB/mo * 12 mo

>>> 2000 * 0.025 * 12

600.0

I use rclone (personal backups to Dropbox): a real pain to set up but works well at a fraction of the cost ($16/mo for 2TB = $192/yr).

rclone is glacially slow, however -- I'd much prefer an rsync/rsnapshot option. :-/

<comment><USER3> > _rclone is glacially slow, however -- I 'd much prefer an rsync/rsnapshot > option. :-/_

Have you tried tweaking the number of transfers, and the transfer chunk size?

<comment><USER2> Yes all of that (thank you h/e for the suggestions ;-). I backup a large datastore: rclone needs to scan everything to `diff` local << >> Dropbox -- takes literally 10-12h.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The enabling technology here is the _excellent_ rclone[1] which we maintain in our environment and can be run over SSH:

      ssh email@example.com rclone s3:bucket /some/path

What I hope will be interesting and useful is that the ZFS snapshots of the backed up data are _immutable_ and provide a layer of protection against Mallory and her ransomware ...</comment>


Post-apocalyptic life in American health care - <AUTHOR> https://meaningness.com/metablog/post-apocalyptic-health-care <comment><USER2> My intuition is that the fragmentation of the US health care system is a queuing problem with interdependencies among many many small jobs. It runs on a system with high costs for context switches. The deadlines are real but indeterminate. Priorities for jobs are not assigned in a way that relates to getting the work done.</comment>


Who needs Google Street View? Indian brothers launch rival service - <AUTHOR> http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-10-15/internet/43064928_1_google-street-view-360-degree-panoramic-views-map

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.wonobo.com/](http://www.wonobo.com/)

Amazing :)</comment>


USB Power 5V or 12V - <AUTHOR> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4049

<comment><USER2> I like the idea, it's a rather elegant solution.

Currently the standard and ugly ways seems to be to either invent your own variation of USB connectors (with extra pins, e.g. USB +19V DC for the external DVD on the Dell Notebook I'm typing this comment on) or to push a unholy amount of juice (2A? 3A?) through those tiny (e.g. Micro-USB) connector pins. Or even bridge two USB ports.

Will there be some kind of standard API to switch ports to high-voltage operation? Will we see this getting widespread use? Or have mobile devices settled on such low power consumption that all the effort isn't even worth thinking about?</comment>


Diep.io - <AUTHOR> http://diep.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the developer of it, feel free to ask me questions about the stack.

In brief: The client side and the server side are both written in C++, and they share a lot of the game code. The clientside is compiled to Javascript using emscripten, and uses the canvas 2d API directly. There's also a load balancer which is coded in C++ (the lb.diep.io endpoint). Servers connect to it to inform their status, and clients query it for a list of servers. It also handles the auto scaling (as it works across several providers, at the moment only Linode servers are enabled).

One interesting bit is that the client is able to swap its code pretty easily, so releasing updates is very smooth (outdated servers start kicking clients as they die, clients update themselves without reloading the page, and connect to an updated server).

</comment><comment><USER2> Hi. You should put up a system that prevents early deaths. A 20 seconds invincibility time frame would be a good way to allow low level players to get started safely. It would also prevent high level players from getting free points easily.

Looking forward to seeing the new features you're working on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Add more enemies that can attack you (Stronger one close to blue patch)

and more different shape of XP rock. More colors more fun. Add option for different background. A score system would also be cool (Points for breaking stuff and kill)

1 or 2 new weapon and voila.

</comment><comment><USER4> Add an option to fire always. Since there are no extra points for accurate shots or a sniper like gun, the better strategy is to just fire continuously.

</comment><comment><USER5> Super fun!

As more people started playing I could definitely feel the game lagging. I've also experience about 3 game freezes where I had to shut down the tab.

</comment><comment><USER6> Too hard i keep get kill and im level 1 try make it more hard level up (Giants)and will you allow add hacks to game?</comment>


Metric Mania - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/magazine/16FOB-WWLN-t.htm

<comment><USER2> Sir John Cowperthwaite, the Financial Secretary of Hong Kong for 1961-71, refused to collect all but the most minimal economics statistics to avoid government meddling and felt this helped its economic miracle.</comment>


The Facebook F8 Story No one is writing: Nothing works. - <AUTHOR> http://lianza.org/blog/2010/04/25/the-facebook-f8-story-that-no-one-seems-to-be-writing/

<comment><USER2> I spent this winter working on a pretty trivial FB app, and existing functionalities broke all the time, usually in silent and mysterious ways.

It drove me insane that my app would be horribly broken and all I could do was wait around spamming refresh.

Seriously awful experience, and it sounds like they're continuing the tradition!

<comment><USER3> I cannot count the Tuesday nights I spent banging my head against the wall, just to find out that Facebook broke something again. It's one of the many prices you pay for being a slave to The Platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hate to say it, but this is par for the course every time Facebook releases new APIs. They move at an insanely fast pace for a company of that size, and there's no free lunch, so the tradeoff is buggy software.

I don't see a lot of first mover advantage with the new stuff, so my advice would be to wait a few weeks.

<comment><USER5> +1 on the insane fast pace. Their connect team is actually quite small, and they got a bazillion things done for F8.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm definitely not criticizing the developers. Developers are often pressured to release half-baked features for the sake of a PR push on a particular date.

However, I don't believe a company should be able to enjoy massive PR attention unless they've also delivered the product they've claimed.

As developers, we also shouldn't sell our own time short. Based on the comments here, the low quality of this release has cost several of us some hours/frustration hacking away on a broken platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know about any of these advanced features, but it looks like even simple images won't load when looking at photos.

My wife has been asking me all morning if the net is down. No, it just looks like FB is broken.

</comment><comment><USER7> I spent a good portion of Friday trying to get their new JS libs working; no dice. Even just running the three-line code examples from the docs was throwing errors deep within the compressed JS. I had great results with the OAuth2 API, however.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is par for the course on a daily basis. I work on facebook apps essentially all day, every day. One of the biggest challenges is writing an application that relies on facebook functionality that may or may not vanish or fail hourly.

+1 for building a business on a platform that you don't own, don't control, and has no TOS or SLA with you that protects your uptime.

</comment><comment><USER9> This isn't exactly news at this point, but I was also having this problem just today and was whining about it and here is this post. It got to the point where I was figuring out what functions actually existed by using Chrome developer tools and investigating the FB object and its members, and then trying to read the minified javascript.

On the plus side, it's bound to improve soon for two reasons: 1) It can't get any worse 2) They can't get away with this much longer

I happen to kind of know one of the guys responsible for a lot of the JS API stuff, so I plan on giving him crap about this next time I see him, if that's any consolation. :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't count the amount of times I ended up re-writing some of the API's functions because the one's they shipped just didnt work.

<comment><USER11> right, but should we be working on their API functions?

you've moved before; gotta keep moving

ps : much respect

</comment></comment><comment><USER12>
      Usually this is the way most of "take over the web" revolutions appeared
      to be after the buzz is down.

      (e.g. Have you seen any interesting Google Wave plugin recently?)

<comment><USER13> I was waiting for an RPG to come onto Google Wave as hyped, but it seemed they all faded away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One peeve: an "undocumented feature" is not a feature that was advertised but doesn't work, it's one that wasn't advertised but does work.

> The most popular site on the web is getting a pass.

Probably because the old API is still fully supported.

<comment><USER15> > One peeve: an "undocumented feature" is not a feature that was advertised > but doesn't work, it's one that wasn't advertised but does work.

"Documented" simply means "has documentation written for it". Being documented or not is independent of whether a feature (1) works or (2) was advertised.

Where the author wrote "In some of the talks they admitted that although these features are live right now, they are not yet documented (ie. you can't use them)", I think he meant that some features were announced, but since they are currently undocumented they cannot be used, simply because you can't figure out how they are used. (And they might or might not work.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I had basically the same experience updating cornify.com to the new social plug-ins. Documentation is incomplete, the Facepile doesn't work at all, and using an older Facebook Connect library at the same time breaks everything.

This has been my experience for a long time now. Even when talking to big clients at work, we're simply not encouraging integration with the Facebook APIs since we can't be sure what's going to happen.

Another thing that is a big downer is that the plug-ins can't be skinned. This may be good to keep the brand visible and establish a minimum level of design quality, but for agencies it doesn't work since it's impossible to create something dead-sexy.

</comment><comment><USER17> tlianza: check your blog, it is showing me a page of spammy pharm links. I think your wordpress is compromised.

</comment><comment><USER18> For a couple of days, new Like button stuck showing only 5 likes for my site whereas I'm sure there are more, so I removed it.

But, implemented a Facebook login though the new graph api and it's really nice to work with. The documentation lacks a bit but enough to integrate it to my site in a day.</comment>


Adobe's Subscription Model and Why Platform Owners Should Care - <AUTHOR> http://stratechery.com/2013/adobes-subscription-model-why-platform-owners-should-care/

<comment><USER2> Why not a capped pay per use?

<comment><USER3> Asking seriously, what's a "use"?

Launching an app is a poor metric, as there are all manner of use-external reasons why an app may be started or stopped. A timer? Perhaps, but my perception is that most folks hate feeling "on the clock". Maybe per-day, or a days-per-month ladder of some sort, to relax that feeling? Seems more complicated for the end-user and for Adobe with the only real upside for very casual users.

To some extent, a monthly subscription seems to strike a balance between an incremental usage fee (aka "use") and avoiding the complexity and psychology of timed usage.</comment></comment>


BestBuy is closing all 250 of its mobile stores in the US - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/1/17066232/bestbuy-close-all-mobile-stores-may-us <comment><USER2> Honestly, I didn't think there was any left. Since I can go to the grocery store and pick up a phone now. At least that will give Radio Shack a shot in the arm. Remember in the 80's and early 90's Radio Shack was the place to get cell phone.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhwBSNuDO0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhwBSNuDO0Q)</comment>


BestIOfE.com -The new "Digg.com" for entrepreneurs.  - <AUTHOR> http://mixreadblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/bestiofecom-new-diggcom-for.html

<comment><USER2> I don't see what this offers over HN that would cause the people here, who provide excellent content + discussion, to jump ship; especially considering they're the likely target audience for this website. Also... the design is quite, link-farm-ish...

</comment><comment><USER3> That site has too much focus on things I dont care about: # of points, the site thumbnail, and the name of the site.

HN is the perfect design for a social news site, imo. It gives most of the attention to the links and discussion and pushes the other stuff to the background.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure it's such a good idea to be associating your site to Digg. People's views on Digg have declined lately.

I agree with benofsky too, the site just feels like a link farm.

</comment><comment><USER5> The tags at the bottom of bestofe.com make it look more like it's focused on "get rich quickly" schemes than entrepreneurship.</comment>