Mass Psychology Supports the Pricey Stock Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/business/stock-market-mass-psychology.html <comment><USER2> It'll be interesting to see how the enormous crop of new index fund investors behave during a market crash. Passive index investing has grown massively since 2008, and there has barely been a few months of consecutive negative monthly returns between then and now. The dogma says time in the market is better than timing the market, but it's easy to preach & believe such things when it gives you a 15%+ return each year. We'll see how strong the passive buy-&-hold ideology really is when the tide goes out.

Which, it will - two more years and we'll have entered the longest uninterrupted period of economic growth in US history.

<comment><USER3> > We'll see how strong the passive buy-&-hold ideology really is when the tide > goes out.

You already know the answer to that. Passive index investors will pull out in record numbers.

I can't believe how many people I know who think "just put all your money in index funds and you'll be a millionaire when you retire." Now I don't have any better advice, but they only say this because of the gains they've seen in the last 7 years, like it's invulnerable. Even when I use my investing website's retirement calculator, it defaults to a 9% gain each year for the rest of my life.

We're in uncharted territory. We could enter a 25-year stagnation. We could be at the beginning of the most prosperous time in history. Nobody knows. And nobody can predict it.

<comment><USER4> I can predict the future economy --- one where people earn a cryptocurrency where they earn token by hitting their healthy goals.

Money has grown at an exponential pace in the last few years -- see money.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one- visualization/

Money is a bunch of bets against bets against bets.

At the end of the day, the poorest person you know has air conditioning,a place to live, netflix, and poops in a toilet --- richer than the richest king of even 100 years ago, not to mention 1000, 2000, or even ~100,000 years ago when our species got started.

When you learn to step outside the fishbowl, only then can you see water.

When you step outside the story of money --- you see it's only a story. Between human beings.

And then you can reassign meaning to money. It's just about to explode

<comment><USER5> Let's chat offline about the health based idea, I had a similar idea. Also classes of produce. Crypto currency of anything, enabling real time comparison shopping globally. Crypto FX.. all decentralized.

<comment><USER4> Would love to chat offline but I don't see any contact info! Shoot me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's been an interesting ride for the past few years. The economy is chugging along, growing, but not that fast. Yes the stock market is up significantly.

It's done wonders to my porfolio since I was in before the crash of 2008. However, I won't be surprised at all when we see DJIA go under 20,000.

However, my retirement is still decades away so my money will stay in the market, just like it did during 2008.

<comment><USER7> I like the forced selling of my winners via annual rebalancing. I have something like 110-my age in stocks (and other risky investments, like reits) and the balance in bonds. Every December I rebalance. Or throughout the year when two things happen: 1. I have time to plug the numbers into my spreadsheet and 2. any asset class is ahead or below asset allocation by 5% or more.

I am pessimistic by nature and the USA has its issues, but there just isn't an economy in the world that I see performing as well as the USA (part is history, part is demography).

<comment><USER6> We're doing the same thing! I rebalance every year or when I put more money into my investments. I love the approach because it automates "sell high, buy low". When stocks go up, you sell some and buy bonds, and vice versa.

It's worked well for me for the past ~15 years.

<comment><USER8> Can you elaborate a little more on this strategy?

<comment><USER7> This may help: [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Rebalancing](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Rebalancing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is no compelling evidence that market timing works, both in terms of technical analysis and fundamental analysis. In 2015, there was talk about a so-called 'earnings recession'; had you sold, you would have missed out on the 15% rally that followed. For years, people have been attributing the rally to the fed and such, ignoring the fact that the fed ended QE in 2014 yet the market has risen 25% since then. Purported successes of timing are due to various statistical and data mining biases, that cannot be replicated with similar success. IMHO, the market is going a lot a lot higher even if valuations seem kinda high. inflation and interest rates are still historically very low, which makes stocks attractive to bonds and cash, and profits and earnings are also strong.

<comment><USER10> The fed stopped buying but still has to start unwinding the bulk: [http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-fed-a-decade- afte...](http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-fed-a-decade-after-the- crisis-is-about-to-embark-on-the-great-unwinding/ar-AAs8lnh)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is the market really that high, or does the market have inflation priced in from soaring US deficit spending?

When you put on the inflation goggles these valuations become a lot more reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER12> Stock market: Sucker if you invest, sucker if you don't

<comment><USER13> Well it's a bit more complicated. Sucker if you invest, the market crashes, and then either you panic and pull out, or otherwise need that money and pull out, and then don't get to ride it back up again.

OR... your country turns into Japan, where their main index is still below 60% of its 1980s peak...

<comment><USER12> It's a suckers game because at any given point of time, you are making a bet with the "hope" that the market will move one direction or the other.

<comment><USER14> I generally invest in the hope that the company will remain profitable, or become more profitable, and in doing so increase dividends to me. Capital increase would be nice too, but it's not the intended source of profit to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


People of the Web - Teen Millionaire - <AUTHOR> http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/52250/teen-millionaire <comment><USER3> I give her credit for taking initiative - timing/she was lucky, yes, but smart enough to build a her own "brand", whateverlife.com (I think we can learn from her that you don't have to be perfect/have a business plan to get going - <USER2> get it going)

</comment><comment><USER4> Cmon. One out of the 500,000 people making myspace pages gets some cash. Really not impressed - although I am happy for her.Is there anything different or innovative? Anything to be learned?

Hpe she is an industrious the next time around.</comment>


Microsoft's New Edge Browser Logo Looks NSFW to Me - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/microsofts-new-edge-browser-logo-looks-nsfw-to-me-1839591334/ <comment><USER2> Since when is an outline (and not a good one at that) of a single sperm NSFW ?

And besides I am not really seeing it even after it was pointed out.</comment>


Facebook: Will it be the new internet? - <AUTHOR> http://reactadapt.co.uk/trends/facebook-internet/

<comment><USER2> Facebook is the new AOL, and will suffer the same fate.</comment>


Mmproxy – Linux L7 proxy that preserves client IP address - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/mmproxy-creative-way-of-preserving-client-ips-in-spectrum/ <comment><AUTHOR> Code at [https://github.com/cloudflare/mmproxy](https://github.com/cloudflare/mmproxy)</comment>


Why Rust ditched pure functions - <AUTHOR> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.rust.devel/3674/focus=3855 <comment><USER2> I just want to reiterate something that I say in a child comment in this thread: thanks to its thoughtful design, many of the advantages of purity are less appreciable in Rust than they would be in, say, C++.

In Rust, everything is immutable unless you opt-in to mutability. Looking at a function signature will tell you which of its arguments can possibly be mutated. Global mutable state is _highly_ discouraged, by requiring you to wrap code that accesses global mutable state in a dreaded `unsafe {}` block. As for optimization capabilities, LLVM itself can (AFAIK) infer when functions are "pure" and mark them as `readonly` or `readnone` (not sure what the limitations to this approach are, though).

So don't make the mistake of thinking that Rust is a free-for-all due to the long-ago removal of its `pure` keyword. Many (dare I say a majority?) of the nice features of purity are merely provided by different mechanisms (for those use cases that Rust does not satisfy, Graydon's own explanation should suffice regarding their enormous added complexity in a language that is not Haskell).

<comment><USER3> Indeed, we mark them as readonly/readnone when we can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since this author is reasoning through proposed purity in Rust by comparing it with purity in Haskell...

\- I personally have never felt constrained by Haskell's purity. During development I use `Debug.Trace` to do any debug printing I need to do in pure functions, and I design a program so that in production code I can do appropriate logging before and/or after any calls to pure functions.

\- Managing monad stacks in Haskell isn't that tricky. This is the kind of thing that people get scared away from not because they actually tried to learn it and couldn't, but because people make it out to be so hard.

\- The Haskell STM example the author links to is actually really simple, especially in terms of monad stacks. It seems dense at first glance only because of the `forkIO`, `timesDo`, and `milliSleep` calls, but you would need these functions' logical equivalents no matter what language you wanted to implement this example in.

<comment><USER5> I am a Haskell outsider, but I've heard SPJ say several times that laziness is what enabled/forced Haskell to stay pure. My understanding is that even advanced Haskell programmers struggle with predicting the runtime cost in space and time of the laziness that bought purity. That unpredictability is highly undesirable in a systems language.

There are certainly ways to have purity without laziness, but it's not straightforward for Rust to adopt the Haskell model, I think.

<comment><USER6> I'm a Haskell newbie, and when I test a program and it shows a laziness- related space leak, I just put strictness annotations on the parameters I suspect of generating large unevaluated thunks. This has always made the issue go away so far.

<comment><USER7> But, would you not agree that it would be really nice to have separate strict vs. lazy types? It would bloat the syntax a little bit (e.g., Coq needs separate Inductive vs. CoInductive, Fixpoint vs. CoFixpoint keywords) but the benefits in terms of not having to find space leaks via debugging and profiling would be enormous.

<comment><USER8> There are several libraries that do distinguish between strict and lazy types. containers [1], for example, separates strict Maps and IntMaps.

That said, introducing new syntax to annotate strictness is far more troublesome than separating strict types from lazy types at the module level, where switching between the two is a comment away:

           import qualified Data.Map        as M
        -- import qualified Data.Map.Strict as M

Introducing syntax would make switching between the two far more painful.

[1]: [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/containers](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/containers)

<comment><USER7> When I say sometimes I need strictness, I really mean it. (Without ugly hacks like deepseq, that is, because I am fundamentalistically opposed to hacks.) WHNF does not quite cut it. This is not to say that I dislike laziness. I want first-class support for _both_ strictness and laziness.

When you come to think about it, a separation of strict types and lazy types makes perfect sense. For example, I want to foldl on lists (strict) but foldr on streams (lazy). I do not want to accidentally use the wrong operation on the wrong type. it is tiny details like these which make a type system helpful for guaranteeing correctness and improving performance.

So, if strictness and laziness are both useful and distinct from one another, why not provide both as core language constructs? Why do languages always have to be biased towards one of them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly, D has this and everybody considers it great. The community consensus is that pure should have been the default, but it is not changed for backwards compatibility.

[http://qznc.github.io/d-tut/idiomatic.html#purity](http://qznc.github.io/d-tut/idiomatic.html#purity)

<comment><USER10> You would only use D if you considered it great.

<comment> Tuna-Fish There are other reasons to use D, and indeed, most of the community came from languages without pure functions and did not want the feature before trying it.

However, it's one of those things where once you use it for a while, you begin to _really_ appreciate it. Better optimization, autovectorization and cpu -> gpu code conversion are all unimportant reasons for checked purity in the type system. The important reason is that by constraining what functions do, it makes reasoning about complex systems easier.

Generally, after you've worked in maintenance on one large project that designed everything to be pure unless there's a very compelling reason not to, you start to really miss the feature when you go back to projects in languages without it.

<comment><USER7> Agreed there. But, on the other hand, D misses out on statically checked resource management, and IMO that is more important than purity in the niche Rust and D are targeted at (systems development). Of course, nothing prevents a language from having both. :-)

<comment><USER11> Purity has a large advantage when writing concurrent code, as pure functions don't need to be synchronized.

This is why D has enforced purity (via an attribute) rather than inferred purity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The corresponding reddit thread at /r/programming: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1t8y6g/why_rust...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1t8y6g/why_rust_ditched_pure_functions/)

</comment><comment><USER12> This discussion is very interesting to me because I am just starting to learn about pure functions and functional programming in general.

Coming from an OOP background, I am used to bundling functionality into objects that loosely represent real-world people, places or things, but I'm starting to experiment with using these more abstract "pure" methods.

For example, I'm working on a GPS-based JavaScript game that uses a "check-in" system to encourage users to travel spontaneously. Initially, I designed a tightly encapsulated "Check-in" object responsible for fetching & interpreting users' locations.

Inspired by reading about functional programming on HN and elsewhere, I'm trying to break up some of the general geo-processing logic such as looping, array filtering, map/reduce, etc., into general functions with predicable results that can be used throughout my application.

It's definitely a different way of thinking that I'm not entirely comfortable with yet, but I can see how it allows for faster, more efficient code. I have been able to replace 50-line code blacks with 10-line blocks that are more efficient and - believe it or not - legible.

</comment><comment><USER13> nice to see a thread I started months ago on the HN homepage

<comment><USER14> Has anything changed in your thinking since posting the original mail?

<comment><USER13> Not sure. I've been less involved with Rust in the past few months.</comment></comment></comment>


Moley automated kitchen uses pair of robotic arms to prepare meals - <AUTHOR> http://www.designboom.com/technology/moley-robotic-kitchen-chef-12-07-2015/ <comment><USER2> If you finance it over 5 years its less than $10 a day per set of arms. put it in a fast casual line and or drive through and you wouldn't need workers. You could drop prices by 20% and still make better profits. so much for $15/hr minimum wage.</comment>


Badoo and Hotornot user disclosure - <AUTHOR> https://hackerone.com/reports/130453 <comment><AUTHOR> This basically means if you are a badoo or hotornot user, any third party site can unmask your identity on those sites

Pretty awful that the guy in charge of their hackerone program didn't seem to understand why preserving their users privacy is important.</comment>


The 25 most notable quotes in tech history. - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2009/11/09/great-tech-quotes/

<comment><USER2> Those were mostly "funny quotes about technology".

Since this is hacker news, what are your favorite quotes about entrepreneurship? Here's mine -

"The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer." - Nolan Bushnell</comment>


SHAttered - <AUTHOR> http://shattered.io/ <comment><USER2> Related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713480)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ugh, another cute name. Who let marketing get their hands on exploits?

<comment><USER4> People who care about public awareness. Imagine we never talked about Heartbleed, but always said CVE-2014-0160, instead? That would do wonders to raise awareness about the issue of software security, I'm sure.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you save money? - <AUTHOR> Hello hackers,
When I have extra money lying around in my account I tend to spend it. I don't trust myself with my own money.
What methods do you use to put your money somewhere else and invest / save it? <comment><USER2> Most banks will set you up with separate but linked savings and checking accounts that you can transfer between. Only the checking account comes with a debit cards. Auto-transfer any spare cash to the savings account.

Option 2: invest your cash in short-term low-risk securities like CDs or 3-mo bonds so that it's cash-like (available quickly if you need to tap your emergency fund) but not cash (burning a hole in your pocket because it's available to spend immediately).

And of course, anything you don't need for an emergency fund should be invested for the long term in non-cash-like securities (ideally via tax- advantaged accounts).</comment>


From Russia, With Stupidity: Band Must Pay Fines To Itself - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20090710/0340345512.shtml <comment><USER2> Probably not a problem with record associations or copyright laws, but just a bureacratic misstep.

 _Of course_ the Deep Purple has a right to play Deep Purple's song, but did you reminded to fill form H14 from secratariate Office of Culture five days prior the concert?</comment>


ASK HN: How to hire good employees? - <AUTHOR>

I run a small web design & development company that deals mostly with small-businesses and local colleges. We're about to open our first office and would like to bring in two or three developers to help with the workload. Most of the work we've done so far was outsourced to out-of-country developers, so this would be the first time we're hiring inhouse developers.
We're planning to recruit from the local colleges, we're in NYC so there's no shortage of CS/engineering schools. I've put together a list of questions and talking points that I want to cover during the interview, but it's difficult to assess whether or not they are sufficient.
Can anyone recommend good reading material on proper interviewing processes? Any advice you can provide would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> What about the people you used to outsource to? There's nothing that matters like the ability to produce and having people work for you on contract is the best way to test that.

The test-type questions I've seen have been almost entirely useless. When I'm asking questions now I mostly ask what about someone's goals and what I'm judging is whether I have a company and position that can meet those goals.

<comment><USER3> How do you figure out if the candidate is going to be able to meet your goals though?

<comment><USER2> If it's programming then have them do some programming. My least productive hire kicked ass on the math questions that another programmer asked but did poorly on the practical programming project.</comment></comment></comment>


The Real Class War - <AUTHOR> https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-war <comment><USER4> I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me.

> At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an "unacceptable" > candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency > personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to > technocratic bodies.

> Unlike the working class, the professional managerial class is still > capable of, and required for, wielding political power.

I've never seen actual grassroots activism accomplish much, if anything. Protests in DC are like rain; bring an umbrella, but no need to pay it much attention because it will blow over in no time. It's always insiders who make a career out of policy that ultimately shape it. Hill staff, think tank wonks, professional bureaucrats, etc--it's that professional Washingtonian class that really shapes the government's policy, because they are the ones that show up to do that work every day.

<comment><USER5> Gay people can get married in America, which was completely unthinkable a generation ago. 100% due to activists, many who risked their lives to make it happen.

<comment><USER6> The gilettes jaunes are on the streets, nobody cares to make them cultural icons. Gays had very visible and generally disproportionate (compared to population) media coverage of their rights. Was it really 100% due to activists on the street, or very influential but high profile gay people who helped build one of the few successful rights movements of our times?

<comment><USER7> _Was it really 100% due to activists on the street, or [high-profile insiders]_

Okay, 90 percent activists on the street, 10 percent insiders (who generally only stepped in after the 90 percent had already laid their bodies on the tracks, and accomplished the hard part).

<comment><USER8> Since we're all spouting bare assertions, I assert that it was 90% Frasier and Ellen DeGeneres and 10% activists.

<comment><USER7> _I assert that it was 90% Frasier and Ellen DeGeneres_

Who got into a Tardis and went back and organized the Stonewall riots, ACT UP and the Mattachine Society. Yeah, OK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a fantastic article; this might be the high point for my 2019 Hacker News reading. What clarity of vision.

It is remarkable reflecting after an article like that on the complete inability of the US political system to organise itself to reward work done rather than access to the super-elite social circles. I'd love to know if this Julius fellow has a take on what mechanisms the 0.1% are using to drive the growing wage gap.

I already have an opinion; I just think if he has one it will be more insightful.

<comment><USER10> > political system to organise itself to reward work done

How do you decide which work is valuable and which work isn't?

<comment><USER11> Not OP, but my personal belief is that all work is valuable, otherwise it wouldn't be desired. I don't think it's a good exercise to decide how much it is worth, except to say that work that requires X unit of time should provide at a minimum an amount of compensation that allows a person to obtain a standard of living above the poverty line.

<comment><USER12> In my book, work has _negative_ utility. It is something you _tolerate_ to get the fruits of it, which may have positive utility. Being paid in exchange for work is the sign that otherwise the work won't be worth doing for you.

The less work you do to achieve a desired result, the better. This is why technical improvements are valuable: they allow you do less work.

There are activities that are rewarding by themselves, like playing games, watching the sunset, or otherwise having leisure. You are not paid for that, you sometimes pay for it yourself, and still it remains worth doing.

<comment><USER13> I fundamentally disagree with the separation of life into toil and leisure. That mentality debases both acts. It implies that the more miserable our job is, the greater the moral reward we have earned. And, conversely, our leisure must be maximally hedonistic and selfish to make that suffering worthwhile.

All of our waking day is a mixture of good and bad experiences, intertwined with all manner of internal and external rewards and punishments. A hobby is just a job that pays you more in fun than cash, and a job is a weird club you go to more than you want but that pays you dues in return.

Trying to separate them into strict binary options makes it hard to build a complete, balanced life that has all of the various kinds of rewards that are meaningful to you as an individual.

<comment><USER14> > A hobby is just a job that pays you more in fun than cash, and a job is a > weird club you go to more than you want but that pays you dues in return.

That is beautifully expressed, and captures the non-dichotomous nature of life. Well-put!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Indeed the conspicuous embrace of "elite values" by journalists and > academics is often little more than an aspirational attempt to remain > connected to an economically distant elite—just as educated millennials' > conspicuous consumption of "experiences" often serves as a necessary > distraction from the grim reality that most will never be able to own a > home.

> An entire "creative class" ideology was constructed to explain this > phenomenon, but its intensity simply concealed the desperation of second- > tier elites to assuage their status anxiety.

The author doesn't pull any punch sent the bourgeoisie way.

<comment><USER16> It's refreshing really.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. Although, on a website made by a company that funds the bourgeoisie, i'd imagine most people here are frustrated.

<comment><USER18> > Although, on a website made by a company that funds the bourgeoisie

...in the hope that their venture,by some miracle, is the winning ticket to join the elite - usually by being "blessed" by an elite via a 6- or (preferbly) 9-figure acquisition

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A cogent and well-written article.

My only possible contributions are the following:

1\. The author perhaps underestimates the bottom 90%, who are written off as politically irrelevant (in terms of real power) near the start of the article.

I do think there's a good reason for this, but we are only one true crisis away from that changing. For example, suppose India and Pakistan only were to have a nuclear engagement and the outcome was a small global "winter" for a few years from the dust and rubble kicked into the atmosphere. When crops and supply chains fail and famine kicks in, who is going hungry?

That's about the point that true populist revolts happen.

2\. The author discusses at length the phenomenon of "the 10%" elites who align themselves (in ideology) with the working class, perhaps blinded by not realizing that they are actually trying to support their own interests.

But I think some underestimate how soon the developers and programmers of the world will crater from "elite 10%/5%/1%" to something resembling median salary.

This is my own opinion, but it's clear to me that the tech industry (and it's associated venture capital scene) are in a state of irrational exuberance as the capitalist class is convinced that tech startups (or the word "tech" attached to non-tech startups) offers incredibly high ROI.

This paradigm will end as easy opportunities and low hanging fruit dry. Maybe we're already there, but nobody has acknowledged it yet. When this happens (and is widely recognized), venture capital will flee to safer vehicles. Meanwhile, the big tech of the world will consolidate and cut costs to grow shareholder value.

When this happens, we will all stop hopping jobs for 30% pay raises and instead we will start hopping jobs (post-layoff) for 30% pay cuts. And this will continue for decades.

<comment><USER20> Tech has always gone through boom and bust cycles. At the end of the day though, it's really hard to write good software and we're only going to see demand go up over time. There may be some bumps in the road, but there will always be new opportunities. I think programmers are one of the only professions _not_ at risk of automation or disruption as all of that is powered by software which maybe 5%-10% of the population has the ability to write and maintain.

<comment><USER21> > software which maybe 5%-10% of the population has the ability to write and > maintain

I sure hope you're right about this. I have no doubts on the rest of what you said, but given enough incentives (both push and pull), there may be a lot more latent ability out there than you think. Especially as the on-ramps from raw talent to real productivity keep improving.

From my direct personal experience, I suspect there are a bunch of current Uber and Lyft drivers who could definitely code if they had enough reasons to. A lot of them have better social skills than your average coder, too.

<comment><USER20> I used to think most people had the ability to code but ~20 years of managing development has made me reconsider. Most people just really can't deal very well with abstraction and complexity (not to mention things like recursion). I think a lot of people can write _some_ code, but it won't be good and it will require someone more senior to extend, maintain and scale it. So basically the more people who write code, the more in demand those top 10% of people with natural coding ability will be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It makes sense that the top 10% to 2% become more active as blame and anger are re-routed toward them. For example, many people think the "elite" are the educated but not necessarily the wealthy. So for many, adjunct faculty are called "elites" while the Koch brothers are not.

Likewise, discussions of wealth inequality are becoming conflated with income inequality.

Yet the professional class has only marginal voting power and comparatively little to contribute to political funding, so it's not surprising that the astute ones are concerned.

<comment><USER23> The professional class has contributed the most to the wealth gap. We blame the wealthy, but it's not they who are performing the task of wealth extraction. The banks owners don't sign mortgages or repossess homes. The shareholders aren't doing the actual labor that increases page views or patents doodads worth negative value to the poor who buy them and funnel the money up. Owners don't do the taxes that rob society of its own worth.

No. It's the professionals who do that immoral work. _They_ are to blame. Not the wealthy. They just pay for it.

The professionals, most all of us here are the cause of the wealth gap. It is we who exacerbate the divide and decline of civilization by sacrificing our moral duty to those less fortunate to get a little more cash for ourselves.

Listen to us all here now. We know this, yet we continue.

<comment><USER24> Work widens inequality whether or not it's extractive. Any time you're creating value, someone else is not, and the difference between the two of you grows.

<comment><USER23> That's not true. We can both be better if I work for you and you pay me right. It's not a negative sum game and can be positive and equal value for both. The value of your cash to me and my product for you.

<comment><USER24> Someone off to the side who did not participate in that exchange benefits from it less than you and I did.

<comment><USER23> I see your point. I still disagree and have more counterpoints. I also don't appreciate that perspective, nor do I believe I'll change your opinion on it, so I'll stop here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Recently, I have a friend group who all graduated from Stanford, with relatively upper middle class(but not suburb/NY upper middle class) roots, and you might even describe as "woke" who belonged to a fb messenger group called "Anti Asian Asian Group".

I felt like I had to call them out on it. Though they made the group as a play on "anti social social club" and to counter conservative sentiments their upper class counterparts might've had, I too thought it might've just been punching down on working/middle class Asians who had traditional values and almost can't help but have those values.

I guess that's the real class war; when people punch down on those who almost don't have the opportunity to decide who to become. Not that people completely lack agency in this country but I think a lot of people forget how much your environment can shape individuals and their values.

<comment><USER26> > those who almost don't have the opportunity to decide who to become

That's an interesting phrase. Can you say what you mean by it?

<comment> barry-cotter It's a reference to the sociological concept of marked versus unmarked identities. If you think of an American you probably think first of a white man of Christian heritage. If you think of a Chinese person you picture someone of Han ethnicity, not Miao or Manchu. If you think of a nurse you picture a woman. All of the people who fit that identity but are different from the unmarked version are marked by their difference from the unmarked version that springs to mind unbidden when the concept is named.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > The company I now work for started as a parking app. . . . We were growing > sustainably as the result of having a superior product based on a great > understanding of consumer needs.

> But sustainable growth isn't what VCs (or the execs that they install in the > firms they have stakes in) are looking for. So we pivoted.

> Without going into too much detail, we are now exclusively focused on > getting acquired by a big tech firm. Meetings with low-level product > managers at a few of the world's largest companies dictate every decision > about which projects we pursue. We're no longer building a company. We're > not even building a product. We're building a feature that we hope will end > up getting included in an app owned by a mega-corporation.

> When I talk to my friends and peers at other tech startups, they tell me > that it's pretty much the same story at their companies. Everyone is > building to the specifications set by Google or Amazon or Apple. This > "competitive" industry, supposedly a shining example of the power of the > free market, is really just a massive risk-free R&D department for the faang > companies.40

ooph.

<comment><USER28> As someone who works at those very companies, I have to say that the code itself isn't worth that much - everything that's not a utility package will definitely get rebuilt. Nor is the idea, the only value proposition is existing customers and potential patents for software startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I disagree that the working class is not going to radicalize itself. They too are out here on the internet, talking to each other and culturally evolving at an unprecedented rate, like everyone else. For the first time they have the power to publish and think in public uncoupled from professional barrier. Better believe it's being used, and that they will assert their awareness.

<comment><USER30> The election of Donald Trump could be seen as the result of the radicalisation of the working class.

<comment><USER31> Trump voters are on average wealthier than Clinton voters: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2017/06/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2017/06/05/its-time-to-bust-the-myth-most-trump-voters-were-not- working-class/?outputType=amp)

<comment><USER32> I would guess (completely based on personal experience) that most in the service class voted for Clinton, while working class is more centered around manufacturing, which does pay better than the service industry.

A big part of the issue is that people have different definitions for all the various social classes, so it's hard to compare things correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> George Orwell covered this basic point in `1984` (published in 1949):

> The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the > High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places > with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an > abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery > to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily > lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all > men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in > its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem > to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment > when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern > efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the > Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty > and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust > the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the > High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, > or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again.

<comment><USER34> So the idea behind this is what? That you shouldn't trust the revolutionaries because they dont have your interests in mind? That its hopeless? This model of the world is just run of the mill statusquoism trying to make people too despondent to tear down hierarchy, not some deep truth.

To be honest I dont know if Orwell agreed with the position of the high or not, but the fact people repeat this propaganda of the "high" from 1984 is absurd.

<comment><USER35> Orwell's biography is so famous that we can guess the basics of how he would answer this: revolutionaries don't necessarily have your interests in mind; it's not hopeless; oppose the status quo; don't be blinded by ideology; be honest before being political.

<comment><USER36> Which biography are you referring to? I'm seeing a few. I didn't know it was famous and never thought to check, but would definitely like to read now that you mention it.

P.S. it's always a treat to stumble on a non-moderator comment from dang

<comment><USER35> Oh, by biography I just meant his life story. I didn't have a specific book in mind.

Orwell is famous for having been early to break with political allies whose tactics he abhorred, even though they were fighting for his side. He had a genius for intellectual honesty, which made his writing exceptionally clear. If there's a clearer writer in English I wonder who it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The resentment of big capital is not entirely without a reason. Most money right now is "passively" deployed into pre-existing securities. This means it's used to extract existing value by market cornering / scarcity generation / rent seeking / monopolies / oliglopolies.

On the other side there is new value / securities creation. This is what people like Elon Musk are doing. He took circa $50mln of his own money, added a couple of billion from investors. Added 1000 highly skilled jobs and result is $50bn company.

Extractive capital alocation is offering much easier profits, but jobs working it are mostly the "bullshit" type.

As a democracy we have control of the laws, we can "nudge" the big capital away from rent seeking into new value creation by changing the tax code.

<comment><USER38> How exactly does money "passively" deployed into pre-existing securities become "extractive"?

If I invest some money in a passive index fund, what does that have to do with market cornering / scarcity generation / etc?

What are "non-extractive" ways of investing money, aside from starting new companies?

<comment><USER39> It's extractive to the extent the economy at large is extractive. Your index fund invests indiscriminately in profit-seeking enterprises proportionately to their size. A lot of profit-making economic activity is dependent on things like cornering a market for trucks through the chicken tax, scarcity generation in housing through restrictive zoning, etc. etc. - <USER2> regulations which, for better or for worse, interfere with the "free market".

Want to invest non-extractively? Invest in companies that you truly believe provide value without explicitly engaging in such activities. Most index investing is incompatible with such a thesis. Some index funds try, for example VFTAX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The whole talk is worth watching, but I'll just point to Lionel Shriver's segment, where she beautifully sums up, what most people – especially in the underclass – know already: [https://youtu.be/ddBKQIomyYI?t=2200](https://youtu.be/ddBKQIomyYI?t=2200)

Today's western progressivism is taken hostage by the elite.

Disturbing as it is for itself, it is even more freightening what this might lead to. What happens if the bottom 50% effectively looses any political say, because their choices by whom to be represented become completely blurred. If you are like me and considered to yourself to be under-/working class, none of today's "leftist" ballot options are even remotely relatable, the more radical their representatives are, the more they reak of privilege.

<comment><USER41> You can see this beginning in roughly 2011 when the Occupy Wallstreet protests start to fracture. This was when Starbucks began advocating for anti-racist policy (why? they make money selling permutations of coffee and milk) and a bunch of other corporations chimed in. The 99% movement quickly splintered off into anti-racist memes and whirled into Third Wave Feminism + needs for "inclusion" and "intersectionality" and whatever terms the Wallstreet-backed Left felt best to appease the working poor and working lower-middle class of academics and journalists (who are basically working poor now, but would not like to admit it).

So when you say: >Today's western progressivism is taken hostage by the elite.

I agree. In fact, there is likely evidence that it was manufactured by the elite. This discussion is heading to the territory of Hypernormalisation[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c2qqA-6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c2qqA-6Y)], a film I recommend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> >Since at least 2016, the divide between the "working class" and the "elite" has been considered a defining issue in American (and Western) politics.

I watch a bit of US news (CNN et cetera) when travelling and almost _never_ hear it defined in those terms. Based on what I've seen the debate is almost entirely framed in terms of the "middle class" and the elites.

<comment><USER43> In America the middle class defines almost everybody. Nobody want to be "upper class" because then you'll be the target of envy, and nobody wants to be "lower class" because of insecurity. For Americans, the phrase "upper middle class" means "Upper class but not multi million house"

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> From 2018-2019, we saw teachers protests and strikes lead to massive concessions being gained in 7/9 states they occurred in, most of which were red states. The working class has a considerable amount of power when wielded correctly.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%9319_education_work...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%9319_education_workers%27_strikes_in_the_United_States)

Eric Blanc's Red State Revolt is another great source on this

[https://www.versobooks.com/books/2955-red-state- revolt](https://www.versobooks.com/books/2955-red-state-revolt)

<comment><USER45> As it stands any broad based working class revolt in the US can be effectively nullified by bringing up a culture war issue like abortion, homosexuality, etc. and using it to split the electorate. This has been true for a long time. These issues evoke emotional responses that easily override any rational concern for one's economic well being.

Whether intentional or not, the culture war continues to be the most effective tool in history for sidelining and fragmenting any struggle for economic equality. This is because culture war issues do not slice the electorate along the same lines as economic issues.

<comment><USER46> HN 2019: downvoted for noting plainly observable phenomenon.

<comment><USER35> Please don't break the site guidelines by posting like this.

Vote totals fluctuate. When users see an unfairly downvoted comment, they often give corrective upvotes. Then the comment goes back to positive, but a post like yours here lingers on, orphaned and inaccurate.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Clickbait antidote:

 _The real class war is between the 0.1 percent and (at most) the 10 percent—or, more precisely, between elites primarily dependent on capital gains and those primarily dependent on professional labor._

<comment><USER6> I d say take the bait because the article is brilliant

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> > But it is precisely for these reasons that the working class is unlikely to > be decisive in shaping politics for the foreseeable future. However one > defines the working class, it has scarcely any political agency in the > current system and no apparent means for acquiring any. At most, working- > class voters can cast their ballots for an "unacceptable" candidate, but > they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much > less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies.

What's the basis for this sweeping claim?

<comment><USER19> While I don't really agree with the author on this point, I think the basis of the claim is implied to be the election of Trump. Trump prevailing in the primary (and the general even) could be seen as a referendum of the working class on establishment politics.

And yet, what has changed? Trump hasn't brought back American industry as promised, nor has he made a trillion dollars infrastructure package as promised. He has succeeded in a tax plan (approved by establishment Republicans in the Senate), supreme Court picks (approved), etc.

The authors argument would be that this illustrates that picking the occasional anti establishment candidate doesn't uproot necessary structural change which happens across a large number of both elected and nonelected organizations, and well-connected elites are implied to be the only ones in a position to affect such change.

<comment><USER49> > occasional anti establishment candidate doesn't uproot necessary structural > change

The anti-establishment is the bare minimum for structural change to happen. The difficulties that Obama and now Trump have faced in bring change (whatever their version of it), actually make the point more strongly that we need even more out of the box thinking in our leadership.

<comment><USER50> Underrated comment. This is deeply true, but points to something ominous. There isn't really a way that this political vortex ends except through ever more extreme policies/pendulum swings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> > This [billionaire] class has no idea what to do with its wealth, much less > the power that results from it. It can only withdraw and extract, socially > and economically, while the political justifications for its existence melt > away.

Would love to hear his perspective on Bill Gates.

It's very interesting to think about this because most people pursue wealth for this very reason - to be freed from constraints of responsibility and to do whatever they want.

However, it seems to be the opposite once you get too much wealth - you all of a sudden become (due to the closed economic and political system) extremely publically responsible.

This is also the first generation of such public billionaires in an era where everyone with power has their lives projected on a live screen for people to see.

<comment><USER52> Bill Gates is in my view deserving of every praise for his civic engagement, as well as a few others (e.g., those who have agreed to the pledge to give away much of their wealth). But I don't think this is common. Just from the public statements of many billionaires, it seems that many do not think they have any civic obbligation at all.

<comment><USER51> It's why I'm curious to see his opinions on this matter.

The author pointed out the problem but didn't say much about the solution. I was wondering if his discourse on those who aren't the problem would yield insights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Reading this thing is an incredible downer and it makes everything sound black and white. It is literally poo-pooing on everything. Life is never this black and white, although the thesis make for a good read it is still an inaccurate model of the real world.

> Moreover, increasing numbers of engineers, even at the most prestigious > companies, are hired on temporary contracts. When the artificial growth > model stalls, employees can expect mass layoffs, "anti-hierarchy" propaganda > notwithstanding.

As an example, I dont find this to be true at all especially for great engineers. Our company is trying to move completely away from contractors.

<comment><USER54> This article is what Karl Popper would call historicism — the idea that history has fixed laws or trends that inevitably lead to certain outcomes.

Here's an article on why he considered it false and even dangerous: [https://fs.blog/2016/03/karl-popper-mistake-of- historicism/](https://fs.blog/2016/03/karl-popper-mistake-of-historicism/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I read it, though not closely, and am still unclear what is the "real class war". The educated-but-alienated professional elite against the oligarchs? I'm just guessing.

Also, he kind of loses it in the final paragraphs, which weakened my impression of the rest.

<comment><USER55> >I read it, though not closely, and am still unclear what is the "real class war"

 _The real class war is between the 0.1 percent and (at most) the 10 percent—or, more precisely, between elites primarily dependent on capital gains and those primarily dependent on professional labor._

It's pretty clearly defined.

It's the group that makes their money primarily from investment returns vs those who make their money primarily from wages/salaries/payments for skills.

<comment><USER26> Ok, so I guessed right. Thanks, I missed that bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> > However one defines the working class, it has scarcely any political agency > in the current system and no apparent means for acquiring any.

Revolutions don't happen when people feel that they have political agency in the status quo system. And if people don't have actual agency, the outlets which provide the illusion of agency eventually fail.

<comment><USER57> That is my fear as well. I would say that the _conventional_ outlets that provide the illusion of agency have in fact failed. That's why we got the rise of both Trump and Bernie. When people realize that _neither_ unconventional approach gives them real political agency, look out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> > But the Valley has never been particularly fertile for the salaried > professionals and "engineers" hired by these companies, who even now > generally make less than their counterparts on Wall Street or in Big Law. > Kindergarten playroom office spaces and other exaggerated perks often serve > to distract employees from this harsh reality.

lol

<comment><USER59> It's always a bit funny and sad when statements like these happen. Most people seem to have _no_ idea how much money Engineers/Product Managers can make at certain companies.

<comment><USER60> Seems like the author knows exactly how much they can make, he states that the median income is 81k/yr.

Now you could argue that that's deliberately missing the long tail nature of this, but if anything, the theme of outliers of the industry just reinforces the point.

<comment><USER61> That was the median for the entire US, not just the valley.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> What is often forgotten is the hyperdeflation of technology. All your gadges would be worth many millions in pre 2000 dollars. Your car is probably better in many ways than a million dollar car from 1980.

<comment><USER63> Everything is way more accessible than pre-2000's, but I would argue that the overall quality of the user-experience is probably worse. If you buy a TV today, you get amazing image quality, but you also have to live with the fact that the TV spies on you and that the software it runs on will discontinue in 5 years. (this of course doesn't matter because it's been designed to break before that point). I would gladly take an old CRT over a modern smart-tv.

<comment><USER64> No you wouldn't take CRT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> > Many industry observers believe Schmidt contributed virtually nothing to > the company, but he became a billionaire because of his superior grasp of > business etiquette: "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and > not cross it," he once said. Jeffrey Epstein, erstwhile dinner companion of > Schmidt, Bill Gates, and seemingly every other member of this class, had a > slightly different policy.

Funny. Obviously this is going overboard with the facts but it makes a good point.

</comment><comment><USER66> >"Indeed the conspicuous embrace of 'elite values' by journalists and academics is often little more than an aspirational attempt to remain connected to an economically distant elite...they gave professionals greater scope to manage "postmaterial' concerns that suited their cultural sensibilities..."

In other words, this potential class war is pacified by telling the upper- middle class that they are culturally superior in spite of their increasing economic precarity. Someone in this class who has to take out massive loans, move across the country, and spend $30,000 a year on rent with no hope of ever owning a home in order to have an insecure job in their field must be assured that living this way, combined with a mix of vague cultural markers, is tasteful and elite, and not an empty bag. There may also be a variety of well- funded social movements that pose zero threat to the economic position of the 0.1% to participate in as an activist.

</comment><comment><USER67> Related article in the same issue: [https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/americas-drift- to...](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/americas-drift-toward- feudalism/)

</comment><comment><USER68> > "What is remarkable about today's oligarchy is not its ruthlessness but its > pettiness and purposelessness."

yup. the 0.1% is really good at hoarding capital, but to what end? none, apparently.

a startlingly coherent summary and critique of the many socioeconomic ills that we tend to discuss opportunistically here.

we non-0.1-percenters need to hone in on undoing the systemic changes since the 70's that has led to this gross and aimless inequity.

<comment><USER69> Honestly, this is what gets me. Say what you will about the man, but few people complain that Elon Musk is a billionaire because clearly he's repeatedly investing his wealth in actually trying to advance humanity in meaningful ways. Similar story with Bill Gates and his foundation. But wtf is the average billionaire (of which there are thousands) or hundred-millionaire (of which there are tens of thousands) doing with their money aside from trying to acquire more money? You would think such people would be into building a positive legacy, but it's just not happening that way.

<comment><USER70> Or they are just quietly building businesses, rather than make flashy headlines.

You don't need to "advance humanity" \- just creating a service or product to satisfy since other human's needs is a good enough goal.

<comment><USER71> Advancing humanity should be a requirement for access to that kind of money.

It's a hugely privileged position to be in, and the idea that it comes with exactly zero responsibility to Rest of World is nonsensical.

<comment><USER10> Why? The service and/or product provided by their business is providing significant value to society (lest they wouldn't be collecting profit). Is the reward for creating a successful business really more responsibility to just give back instead of using it to create more business?

<comment><USER72> > The service and/or product provided by their business is providing > significant value to society (lest they wouldn't be collecting profit).

This is assuming the conclusion.

They could just be collecting a monopoly rent or a land-rent or an IP rent; for example, when Martin Shkreli raised the price of insulin dramatically he wasn't "providing more value to society", he was _extracting_ that value, potentially at the cost of human lives.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/shkrelis- former-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/shkrelis-former- company-is-now-losing-money-even-with-the-5000-price-hike/)

<comment><USER70> There's a lot of confounding issues here in relation to the insulin problem: the fact that medical patents are poorly structured - insulin is hard to make, and making it via a biological mechanism means the "molecule" is slightly different, and so the FDA needs time and money to assess it. This creates a defacto monopoly, and thus, said monopoly can raise their prices.

The fix isn't to force billionaires to give out their wealth for free - <USER3> instead to fix monopoly laws, as well as to stream line the way approvals can be made for generic molecules made via biological means (like the way generic drugs are today).

In fact, an insulin factory _should_ be easy for a billionaire to fund and if the relevant regulations are better, there'd be more insulin sellers as there's profit to be made (seeing as Shkreli has raised the price).

<comment><USER73> This close to the money, there's no distinction between what you are proposing (fixing the monopoly laws) and force billionaires to do something. Currently, the companies write the laws. You want to force them to stop writing the laws.

<comment><USER10> > there's no distinction between what you are proposing (fixing the monopoly > laws) and force billionaires to do something

Of course there is. One is punitive and accomplishes no long term positive effects. The other encourages competition and subsequently innovation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Well this pulls no punches:

> Conservative donor gatherings are somehow even more pathetic. Most of the > attendees are there only because they are not smart enough to recognize that > the Democratic Party offers a far more effective reputation laundering > service. The rest are probably too senile to know where they are at all. > There is often a special irony to these events: an uninspiring ideologue is > usually on hand to repeat a decades-old speech decrying Communism—recounting > the horrors experienced in countries ruled by a self-dealing, incompetent > nomenklatura and marked by a decaying industrial base, crumbling > infrastructure, poor education system, a demoralized populace, low > confidence in public institutions, falling life expectancy, repeated > foreign policy failures, a vast and arbitrary carceral system, constant > surveillance, and even massive power outages in major cities. Imagine that.

<comment><USER57> The last several screenfuls all all a very bitter rant. I find it hard to take seriously something written like this.

<comment><USER74> It does get a little screechy during the last 500-1000 words. First section is on point though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I found it informative to research the author and his background: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Krein](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Krein)

For some reason my mental image of the messenger behind the article was that of a well studied and neutral academic throwing out firehouse citations.

his points are thought provoking, but it reduces everything to purely economic competition by a delusional population with only the author to cut through the illusions.

<comment><USER76> His article shows why we need a wealth tax instead of an income tax... There is a huge difference between a hard working manager making $100k and an equally hard working owner with $10m in assets. I suggest dropping the income tax entirely, and tax wealth under $50k at 0%, $50k - $1m at 1%, $1m - 10m at 2%, $10m - $100m at 3%, $100m - $1b at 4%, and everything higher at 5%. This keeps even billionaires motivated to work hard to earn returns on their assets, without taking from the little guy who can't afford it.

<comment><USER77> I keep hearing this idea from a variety of sources recently, and the idea is so absurd I don't even understand how it came to be. How, exactly, do you expect the government to tally the amount of wealth to be taxed for each person in the country? The amount of bureaucracy and auditing and enforcement it would require would dwarf the insurance industry, and waste taxpayer dollars to the extent that it couldn't actually be profitable for the government.

<comment><USER56> > How, exactly, do you expect the government to tally the amount of wealth to > be taxed for each person in the country?

Ask and audit, the same way it does income. Of course, it's harder to get filed confirmation data for wealth and even easier to have an alternative valuation for wealth held in non-cash assets than for realized income, so it will be _much_ easier to evade, but that's probably part of why it (which complicates our overall system of taxation) rather than taxing the currently tax-favored income of the rich, primarily capital gains, at the same rate as other income (which would simplify the tax system) is favored by people whose concern is to be _seen as_ doing something about tax fairness.

<comment><USER77> I think by "easier to evade" you actually mean "impossible to enforce". The sorts of things the wealthy store their money in aren't easy or even possible to value, especially on some yearly basis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> This is a great article but I think it misses the counterpart to the professional class - moderately well-to-do small-business owners, millionaire next door types. I think these are heavily represented in the top 10%. They are not as well-educated, lean much more to the right than the professional class. Economically they identify more with the 0.1% and consider themselves capitalists, but culturally they identify more with the working class.

These two groups seem diametrically opposed to each other, much more so that they are with the actual elite or with the actual working class.

</comment><comment><USER79> > But it is precisely for these reasons that the working class is unlikely to > be decisive in shaping politics for the foreseeable future. ...

This seems like an odd statement given that the American system of government was designed from its inception to insulate the ruling elites from the masses. The founders were terrified of mob rule. The term "democracy" was used at the time to mean something not far away from "mob rule."

The people don't directly elect the president, the Electoral College does that. The people don't vote on any pending legislation. The House and Senate do that. The people don't set foreign policy - the executive and legislative branches do that. The people don't strike down any legislation - the courts do that, members of which at the top level are appointed for life. The full legislature is never up for re-election specifically to prevent a popular uprising.

One wonders what the article has in mind here. The answer comes shortly:

> ... In countries like France, the working class might still be able to veto > certain policies through public demonstrations, but such actions seem > unlikely in the United States, and even the most heroic efforts of this kind > show little prospect of achieving systemic reforms.

Even in France, that's an extra-governmental action. There's no mechanism to include popular dissent except for routinely scheduled elections in either France or the US.

What's more troubling though is the ubiquitous disengagement from the parts of American government through which people can effect (small) changes:

\- jury duty

\- elections

</comment><comment><USER80> > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an "unacceptable" > candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency > personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to > technocratic bodies.

The problem here is that we don't have direct democracy. I've noticed that citizens in countries with direct democracy elements like Switzerland seem to feel significantly better represented by their governments.

It blows my mind how little is spoken about direct democracy and concepts like delogative/liquid democracy. There's absolutely no reason we must confine ourselves to a representative democracy conceived in a time when direct democracy was literally impossible because messages were delivered on horseback.

</comment><comment><USER81> From Zinn's A People's History of the United States: "One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country."

</comment><comment><USER82> Great article. Regarding the wealth accumulation, there is an interesting parallel with black holes: a single blob of wealth absorbs other wealth at the exponential rate: dw/dt=k*w, where k is the population growth dp/dt. The same blob of wealth has a Hawking radiation that evaporates this wealth, but at a constant rate: dw/dt=-e, where e is expenses to support ones lifestyle. Big blobs of wealth have about the same rate of evaporation, but absorb surrounding wealth much faster. Add to that the constraint: the total wealth is fixed and generally grows with the population size. In practice, all the small wealth bubbles (workers) evaporate quickly and the radiation gets absorbed by the big black holes. Eventually they become too big for this planet and collide: US vs China. This boom cycle of the wealth bubbles universe is always followed by the bust cycle: a war. The big bubbles explode and firm many small bubbles, that evaporate and so on. Nothing new here. In the black holes world, the force distributing the matter is gravity. In our world of wealth bubbles, this force is called greed. It is the driving force of the boom and bust cycle. Greed is one the few fundamental imperfections of the human mind and it takes eons fir the human mind to change. The previous driving force was cruelty, and it still is in some places. The next driving force will be

</comment><comment><USER83> > The real class war is between the 0.1 percent and (at most) the 10 > percent—or, more precisely, between elites primarily dependent on capital > gains and those primarily dependent on professional labor.

There is a sharp contrast here, but I don't think it'll be the basis for a war – figuratively or otherwise. But this divide deserves more illumination.

</comment><comment><USER84> I would like to further understand the societal, political and economic forces in the context of the political outcomes described in this article. Has anyone got a couple of recommendations on where to start?

<comment><USER85> I was discussing this article with a friend and he recommended Paul Tucker's book Unelected Power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> A well-written article about politics in US and its class conflict. I still think and insists that US citizens don't look enough to the rest of the world. Just observe what happened to South-America since 2000's. Popular Revolution and Popular Governments was the way out of the capitalist-neoliberal crisis, at the time when global "promises" were being risen by the elites. The struggle had its positives results because even when the dictatorships, imposed by Washington, tried to drown the working class and the professional class, they couldn't kill inequalities and the political structure that generated that inequalities. Those measures (dictatorships) were brought for preserving those inequalities and that structure. Now South-America is entering into a new crisis, the elite's reaction to the conquests for the People.

US needs new leaders, grassroots political leaders. Many people believe that "change" comes from upper classes, but that happens when class struggle is in the stagnant state, when the conditions are uncertain for the majority. Building a new leadership and activism style for the affected classes will effectively replace the excuses and the fear, that Fear that was imposed by the elites.

</comment><comment><USER87> Theorists of capitalism long argued that it and it alone could efficiently distribute resources across an economy (though not, oddly, within a firm).

This might be true in an economy whose rules about contrantracts, commerce, and property relations were fixed and predictable, but most economic simulations overlook or sidestep the fact that the most powerful economic incumbents can and do adjust the legal conditions to maximize their own gain.

<comment><USER88> Adam Smith had recognised that in "Wealth of Nations".

He goes on to conclude that "the mercantile system" allows the "merchants and manufacturers" to pervert legislation towards their "sole end and purpose" – production for profit – and away from the legitimate "sole end and purpose" of production – to satisfy human needs.

He also points out that the interests of these manufacturers, have been "peculiarly attended to" by the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> This is one of the best pieces I have ever read. Absolutely brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER90> This is the article of it's sort I've ever read since...?

UBI now, please

</comment><comment><USER91> Most places with high per-capita GDP (Canada, Scandinavia, England, Germany etc) have found that they can make meaningful, consistent, incremental progress on a lot of the problems Krein is trying to address through introducing a public system in sectors like healthcare, education, and child care - probably literally the only tack Krein would never agree to.

The problem isn't "billionaires" or "capitalism." I would probably rather billionaires lock up their money in Vangaurd stock - where its allocation is at least beholden to market forces - than spent it on misguided vanity projects.

The problem is that market failure is a real thing. Every other country on the planet seems to have realized this.

<comment><USER92> > The problem is that market failure is a real thing

At least two of the examples you site (healthcare and education) are nowhere near being functional markets, so blaming market failure for poor outcomes in these sectors seems like a red herring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> This article is interesting, partly due to the blatant political biases which are present but unrevealed, and partly due to the attempt to address those biases in closing segments. This line in particular was telling "the state—the only way to address the most important issues of the present".

The author of this piece is a left-wing statist, and they interpret all of the data they reference through this lens. That does not mean that their conclusions are wrong in whole, as there's definitely some intriguing things in this article. Their ending statements are relatively on-point and don't align with any particular political leaning.

A good read, but unfortunately didn't tell me anything I didn't already know just from watching the news and paying attention.

Perhaps the most disappointing fact is that the author hinted at but failed to make the correct mental leap. This change in our society and economy is largely a result of globalism. Those in the top elites were able to improve their personal margins at the expense of the rest of the population by moving both production and knowledge work outside the bounds of the US, and in so doing increase the divide. The interaction of state-backed industrial interests in other countries and the anointing of new billionaires at their behest is not to be overlooked either.

I don't see any immediate solutions, as anything direct action will result in chaos, and anything taken slowly will not produce a positive effect in my lifetime. Like many other people in the professional class, my focus is on my own self-reliance and ensuring that I am not beholden to society any more than I must.

<comment><USER94> > The author of this piece is a left-wing statist

How familiar are you with the author's work? I'm not familiar with it, but Wikipedia says they are a conservative and former Trump supporter.

Most people seem to consider American Affairs a conservative journal, and the author is its editor.

<comment><USER93> Maybe I overstated my case, then. I am not familiar with the author beyond this piece. This piece, though, shows a very deep disdain for anyone who could be considered conservative and blatantly makes the case for statism. So, perhaps they are not left-wing, merely a statist.

I tend to think there are more than one way to skin a cat, and statism is not automatically the correct answer. Their direct statements disagree.

<comment><USER95> Author is saying that the state is where opportunity is best found at the moment due to all the reasons laid out in the article, which is quite good. It's not a value judgement, just an observation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> so many type's of war ""

</comment><comment><USER97> This is all driven by globalisation, and don't get me wrong I'm a globalist, but this is just a fact. First manual labour in manufacturing was outsourced abroad, then higher tier tech jobs in software and product engineering. Now big firms from former third world countries are muscling in on markets at every level of the economy, creating competition at every level of business.

You can't add hundreds of millions of Chinese people to the global work force, now at every level of the global economy, without affecting the market for that labour.

I said I'm a globalist, yes I am. My wife is Chinese, I've been going there regularly since 2001. When I first went private car ownership was near unheard of. It's a different country now, near-empty streets with a few donkey drawn carts are now choked with commuter traffic.

The result has been a pause in income growth in the western world. We've benefited from cheap imported goods, but lost out in domestic growth. The upside is that hundreds of millions of people, not just in China but in plenty of other places too, have been elevated out of poverty. I've seen that for myself and it's done an incalculable amount of good, it's just that all the benefits haven't been evenly distributed.

Could we in the west have benefited more if we'd had less globalisation? I really don't know. We have benefited I think, and we've had opportunities to invest and sell into those markets we wouldn't have otherwise had. I don't know, it's hard to evaluate what could have been as it's such a radically different shape for the world economy. Maybe we'd have ended up even worse off, who knows? But we might have been better off, I can't deny it.

For the future, we can already see incomes in China have shot up. Low level manufacturing jobs are moving out of China, because Chinese labourers have more skills now and can command high enough wages in more upmarket jobs that they don't need the low end work any more. I suspect that's why the employment rate in the US and elsewhere, at the bottom end of the economy, is picking up. I hope that continues, and in future growth will be more balanced across the economic and wage spectrum.

<comment><USER98> > The result has been a pause in income growth in the western world. We've > benefited from cheap imported goods, but lost out in domestic growth.

Except that's not true. There's been growth; it's just all gone to the very wealthy in the West.

<comment><USER99> > There's been growth; it's just all gone to the very wealthy in the West.

Wrong. According to ourworldindata.org the world population in extreme poverty fell by half since 1990. I'm sure there are other sources to match this data as well.

But that doesn't fit your narrative.

<comment><USER100> You misinterpreted the grammar.

"In the West, it's just all gone to the very wealthy" is the intent. Not "All the growth in the world has gone to the wealthy in the West."

<comment><USER99> "In the West, it's just all gone to the very wealthy" is also a claim that is broad, hard to define, and is empty without evidence.

Of course those who pay attention to these sorts of things know that the reality is more complex than that, even if you limit your analysis to "The West," which isn't a unified bloc. See the differences exhibited by the change in income inequality by these nations: [https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/07/Top- Incomes.png](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/07/Top-Incomes.png) . You can't make a generalized statement about "wealth in the West," because it has exhibited different patterns in different countries over different timeframes. You have to specify all of those parameters before an intelligent conversation can even be started.

Even if the grandparent was worded too vaguely to communicate the poster's actual point, the grandparent turned out to be making a statement that was too low resolution to actually communicate anything beyond hand-waving anti- Capital rhetorical sentiment.

<comment><USER101> > those who pay attention to these sorts of things know that the reality is > more complex than that

Kind of, but the trends are similar if the magnitudes are somewhat different. States with more distributive policies have less inequality, surprise surprise.

> Even if the grandparent was worded too vaguely to communicate the poster's > actual point, the grandparent turned out to be making a statement that was > too low resolution to actually communicate anything beyond hand-waving anti- > Capital rhetorical sentiment.

I guess technically that's true, but it's also not far off. Because the West is back into relatively low growth, capital's influence is growing [2]. When you consider the only way to get capital is income or returns on capital, this is a simple recipe for inequality growing. And it indeed is the likely trend without (again surprise surprise) more redistribution policies [3].

[1]: [https://boingboing.net/2017/12/14/oligarchy-on- ice.html](https://boingboing.net/2017/12/14/oligarchy-on-ice.html)

[2]: [https://voxeu.org/article/capital- back](https://voxeu.org/article/capital-back)

[3]: [https://voxeu.org/article/new-globalisation-and-income- inequ...](https://voxeu.org/article/new-globalisation-and-income-inequality)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> The story of Rome's fall is both complicated and relatively straightforward yet it eerily resembles America: The state became too big and chaotic; the influence of money and private interests corrupted public institutions; and social and economic inequalities became so large that citizens lost faith in the system altogether and gradually fell into the arms of tyrants and demagogues. If all of that sounds familiar, well, that's because the parallels to our current political moment are striking. Edward Watts, a historian at the University of California San Diego, has just published a new book titled Mortal Republic that carefully lays out what went wrong in ancient Rome — and how the lessons of its decline might help save fledgling republics like the United States today.

<comment><USER103> Not to mention they were all poisoned by lead, using it for sweeteners, pipes, and for their chalices and cups.

<comment><USER66> One could consider Americans poisoned by _something_ , considering that 40% of the American population is obese (not just overweight) and sperm count has declined 50% in developed countries over the past few decades.

<comment><USER104> Hmm... is the sperm count stat normalized to the obesity problem? I keep hearing things about America's declining health, some of which seem to be "mysterious" and concerning. But then I'm always reminded that a lot of it is just people being fat. People being fat sounds like a highly probable culprit for why sperm counts are dropping on average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> If more of our pundits were as sharp as this kid, I'd have less anxiety over the future of our republic.

Instead, we have Maddows and Kristols and Matthews and Schapiros--venal persons, who make camps in Siberia seem like _maybe_ not such a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER106> Could someone write a tl;dr for this article so I can understand his point(s)?

<comment><USER107> The gap between the haves and have nots that will cause problems is between 0.1% and 90% to 99.9%, rather than the gap between 10% and 90%. I think.

And there is a lot of misallocation of resources as people try to hold onto their percentile, or spend an inordinate amount of resources trying to climb to the next one. I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> IDK I have a hard time reading a conservative journal that voted for Trump describing wage gaps

</comment><comment><USER109> The US has healthy capitalism, and a separate theft by crony capitalism. GDP growth is stolen away from workers to investors. Crony capitalism has completely spread across the pharma industry, medical, banking, and so much more.

US congress men and women sell out on the key areas where crony capitalists need their laws changed.

</comment><comment><USER110> Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hmr8YLNzoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hmr8YLNzoQ)

</comment><comment><USER111> The top 0.1% consists mostly of top 1% folks having a windfall, and the top 1% is mostly top 10% folks having some good years. These aren't really separate and distinct classes of people as is popularly imagined

> The performance gap between the top 1 or 0.1 percent versus the top 10 > percent is actually larger than the gap between those right at 10 percent > and any part of the bottom 90 percent.

<comment><USER19> > The top 0.1% consists mostly of top 1% folks having a windfall, and the top > 1% is mostly top 10% folks having some good years. These aren't really > separate and distinct classes of people as is popularly imagined

They aren't "separate" in that we're not literally a feudal society. Sure, I can agree that an ordinary engineer has a chance of making it big on stock options and becoming a multi millionaire.

But that's not common. It's like winning the lottery. You can't plan to join a startup that will make you a millionaire, especially if you aren't a software engineer or aren't living in silicon valley. And for everyone else, the gap between the 0.1% and the 1% and the 10% is widening.

<comment><USER112> The key thing here is that most of these measures are measuring income, not wealth. The graphs in the article definitely show income.

And what that means is that "top 0.1%" or "top 0.001%" is not the same group year to year. Especially given the way capital income is handled: in the year when you sell a bunch of stock, or sell a house, or whatever, you suddenly move much higher in the income distribution, but just for that one year.

To make this concrete, let's look at the "top 1%" of the population in the sense that their income is consistently in the top 1% of incomes (let's ignore lifecycle effects for now, which throw extra wrenches into the works). These people buy houses, then sell them at some point. I really doubt they average more than 20 years between sales, so in any given year at least 5% of them are selling houses. Any such house sale is likely accompanied by significant capital gains (from inflation, if nothing else, though the real estate markets in various places have been helping, of course). In what fraction of cases are those capital gains enough to move you into the 0.1% for that one year? What fraction of 0.1% incomes are then due to "top 1%" people selling their house?

If we were tracking lifetime cumulative incomes here, rather than annual incomes, we might be able to say something more useful. But a significant part of what we are seeing in the data is that income at the top has become more volatile, so when you get taxable events those taxable events are larger than they used to be.

Now of course the gap between someone who consistently makes a "0.1%" income and someone who consistently makes a "10%" income has in fact been widening. But I'd really like to see some data on how big those classes of people are. Consistent "0.1%" income accrues to _much_ less than 0.1% of the population, from everything I've seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> Virtually every problem listed in this article is solved if bitcoin continues its historic rise - and yet you mention bitcoin on hacker news and you're down-voted to oblivion, it really is unbelievable.

The "Elites" are getting richer because capital is being used to accumulate more capital through dividends on stocks and revenue producing assets. The only reason money is being funneled into these assets is because they have the best return on investment, period. Money goes where it can get the best return.

The script gets flipped if that asset is a hard, un-inflatable asset like bitcoin with a built in scarcity mechanism.

Bitcoin doesn't have a dividend, if you're part of the 0.1 percent you can buy a ton of it, but in order to realize any gains you have to sell it and if you can't replenish it you'll have to go back to work to earn more. Of course all of that is in theory, a lot of the truly rich people in this world have income producing businesses and other assets aside from stocks but you could argue that that's a lot better than money simply producing more money.

The world desperately needs bitcoin to succeed.

<comment><USER73> Do you really think the elite would accept any threat to the status quo without a fight? Besides, even _if_ you were to somehow succeed, the scarcity of bitcoin would just be the new elite. Bitcoin ownership is already incredibly concentrated. Meet your new boss, same as old boss.

<comment><USER113> You're always going to have people in life who have more than other people, life is inherently unfair, there's always going to be a 1%. You can put measures in place to ensure that the gap doesn't widen too greatly, but that's a different discussion.

It's true that bitcoin creates a disparity in ownership, but you can't actually realize any gain unless you sell what you have. If I'm accumulating and holding bitcoin, that's good for me and everyone else who's accumulating and holding bitcoin because it keeps the price up. If I sell bitcoin at a profit, that's good for me but bad for most other people, but I also lose my position and the price goes down to allow others to enter into the market.

There's no incentive to sell with dividend producing stocks and real-estate because they produce money, if you're strictly speaking about money begetting more money then that's the problem.

The middle class can gain a strong foothold in bitcoin in its nascencey, the elites aren't willing to give up their income producing assets but if bitcoin continues to multiply by 5-10X every four years like many expect it to then that gives the middle class incredible leverage to move up the economic hierarchy like we've never seen before.

I actually think this is how the next decade will play out, bitcoin will continue its historic rise and we'll see economic changes like we've never seen before. Bitcoin is going to restructure the way the economy works over the next decade or two.

Millennials will be able to pay off their loans, they'll be able to buy houses and many will become the new "Elite" until something else comes along.</comment></comment></comment>


Cadence & Slang is a book about interaction design. - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nickd/cadence-and-slang-is-a-book-about-interaction-design

<comment><USER2> Nice idea, but... you're asking for money? That would be a nice thing to put in the headline or somewhere on the page. I thought you were going to tell me about what's in the book. I closed the video when you got to the money part, cranky because I felt like I had been misled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I'm the one that posted this cause I'd like to see it get funded.

I am not the one asking for funding, though I have added funding in the form of a $40 pre-order.

Either Nick hits his $9800 mark and the book gets published or he doesn't and nobody's card gets charged.

The project is featured on the kickstart.com homepage <http://www.kickstarter.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this will be a great and useful book because the author has a defined focus. being that the focus is "making technology (not just websites but all things new/fancy) helpful" i think it will be something very necessary going forward.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've run into nick a few times lately at a local cafe. From what I've seen, he's been hard at work on the book and he's definitely got my pledge.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great book idea, hope it gets funded</comment>


Republican and Democratic Party Platforms in XML - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tauberer/party-platforms

<comment><USER2> Politics with markup is still politics, and is probably best left to other sites.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wanted two XML files defining issues and stances which I could do a diff on or as the basis of some application. This is just glorified HTML.

<comment><USER4> The problem is any XML schema would be influenced by the opinions of the creator of the schema so you couldn't do a diff and get equally weighted values.</comment></comment>


How Computers Are Changing the Way We Explain the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/08/computers-changing-way-explain-world/ <comment><USER2> When we all use these "genderless no form factor options" I've heard are all the rage nowadays...</comment>


Ask YC: When and how did you start showing off your product? - <AUTHOR>

Our project is on target for an August 1st release, and we're planning on recruiting beta users in our local area using old fashioned methods like "talking to people" and "putting up posters".
Our application is geographically bounded -- that is, it's no fun if there aren't any other users in your region.  Because of that problem, we've had trouble deciding on the best strategy to reach a wider audience.
So, even if it doesn't apply directly to our problem, for added insight I'm asking other startup founders -- at what point in your startup process did you start looking for a wider audience?  Was there any rhyme or reason to how they came to you?  What sorts of channels did you try to advertise yourself through? <comment><USER2> I'm starting today with a couple of people i met at meet-ups. Then i plan to tap into my alumni and keep spreading the word. Good luck to your launch!</comment>


Ask HN: It is difficult to find a company to sponsor a visa for a junior dev? - <AUTHOR> I'm a Colombian rails developer (6 months of experience), and my biggest dream is to move to bay area and get a job as a developer. However, I'm not senior yet.
I'm planning to travel in october to have a lot of interviews, but some close friends to me have told me that the companies just serve as sponsors for really experienced developers.
I'm thinking I could work remotely in the months that the visa request is processed.
Do you think that I could have a possibility to get a job in this circunstances?
Thanks a LOT for any help <comment><USER2> US H1B visa sucks, forget it. Unless you got a PhD or something better... companies aren't that willing to go through the bureaucracy and investment to hire you. Also, your wife/significant other will have no rights there, also, you are tied to the company...

I'm from Brazil. I gave up trying to go to US and then applied to a couple of companies in Europe and got the job. The visa here is good(Germany), my wife can work, public services are good and I can get permanent residence in 2 years, citizenship in 8.

I still have the dream to work in the US, but only when they deal with their poor VISA crap. After I saw how things are good for immigrants here in Europe, even if I got an offer to work there for Facebook, I wouldn't go. The US government have to get their stuff straight.

But yeah, I think you need more experience. Talk in events, have a nice github, improve your english, level up your game... and keep applying to companies!

<comment><USER3> I actually forgot to mention that if you have a Master's degree, the chance for you to get an H1B work visa increases from 1/3 to 1/2 (based on these past 2 years status). But keep in mind that even your company hires you, the company has to file your petition by between April 1-7, and if you are lucky to win the H1b lottery, then you can start working ONLY after October 1. The problem (that is the hard part) is: not many employers are willing to wait for 6 months for you to start working. But again, this kind of logistics can always work out if you are valuable enough for your employer.

<comment><USER4> [...] if you have a Master's degree or higher from an US university [...]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't waste your time flying in October. Companies will be applying for H1Bs in April, and they usually run out on the 1st day. And even if you get an H1B in April, you can't start until the following October. Very few companies (probably zero) will allow you to work remotely until you get your H1B and then can start working.

Your best chance is to get into a Master's program and then apply for internships, and eventually a job that way. Then they can apply for your behalf while you are on OPT, rather than randomly while you're in Columbia.

Your other option is to get a job locally at a big Silicon Valley company, like Facebook or Google and then transfer to the US. If you are manager, then you can get your L1 visa which is really fast.

</comment><comment><USER6> I did it the other way around. I started to work as a freelancer for quite a large company. After a while, they offered me a full-time job under the J-1 visa. During the J-1, they applied for an H1-B for me. My H1-B application failed in the first year, so they had to extend J-1 (6 months is the maximum allowed extension). They applied for another H1-B and I finally got it. My J-1 expiration time was somewhere in August, so I had to go back to my home country. I had one month and half to get an H1-B stamping and during this period I worked remotely. I got back to US in the early of October, but now with an H1-B stamping.

P.S. The reason they made me a J-1 visa initially is because it was the fastest way to get me to US.

</comment><comment><USER3> true and false.

One important factor: depends on how well you do in the interview & how much you know about what you know. I am an environmental engineer turns into healthcare startup person, I got job offers before I quitted my job (and of course they sponsored visa to work in the US). But that said you have to do a lot of additional learning to make sure you know what you are talking about.

In addition, while experience is a factor, it all depends on whether you: 1. have 10 years of experience and repeat doing what you have learned 20 times; 2. convert the 6-month experience into infinite values to the company. So make sure you show your passion and ability to perform like a learning machine :)</comment>


Roger Stone Indictment [pdf] - _-_T_-_ https://www.justice.gov/file/1124706/download <comment> _-_T_-_ Roger Stone, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller and arrested Friday on charges of obstruction, giving false statements and witness tampering.

Allegedly

Organization 1= Wikileaks

Person 1= Jerome Corsi

Person 2= Randy Credico or Jerome Corsi

Bannon is one of "senior Trump Campaign officials"</comment>