Why it's expensive to be poor - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html?referrer=emailarticle <comment><USER2> Data point: I once worked on software for very large retail chains which allows those retailers to group stores by "zones" for pricing purposes. One of the commonly defined pricing zones is "inner-city", which consistently get their prices bumped by, say, 5 or 10% for many items. The reasoning behind this was exactly as laid out in the article: inner-city residents lack transportation options, and so retailers can command higher prices.

<comment><USER3> Right, the article should have been about it being expensive to be the urban poor. Suburban poor have it much better. They largely have cars, because people in a city pay more to park a car for three months than people in the suburbs pay to buy a car. They shop at and work Wal-Mart rather than 7-11, and Wal-Mart costs less and pays more. Etc.

The moral is, if you're poor, get the hell out of the city.

<comment><USER4> The urban poor usually have much better bus access and walking access to jobs. That saves a lot of money. The cost of housing is also super cheap. And many inner cities do have inexpensive super markets, cheap ethnic grocers, and dollar discount stores for household goods. I'd need to see some actual stats on the price of milk or eggs by neighborhood. I'm not sure inner cities are really that much more expensive.

<comment><USER5> The poor city I'm adjacent to, Trenton, has no supermarket. People simply have to shop at the convenience stores, which are more expensive anywhere. I'm not aware of anything you mentioned inside the city--just in the suburbs surrounding it. Housing is not super cheap: 800-1200 a month rent is typical for a far-from-glamorous home, maybe 700 if you're willing to live in the high-crime areas. Most people with kids would do anything to stay out of those parts. That doesn't leave a lot for food, utilities, child care, transportation, and misc. costs.

I'm not really sure what city you're considering. It's far from the reality I've seen.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean Trenton has no super markets? A quick google maps search shows over a dozen super markets and grocery stores. The rent you cite is less expensive than the suburbs. The cities I know best are Philly, DC, and New Haven. In each of these cities, the poor, inner city areas have lower housing prices than the surrounding suburbs, and they have available super markets.

<comment><USER5> Those small grocery stores aren't the same as a supermarket, and the supermarkets listed aren't really in Trenton. For some reason some of them are listed as such, but if you look at the map they're a bit off elsewhere. We don't consider that part of Trenton--one of those is in Hamilton, for example. Trenton's last supermarket closed back awhile ago and it's an obstruction to food access often-mentioned by non-profits in the area.

I'm not sure about rent. In states south from NJ those rents are high for suburban areas, for housing in much worse shape (chipping lead paint, etc). You're right in terms of staying within New Jersey--those are low in a state with very expensive housing (and everything else), but considering both health and the pay people get in the poor areas receive I'm not sure if it's a fair comparison. In my own experience, the suburban poor do seem to be better off than the urban poor (and I think it all trumps rural poverty)--and I love cities, so I really wish that weren't the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I call BS on some of the "facts" in this story.

 _...an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston [says]. "You have to work a lot of hours and still not make a lot of money...."_

Just not true. The typical poor family works less than half as much as the typical non-poor family (1000 hours/year vs 2100 hours/year).

<http://www3.brookings.edu/es/wrb/publications/pb/pb28.pdf>

 _You ask him why he didn't just go to a bank...He says he lost his driver's license and now his regular bank "won't recognize me as a human._

A check cashing place requires the same, usually more stringent ID than a bank.

 _...Jacob Carter finds himself standing in a checkout line at the Giant on Alabama Avenue SE...The clerk suggests that he use his "bonus card" for savings...Carter tells the clerk he has no such card._

Bonus cards are so hard to get. You need to walk over to the courtesy counter, ask for one, then fill out phony information on the card to get it.

<comment><USER7> I agree with you here. Some of the things that the article dismisses as impossible are quite possible, like getting a bank account. You have to waste an hour waiting in line to get an ID, and then you can save $15 every time you get paid. That sounds like a good deal to me. These people should do that, and stop letting the check cashing places take advantage of them. They can also go to the public library and pay their bills online, saving the the cost of either postage or the fee on the money order. None of this costs money or much time, but it will _save_ money.

Also, why are people with a 10 minute drive not riding a bicycle? If you can't afford a car, and the bus route isn't convenient enough, it's time to get a bicycle.

I also don't buy the article's premise that having a car is mandatory. I live in a big city (Chicago), and I have never owned a car. I ride my bike to the grocery store (even in the winter), take the CTA to other stores I need to visit, or just order what I need online. All of these things save me money, and don't cost me much time. (It would take as long to drive to the grocery store ad it takes to ride my bike.)

Don't get me wrong, I know the poor have a hard life. But some of their problems are easily fixed, if they are willing to invest time now to save time later.

<comment><USER8> That is kind of the point of the article. Part of being poor is not knowing ways of saving money. That is why they are stuck in this vicious circle.

<comment><USER9> Not taking this out on you. But, start a business then that teaches them this and find a way to make money doing, or get donors and do it as a none profit. I am not saying that you are saying have the government do it for them, but that is the vibe, I get with the vast majority of people in this thread.

The government is not the only people that can help the poor, and likely not the best to help the poor. Why is this? Because the government does things on tax payers dime, they don't have a 100% control of the money.

I am sorry, but even if this is the case in real life that the poor have it harder, which I do not doubt, it does not make the solution government intervention.

<comment><USER10> "I am sorry, but even if this is the case in real life that the poor have it harder, which I do not doubt, it does not make the solution government intervention."

Why is that any less a solution than starting a business?

I realize this place is full of people who want to start businesses, but at least attempt to make an argument why that is the case instead of just stating it as if you're saying "the Sun rises in the East"...

In the case of poverty it's _in the taxpayers interest_ to get rid of poverty, because society is footing a lot of the bill. The interests seem much better aligned than those of someone running a business trying to extract money from the people who have none.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had high hopes for this article (based on the title), but was utterly disappointed by it. It seems to serve no purpose other than to provide dinner- party fodder for the middle classes hoping to project a sense of _I'm in touch with the poor_ empathy.

It deals with a generality that is stunningly obvious: it's expensive to be poor. In the space of five pages, it struggles to get beyond that generality. There are a handful of anecdotes and equal number of catch-phrase expert opinions that barely scratch the surface.

Where is the data: how many people are _actually affected_ by these factors (not merely 'poor'), to what extent, and at what ultimate cost (in dollars).

Where is the root-cause analysis: is being poor linked to class / expectations of life / upbringing?

Where is the counter story: examples of people who got them selves our of the trap - how did they do that? What made them different.

Where is call to action: if this is truly an _oh-so-terrible-problem_ then where is the call to action? What are readers to do?

I apologize now if this comes across as a rant. In my opinion this is a _real and growing problem_ for the developed world, and as such a article that merely skims the surface like this one comes across as disingenuous, so I suspect the motives.

I'm reminded of the 1984 hit "Feed the world". The final lines of the verse (sung by Bono) always sends a chill through me:

      There's a world outside your window,
      and it's a world of dread and fear
      Where the only water flowing
      is the bitter sting of tears
      And the Christmas bells that ring there
      are the clanging chimes of doom
      Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you  (Bono)

This feels like classic _'tonight thank God it's them instead of you'_ journalism.

</rant>

<comment><USER12> _I apologize now if this comes across as a rant._

Actually, I think yours is the best comment of the entire page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is it they say, "money rolls uphill"?

It's very true that when you don't have funds to make financial investments that pay off over time you end up even deeper.

I guess this is why I think progressive taxation is "fair", people with higher incomes can leverage it so it makes more difference than the apparent income difference would indicate.

<comment><USER13> This is exactly the arguement I make when people tell me that progressive taxation is some sort of evil and "fair" is when everyone just pays a fixed percent. I usually say "money has its own economies of scale" and a progressive tax is just a way to address these. "Money rolls uphill" is a nice way of saying that. I hadn't heard that before. I think maybe I'll borrow that. Thanks.

<comment><USER14> Rich people pay more taxes if you have a flat tax rate too.

How do you know how much progressiveness you need to counteract the vague phenomenon you describe? How can you be sure a mere proportionate increase wouldn't be enough to do it? Or even less?

<comment><USER10> Look at the wealth accumulation with time of people with different incomes. I bet you that someone who makes $80k/yr will accumulate a whole lot more wealth with time than someone who makes $40k/yr (~ median income in US), and compare to those that make $14k/yr (what you make in a year of full-time work at minimum wage). That should tell you what the ROI of money made at various income levels is.

<comment><USER15> It tells you that if that's your hypothesis. If you think rich people are smarter, it tells you that not only do they make more money, but they're more responsible about saving it, too. So even though Mr. $80K has to buy a nice car and a couple suits, and Mr. $40K doesn't, Mr. $80K still spends less on liquor and lotto tickets.

<comment><USER10> It tells me what if what's my hypothesis?

I really dislike when people use the word "smart" or "intelligent" in these situations, because it makes it sound like "intelligence" is innate, like a genetic trait. Even people's IQ scores are not genetically determined, and an even more amorphous trait like "ability to amass monetary wealth" probably has a lot more to do with skills you acquire during your upbringing than with genetics.

So if you want to say that rich people are better at gathering wealth, sure. That does not imply that the poor people, if they had been swapped at birth, could have acquired the same skills from the same situation.

<comment><USER14> Don't get distracted with the intelligence thing. His point is simply that you can't tell how much of the growth in people's fortunes is due to money rolling uphill, because it's probably not the only factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've always really hated vehicle emissions testing. It's evil. The government colludes with the auto industry to force perfectly fine but slightly older vehicles off the road. And 90% of the time it's not even related to emissions--- some damn sensor is just faulty. For the middle class it's a costly expense. But if you own a car that costs $1500 but to pass emissions you have to spend $1000 to get it fixed, you're hosed. So you don't have any option but to drive an unregistered vehicle, and so the cycle continues...

<comment><USER17> Putting $1000 into a $1500 car still makes it much cheaper than any new car you can buy in the US.

As air pollution expert Glen Class used to say (while acknowledging its disproportionate effect one the poor), the most effective thing you can do improve auto emissions is to remove the oldest 10% of cars from the road as they contribute emissions equal to the newer 90%.

While I don't know who colludes with whom, new cars really are that much better emissions wise than older ones.

</comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill I feel bad for the people mentioned ... however, just by virtue of being in the US/Canada/Western Europe etc. you have already "won life's lottery".

Is it also expensive to be a flea-bitten, hungry, malnourished baby in Africa and with only a 50% chance (or whatever the number is) of making it to 25 years old?

No matter which country has higher mobility, the reality is, you can in fact improve your lot in life if you are poor and in the USA.

<comment><USER8> ".. however, just by virtue of being in the US/Canada/Western Europe etc. you have already "won life's lottery"."

That is true. But you can also "win life's lottery" if you are born in a middle/upper class in a developing country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ok, you save a dollar on a gallon of milk, but how much does it cost to own a car?

<comment><USER19> The point is that the poor pay more for exactly the same (or even inferior) things as people who are better off, not that they somehow spend more in the aggregate. People who already are going to have less than others because of their lower income actually have that small amount of money go less far than exactly that same amount of money would go for someone who was better off.

You can view that as just the reality of how the economics work out, or you can view that as fundamentally unfair that people essentially get kicked while they're already down.

<comment><USER20> _You can view that as just the reality of how the economics work out, or you can view that as fundamentally unfair that people essentially get kicked while they're already down._

The two are not mutually exclusive positions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems like this should be a huge opportunity for someone to come in and optimize things.

The "pay day advance" stuff seems particularly wasteful and generally awful. Even my credit card company won't charge me $50 to front me $300 in cash. Hell on a clean card with one of those "0% APR for 6 months" I could probably cut myself a 3k bridge loan and pay almost nothing. (assuming I just pay minimums and then if the 0% APR expires I clear the balance).

<comment><USER22> If you're the kind of person that needs to go to a payday loan place, you're not going to be eligible for a 0% APR card - if you're lucky, you'd be offered a fully-secured credit card (meaning you have to give them money first before you can use it, and you can only use up to the amount you've given them) with a maximum balance of five hundred bucks, which you wouldn't have lying around anyways.

You get those card offers now because you're (presumably) employed to some degree and have a decent credit rating, so the card company thinks you're a pretty good bet to not default. If you need a payday loan, it's unlikely you have anything near a good credit rating, if you have one at all.

As for optimizing things, it depends on who you want to optimize for. If you want to optimize it for the credit card and payday loan companies, that's pretty much been done already - they have a very permissive set of regulations they operate under, and aren't short on profit margin. If you want to do it for the customers, that means you need to set up a financing service aimed at high-risk individuals, but you're going to have to mark-up some to make up for the default rate.

A good deal of people who frequent payday loan companies can't even get it together (for whatever reasons, both in and out of their immediate control) to get a normal checking account - you think that they'll be offered no-interest unsecured credit cards?

<comment><USER21> @optimizing why not do something like a fresh fruit/vegetable cart that rolls through every morning at say 8am. The cart is actually backed/financed/supported by some bigger "rich folk" store (Shaws/Krugers/whatever) and is only available from 8am to 10am.

This, theoretically reduces the "cost of doing business" since the likely hood that you get mugged for vegetables and fruit in broad daylight is probably pretty low.

Following from the article, low cost of doing business should mean lower costs - even if you factor in gas and such you should still be able to beat the corner market and cut a profit since you are selling "big box" product at a markup...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >>But, Blakeney says: "I don't have time to mail it. You come here and get it done. Then you don't get charged with the late fee." <<

Huh? So you pay 10% for someone to do it for you..

<comment><USER22> To mail it himself would take some long-term planning. He'd have to book off a time when he knows he'll have the bill and the address with him, not put this off until tomorrow, locate and go to a post office/convenience store to buy stamps and an envelope, get the money in his account, and then keep it there for five or six business days until he's sure that it's been cashed.

If you're living paycheque-to-paycheque, this is more difficult than you would think - especially the part about having the fifty bucks sitting in his account for five days without touching it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Print Version:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/05...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053_pf.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> "The effective annual percentage rate is 806 percent"

A ridiculous metric for a week long loan.

<comment><USER26> Unless you take one out (almost) every week.

<comment><USER27> No, because the 806 number includes compounding.

<comment><USER26> It certainly does not include compounding; the 806 figure is derived from the stated weekly cost of $100 -- $15.5 -- times 52 weeks, a simple sum.

A calculation of the annual rate based on 15.5% compounded weekly would be much, much worse.

The effective annual rate is _somewhat_ worse than 806%, because if you rolled over your $100 principal loan each week, paying just the $15.5 fees, then paid back the principal at the end of the year, you've paid $806 in interest, yes. And if that full interest payment had been made only at the end of the year, your annual rate would have been 806%. But you paid a lot of that early, so your effective rate was higher.

<comment><USER27> Yikes, you're right. That's obscene.

I hope non-profits like Kiva are able to help in this area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Related video: Comedian Louis CK on the cost of being broke:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q0dIktwJmw>

</comment><comment><USER29> Read the article, didn't like it.

How can I comment that it's stupid to _lease a sofa_ when you have to scrounge food for your family, without getting lynched by the "you don't know what it's like you evil smug lucky middle class brat" crowd?

It's a suboptimal choice. Maybe a stupid choice (BUT POOR PEOPLE AREN'T STUPID).

You could go on the bus to the cheaper shop and buy two lots of food while your friend does two lots of washing at the laundromat (BUT IT'S EASY FOR YOU TO SAY YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE)

You could pool your money and get a washing machine between several people and free up a lot of time (BUT THAT'S NOT AN OPTION, DON'T YOU _SEE_?)

You could not spend 25% of your available money on fried chicken instead of food that lasts longer (and is healthier). (What the hell? Fried chicken? Is that paragraph solely there as bait to trap commenters like me?)

Isn't it silly for several people to have $800 cars they can't afford to repair, when together they could have a $2000 car and some spare cash? Well isn't it?

OK, OK, you can't do any of that. You can't do anything. You're not stupid or lazy you just didn't get a break. Yes I am lucky, yes I don't know what it's like. Yes I see it's probably extremely unpleasant. OK then, there's no way out. At all. So does it help that I now feel guilty about it? Not really.

Do you really believe it's possible to have a society almost like ours, but with no poor people? I don't. Not really. No good reasons why not, but it feels impossible. I mean, we can't all be millionaires, can we? Is that different?

So there's Bob. Bob is poor. It can't be OK. because that's something "you can't say" (see PG essay). So it's not OK. But it's not Bob's _fault_. If there's anything that can happen short of a lottery win that would help Bob, then that would be good. But that must include being able to publicly acknowledge bad choices without condemning them or the reasons for making them.

So is information the answer? You can't see what available options you have. Well hello the internet - information delivery a specialty. Hello HN - information crunching a specialty.

Whoever brought up AKay's quote that "perspective is worth 80 IQ points" in these comments, that rings true.

But I also want it to be true that anybody has the chance of happiness. This includes billions of people born in poor countries. It includes the billions and billions of people who were born and lived more than 50 years ago. In order for this to be the case, then the answer has to be in perspective, not money or sofas or cheap rent or abundant food or "lack of opression by the system" or handouts or community centres or lucky breaks.

Would it be as bad to be poor if I didn't know anything of any alternatives? There is so much poverty and so little luxury when you consider global population. Global population over all history - is wealth and comfortable living really a possible way forward, or just an aberration? A temporary break from a nasty, brutish and short life, for the lucky few?

:(

</comment><comment><USER30> This aligns well with the concept of economic mobility: Team of Brookings Institution researchers publish study - [http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP_American_Dre...](http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP_American_Dream.pdf)

From the PDF: the U.S.A. has fallen behind other western nations, such as Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden in maintaining the concept of economic or upward mobility...

And this is the main reason, as I recall, why the U.S. was always portrayed as more desirable than European nations (and it was true in the 50s; part of my German family immigrated to the U.S. in the 50s). If you take that concept away - why would you want to live in the U.S. anymore:

\- none of U.S. cities rank in the top 100 most livable places (Mercer Cities Ranking)

\- high schools and many public schools rank low in comparison to other western nations

\- education is much more expensive

\- there is no organized trade school education, like in Germany, Britain etc.

\- salaries for the lower third are less

\- health care (don't get me started)

\- hardly any social safety net

\- crime, largest per capita prison population in the world

\- infrastructure - roads, bridges, buildings etc. (don't get me started; it's almost third world country level)

\- average lasting quality of housing (drywall, cheap wood framing, bad carpentry on windows and doors etc.)

\- manufacturing quality and capability: look at American made cars or power tools (I always prefer foreign made)

\- half of the government budget goes towards the military

\- lack of public transportation (Standard Oil bought up the urban train networks in the 1940's and had them decommissioned: street cars, urban transit etc.)

\- no functioning Euro-style city cores, urban sprawl, stuffed highways with commuters

\- and the most important fact of all: the byzantine law system of the U.S. and the huge costs of lawyers and law suits (this affects many areas); lawyers can cost over $ 500/ hour and if you can't afford one you are out of luck; further, judges are not high-end lawyers trained as judges (like in Germany etc.) but can be any random divorce lawyer that got appointed regionally, as I understand

Final verdict: the U.S. has been badly managed in the last 30 years, and the poor carry the burden.

The final evidence is given in the study of Cliometrics and measuring average body height of nations (an indicator for health/ prosperity): it used to be (up until the 1950s) that U.S. Citizens were taller than Europeans; this trend has been reversed in the last 30 years - now the Euros are taller (especially the Dutch)

<comment><USER31> "- none of U.S. cities rank in the top 100 most livable places (Mercer Cities Ranking)"

This is rather false: <http://www.citymayors.com/features/quality_survey.html>

This calls into question the other assertions. What is your source?

I actually agree that the U.S. has been pretty badly mismanaged lately, but despite this I've encountered many hardworking immigrants who manage to do well for themselves. I believe the main reason the poor continue to be poor is lack of drive and lower intelligence/education. Both of these derive mostly from environmental factors, especially family life, poor values, poor education and generally inhospitable surroundings.

You would need to make some pretty radical changes to turn it around.

<comment><USER30> My mistake - quoted from memory (comment system on HN locks edits after 1 hour), tried to edit later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Everyone should read this link by John Scalzi, as well, as a companion to this article. Being Poor:

<http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/>

<comment><USER13> That's fantastic. They're all brilliant but, _"Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old."_ , just gives me chills.

<comment><USER33> _Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old._

Let's not mumble-mumble "choices" -- that makes it sound like you could be doomed forever if, in a fit of adolescent stupidity, you went out with friends instead of studying for a geometry test.

Here are the durable wreck-your-life decisions you can make at age 14:

1) Dropping out of high school, at age 14.

2) Getting thrown in jail for crimes you committed, at age 14.

3) Getting pregnant, at age 14.

They don't seem all that hard to avoid now, do they? And they don't look all that hidden now, do they? Its not like rich people get together and say "Psssst, pssst: having a baby at age 14 will wreck your life. Pass it on but _don't tell the poor people_!"

<comment><USER13> When I was 14, I thought that sex in a pool was a contraceptive method because _"the chlorine would kill the sperm"_.

14 year olds can be _monumentally_ ignorant about very important things. How many geometry tests do you have to skip before its one too many?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The poor tend to be the stupid (plenty of studies to back this up), and hence the poverty. Since they are more stupid, they fall for stupid payday loan schemes, credit card idiocy, etc., at rates greater than the rich do.

Please do not reply if you read "tend to" as "always." I'm not going to bother responding.

<comment><USER35> yep, so?

Your implying stupid people aren't equal, they deserve to be poor? That smart people are superior? Perhaps stupid people should have to stay in special stupid areas, go to separate schools, drink at special stupid people only water fountains.

I believe stupid people need more not less of a break, more not less assistance, more not less of everything from society and government precisely cause they are stupid.

<comment><USER34> I implied nothing. I said what I said.

Your solution, however, leaves much to be desired. Affirmative action for the unintelligent is unlikely to lead to wonderful economic success on any scale.

<comment><USER36> If your original comment really does imply nothing beyond what it literally said, it is superfluous. All it offers is a correlation - which is insufficient to show whether poverty causes stupidity or the opposite - and a qualitative, unsubstantiated 'explanation' for why stupidity causes poverty and not the other way around.

<comment><USER34> You're right. I didn't say which caused what. I can if you'd like though: Sibling and SES-normed adoption studies tend to show that intelligence is the cause and not the result.

<comment><USER12> I wasn't going to waste my time responding to this, but wikipedia made it easy:

 _The American Psychological Association's report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns[8] states that IQ scores account for about one-fourth of the social status variance and one-sixth of the income variance. Statistical controls for parental SES eliminate about a quarter of this predictive power. Psychometric intelligence appears as only one of a great many factors that influence social outcomes.[8]_

 _One reason why some studies claim that IQ only accounts for a sixth of the variation in income is because many studies are based on young adults (many of whom have not yet completed their education). On pg 568 of The g Factor, Arthur Jensen claims that although the correlation between IQ and income averages a moderate 0.4 (one sixth or 16% of the variance), the relationship increases with age, and peaks at middle age when people have reached their maximum career potential. In the book, A Question of Intelligence, Daniel Seligman cites an IQ income correlation of 0.5 (25% of the variance)._

 _A 2002 study[75] further examined the impact of non-IQ factors on income and concluded that an offspring's inherited wealth, race, and schooling are more important as factors in determining income than IQ._

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

<comment><USER34> I hadn't come across the APA link you provided before, but I had read the Bowles study. He's absolutely right if you assume that inherited wealth, race, and schooling are all independent of IQ. But there's plenty of evidence to show they aren't. So he's not right. In fact, his analysis is quite representative of a certain kind of study you see every so often: you can always make the IQ effect disappear by relying on IQ-correlates instead. I can give you a half-dozen papers that use the same trick. Nobody is impressed by them.

Now, instead of copying and pasting from Wikipedia, maybe you should actually look into the literature in the future. You'll come up with a much fairer sampling of what's out there.

<comment><USER12> Cosma Shalizi will handle this one for me: <http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html>

_Let me sum up._

 _4\. Now that people are finally beginning to model gene-environment interactions, even in very crude ways, they find it matters a lot. Recall that Turkheimer et al. found a heritability which rose monotonically with socioeconomic status, starting around zero at low status and going up to around 0.8 at high status. Even this is probably an over-estimate, since it neglected maternal effects and other shared non-familial environment, correlations between variance components, etc._

 _7\. Randomized experiments, natural experiments and the Flynn Effect all show what competent regressions also suggest, namely that IQ is, indeed, responsive to purely environmental interventions._

...

 _I suspect this answer will still not satisfy some people, who really want to know about differences between people who do not have significant developmental disorders. Here, my honest answer would be that I presently have no evidence one way or the other. If you put a gun to my head and asked me to guess, and I couldn't tell what answer you wanted to hear, I'd say that my suspicion is that there are, mostly on the strength of analogy to other areas of biology where we know much more. I would then — cautiously, because you have a gun to my head — suggest that you read, say, Dobzhansky on the distinction between "human equality" and "genetic identity", and ask why it is so important to you that IQ be heritable and unchangeable._

<comment><USER34> Oh, god, not Shalizi. Back when I was a younger fellow, still willing to devote long chunks of my time in pointless internet debates, I thought of writing up a long critique of Shalizi. He's wrong, and purposefully so. He invokes straw man arguments. He cherry picks whatever evidence he needs to in order to make his points. The fact that he believes something is wonderful evidence that it's probably not true.

A friend of mine once told me that Shalizi's world view was explained by a certain instructor he had as a graduate student, and most of his argument is derived from there, but the name escapes me right now.

Regardless. I happen to believe in evolution. Shalizi believes in a magical equality fairy. One look at an SNP map proves him wrong.

Edit: I just realized that you were trying to follow my suggestion to look into "the literature" and mistook Shalizi's blog entries for actual journal articles. He never published them anywhere as far as I know. Nor could he.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Yeah, it is expensive for a poor to try to live as middle-class. And it is stupid. Stupidity is always more expensive.

The advantage of being poor is that you're detached from all that useless goods, property, stuff and even people. Then you can move. You can live where life is better - some warmer and cheaper place - maybe some buddhist countries, but not California, of course.

Take a look at the Indian brahmins, Tibetan or buddhist monks - they are very poor, as poor as possible, but they are happy and healthy because they does not trying to catch some advertised illusion or broadcasted style of life.

The rule is very simple - spend less than you got. It means to avoid what you can't afford. If you have only one bag with some absolutely necessary things you can live in almost every place with warm climate and peaceful people.

</comment><comment><USER38> read it, enjoyed it, but had to flag because it's OT. Sorry.

<comment><USER39> And what exactly is the topic?

<comment><USER40> Hacker News. I flagged it as well, incidentally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41>
        For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
        —Matthew 25:29, King James Version.</comment>


Quantum pseudo-telepathy - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_pseudo-telepathy <comment><USER2> That says it _can be verified experimentally_ but sounds like it hasn't been. I think. If not, why not; what would it take to test?</comment>


Welcome to Powder Mountain – a utopian club for the millennial elite - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/powder-mountain-ski-resort-summit-elite-club-rich-millennials?CMP=share_btn_tw <comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=powder%20utopian&sort=byDate&p...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=powder%20utopian&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER3> DUP [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16602878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16602878)

(my own submission 30 minutes before yours. Wonder why it was not marked as dup)</comment>


Democracy is hard - <AUTHOR> http://hackertourism.com/post/39268902391/democracy-is-hard

<comment><USER2> The best interpretation of this type of dispute comes from the Federalist Papers #10, written in the (about-to-be) USA by James Madison in 1787. I'll paraphrase it here, but a lot gets lost in simplifications and it might be best to just read it:

<http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm>

"Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true."

He makes the point that it is difficult to combine both majority rule with a reasonable protection of minority rights, and he references other writings that argued that previous democracies had failed because a too permanent majority eventually encroached the rights of the minority to such a degree that the minority became a supporter of any agent or movement that might improve their situation, a situation that could only be improved by ending the rule of the infringing majority.

Madison then made the argument (wholly novel at the time) that a large and diverse nation was better suited to majority rule than a small and homogenous nation, for a large and diverse nation would be less likely to have a permanent majority.

The ruling majority usually has the greatest respect for the rights of minority factions only when that majority is about to lose its majority status, and therefore perpetual changes in the majority is the best way of keeping alive a wide spread respect for minority rights (that is, if everyone can reasonably expect to be in the minority at some point during their life, then everyone will be more likely to respect minority rights).

Some people read #10 and seem to think that Madison is arguing that people should not engage in factions (that protest movements are bad for the nation) however he sets that aside very early in the essay:

"There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects. There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests. It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves."

That is to say, faction is natural and can not be eliminated from a free society. The only question is how to channel it in constructive ways.

Over the last 3 centuries most Western nations have experimented with majority rule combined with various restraints. Some societies achieved reasonable compromises of majority rule plus some protections for those in the minority. The biggest failures of the model have been in those cases where some groups were able to see themselves as holding a permanent majority, and most of these failures have had to do with race. The writer of the linked article seems aware of this, although they do not explicitly mention it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope this helps to bring more attention to the hunger strike and to First Nations issues!

</comment><comment><USER4> Uhm, democracy is hard? The article doesn't seem to substantiate this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hard: inconvenient, expensive, embarrassing at times. It takes a long time and lots of people have to compromise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> democracy blows. no rights are guaranteed in it's nature. tyranny of the uninformed majority

<comment><USER6> would you rather live under ruthlessly intelligent fascism?

I think democracy is pretty great actually. I think we just screwed up requiring arguing from some sort of moral-free first principles.

<comment><USER5> saying democracy doesn't obviously doesn't mean I'd desire something worse. What gave you that idea?

A pure democracy is a joke. A Republic was a fine idea, but the US has done a really poor job of understanding the notion of a sovereign citizen (as opposed to whatever king .. er president is in power)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is search on mobile not as important as on the classic web? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Need some more detail on this question. Do you mean search within a website, or a search engine as in Google?

In either case I would say, as a single datapoint, that search on mobile is just as important as on the desktop.

In some ways more important as I am more likely to use Google Maps on my mobile device than on the desktop, and I search for both specific addresses and the name of a business.

</comment><comment><USER3> Broad question but say for a typical website you should expect ~30% of your traffic to come from mobile. This naturally varies on geography and site function.

From this classic search is still the most important from a pure eyeballs POV but mobile is significant and ever growing.</comment>


Why people irrationally reject cleaned sewer water, and how to change their mind - <AUTHOR> http://www.wbur.org/npr/139642271/why-cleaned-wastewater-stays-dirty-in-our-minds

<comment><USER3> "[I]f you have people imagine the water going into an underground aquifer, for example, and then sitting there for 10 years, the water becomes much more palatable to the public. It budges even those most unwilling to drink the water. ... 'When you do introduce a river or even groundwater ... you run the risk of deteriorating the water that's been treated. You can make the water quality worse.'"

I am singularly amused at the possibility of contaminating treated post-sewage water with river water, resulting in a medically less safe but socially more acceptable water supply. The results of a public vote (as to whether to mix river water with the treated water) would at least tell us who needs to be mailed a printed copy of lesswrong.com.

<comment><USER4> > a printed copy of lesswrong.com.

Does such a critter exist? Not as an actual printed copy, but a way of diving into it that's not quite so ... scary? The closest thing I see to a "table of contents" is the list of Sequences.

<comment><USER5> ciphergoth produced an ebook of Eliezer's posts recently which I'm finding useful:

[http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers...](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers_blog_posts/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Consider the sausage.

Many sausages are made with the intestinal linings and viscera of animals who live in, root around in, and occasionally even eat their own feces. Shit that's passed through shit that's passed through shit.

And yet, few people bat an eyelash at hot dogs, brats, or cocktail weenies. Of course, there's that old chestnut about not wanting to know 'how the sausage gets made.' But, by and large, people cognitively distance the making-of-the- sausage from the sausage itself. Why? Because they've been trained to think of "sausage" as a wholly separate class of item from "pig's colon." And because they've first encountered -- and enjoyed -- sausage before anyone ever told them about how it got there.

We need to use similar psychology to fight the psychology of contamination thinking w/r/t treated wastewater. The message needs to be about how the input is apples, and the output is oranges. But we have to _start_ with the oranges. It's very tough to sell the story when the story begins with the making-of- the-sausage and not the sausage itself.

<comment><USER7> Hot dogs, brats, and cocktail weenies are all types of Americanized sausage which don't use intestinal linings anymore. You have to work pretty hard today to find sausage in your supermarket that is made the old-fashioned way.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casing_(sausage)>

<comment><USER6> Fair. But I suggest that we're picking at nits here. Most mass-market sausages, even of the American variety, are made with mixed and mechanically separated parts, drawn from all over the animal and highly likely to be include portions of bone, head(!), feet, and visceral matter. And the animals themselves live in horrid conditions that often includes standing knee-deep in lakes of their own waste. I think my overall point still stands.

<comment><USER8> My local standard (non-specialist) grocery store sells whole pigs heads, chopped at the neck. Feet are even more popular. I think you might be overestimating how squimish the general population is/would be of such things.

<comment><USER9> Where do you live? I actually go out of my way to find exotic things, but I have never seen that. In fact, I'm one of this people that visit 3-4 grocery stores on the weekend. For reference, I live in New England.

<comment><USER8> Currently Philadelphia. I just checked the grocery store's website and although they list feet/tails/jowls/skin/neck, they don't seem to be listing head right now. I may be recalling seeing it in Reading Terminal Market^ which certainly has that kind of stuff (one stall there has piles and piles of chicken feet.. I have no idea what you'd even do with those. Stews perhaps.)

^ [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Reading_Termi...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Reading_Terminal_Market)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think if they bottled the water and called is 'Dasani' it would be acceptable to the public :-)

As a resident of California, and an engineer, I to find this discussion difficult to fathom. The notion of 'contagion thinking' was probably the best thing in that article. By having the water 'touch' something good it can become 'good.' NASA has a vested interest in such systems [1] for things like the space station. No doubt a lunar colony would have a similar system.

[1] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=nasa- all-...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=nasa-all-systems- go-for-space-urine-2008-11-25)

<comment><USER11> Oh no not Dasani, I remember the uk launch when they made tap water less safe and withdrew it. [http://www.stevedenning.com/Storytelling-in-the- News/95-coke...](http://www.stevedenning.com/Storytelling-in-the-News/95-coke- dasani-launch.aspx)

<comment><USER12> It's interesting how easily people mistake orders of magnitude when they are using different units of measure simultanously -- in the article you linked, first they say:

 _give it a mark-up from 0.03p to 95p per half litre;_

and then:

 _In other words, Dasani is less healthy than regular tap water, but at more than thirty times the price._

It's not _thirty_ times the price -- it's _three thousand_.

It reminds me of a Verizon Math story[1].

[1] - <http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People often act irrationally...

Here in Vienna the tap water basically comes straight from mountain springs in the Alps. Still, almost everyone here buys bottled water, instead of directly drinking the tap water which has the same quality, if not even better.

<comment><USER14> When I was in Vienna in 2007 I spoke to a random entrepreneur during lunch and he noticed I was drinking bottled water.

It turned out he was in the business of bottling water and said the tap water in Vienna was what he was trying to bottle, and the joke was on me that I was drinking water bottled elsewhere when the free tap water was a much higher quality.

<comment><USER15> Why joke? I happily buy bottled water which tastes better than the local tap one. It really depends on what you look for. I wouldn't mind if it's filtered sewage, as long as it tastes good.

The "quality", which can be defined in many ways is hard to judge... Does it matter that much though? At least we can judge the taste ourselves.

<comment><USER16> It matters because tap water doesn't generate plastic waste (created by wasting oil).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Simple solution: don't use the words 'sewer' or 'reused' anywhere near the promotional materials for this product. Call it 'filtered water' or some other safe euphemism.

<comment><USER18> And how long would it take before someone blogs about it.

<comment><USER19> I suspect the trick is to get people to think about it as "recycled water" (or whatever name gets them to accept it) while also intellectually realizing that it's treated wastewater, so when someone blogs about it, people just shrug and say "Oh, yeah, doesn't everybody know that?" I'm not sure if that's possible, but that's probably the only way it would work.

For example, the idea of passing it through an underground aquifer lets people think "yeah, I know it came from a sewer treatment plant, but now it's _different_ ". You're not trying to _hide_ anything, you're just trying to get them to view it differently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm a scientist. I have no issues with the process of turning sewage water into clean drinking water. Absolutely none. However, I do have an issue with humans. Humans screw things up. Humans don't always implement the proper quality assurance programs, and when they do, they might not follow them. Every time I pour myself a glass of water from the tap, it's not the science I'll doubt, I'll just be wondering if Timmy down at the local water treatment plant did his job properly today, because if he didn't, I'm now drinking someone's shit.

<comment><USER21> "Whoah Timmy, that stuff is expensive! The inspector doesn't take samples until the end of the month so go easy on the disinfectant until then will ya?" says Ned the beancounter. True story though my google fu is failing me.

The failure modes are not equal. Timmy cuts corners with river/aquifer water and I get some very diluted nasty shit. Timmy cuts corners with waste water and I get some very concentrated nasty shit.

<comment><USER22> That might actually be an argument that fewer shortcuts would be taken since the consequences would be so dire. Ned is willing to take shortcuts on river water because it's likely that nothing will happen, but if he's smart, he won't make that same statement with sewage.

(Not saying this is any sort of guarantee, just thought it was an interesting thing to consider.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The problem isn't just contagion theory: it's percentages.

We know that the treatment process doesn't remove everything (witness the taste of tap water in various cities).

Purification rates are generally stated as percentages, suggesting that the dirtier the input, the dirtier the output (GIGO)

Searching for "waste water treatment effectiveness" yields interesting articles about failures - for instance: [http://www.cabq.gov/progress/public- infrastructure/dcc-18/in...](http://www.cabq.gov/progress/public- infrastructure/dcc-18/indicator-18-2) which indicates that upstream failures treating the waste water increase health risks and treatment costs of water users downstream - why should it matter without the GIGO principle above?

How sure are you that the treatment systems remove 100% of the micro- organisms? 100% of the chemical hazards? All the time?

There's definitely room for concern, even on the purely scientific/engineering side, though advocates say that the treated waste water is the cleaner water source.

<comment><USER24> "How sure are you that the treatment systems remove 100% of the micro- organisms? 100% of the chemical hazards? All the time?"

I am 100% sure that they do not. It's impossible. No water in nature is that clean, either, by any standard.

But also, you are not a wilting flower that can only survive on the purest triple-distilled angel tears. There absolutely is a such thing as "good enough" and any water that meets existing US standards is well in excess of "good enough". It is certainly far, far, _far_ cleaner than anything your ancestors ever had to drink!

This isn't about safety. All "room for concern" has been abundantly addressed; US water standards are incredibly strict both in theory and in practice. It is entirely about psychology.

<comment><USER25> The article, and all of the responses I've seen so far, all ignore the problem that sewer water is overflowing with the prescription drugs that people have consumed. Municipal water AND many bottled water suppliers don't even bother testing for drug contamination.

[http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/there-are- drugs-...](http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/there-are-drugs-in- drinking-water-now-what/)

<comment><USER24> Broadly speaking, I would consider the burden of proof to be on those who say that things in concentrations measured in small numbers of parts per billion are really bad and worth panicking over. It may be, it can not be ruled out, but the list of things that you routinely consume, that you can't _help_ but consume, at similar concentrations would blow your mind.

Heck, a complete rundown of every microorganism you just ingested the last time you took a breath would blow your mind. (Mine too. I'd love to see it.)

The world is a dirty, dirty place, and always has been. You aren't a wilting flower, you are the product of billions of generations of organisms that survived, all of which except maybe the last three generations lived in a radically dirtier world than you do. I'm really not that worried about ppb pharmaceuticals in my water; if I'm going to go that route I'm going to finger my _food_ for things like hormones and antibiotics long before my _water_.

<comment><USER25> [http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-10-drugs-tap- wat...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-10-drugs-tap-water_N.htm)

""" Troubled by drugs discovered in European waters, poisons expert and biologist Francesco Pomati set up an experiment: He exposed developing human kidney cells to a mixture of 13 drugs at levels mimicking those found in Italian rivers.

There were drugs to fight high cholesterol and blood pressure, seizures and depression, pain and infection, and cancer, all in tiny amounts.

The result: The pharmaceutical blend slowed cell growth by up to a third suggesting that scant amounts may exert powerful effects, said Pomati, who works at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. """

<comment><USER24> Unfortunately (and I mean that, I wish this style worked better than it does because it is so easy compared to real experiments), that style of experiment is well known for producing useless results.

Think about it; if the water was _that_ poisonous, such that 1/3 of our celluar growth was being eliminated, we wouldn't be _speculating_ about whether our water was killing us, we'd _know_ and long since have taken some sort of action. The strength of the real signal is bounded by the fact that we have millions upon millions upon millions of _real people_ consuming these things every day. Reality always trumps both theory and experiment, and don't ever listen to anybody who forgets that. An experiment that shows an enormous signal, which we can observe in the real world can not possibly be occurring, is far more likely to be a flawed-beyond-usefulness experiment than a real reason for concern.

It is, however, a great way to get in the news.

You get the same problem when some people discover that X causes cancer, except that if you take their results seriously you end up with (metaphorically) 245% of the population dying of cancer X by the time they are 30. Except we don't. Hidden dangers can only be so dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What about the fallibility of the system?

If there's a set of processes feeding into each other taking sewage and producing clean drinking water, I feel that there's a much higher possibility of a failure causing contamination to the drinking water. Engineers can be complacent about fail-safes and politics may compromise good engineering.

If there's a river in the way, then although the water must be processed again, this apparent wastefulness also has the effect of preventing engineers (or their managers) from taking shortcuts.

<comment><USER27> Any system for producing drinking water is fallible - why is this one special? Why should we be more suspicious of it than any other process?

Just for one example, I remember in 2004 when Dasani launched in the UK [1]. Aside from a bunch of other rather hilarious mistakes, their purification process (applied to regular mains drinking water) introduced bromate - <USER2> suspected carcinogen.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani#United_Kingdom>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Rejecting cleaned sewer water would seem to be a logical consequence of accepting homeopathic theory.

<comment><USER29> But isn't the idea of homeopathy to consume miniscule amounts of things that are toxic in large quantities, like arsenic? In that case, cleaned sewer water should be good for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Its not good water or bad water; its desecrated water or sanctified water. No engineering principle is involved; only culture, belief and emotion guide the issue. For better or worse, its people that have to be convinced, and people are emotional creatures.

</comment><comment><USER31> While in school I was taught and learned that all water went through a filtration system including sewage and after cleaning it would go back into the drinkable water lines running to our house.

I grew up in Europe :-)

<comment><USER32> I learned the same. I was quite disappointed later to find that, while all the sewage here goes through treatment, it does not get directly pumped back into the water pipes, but instead gets pumped back into the rivers. Although pragmatically speaking that makes more sense, since surface water is surface water, and completely separating these systems avoids any risk of contamination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> real sewage is not 'gone': remember all the drugs and pharmaceuticals that are emptied on a daily basis.

<comment><USER34> And remember that all water must be treated. So the real question is, why is sewage different than all of the other contaminants that get in fresh water?

<comment><USER33> Sewage is different, because it has a high concentration of WC water (urine), which in turn contains high level of hormone supplements (contraception). Some of the problem is, that these drugs can eventually find their way to fresh water.

The standard scientific (chemical) process is the mechanical separation and dilution mentioned, but there is no evidence that there is a safe level of hormone that can be absorbed daily. Not unlike DDT: actually hormones were cited as evidence during the fight for the ban. However, there is scientific evidence of sexual mutation in creatures living in water (frogs, fish etc. -- though many other things could be blamed for this, but none rule out the above)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> psychological contagion - why i don't want my mashed potatoes touching my turkey, but I'm cool with my gravy being the mediator between the two.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm not sure "irrational" is the best description. It's not obvious to most in California that water is in that short of supply. It also seems reasonable that treated water would be used for things like watering crops before things like human drinking water. Finally, it's reasonable to be wary of something newish that sounds obviously problematic.

</comment><comment><USER37> People alive today are descended from people who've been through a multi- thousand year selection process, where the main factor that determined whether you lived or not was how important you & your parents thought it was to drink really clean water. It's no wonder people are pretty touchy about the water issue.

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting fact: Pure water tastes very bitter and can in fact be dangerous to drink [0].

[0] [http://www.fastcompany.com/1750612/the-dangerously-clean- wat...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1750612/the-dangerously-clean-water-used- to-make-your-iphone)

<comment><USER39> Not necessarily.[1]

[1] <http://www.finishing.com/156/65.shtml>

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I cannot understand why California has a water supply issue when they are located right next to the largest body of water on Earth. I think the public is much more accepting of desalinized ocean water than they are of reclaimed municipal water.

<comment><USER41> Let's see:

It takes 5kW/h to produce a cubic meter of fresh water from sea water via reverse osmosis.[0] The population of just LA is a bit over 3 million.[1] The average U.S. citizen consumes 2842 cubic meters of water per year.

5 kWh/m^3 * 8765 h/year * 3,000,000 people * 2842 m^3/person-year = 4863662 kW = 4863 MW.

I will conservatively estimate that a nuclear power plant will produce 800 MW.[3] So:

4863 MW / 800 MW/plant = 6

That means we're talking about six full-size nuclear power plants running 24/7 with their entire energy output going toward desalinization to supply LA alone.

Extrapolating further, I get that it would take twenty nuclear power plants running full-time to meet just half of the demand for the entirety of southern California.

Does that answer your question?

(I know my sources aren't all that authoritative--they are just what Google pulled up. Feel free to redo the calculations with more accurate numbers, or just to double-check my arithmetic.)

[0] [http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/large-scale- desa...](http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/large-scale-desalination- is-there-enough-energy-to-do-it/) [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California> [2] <http://www.waterfootprint.org/> [3] [http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_output_MW_of_a...](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_output_MW_of_a_nuclear_power_plant)

<comment><USER42> You've got the _h_ on the wrong side of the fraction. A Watt is a rate of energy usage: 1 J/s. It requires an amount of energy that could power 100 50-watt light bulbs for an hour to desalinate a cubic meter of water. That is, the _8765 h/year_ in your calculation doesn't belong.

From [http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/usnu...](http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/usnuclearpowerplants/), a 90% capacity nuclear power plant can produce 7.9 billion KWh in a year. Let's round that down to 6 billion. The math is:

5 kWh/m^3 * 3,000,000 people * 2842 m^3/(person _year) / 6,000,000,000 kWh/(power-plant_ year) = 7.1 power plants for LA.

It looks like something funny happened in your math/numbers, but your final calculation and conclusion somehow ended up correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Paul Bloom (Psychologist at Yale) did a fascinating talk on a whole lot of different examples of psychological contagions:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWOfP-Lubuw>

</comment><comment><USER44> Its already done in Singapore, called NEWater <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater>

</comment><comment><USER45> On a related note, Portland recently blew $36,000 draining a reservoir after a guy peed in it.

[http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011...](http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/06/portland- ore-drains-reservoir-after-man-pees-in-it/1)

The reservoir is completely open. Untold numbers of animals pee, poop, and die in it every year.

<comment><USER46> Here in South Australia (Adelaide, a city of 1m or so people), we often face water restrictions due to low water levels in our reservoirs and low rainfall projections. These restrictions include only being able to water gardens on certain days of the week, etc. It's quite remarkable to hear about a city/council 'wasting' water and spending money to do so.

<comment><USER47> It's quite remarkable to us in California as well, only a few hundred miles south of Portland. If Oregon has that much water to spare, maybe we should get them to let us build a pipeline.

<comment><USER48> We built a pipeline, it's called the Pacific Ocean. Enjoy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> call it "rain"

</comment><comment><USER50> Can you use it to make belgian beer?

</comment><comment><USER51> Just have Barack drink it on TV.

</comment><comment><USER52> Put it in bottles, charge a lot of money, and label it "Egawes"

</comment><comment><USER53> Words like "irrational" are propaganda and "how to change their mind" suggests that people should be drinking cleaned sewer water provided by a municipality whose equipment is run by drug addicts and losers, and equipment provided by the lowest bidder.

</comment><comment><USER54> Its not irrational.

I know for a fact that the sun only evaporates the water and leaves the crap behind. Its a process that has been happening for a very long time.

And we all know how perfect industrial processes are, especially when managed by the government.

The sewer water isn't THAT MUCH cheaper than regular water. So I'd prefer that the experiment be run on someone other than me.

If it is cheaper and a city wants cheaper water, let them enjoy it. We should be charging market prices to all users. Then if this actually made economic sense, it would be adopted.

<comment><USER55> And then that water in the clouds falls as snow and rain and then feeds into rivers and reservoirs where fish, insects, deer, ducks, beavers, bears, bird, etc. urinate, defecate, bleed, and die into it. That's why pure unfiltered river water doesn't feed directly to a municipal water supply and is filtered and treated first.

<comment><USER54> Yes, that's true. I guess I don't trust the municipal water system to do the job.

I also don't see how they can filter out all the drugs and salt that sewage water currently contains and is being released into the environment. These things are just going to accumulate. Or is there new invention I'm not aware of?

Granted, that's not the argument I originally stated but its definitely a question.

If you're aware familiar with the Colorado River, you may know that the water gets saltier and saltier as it is taken out, run through the land and drains back into it. Without any intervention, its pretty brackish by the time it gets to Mexico.

Running the same water through humanity over and over again is bound to have a similar problem.

<comment><USER55> The water of the Mississippi river gets filtered and processed and drunk by the residents of Minneapolis, then their waste water gets dumped into the river only to be taken up and processed by St. Louis who also dump their waste water back into the river only to later run out of the taps of the residents of New Orleans.

<comment><USER54> Thats traveling with a whole lot of other water not the same water all of the time. And that's only 3 recycles not an endless number of recycles.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Steve Jobs' old resume from his mac.com page - <AUTHOR> http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20090204025538/http://homepage.mac.com/steve/Resume.html

<comment><USER2> Folks it was just a marketing page just to show what you could publish with the web app HomePage which was part of the iTools suite. Don't take it seriously ! I know a few folks that used to work in iTools and .Mac and it was well known that Steve's web pages where just for demo purpose.

<comment><USER3> Got a reference? I think it could have been made by a fan. It doesn't have any information that isn't available publicly. With the same phone number appearing in four places, it doesn't seem particularly like Jobs.

<comment><USER2> When Apple released iTools / .Mac and so on, even recently with Ping they usually reserve a bunch of name for either marketing pages or of their own usage. Many exec have usually their accounts created way ahead before the services goes live, and often Apple product name are reserved or unavailable. When Apple did introduce iTools at MacWorld January 2000, a few days afterward every employee at Apple got a mac.com/iTools account based on their existing apple.com email address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On the first Apple employment: "Learned many things, including do's and don'ts for building executive teams."

Snide remark of the year?

<comment><USER5> Wish he wrote those do's and don'ts down.

<comment><AUTHOR> not sure how it can apply to a startup, but it would be 'do not hire John Sculley to run your company'

<comment><USER6> Unless your company is PepsiCo, that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know if this is supposed to be some tongue in cheek demo of Apple iTools, but I get the feeling after reading that résumé, that if Jobs had to start from nothing again, he could.

<comment><USER8> Success is a habit. I bet that most successful individuals who started from scratch, if sent in a foreign country with no connections or resources at all, would recreate their level of success given enough time.

<comment><USER9> I actually know someone from Somalia who got successful there, got screwed and left to Holland. Got successful there again, and again got screwed and left to Romania. He has a successful business here, and he probably won't get screwed again :P After the first "failure", his connections helped him rise again.

<comment><USER10> Can you say that "getting screwed" is a habit too then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> More interestingly, this site first was noticed by Wayback on September 25, 2000. (Presumably about the time it was first published).

Apple's homepage at that time: [http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20001008232304/http://apple...](http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20001008232304/http://apple.com/)

<comment><USER11> It's fascinating how little the homepage has changed over the years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _"Discovered a little animation company that needed a vision."_

That's so amazing - or amusing - I absolutely can not tell if this is humbleness, irony, some bragging disguised as humbleness or something totally else ...

<comment><USER13> Actually he bought Pixar to turn it into a hardware company. John Lasseter is probably the bigger reason why it became such a successful animation company. Of course, thanks to Steve the company survived long enough to discover its true purpose and thanks to Steve got such a great deal with Disney for marketing the initial movies.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, if you read "The Pixar Touch" you get a good picture of what Jobs hoped to achieve with Pixar (focusing on selling the hardware to consumers). His main contribution was money. I think it was only after Toy Story did he truly "get" how good the computer animated films could be.

It's funny because in the book they describe the brief period where Pixar was owned by George Lucas, and he too did not have faith in computer animated films.

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember reading something along the lines of 'Jobs saw Pixar as the next SGI' - which matches a lot of what has been said in Pixar biographies

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This can't be real. What type of employer would say "Oh, Steve Jobs. Yes, I think I may have heard of you, but let's have a look at your resume before we get serious." And would Steve really write that one of his skills was "That 'vision thing?'"

<comment><USER4> I think he's being modest for the asset that most clearly has. Being a visionary is his greatest strength, I think he humbles it down by saying it like that.

<comment><USER15> I'm not contesting Steve's vision. This just seems too cutesy to be serious, by several orders of magnitude. If this was really Steve's home page, I bet he put this up as a joke.

<comment><USER16> It used to be the marketing page for iTools (which became mac.com which became MobileMe).

I used to think it was a nice (slightly tongue in cheek) way of promoting the service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's a remarkably informal tone of writing for a resume. Is Steve Jobs just casual or have resumes gotten more formal?

</comment><comment><USER18> I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that "vision thing"

Yeah, just a bit of vision thing :)

</comment><comment><USER19> its likely fake. homepage.mac.com was for public content, kinda like geocities.

</comment><comment><USER20> This résumé looks far better than many I come across today, aesthetically.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow! Rounded corners!

</comment><comment><USER22> Curious as to why he wrote "Left in 1986 to decide which step to take NeXT" under his first stint at Apple. I thought he was fired by John Sculley.

<comment><USER23> The Apple board reduced Steve Jobs's role at Apple to ceremonial/figurehead. Steve Jobs actually resigned from Apple.

[http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_End_Of_An_Era.txt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "references: available on request"

I wonder who will Steve Jobs ask for references...woz? Bill gates?...oh yes i think it would be Mark Zuckerberg..haha

</comment><comment><USER24> guys..seriously is thing real? i always thought it was made by some fan boy

</comment><comment><USER4> What's interesting to me is I can't imagine why he would need this unless he was looking to move on to his next thing after apple. This isn't a list of accomplishments - it's a resume, geared to sell someone on why this guy should be hired.</comment>