Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/technology/apple-earnings-iphone.html <comment><USER2> NY Times made a mess of this story and slanted it toward their agendas. Horrible reporting.

Apple beat most estimates. Revenues grew. All time high revenue from services. Forward guidance was raised.

[https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/apple-reports- third-q...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/apple-reports-third- quarter-results/)

<comment><USER3> That's a bit spun too, though. Revenue is up just .93%. Net income is down 12.7%. And they beat the estimates because the estimates were expecting bad news, as the overall trend has been stagnant for about two years.

Those just aren't good numbers for a company that, over the past decade, has been literally the most profitable in history. They aren't "bad" numbers, but for Apple they're sort of a disaster. The iPhone gravy train is running out of steam, basically.

<comment><USER4> When are we going to stop expecting exponential growth though? Or should the exponential growth just continue indefinitely? Is there no value in having a nice S-curve, ending up as one of the most profitable companies in history, and then just staying insanely profitable for a long time in a sustainable way?

<comment><USER3> We _have_ stopped expecting exponential growth, that's what the linked article is about. "Slowing Growth" is literally in the title!

And that means things, like for example the stock has to decline and/or dividends increase because it becomes more productive to put that money into companies that are growing. Investors care about news like this.

It seems like a lot (a _lot_ ) of readers here are looking at the article as if it says "Apple sucks. Their products suck. No one should buy this junk. They're going to fail."

That's not what it says. It does say that Apple, as an investment, is changing from one kind of thing (a growing tech behemoth) to another (a basically static industry giant), and that change is news.

<comment><USER4> I was commenting on the idea that "for Apple, [these numbers] are sort of a disaster". I agree that Apple changing from a growth company to a static company is interesting to investors.

<comment><USER5> Disaster is certainly hyperbole. It would imply their business is in jeopardy or something. All this means is a lower P/E ratio in the future. Apple has an absurd amount of cash on hand, and are still earning huge profit.

<comment><USER6> > All this means is a lower P/E ratio in the future.

Apple's P/E ratio is around 17, which seems perfectly reasonable for a mature company these days. Investors aren't expecting growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And the stock increased over 4% in after-hours trading, as increases in non- iPhone hardware sales and services overcame the decrease in iPhone sales. Earnings per share slightly beat the consensus forecast.

An interesting quote from Cook in the press release: _" The balance of calendar 2019 will be an exciting period, with major launches on all of our platforms, new services and several new products"_

<comment><USER8> If one of these _major launches_ is a MacBook Pro with the same (or better) specs (esp video graphics) as their latest MacBook Pro, but without a TouchBar, they will get at least $2,500 from me.

If one of these _major launches_ is an iPhone X-like phone with a thumbprint reader (home button or otherwise), they will get at least another $1,000 from me.

<comment><USER9> I don't even mind the touchbar. Just give me back the Escape key!

<comment><USER10> I thought this was a joke as I haven't used a recent Mac in a while but apparently it's not. There really isn't an escape key!

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207358](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT207358)

<comment><USER11> It's extra fun when touchbaragent hangs and you can't force quit anything

<comment><USER12> Personally, I just remapped capslock to esc, since I never use capslock. The touchbar does seem to hang more often nowadays, though. Especially when I'm trying to adjust the volume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That iPhones were less than half their revenue, while still growing overall revenue, is a positive sign. Apple has done a good job of diversifying their revenue base over the last few years. It will be interesting to see how large wearables and services can become as revenue sources, I suspect they are still quite early in their growth.

<comment><USER14> Still, the company hasn't released an innovative hardware product since 2008. That's a long time for them. If Apple can't innovate anymore, regardless of whether they have continued financial success, are they still really Apple?

<comment><USER15> Ignoring the Apple Watch, which dominates the category and is a clear success.

<comment><USER14> Fair, but the Apple Watch has largely been an iPhone accessory rather than a standalone product. You could also point to AirPods. They sold a lot of them because a lot of people had iPhones. But neither is anything like the iPhone or the Mac in terms of defining a product category. Eventually, the Apple Watch is just going to be an iPhone on your wrist. More of a derivative, like the iPad.

<comment><USER16> The iPhone is a product that completely transformed the world and defines what a smartphone is. There are 3 billion of them so almost half the world owns a smartphone.

If your bar for "innovative" is seriously that incredibly high, prepare to be disappointed..

<comment><USER14> Agreed. But what are the contenders since 2008? The iPad and the Apple Watch. The iPad was really co-developed with the iPhone for all practical purposes, as the original iPad prototype inspired the phone. You can definitely make a case for the watch, but it's an extension of the phone in so many ways.

<comment><USER16> There aren't any thats my point. Its like they made the first ever car 10 years ago after lifetimes of horse carriages and you're disappointed theres nothing else of that magnitude yet.

<comment><USER14> But it's not like nothing innovative has been released by others. There's the Echo, there's Google Glass, even the Pebble watch, which I would argue was more innovative (as watches go) than the Apple Watch two years later. Are any of them as financially successful as the iPhone? No, but I'm not saying Apple hasn't been financially successful, only that it has not been as innovative as it was in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have thought long and hard about upgrading my iPhone 8 to one of the new X models, but I don't like the lack of a home button. I guess I am officially old now, but I dont want to look at my phone to unlock it. I like that I can reach in my pocket, and unlock it with my thumb as I retrieve it. It may be user error, but I see several co-workers have to really train the phone on their face to unlock with Face ID. That would drive me nuts. the swipe up gesture just seems annoying, and on my iPhone 8 is unreliable to bring up the control panel. they need to do what they did before and copy the other vendors that put the fingerprint reader on the back of the phone so that the nice bezel free design can be implemented.

<comment> brian-armstrong I'm fairly shocked to find that a community of seemingly technically competent people would forfeit their 4th amendment rights in order to save a few seconds keying in a passcode. This small detail feels like a microcosm of tech in general currently :/

<comment><USER18> Who's forfeiting anything? If you don't want to unlock your device for law enforcement, just use the sleep/lock button to make your phone require the passcode (which the police can't legally compel you to give, I believe). It takes several seconds to key in a reasonably secure passcode, and it ceases to be secure if you type it in view of any security cameras. Also, if you open your phone 50 times per day, it's way more than just a few seconds.

<comment> brian-armstrong You're counting on your ability to (and memory to carry out) access and disable your phone after encountering law enforcement?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is how it did compared to expectations

EPS: $2.18 vs. $2.10 estimated by Refinitiv consensus estimates.

Revenue: $53.8 billion vs. $53.39B estimated by Refinitiv consensus estimates.

Q4 Revenue guidance: $61 billion to $64 billion versus $60.98 billion estimate by Refinitiv consensus estimates.

iPhone revenue: $25.99 billion vs. $26.31 billion estimated by FactSet.

Services revenue: $11.46 billion vs. $11.61 billion estimated by FactSet.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/30/apple- earnings-q3-2019.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/30/apple- earnings-q3-2019.html)

<comment><USER20> These estimates are amazingly accurate or is my amazement inappropriate?

<comment><USER21> The number of human man hours invested into that guidance number is vast. As accurate as that number is (and for what it is), people are going to make and lose a lot of money even still. Basically I'm saying — check your amazement because it's amazement all the way down.

<comment><USER22> "check your amazement because it's amazement all the way down"

I like that sentence a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm bullish on AAPL because of their planned services. Anything they roll out has a gigantic audience and will have immediate revenue impact. They have a tremendous bully-pulpit inside their users devices, incomparable email lists, and a habit of making TV commercials people like to watch. The fact that they are adding 4 lines of business (banking, ad-free gaming, news, and streaming) is going to sustain double-digit, high-margin growth for the foreseeable future.

If I had money play with I would buy after this earnings report dropped; but it looks like the stock price isn't getting beat up.

</comment><comment><USER24> Apple beat out EPS and Revenue estimates and the stock is trading up in after- hours. This is a headline for the cap-wearing anti-Tech Company crowd, as has been typical of the New York Times over the last year or two.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't understand why these articles think that people will just keep buying, like in the past decade the lifespan of devices has become bigger and bigger. I'm typing this post on a 2013 Macbook and I'm sure a lot of other users are using older laptops than that, that run perfectly fine. Like does the media just expect people to be buying new stuff again and again?

I don't know if I'm just missing the point or something...

<comment><USER26> Sooner or later you will have to buy a new device due to planned obsolescence, i.e. when (security) updates are no longer released. But then you can of course install a free operating system instead.

<comment><USER27> In the case of iOS devices, Apple just released a series of patches for devices back to the iPhone 4s that was introduced in 2011.

<comment><USER28> And they only just stopped supporting 2009 imacs.

<comment><USER27> I was purposefully leaving Macs out. My 2006 era Core Duo Mac Mini stopped being supported in 2008 (?). I was able to install Windows 7 on it, give it to my mom and it will still be supported until 2020 by Microsoft...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why would you link the NYTimes for a business article? They don't have a clue. These results are excellent (particularly wearables growth) and they guided Q3 revenues well ABOVE Sell side estimates. China decline rate improved dramatically to only -4% Y/Y.

<comment><USER30> I thought this headline sounded overly pessimistic when seeing it after actually reading the report...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Is Apple still capable of innovation?" must be one of the most tedious and clapped out topics in all of tech. No one can even remotely agree on a definition of what constitutes "innovation" and yet people keep showing up to dash themselves against the rocks chasing their 5 minutes.

If you're sitting at home playing armchair quarterback with this stuff, all I can say is I hope you're not responsible for managing any actual money.

</comment><comment><USER32> iPhone sales continues to decline (down another 13% vs this quarter last year), but services are making up for it

<comment><USER33> And they will continue to decline as long as a $200 Android phone can do literally ~95% of what a $1400 iPhone can do.

Seriously, there's just no good reason for a general consumer to purchase an iPhone today. Build quality on the Android devices even in the $200 realm are damn near what the iPhone offers.

For the record: I've used iPhones since 2010. I've never had an Android until this year. It came time to upgrade, and I did my research. Simply put, there's nothing on the flagship iPhone that most vastly cheaper Android phones can do. I'm not a fanboy, I vote with my dollar.

<comment><USER34> > there's just no good reason for a general consumer to purchase an iPhone > today

* iOS (I prefer it over android)

* customers already tied into the apple ecosystem

* more of a focus on privacy (admittedly, this one is probably debatable)

<comment> toper-centage So it's a mix of Stockholm syndrome and lazyness to change and tweak the system a bit in a more privacy friendly way.

<comment><USER35> Unlocking the bootloader, flashing TWRP, and installing LineageOS without Google Play Services is roughly equivalent in privacy to an iPhone. I wouldn't blame my grandma for choosing to buy an iPhone instead!

<comment><USER36> A phone with Google Play Services collects less data than an iPhone.

To wit: Apple knows every app you ever downloaded, and there is nothing you can do about it. Every time you click on an address link, it sends the address to Apple, and there is nothing you can do about it. Any time an app looks up your GPS location, that location is sent to Apple, and there is nothing you can do about it. If you want to write apps for your own device, you need to give card details to Apple, and there is nothing you can do about it. A phone with Google Play services doesn't suffer from any of these problems.

<comment><USER37> How do you stop Google Play services from sending your location to google without disabling Location Services?

<comment><USER36> If you disable Location Services, which is an option presented on initial setup of the device, apps can still request the GPS permission directly (the default behavior in most location libraries), not sending your location to Google. This is not possible on iOS. Every location lookup will send your location to Apple.

<comment><USER37> How do you know iOS sends all location lookups to Apple?

<comment><USER36> Because Apple says so.

"By enabling Location Services for your devices, you agree and consent to the transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of your location data and location search queries by Apple and its partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based and road traffic-based products and services."

It will also send your location to Apple when no app is requesting your location:

"If Location Services is on, your iPhone will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple, to be used for augmenting this crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations."

Unlike on Android, you cannot get your location without sending this data to Apple:

"To use features such as these, you must enable Location Services on your iPhone"

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT207056)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I believe that Apple's next big thing will come in the form of AR consumer hardware and a detached Watch. Recent expansions of their chip design org and acquisition of Intel's modem business reinforce my confidence in their execution, iPhones are still big business and services are rising. There is little reason to doubt that Apple has more than enough resources to take it through until the next breakthrough.

</comment><comment><USER39> 2019 is another year I'm stuck with my iPhone 8 from 2017. I use to upgrade every year then some genius at Apple thought bigger phones are the only way to go from here on out. Maybe that person no longer works there?

Also Touch ID over Face ID or offer both or I'm not interested along with millions of others!

<comment><USER40> The iPhone XS is basically the same size as an iPhone 8 with a screen that is 1" larger.

<comment><USER39> I can not hold my previously owned XS in one hand and text one person then go back to text another without moving the phone's position in my hand. Thus I took it back ..bad UX that makes me exert effort my iPhone 8 doesn't.

Also no Touch ID..pick phone up without looking at it and boom phone is open. Face ID forces user to do more work..swipe up and look. Two more steps I didn't have to do previously. Those to me as a UX professional who strives to make things easiest as possible equals bad UX. Forcing the user to exert more effort they didn't have to before.

Apple has always been about ease of use..yet the person in charge of UX (Johnny Ive) thought making things an inch harder would be no big deal, yet look at the amount of phones they aren't selling these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> At these valuations Apple makes sense only when seen as an alternative to other investments. S&P 500 as a whole has P/S ratio that indicates lower return of investment for the next decade. At least Apple will be able to make profits.

<comment><USER42> Every investment is an alternative to another investment...

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think the trouble is that the devices are getting too good and there is really only incremental improvement every year so the upgrade cycle is getting longer.

I typically get the latest phone every year (but it starts to feel unnecessary) - iPad's and Mac's, however, last a lot longer (several years) for me these days.

I wonder where the real innovation is going to come from? AI, AR?

<comment><USER44> Airpods and Apple Watch are both relatively new products in Apple-terms and have many years of incremental improvements ahead of them.

If you are looking for something as big as the iPhone, I think you might be disappointed. But, it is a pretty poorly kept secret that they are working on self-driving cars and some kind of "TV".

And Apple has been pretty clear about focusing on growth in services now that they have this massive base of deployed devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I would pay lots of money for an Apple Bluetooth Mechanical keyboard. Like $300+ easily if it's good.

<comment><USER46> I'd expect Porsche to put out a minivan first.

<comment><USER47> They put out a SUV, and all the laughing didn't stop it or purchases.

<comment><USER46> Thats a great point. There's a precedent of them heading in that direction. Although with Apple, they're trying to make keyboards that can be activated by a light sneeze or slightly higher than usual barometric pressure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Do you think they would ever monetize iMessage? Imagine making iMessage cross platform, but only available to paying iCloud Subscribers. So I could pay $10 / month for upgraded iCloud storage and get iMessage on my Android phone. I'd pay for that.

<comment><USER49> I'd love that. I have an Android phone and already pay for iCloud storage for Apple Photos even though using it with an Android Phone adds considerably friction to the process. I'll be getting rid of my Nest Camera in favour of one that supports HomeKit Secure Video next time my Nest Aware account comes up for renewal.

An approach I'd like for iMessage is to make it free for anyone, but only functional if at least one member of a conversation has an iPhone or paid iCloud subscription.

<comment><USER48> I like that approach! Very plausible and consistent with services like Cisco WebEx and such that require one "admin license" and as many guests as possible.

I just recently switched from Android to iOS and there's a lot I miss about Android that will never come to iOS. I'd love to have that flexibility but cross-platform compatibility too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I just visited a local shop where I tested different smartphones including iPhones. Lots of similarly looking models, most with Android. Most are below 300 Euro. An average buyer cannot probably see big difference between phones priced at 1000 and 200 Euro.

</comment><comment> hal-9-000 Not related to article but.. I have a change request for HN, put some kind of marker next to links which require payment/signingIn/signingUp or whatever the f __k stops you from consuming content right away.

</comment><comment><USER51> Apple needs new sources of revenue. Anything marginal like cheaper iphone models won't cut it.

I like the recent wave of acquisitions. Smart cars? Smart homes? Iterations of Apple Watch - deeper connection to the body itself?

What's next for them?

<comment><USER52> Does there have to be something else? What are the implications of a company growing forever? In 500 years are there going to be only 3 companies because they acquired everything and nothing else makes products?

<comment><USER53> It seems that the endgame we're unwittingly asking for is _WALL-E_.

<comment><USER54> The hitch in that plan is that only _one_ company can have their P/E ratio justified by being Buy-n-Large 100 years from now.

<comment><USER53> I suspect that that fact and our beliefs around it are being reflected in market prices, albeit with some heavy discounting for the uncertainty inherent in there still being so many companies out there.

So many people's first instinct to respond by buying more shares of that company, thereby driving its price and market cap higher. That's a reaction that implies that we think that the general trend _is_ toward Buy-n-Large. If we expected regression to the mean to be the driving phenomenon, then we'd be more likely to respond by selling.

(Disclaimer: I'm not suggesting that's actually how things work, just that a lot of us behave as if we think that's how it works, or should work.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> VvR-Ox Clearly they shouldn't have stopped producing the iPhone SE or it's successor in the same shape.

Also they messed up really hard when they introduced the new MBP keyboards which now all have to be replaced.

The iPad started to be useful much too slow and in the meanwhile less and less people would even consider it when comparing with a surface.

There is one more thing: The ecosystem seemed to be cool some day. Now it's nothing special anymore and it's not really magical how many things don't work together (because software, bugs, whatever...).

I buy the nice devices as used parts because they had times when they produced some cool stuff that I still like to use. Maybe not with their OS but this will probably change when less money gives them more pressure to be innovative again.

</comment><comment><USER55> No surprise. No innovation. All stopped around 2011.

They've been coasting since then. Difference sizes of the same product. The watch was about as far as they've wandered out of their comfort zone.

<comment><USER56> Yeah, its not like they made some headphones that 20% of the people you see on the street are wearing.

<comment><USER55> Wireless headphones... and a stylus that costs $100.. They're breaking new ground there. Sounds like they have great marketing department. That's not innovation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Doesn't Google pay Apple ~10 billion$ for TAC nowadays? I am hoping someone with time will lookup the increase in Google's spend and Apple's revenue.

</comment><comment><USER58> serious, I never understood why a company must steadily grow, isn't that in contrast to the limited economical resources we have globally?

<comment><USER59> We don't have limited economical resources globally.

Wealth creation is not zero sum, 100 years ago we had far less wealth than we had today and in 100 years we'll have a lot more.

Sure, an individual company can stop growing but everything must continue to grow in aggregate to push humanity forward.

<comment><USER58> Thank you for your answer but: if we need to back the economical resources with real assets, don't this translates to limited economical resources?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> What new product can they offer? What new ideas do they have? Is there any sign of the originality that was on display 10 years ago?

</comment><comment><USER61> Its quite remarkable that some people value the fact that estiamtes have been beaten or not.

</comment><comment><USER62> The iPhone costs too much now.

People are realizing they can buy a OnePlus 6T or Samsung 9 for half the price.

My wife has been fed up with our older Android phone and said - we're going back to the iphone. We looked up the prices for the latest, second latest, third latest iphone models and then she said - why don't we get another OnePlus.

</comment><comment><USER63> New iPhone should be announced on September. Let's see what's going on.

</comment><comment><USER64> Apple can only stay afloat by exchanging people's faith into money by raising product prices when they have stopped innovating.

</comment><comment><USER65> "Slowing growth." Honestly.

</comment><comment><USER66> Apple should just spin off _everything but iPhone_ into a company that people who need quarterly growth can invest in.

</comment><comment><USER67> [http://archive.is/El570](http://archive.is/El570)

</comment><comment><USER68> Revenue was up 1% YoY.

</comment><comment><USER69> Another justification to the more increased prices expected in newer Keynote

</comment><comment><USER70> yes, definitely sell your stock, I want to get more at a good price

</comment><comment><USER71> Stock is up 4% after hours on the earnings beat.

</comment><comment><USER72> Of course slowing growth, they got rid of the headphone jack. What did they expect?

</comment><comment><USER50> 'Apple experience' for me today is lag. Beginning from lagging volume bar on iPhone, going through iTunes, and up to UI. Everything feels slower than on a much cheaper Android phone with 3.5mm jack.

</comment><comment><USER73> They should fix their keyboards and things might start working again.

</comment><comment><USER74> there's something wrong with Apple lately. They ship hardware that's worse than what they had five years ago, and their software has more and more embarrassing bugs. Seems like management problems.

<comment><USER75> CarPlay is amazing and keeps getting better. The new beta 13 is a solid upgrade from 12 -- even as a beta.

<comment><USER74> yeah, but buying a new car is just not ever a good idea

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Services are making up for it, but they are losing a vast amount of their base customers.

13% drop in sales won't make their services popular.

They should have launched 5 years ago, they had way more advantage then.

They do still have a big consumer base, but 13% is a lot and it doesn't seem to go upwards.

<comment><USER77> Seems unwarranted to assume they are actively losing customers. I haven't bought an iPhone in years because I still use a SE, and I still use my 2015 MBP. They haven't lost me in any real sense just because I haven't contributed to a sale _recently_.

<comment><USER76> I'm not the only one that thinks so, but the Apple fans are still here ( only -1 downvotes after 17 hours though, considerably less than in the past)

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/31/wall-street-analysts- worry-a...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/31/wall-street-analysts-worry-about- apples-iphone.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Apple: Revenue Growth 1% (quarterly)

Huawei: Revenue Growth 23.2% (half-yearly)

Apple: Revenue ~$258 billion

Huawei: Revenue ~$105 billion

Apple: R&D $14 billion[0]

Huawei: R&D $15 billion[1]

Apple: Employee Count ~132,000

Huawei: Employee Count ~188,000†

\---

I'm going to take an unusual step here. Please, please don't downvote this post for pointing this out! I'm just highlighting for contrast, not for criticism. Trying to start a conversation.

\---

[0] [https://www.nasdaq.com/article/apple-aapl-earnings-after- the...](https://www.nasdaq.com/article/apple-aapl-earnings-after-the-bell- tuesday-can-the-iphones-slump-be-reversed-cm1185985)

[1] [http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201904/09/WS5cac0859a31048422...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201904/09/WS5cac0859a3104842260b5265.html)

† "Huawei had over 188,000 employees as of September 2018, around 76,000 of them engaged in Research & Development (R&D)" (I presume Apple has tens of thousands employed in r&d, anybody any idea roughly how many?)

edit: _sigh_

<comment><USER79> What fraction of Huawei's employees work on mobile phones?

<comment><USER78> No idea. Good question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Apple has been stagnant since Steve Jobs died. His momentum keeps the company moving forward, but they haven't had a fresh idea since he passed.

<comment><USER81> Except for AirPods, Apple Watch, .....

<comment><USER74> nobody wants those. AirPods are expensive, ugly earbuds that you have to recharge for some reason, and the watch is just a way for your phone to distract you more frequently.

<comment><USER82> This seems more like an individual opinion rather than market data.

The Apple Watch is the world's most popular watch.

AirPods have exploded in popularity among youth as a status symbol.

Both are selling relatively well, even if you may think they're inferior products.

<comment><USER74> "most popular watch" is not really a high bar, is it?

<comment><USER82> 5-7 million units sold per quarter and 36% market share in the smartwatch category[1] isn't enough for you?

[1]: [https://www.macrumors.com/2019/05/02/apple- watch-1q19-market...](https://www.macrumors.com/2019/05/02/apple- watch-1q19-market-share-counterpoint/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Multiple factors I can think of, I'm sure there's more

* Competing brands with better hardware quality (Pixel's camera vs iPhone) * Competing brands with less opinionated design choices (headphone jacks, expandable storage, et all) * Highly specialized supply chains prevent flexibility in part choices/manufacturers (ex: designing custom screws for iMac chassis, rather than using off-the-shelf parts) * Unnecessary complexity in designs (The HDMI/lightning adapter is actually a computer that essentially runs a program in RAM) * Trade wars cooling relationships with everything from shippers * Walled garden of iMessage preventing soft user migration

<comment><USER84> Or... none of those things. LMAO.</comment></comment>


The Meeting That Showed Me the Truth about VC's and How They Don't Make Money - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tomerdean/the-meeting-that-showed-me-the-truth-about-vcs-and-how-they-don-t-make-money-ab72b52b50cd#.d301mxgo8 <comment><USER2> The thing that is bad about this is that you see a statistic like 95% of VCs don't give a reasonable return and there is a good chance that is your money or the money of someone in your family that is being wasted. Pension funds, private equity funds that you or someone you know may be holding as part of their retirement funds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally right. I'm hoping my pension funds are investing in Sequoia ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The math doesn't look reasonable in this post.

The "okay" startups only return 25% growth over ten years. Even hundred year- old blue chips grow faster than that. Of course a 50M exit isn't good enough if it takes ten years and you only own a quarter of the company after putting in 10M.</comment>


Why Rent Is So High and Pay So Low - <AUTHOR> https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/why-your-rent-is-so-high-and-your-pay-is-so-low-tom-streithorst <comment><USER3> This article doesn't answer the question and seems primary based on nostalgia.

My theory: the Fed's zero interest rate policy is very good at inflating asset values: S&P500, housing, you name it.

Rising income is a second-order effect: we hope that rising asset values will lead to increased wages. That used to be the case, but no longer is. Why? Because of automation and globalization probably.

So, the Fed has the pedal to the metal for seven whole years and we get mediocre job growth, no real wage growth, but screaming high housing costs and stock market. And who owns the most real-estate and stocks? The wealthy do, which is why inequality is growing.

Even though I'm critiquing the Fed's policy, I don't have the answers and would probably pursue the same policy. It's a real conundrum. Perhaps basic income, or some other "throw money from helicopters" idea is the solution.

<comment><USER4> Here's another solution:

Respect the wisdom of markets. Allow corrections to take place and don't bury malinvestment under the rug only for it rear it's ugly head worse later on by acting as if you have a better intuition on what the price of money should be.

Most people accept the virtue of free markets. Yet many don't see that the actions the Fed has been taking destroys the concept of a market by artificially supplementing supply or demand in an unbounded way based on a perceived sense of greater understanding.

The problem is it's really hard for most of these policy makers to build a platform based on "Let's do nothing and let the markets correct themselves". In such complex domains like an economy the action bias is very real, problematic, and the best thing to eliminate if you want to renormalize markets.

<comment><USER5> This is a gray area. If we allowed a large automaker to go bankrupt, we probably would have lost the supply chain and many supporting industries which would be gone (from the US) forever. Same with banks. As much as we detest bailing out bankers, allowing the US to economy to be cut off from credit would create lasting collateral damage.

<comment><USER6> The counter example is Iceland who told the banks to get lost and is the only European country who's economy is now ahead of where it was in 2008.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/three- charts...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/three-charts-that- show-icelands-economy-recovered-after-it-imprisoned-bankers-and-let-banks-go- bust--instead-of-bailing-them-out-10309503.html)

<comment><USER7> Ireland, the example shunned by krugmanites, has followed the IMF/ECB advice and is in better position than it was in 2008.

<comment><USER5> I see some mixed data on Ireland.

A quick search shows an unemployment rate that just crossed below 10% in April. From 2000-2008, the unemployment rate ranged 4-5% (with very high unemployment in the 80s and 90s). [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=ieuert&v=2015080617...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=ieuert&v=201508061744d&d1=19150101&d2=20151231&h=300&w=600)

Also, government debt to GDP rose steadily and is near historic highs, although has recently begun to fall: [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=irldebt2gdp&v=20150...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=irldebt2gdp&v=201508071422d&d1=19150101&d2=20151231&h=300&w=600)

By which measure is Ireland in a better position than 2008?

<comment><USER8> The _only_ reason Ireland's unemployment fell is because of emigration.

The economy is a disaster, especially for young people, home repossessions are just getting started by the banks (who were the actual ones bailed out, wrecking the economy by driving government debt through the roof.) The actual situation on the ground is grim, despite what the official figures might tell you.

Source: Irish person who emigrated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> TL;DR

 _We vote and so politicians listen to our desires. Falling house prices would be a boon for renters and first-time buyers (and probably for society at large), but their political clout is less than that of middle-aged, middle- class property owners._

Link baity article with no real "answer". Rents and house prices follow simple supply and demand over long term. Cities are either already saturated or don't allow new constructions limiting the supply however people never stop flocking to them year over year. Even the medium size cities see net inflow of 50K-100K people every year - which means you need that many more new housing units _each year_. So ultimately only a few % of people gets to live in city and everyone else are forced to suffer commute. This % keeps declining because population total keeps growing and so the rent keeps rising.

Rent control etc can distort the economics for a while but not over long run. They are just "pain killers" when what you need is real medicine. The real medicine is simply policies that diversifies the areas. For example, encourage businesses to move in surrounding towns by offering tax benefits, build solid transportation network, open new public schools, encourage more constructions outside popular area, build communities with attractive facilities, build venues for cultural and sports events outside of cities and so on.

<comment><USER10> Cities are only "saturated" if you consider existing zoning. American cities in general are distinguished by having a very large proportion of single family homes, right in the city, generally on relatively large lots. And of course, the homeowners are relatively influential in local politics so they vote for policies that prop up the value of their assets by creating artificial scarcity. Some cities have been building more than others and they have lower rents: this has more to do with local land use policies than with how "saturated" the city is.

<comment><USER9> Even if you removed all these single family homes inside city and built skyscrappers instead, the additional units will get filled up pretty soon and at some point not too distant, you will be in the same situation again where you are now. The key fact here is that cities are seeing huge migrations from other areas since last couple of decades. There 100s of thousands of people piling up each year. Eventually they _will_ get saturated. In large scheme of things, cities are artifact of ancient times when transportation was hard and natural landscape for habitat was scarce. Now both problems can be solved even for extreme places such as Dubai and there is no reason for huge swaths for human population to be concentrated in cities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author looks to be drawing a lot of conclusions from a very limited set of data. His examples about prices are only from Manhattan and London. He also compares median wages in New York to rents in Manhattan, which is just lazy. I don't doubt that the rent/income ratio has gotten worse in New York over time, but an apples to apples comparison would have been nice to see.

I don't even disagree with the sentiment expressed in this article. I just think it was woefully under-researched.

<comment><USER12> This is a great point. The author's last graph tries to make the point that that the fraction of income taken from tenants has outpaced tenant wage growth over a period of decades.

In present day SV (especially SF), most landlords will require tenants spend no more than 30% of their income on rent as part of the application process-- it's a somewhat fixed rule-of-thumb. As rents have risen, a lot of tenants in non-rent-controlled housing have been effectively priced out and displaced elsewhere.

So it's actually not so easy to demonstrate that landlords have been taking a larger fraction of tenant income; one must adjust for the fact that greedy landlords will also drive away poorer tenants. Simpson's Paradox at work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The money quotes:

"If house prices fall, the middle aged and middle class will be in an uproar. [...] Perhaps even more critically, banks need house prices to rise, or at least not collapse."

"More quality housing would increase its stock, and with supply rising to meet demand, prices would fall. This would be great for young renters, bad for middle-aged property owners, bad for banks. Thus it is not likely to happen. Property prices, at an all time high, are not likely to fall, and if they do, expect the government to put a floor under them."

I couldn't agree more. I'm young and capital-poor, so this fact is a huge problem for me. I don't see a solution.

<comment><USER14> > I couldn't agree more. I'm young and capital-poor, so this fact is a huge > problem for me. I don't see a solution.

Vote for politicians not obsessed with propping up the business and real- estate portfolios of wealthy middle-aged people? (assuming you can find such politicians)

<comment><USER13> Easier said than done. Unfortunately, these issues are so far removed from the public's mind that no politicians even bother talking about it.

<comment><USER14> It's not far removed from the public's mind. People know they're currently getting shafted. They have just been convinced that anything in the best interest of wealthy middle-aged people must also be in their best interest, because everyone thinks they will one day be wealthy middle-aged people.

39% of Americans think they are or will one day be among the top 1%: [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of- hop...](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hope-over- self-interest.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a great question. I wish the article had answered it.

> If they wanted to drive down rents, government could fund the construction > of public housing, as they did during the Golden Age.

In housing, government is very clearly the problem, not the solution. It's government zoning regulations which keep demand far below supply: if we'd just lift the ridiculous restrictions, supply would rapidly rise to meet demand. Similarly with the rent control: all it does is impose higher rents on newcomers and the young while providing a great entitlement to the middle-aged and aging.

> you and I could quite easily have gone to the ATM, slipped in our card, and > been told the money we thought was safe in our accounts was gone.

It's almost like he's never heard of the FDIC.

</comment><comment><USER16> The velocity of money is too low.

When money flows through many hands quickly, prosperity is the result.

When money stagnates and accumulates in deep pools, the economy suffers.

Reducing the number of people being employed reduces the speed of money. That's been happening.

Increasing wealth disparity reduces the speed of money. That's been happening.

Government spending increases the speed of money, but money spent on projects that end up with high concentrations of wealth (stadiums, military) are not as useful as projects that enable further speed increases (transportation, infrastructure, sanitation, urban renewal).

</comment><comment><USER17> The concept that you can "own" property and charge "rent" for it has been an economic drain on the world.

When a cash exchange or transfer is made, it is usually for a product, aka GDP. There is no GDP involved with paying rent. A landlord is someone who can sit on his ass and live off of the GDP the tenant generates in the form of "rent" while offering no GDP back to the economy. The landlord is essentially a parasite, offering nothing beneficial to the economy, he simply can suck the life blood out of you through this strange concept of "owning" the habitat in which you live. Life is a bitch, but it is what it is.

<comment><USER18> I would love it if the person who downvoted this anonymously would chime in as to why. Because this is exactly what a landlord is.

<comment><USER17> I can see why. This argument goes beyond simply just landlords and rent into a critique about the dark sides of capitalism itself.

In capitalism you can not only own land as an landlord but you can also own labor. Someone who owns the corporation, can sit on the profits, dividends, and growth without producing actual GDP himself. It's very similar to the landlord situation. The owner of the corporation essentially sucks the lifeblood of the work output generated by employees while doing no work himself. Y-Combinator at its very core is a product of this system, hence the possible downvotes.

Capitalism is great, but landlords and freeloaders who get richer and richer without producing any GDP themselves is a huge negative attribute that is intrinsic to capitalism. Ironically, it is the hopeful opportunity of becoming a freeloader that drives the risk-taking entrepreneurial qualities which in turn make capitalism so effective.

<comment><USER18> I would say that investing looking for growth and creation(Y-Combinator), is much different than buying an unchanging asset, doing nothing to it and simply collecting a non-trivial portion of the renter's value created. It's the difference between creating new value and simply gaining control of a static asset to extract rent.

EDIT: I should add I appreciate that you took the time to shed some light on what the downvote may have been about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Worth noting the decline in how much is spent on food: in 1950 it was a third of household income, now it's 13%. So part of the cost of living has drastically decreased.

<comment><USER20> Almost all sectors of the economy have delivered much improved value since 1950. In many cases at reduced cost.

Real estate, education and medical care are subsidized. When you subsidize something, they cost more and you get more of it. So we constrain residential real estate development by regulation - zoning, permitting.

<comment><USER21> All the sectors free of excessive regulation and central planning have shown massively reduced costs.

Energy and housing - increasingly micro controlled to a fine detail, both spiralling ever upwards way in front of inflation.

Healthcare: massively regulated, increased costs.

Hiring people : massively regulated, increased costs (for the buyer) result : less buyers meaning less employment.

The problem is _clearly_ excessive regulation but any problem is immediately met with calls for more regulation.

Until this becomes so incredibly clear that people can no longer deny it - <USER2> will just go on and on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can anyone recommend further reading that gives an in-depth analysis of housing costs?

There's no end to articles exploring the various political angles, but what good are those without understanding the underlying economic constraints?

I'd be most interested in sources that use raw data, introduce mathematical models, and take into account measurable factors such as land availability, construction costs, incentives to invest, transportation, and so forth.

<comment><USER23> I read a book on local investment and slow money but I can't remember the name of it. It talked about how the stock market has become divorced from putting money back into business creation. How it is just the sum of the money people have laying around. I want to extrapolate that to housing and blame the high values on investment divorced from construction but now I'm just repeating your question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Funny, if you look at news and popular media from the 1970s you get the impression is was an awful time economically and pretty much everyone agreed we were doomed. Rents were cheap in NYC in the 1970s? I don't doubt it; ever seen "Taxi Driver"? Yes rent control is great for people in rent controled apartments. The flip side is that as demand rises everyone who hasn't been in NYC for 40 years is SOL...which seems analogous to the complaint the author makes at the end about middle aged home owners vs new renters. As a renter, I agree the current situation is ridiculous but the author doesn't explain it. He just notes who has incentive to favor the current situation and winks

<comment><USER25> Up until loopholes were introduced in the 90s almost every apartment in NYC was rent stabilized, which is a very modest version of rent control. Over half of all non-public apartments for rent are still in this program. Almost no apartments are traditionally rent controlled anymore.

Rent laws are often blamed for the city's problems in the 1970s, but there were plenty of other issues (underinvestment, depopulation, municipal bankruptcy).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can someone explain why worker productivity increases would ever enrich the worker? This sounds like a Golden Age fallacy. What forces in a capitalist system lead to paying workers more? Workers are not entitled to the value they create, they are just compensated for their labor. It would have to be competition from other employers who are paying more (because they too are making more money for what they are paying workers, but have strategically decided to apply it to raising salaries). However, if you have an oversupply of workers and a shortage of jobs, this dynamic does not really exist.

<comment><USER27> Unions for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A couple of corrections as this article is sort of making assumptions based on falsehoods:

Real wages stopped going up in 1972, not the 1980s, and real wage are what matter.

[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most- wor...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real- wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/)

Unemployment also hit some record highs in the 70s:

[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNU04000000?years_option=all_...](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNU04000000?years_option=all_years&periods_option=specific_periods&periods=Annual+Data)

So, I think to say that it was bad only for rich people is a very unusual... I think it was probably worse for poor people since they don't have safety nets. It was also the beginning of the end for real wages which have never reached their 1972 peak.

Those are some pretty large assumptions to be wrong on, for the rest of the article, so I'm not really sure how to take it...? Maybe the author can clarify for me?

Edit: better source for real wage data, and clarity.

</comment><comment><USER29> The economic systems are over-simplified, poorly automated, and disconnected from real physical and social science and measurements.

Money is a very useful technology but the 'economy' really encompasses everything, and expecting some interest rate changes to save a sick economy is like a doctor who is only aware of the existence of the cardiovascular system and has one move -- rapid chest thrusts to get more blood pumping.

By harnessing technology we can make our systems much more sophisticated than that.

</comment><comment><USER30> I spent a few minutes posting a comment on this article only to find in the morning that the comments had been disabled. Not a great way to encourage discussion! Anyways, here's my comment that was deleted:

I really enjoyed this article, however, I think you have glossed over what really led to the 2008 banking crisis. The banks bundled subprime home loans into securities that were then sold off to investors. As I understand it, what actually put the banks at risk was that banks were selling "Credit Default Swaps" (CDSes) on those bundled mortgage assets. These CDSes were essentially unregulated insurance policies that banks sold to insure the bundled mortgages against losses. Since the CDSes were not technically insurance policies (even though they really were) the banks did not have to keep money put away to cover those insurance policy payouts if the mortgage-backed assets went bad. This resulted in the banks selling many more CDSes than they could actually cover. I'm not an economist or banker, but as I understand it, the unregulated CDS market is what really put the banks at risk in 2008. I highly recommend the book The Big Short by Michael Lewis for anyone interested in the 2008 crash.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think the author is kind of mixing some different effects

1) The switch of bargaining power from workers to capital with Thatcher and Regan. I basically agree with him at least in the UK and US. Less so in places like France.

2) High asset prices - largely due to very low interest rates.

3) Rents to wages. Outside of popular cities like London, NY, SF I'm skeptical it's got much worse. I don't have that much data but here's a graph for NZ for the time period and it kind of goes up a bit and down a bit without much of a trend. [http://transportblog.co.nz/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/Rodney...](http://transportblog.co.nz/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/Rodney-graph-2.jpg)

4) Rent to income in NY, SF, London

In the old days where people worked in mostly industry and agriculture it made sense to be where that was happening. Now when a lot of people are information workers it makes sense to go where the smart people are at so everyone piles into the top cities even if it means packing twice as many into an apartment as used to be the case.

So if your rents so high relative to your wages it's probably because you are in a popular location with a restricted supply of property.

</comment><comment><USER32> The reason is monetary. Private debt increased and has reached it's peak. Previous generations have borrowed their prosperity, and next generations are living in an economy that is already full of debt obligations.

Everyone should see one of the few economists that actually does a proper craft: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqzfOQXCwFg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqzfOQXCwFg)

</comment><comment><USER33> This makes me sad. The title sounds promising, as if the article contained interesting analysis. But it doesn't. The author doesn't understand economics... Or anything. He peppered in a few facts and statistics to sound credible, which he probably looked up after he wrote the article. I would accuse him of click bait, but I don't think he understands what that even means.

</comment><comment><USER34> Reagan ended the Golden years and turned the US around from worker friendly to money-friendly. The result are low taxes for income generated from pure money, high speculation, bailouts for the big corporations and the decline of the US middle class.

Many of the other "western countries" just copy this trend and get the same, just with a few years between.

<comment><USER35> The oil crisis and recession of the 70's happened before Reagan was even on the ballots.

<comment><USER34> The oil crisis and recession of the 70s has nothing to do with the situation today, at least not directly. More important where the political decisions that where made in this time. Of course they where not all made by Reagan alone, but he was one of the major breaches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was disappointed that I could not actually scroll of down to read the article on mobile Android/chrome.

<comment><USER37> If the viewport is small enough it seems scrolling is disabled. I usually browse the web on the right side of my 15" screen and was confused when I wasn't able to scroll.

I find it weird that most people don't plan for people with 900px or so wide browsers.

<comment><USER38> It's trying to display a lightbox advertisement that is too big for the viewport. So, scrolling gets disabled but the lightbox doesn't render until/unless you enlarge the window.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> How many people died during WW2? It all seems like supply and demand to me. If we want lower housing prices in major cities we need more supply. Anecdotal, L.A. is built to the max horizontally. If L.A. would allow more vertical space to be used prices would drop.

<comment><USER40> About 400,000 US citizens were killed in WW2, or about .0003% of the entire US population in 1945 (140M).

It didn't have a huge downward impact on real estate prices.

<comment><USER41> 400k is 0.3% of 140 million, not 0.0003%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Eh, supply and demand? While the good places are ever harder to find for cheap, we the humans are ever easier to replace. The solution will come from the sharing economy, a sort of airbnb for long-term renting mixed with a facebook-dating-like social net that [almost] guarantees one does not move-in with a Freddy Kruger. I even think we will start seeing two or more families sharing a big house. There is also an incentive to property owners to go this way b/c risk is minimized by the multiple sources of income to pay for the hefty rent.

In general terms, the world of one of everything for each one is ending, all the uber-like business models that are popping around prove it feasible and profitable.

</comment><comment><USER43> (60 * 12) / 5000 = 14.4% which is about 1/7th not 1/10th.

Kinda depressing where there is a glaring math error in the 2nd sentence.

Edit: Well I suppose the NY median wage could have been higher than the US median wage that he quotes, but who knows? He doesn't even say.

</comment><comment><USER44> So this article gives an explanation for _why_ people would want to push up rents and property values.

Anyone know the _how_ of it? Rising rent compared to wage would normally lead to increased building, so this must be prevented somehow.

<comment><USER45> I would point the finger at NIMBYism and the fact that new developments in places like San Francisco, London, and New York have to hop through many many hoops to get built (and pass muster with a surprising number of "stakeholders").

Here is just one example...

[http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real- estate/201...](http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real- estate/2015/06/mission-housing-opposed-by-unions-sf-development.html)

The TL;DR of this article is that a large new apartment block in SF is being held up by a construction union because the developer is refusing to hire union labor for every contractor role in the project.

Maybe we should reduce the red tape around building new structures and see how far that gets us before plowing more money into public housing and other government interventions.

<comment><USER46> Or maybe the developer could just hire union labor to build the apartment block.

<comment><USER45> Nah, that's what I'm talking about. Makes things too complicated and expensive. How about this...

If you have the capital, you can build whatever you want as long as you don't physically endanger other people (building meets earthquake and fire codes, etc.)

<comment><USER46> Why is it "too complicated" to hire union labor? That seems like an easy thing to do, especially since the developer would have ready access to a large labor pool, of which union labor would be one component.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> What is the ideal ratio of rent/net income?

Personally, I don't want to spend more than 20% of my net income on rent + utilities. That way, I can save 50% and use the remaining 30% for food and entertainment.

I am currently at 16% in Seattle and I leave in a very good apartment, but I got lucky.

<comment><USER48> I rented a 3 room apartment. Sublet out 2.5 rooms. (I'm sharing one room.) Reduced my rental expense to 0%. Paying bills only. Only 15 minutes train to the second most expensive city by property prices relative to income in the world. (Sydney)

<comment><USER49> Unfortunately you have to find a landlord that lets you rent a 3-bedroom AND sublet parts of it, which where I live is completely unheard of (unless you're high net worth and pay premium rent, but then why have flatmates ?). Plus, you'd pay income taxes on the subletting rents and that builds up really quickly.

<comment><USER48> Yes, I used some salesmanship I gleaned from working in a startup and paid 5% premium rent. The landlord isn't worried about subletting. They want the place taken care of and to be assured you can make rent payments regularly and on time and don't trouble them too much. Convince them you're a better option than a family of 5 who also applied for the property and you too can sublet the place. The rent I pay is tax deductible from rent I receive. I chose to have flatmates and pay premium rent (paid for by flatmates) to live free in a renovated apartment close to the city. My office doesn't come with a space I can park a camper van.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Reasons why rent is so high not named:

\- A constant influx of people into the cities especially as inner city new york had a bad reputation

\- Apartments get bigger. Even if you rent a small one others are causing high rents through making space more scarce

</comment><comment><USER51> I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I live in NYC so I see some of what's happening in the property market here. I've also lived in London, Zurich and Australia.

The problem, ultimately, I think is trade agreements.

I came across this comic [1] recently that resonated with me. Trade agreements aren't about trade anymore. Tariffs and protection are at all time lows. Really they're about the free movement of capital.

The English-speaking world and much of the rest of the developed world has embraced the idea that real estate is a speculative investment. This includes allowing foreign capital to flow in and buy up property.

A lot of Manhattan condos are bought by the wealthy, many of them foreign, who don't live here at all (ie it's just a means of parking money) or they visit a few times a year.

The NYT has done a piece on this [2]. Luckily, much of Manhattan is still co- ops. For those of you unfamiliar with the history of this, NYC imposed rent control on property owners in the post-war era (up until 1973). Coops were a reform to allow building owners to divest themselves of apartments being rented below cost after the massive inflation of the 1970s.

Rent control tenants were offered their apartment at a discounted rate. They became owners and the owners divested themselves of the loss-making asset. Win-win.

Co-op residents technically own shares in a corporation. That corporation owns the building. Your shares give you the right to inhabit a certain apartment. You must however abide by the co-op rules. Some are lenient, some very strict. Co-ops can dictate a lot of things like:

\- Whether or not you can use the apartment as a pied-a-terre;

\- Whether or not and how much you can sublet your apartment (some note at all, some very lenient, lots in between);

\- How much financing is allowed. Many require a 20-25% downpayments and significant post-close liquidity. The more aristocratic buildings don't allow financing at all.

And so on.

The net effect though is that most co-ops tend to be fully or near-fully occupied, at least until you get to the very high end. This is actually good for the building and (IMHO) the city.

Without this NYC would be doomed to become a desert of unoccupied condos.

There are problems. Property tax is grossly unfair as the system is decided by the state government in Albany and they have heavily skewed it in favour of SFHs (single family homes). Plus for incumbent owners there are Prop 13 like caps on rate increases.

Also within apartment buildings there are problems. A $100m condo pays $18k/month in property tax. A $3m condo pays $3k. How does that make sense? It probably dates back to Bloomberg's idea that attracting billionaires who never live here is somehow good for the city.

At the same time as all this you need property investment to some degree as that's what provides the rental market. So you can't eliminate it entirely. But this is what I think you need:

1\. A higher bracket of capital gains tax paid by non-residents of wherever the property is. This should include any residential property held through corporations or trusts.

Now you have to be careful with this because there's also the flipper market. These are people who buy distressed properties, fix them up and sell them. I actually believe these people are providing a useful service in rehabing neighbourhoods.

2\. Property taxes that are in line with market values that don't discriminate on property type;

3\. Higher property taxes for non-residents (and trusts and corporations);

4\. No property transfer taxes like NYC's "mansion" tax.

Lastly, I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for the argument that people in entry-level jobs should be able to, say, afford to live in Manhattan. Why? Why is living anywhere a right? You hear the same thing about San Francisco.

At least in NYC there are options if you're on a lower income (Queens, NJ, NY, many of which have good transport options). Whatever problems there are in NYC the Bay Area is a mess an order of magnitude worse.

Vouncouver is another place that's had property driven up to sky-high levels. In that case it's because of rich Chinese seeking a safe harbour for their money and/or (ab)using the invest-to-immigrate program in Canada (how is buying an expensive house investing in Canada exactly?).

Freedom of capital is a problem. It allows companies to avoid paying taxes with transfer pricing. It allows voters to vote themselves huge benefits from the government treasury and then abandon the city, state or country when that debt collapses on itself.

[1]: [http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/](http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/)

[2]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/realestate/new-york- citys-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/realestate/new-york-citys- emptiest-co-ops-and-condos.html)

</comment><comment><USER52> My rent is low and my pay is high. North England is good for that.

<comment><USER53> Tell me more. High by southern standards? I'm hearing more and more about high paid tech jobs in the north but haven't seen any figures. I'm sick of the south and seriously considering moving north.

<comment><USER52> I don't know, I haven't worked in the south. But I earn £45k, my rent is £650 for a house with a big garden and a garage, a loaf of bread is 75p and a beer is in the range of £1.30-3, usually around £2.20

When I was in London, I couldn't get a beer for less than a fiver

<comment><USER53> Useful, thank you. I know people paying that and more for a room in a shared house down here :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> If the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer, eventually either the poor will die of starvation or disease or the rich will die in the guillotine - History.

</comment><comment><USER55> The author does not cite the true reason for the high cost of housing in NYC (I live in Manhattan), SF, (and I'm told Bombay) which is 1) using politics to create artificial scarcity of housing through zoning density restrictions ("rent seeking"in microeconomics or "green belting") and 2) overuse of historic landmark status. This is well-recognized by economists, but I suggest reading this Op-Ed by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser [http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill- article-1....](http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill- article-1.1913739) Nobelist and NY Times Columnist Paul Krugman cites Glaeser as well.

What I find frustrating is that people write and publish articles without consulting the experts like Glaeser or consulting any economist for that matter.

Prices rise because of scarcity. The high cost of housing is from inflated land costs through politically induced scarcity which is done through zoning density restrictions and overuse of historic landmark status. It is really that simple, yet many writers don't seem to understand that concept.

</comment><comment><USER56> Globalization and participation of women increase the labor supply. Wages fall. Supply and demand.

<comment><USER34> Participation of women was invented, not because it was needed, but to compensate for (relatively) reduced wages of the workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> you dont know high cost of living with low salary if you haven't lived in vancouver, bc.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/18UwaThgGikSXzinn...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/18UwaThgGikSXzinnLNHx7P3_HQSenggWbV262_UmuTk/edit#gid=0)

You can see based on that the average is around $45~50k CAD (if the salary field is blank assume $50k or less as these are less well known, smaller companies with tighter budgets)

rent for studio or 1 bedroom apartment in downtown area where lot of jobs are located is around $1300/month (nvm, it appears to have gone up in the past 3 years, $1700/month according to another users comment).

<comment><USER58> Portland, OR is getting pretty bad as well. Average cost to own a home in 2015 is $313,000[1]. I can't find a current house hold income figure but I know it's pretty low. Definitely below the national average IIRC.

The thing to note is that many of those houses selling for ~$300k are very small (< 1000sqft). So the average housing cost for a family of 3 is probably much higher.

1\. [http://www.movingtoportland.net/wp- content/uploads/AverageMe...](http://www.movingtoportland.net/wp- content/uploads/AverageMedianSalesPrice_May2015.png)

<comment><USER59> $313k? That's a pittance compared to Vancouver where the average home is over $1M. Even in the shitty east side with drug-dealers and prostitutes hanging out on your street you still pay over $1M for a detached home.

<comment><USER58> Fair enough. Perhaps rental was a better comparison. They are very close, and Portland pays way less than Vancouver (in addition to the US not having healthcare) - I'd say it's more expensive to buy in Vancouver, more expensive to rent in Portland.

1\. [https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-vancouver-bc- rent...](https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-vancouver-bc-rent-trends/)

2\. [https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-portland-or- rent-...](https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-portland-or-rent-trends/)

<comment><USER60> Houses in Vancouver are traded equities. They are more subject to external and speculative investors, rather than just local income and demand.

As a result, the price-to-rent ratio has been unreasonable in a similar way to Amazon's stock price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Long winded article and it doesn't even answer the question.

Rent in NYC is high because people are paying it.

Your pay is low because you decided it is. Lots of CEOs think their pay is low too as they drive a new Lexus off the dealership lot.

<comment><USER62> The article provides historical context and a framework to think about the question. I think it does a better job answering the question than your last 2 paragraphs.

<comment><USER63> The article tries to backdoor an emotionally resonant populist political view in the guise of concern. If you think it does a good job answering the question, that probably just means that you have a converging viewpoint.

<comment><USER64> Yeah, nothing is persuasive. Everything simply confirms or disconfirms what you already know. There is no learning. I will die knowing what I knew yesterday.

Life is shit, eat Arby's. Am I following along?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> kuni-toko-tachi Utter leftist nonsense. Reagan was responsible for the biggest and longest economic boom since World War 2, he freed millions of people from the miserable tyranny of communism. His tax cuts and deregulation revitalized the American economy. By winning the cold war through strength, he allowed Clinton (forced by strong Republican leaders in Congress) to demilitarize and reap the cost savings which balanced the budget.

The decline in wages has nothing to do with him, it has everything with productivity gains through technology and by loss of bargaining power through illegal immigration and by "free" trade agreements like NAFTA - passed by Clinton - which were pure crony capitalism purposely designed to chop the legs out from underneath the American worker. This, combined with out of control government spending - which funnels money printed out of thin air through Wall Street is what caused the conditions described.

</comment><comment><USER39> Labor has been on the decline for years. The union corruption and bashing seems never ending. The ignorance in the general populace allows this to happen, as people will vote against their own best interests.

I would assume that the populace movement that is gaining steam with sanders and warren will start to expand if the inequality continues.

<comment><USER65> If the unions are corrupt, why do you assume that it's in my best interest to join one?

<comment><USER39> Why do you assume I said that?

<comment><USER65> > Labor has been on the decline for years. The union corruption and bashing > seems never ending. The ignorance in the general populace allows this to > happen, as people will vote against their own best interests.

"The union corruption seems never ending." I agree. Unions are corrupt too much of the time. (Any is too much...)

"Labor has been on the decline for years... The ignorance in the general populace allows this to happen, as people will vote against their own best interests." I presume that this is supposed to mean that labor is in the best interest of people.

So it looks like you said that unions are corrupt, and that labor unions are in the best interest of people. Hence my question.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kids Don't Care About Cars - <AUTHOR> http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2014/07/05/kids-dont-care-cars/ <comment><USER2> Be careful not to extrapolate future trends too much based on what "kids these days" are doing _right now_. Cars are tools, and when the only task you have to complete is "get to school or work, get home, occasionally get to your girlfriend's place" a car that gets you from A to B without much trouble is fine. But a lot of "kids these days" will eventually grow into parents, and they'll have different use cases and therefore need more versatile tools. A 2-seater no longer works when you have 3 kids, or when you have to haul things bigger than a person for work or your own projects. A simple city-commute- optimized car with a short range no longer works when you occasionally want to visit your parents 2 states over, your brother 3 states over, and your wife's parents in a small town that's inconveniently far from any airport. When "kids these days" grow up, they may discover use cases they'd never considered before.

<comment><USER3> How often do you visit your parents 2 states over, or your parents-in-law who live far away from any airport?

Sure, "kids these days" will soon grow up and figure out what they need to get to those places. But the answer might not be "Buy a minivan." It could just as well be "Use this app to rent a self-driving minivan."

Having 3 kids, of course, is a different problem, but a lot of it depends on where you live. I have a hunch that many "kids these days" would hate to live in the same boring suburbs that their parents raised them in. And who knows, maybe Americans will finally rediscover the courage to tell their kids to take the subway to soccer.

<comment><USER2> my parents are nearby, but my wife's parents are about 500 miles away, and we visit several times per year. We'd like to visit more often, but have also had multiple funerals this year that have taken us in the other direction.

I'm not suggesting everyone will necessarily own a car. Only that extrapolating from the trends of what young people are currently doing isn't necessarily accurate -- recently graduated singles won't have all of the same life considerations as they will 5-10 years in the future. (Another one: those "boring suburbs" often have much better schools than the "hip" inner city. When you have kids, bad schools become a serious consideration.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been pretty happy with swapping driving, insurance, parking, maintenance etc. for living right in the middle of the city very close to work and using Lyft for everything else. Actually saves me a ton of time/money. For just the cost of a parking spot in SF (~$300) I can get a good 40 lyft rides a month to most of the locations I need to access.

<comment><USER5> What if you want to go for a weekend camping in Yosemite, or drive down the coastal highway to LA, or maybe up to Portland and Seattle? I agree owning and keeping a car in the middle of a city is expensive and tough. There are certainly some benefits to having a car though.

<comment><USER6> My fiance and I live in San Francisco; neither one of us owns a car. On the occasions that we need a car for a couple of hours (e.g., large purchases) we use City Car Share. For trips out of the City, we just rent a car. We save thousands of dollars a year in gas, insurance and maintenance. We also save time and aggravation in not having to worry about things like parking and street cleaning. We can't see ever going back to owning a car.

<comment><USER7> I did the same thing. It was basically break even for weekend trips and more profitable to have the car for week long trips. If you like the woods and places off the beaten path car shares aren't going to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wrote a similar post two years ago: [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/cars-and- generation...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/cars-and-generational- shift/) and have noticed the same basic trends. I'd also note that this:

 _As for the freedom the automobile once represented…

You don't have to leave your house to connect with your friends, you don't have go to the mall, as for doing illicit things…sexting is more outre and volatile than anything baby boomers could ever cook up._

May have been done in by traffic, too. Many of the people I know associate cars with traffic and wasted time.

<comment><USER9> _Many of the people I know associate cars with traffic and wasted time._

Won't self driving cars change that, though? I've also heard that a side effect of constant Oculus use, is that one becomes far less sensitive to motion sickness. These two things might combine to lessen the time wastage in cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For what truth there is to this, I wonder if it's partly a class thing too. For people middle-class and above, myself included, I get the sense that cars are something that was always present in abundance, and therefore no big deal. We're more sensitive to noticing the annoying things about them, like parking, worrying about driving drunk, traffic jams, etc, and perhaps take for granted the freedom in having your own car.

People in lower classes, at least that I have interacted with, tend to see a car as more of a status symbol, since they're not so readily available at their income levels. As in, their family may have one, but they don't just automatically get their kids a car when they turn 16. And so they're more of a status symbol, and people tend to more glamorize the freedom of it while ignoring the headaches as trivial.

<comment><USER11> In many ways cars are also more useful to people who are poor. You're more likely to work in some out of the way place without good transport links rather than an office in the big city and taking taxis can get expensive.

If you look at jobs in construction "must have own transport to get to the job site" is often listed as a requirement, less so for programming jobs.

Poorer people are more likely to holiday by packing their family into the car and driving somewhere rather than getting an international flight. They can also be used to transport stuff around when moving etc.

In short cars provide a great deal of flexibility and utility for the cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have problem opening the link... so out of mere speculation what it is discussing, but of all things, I don't appreciate that it is so much hassle having a car. I wouldn't own a car if I had a choice. I almost feel like that the lifecycle of owning car is designed to induce pain at every single step -- buying, maintaining, selling, etc.

<comment><USER13> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2014/07/05/kids- dont-care-cars/)

<comment><USER12> Thanks, doesn't sound too far off from what I thought it would be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know the statistics, but car culture is definitely not dead in the younger generation. Just look at the enthusiast forums for any make of car and you'll see thousands of young people talking about modifying, enjoying, driving, and racing cars.

Modern cars aren't as easy to upgrade and modify for the hobbyist, but they're still doing it.

</comment><comment><USER15> On quibble: I don't foresee the market for luxury and sports cards drying up any time soon (as the author suggests). A status symbol is still a status symbol: the main value proposition of an expensive car is to be expensive [1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good)

<comment><USER16> Yes. This has been my experience at all whenever my younger relatives (ages 10-20) see a nice (to them defined as Tesla or European and fast, it seems) car.

Kids still like toys, even with smartphones and the internet. And they'll most likely grow into adults who still like toys.

Car ownership patterns will probably change (students living on campuses and young professionals will probably have much less need for a personally owned car in the next decade or so), but there's two pretty big car markets that won't be threatened by that: luxury status symbol cars, and utilitarian people/stuff-movers. Uber and all the "fleet of centrally owned self-driving cars" talk is useless to someone who needs to keep a stash of items for their kids in their car, and needs space for their kids' friends, and needs that vehicle several times a day for family/commuting purposes (I don't think UberMinivan would really take off...). Owning won't be practically replaced by renting for every use case, and there's a lot of use cases for personal vehicles out there that fall outside of the typical HN perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> More on this topic: [http://fortune.com/2013/11/21/inside-the-mind-of-marc- andree...](http://fortune.com/2013/11/21/inside-the-mind-of-marc-andreessen/)

"Ask kids if they'd rather have a smartphone or a car if they had to pick and 100% would say smartphones. Because smartphones represent freedom."

<comment><USER18> A smart kid would realize that with a car he could have a job and then buy his own smartphone.

<comment><USER6> 47% of the population of San Francisco uses something other than a car to get to work. In big cities, a car is not needed to get a well paying job. The really smart kids realize this.

<comment><USER19> 'kids today'[1] have quite a lot of representation outside the concentrated city centre - usually city centres have a higher-than-average age. Cool, SF is tiny, compact, and riddled with public transport. Now travel down the coast a bit to greater LA, 20 million people of which have poor access to public transport and live in a very spread out city, limiting the utility of getting around via musclepower. Rinse, repeat anywhere you have spread-out suburbia with poor PT, or outside cities altogether..

[1] article's chosen demographic, though it doesn't really matter

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In my opinion, the market for the auto industry is divided into two major groups, there's the group that views cars as a means to an end whether this end is an upgrade in status or getting from point A to B, and the group that actually likes to drive and buys cars for the pleasure of it.

I think even in the younger generation this division exists. Granted the latter group is a minority but it accounts for(or will account for when they can afford to) sales in the sports car sector and activity in the tuning sector.

But is this such a change from past? The words in the adverts may have changed from freedom to self driving and electric but has the landscape really changed? I don't think so. There's always a market segment that looks at what cars bring and not the cars themselves. It's up to the auto industry to figure out how to meet today's needs.

Personally though i will still line up for that Aston Martin, i am the other kind.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think the trends the author is seeing may only be regional. Out here in Oklahoma and on some of my trips around the midwest, every little kid who sees my car knows the difference between a new base model Mustang and a Mustang GT and gets excited to hear a real 420HP V8. Lots of young guys I've met -- in college, through friends, in the military, etc. -- have also had their share of fast cars or tuners. A good number have even done a restoration or two.

As for the women, plenty of college girls and other young women notice what I'm driving and give me complements. A nice car definitely still gets attention from the ladies. Quite a few I've know even enjoy driving stick and like to go pretty fast.

I'll admit, young people may be more practical and economical with their vehicle purchase decisions, but car culture is still very alive and strong here.

</comment><comment><USER22> I can certainly anecdotally confirm this. The only reason I'm even in the process of getting my license is because my parents want me to, and many of my peers are similar in that regard. Additionally, when my dad got a new car recently, I was not excited due to its beauty or power, but because of its convenience, energy efficiency, and price (he got a Spark EV).

Add this to self-driving cars coming soon, and cars are definitely looking more and more like a utility.

<comment><USER18> Interesting to hear. My son (17) and all his friends are quite interested in cars, watch Top Gear, talk about cars, etc. The one difference I have noted between he and I is that he is not really interested in how cars work or how to maintain/repair them. I on the other hand do all the basic maintenance myself and mostly enjoy doing it.

It might be an urban/rural thing as well.

Edit: I also think practical self-driving cars as well as EVs are a lot farther off than you seem to. I've just seen in the automotive world too many stories about amazing technologies that are "just around the corner" but never seem to materialize.

<comment><USER9> _I also think practical self-driving cars as well as EVs are a lot farther off than you seem to._

For heaven's sake: don't get your information about EVs from Top Gear. I love watching those guys, but they really are a bunch of clowns, and the show's just pure entertainment. The Tesla S model with the 260 mile range is a perfectly reasonable (though pricey) car for getting around the Bay Area.

Also, I've heard that if you lease a Fiat 500e, you get some long distance car rentals as part of your lease. (100 mile range is too short, though.)

<comment><USER23> _The Tesla S model with the 260 mile range is a perfectly reasonable (though pricey) car for getting around the Bay Area._

That's like saying a private jet is a perfectly reasonable (though pricey) airplane for making flights.

I'm sorry my pockets are not gilded like some of the folk around here, but a Tesla is way too goddamn expensive for us normal folk.

<comment><USER9> _That 's like saying a private jet is a perfectly reasonable (though pricey) airplane for making flights._

Your analogy is off by a few orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER23> It's exaggerated to make a point to people who consider a Tesla affordable.

My house cost less than two Teslas.

<comment><USER9> _It 's exaggerated to make a point to people who consider a Tesla affordable._

A Tesla is in the same price range as a lot of conventional luxury cars. To me, that's a good first step. I didn't say to stop there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 16 year old here, I've got a few thoughts on this from being in the middle of it. Background: I live in a moderately sized urban center (Austin).

First, some anecdotal data: roughly half my friends have no plans to even get a license before they're 18, many of the rest (including myself) regularly borrow a parent's car, a smaller sub-set have parents who bought them cars, and a couple have bought cars with earned money.

> Yup, the road trip is as dead as the western

This is plainly wrong. Myself, and most of my friends grew up going on road trips with parents and now we're starting to take them ourselves.

> To the younger generation cars are transportation, nothing more. They take > you from a to b.

This is 100% on-point. They're a convenient tool, and not much more. Granted, we still appreciate a Porsche, but we don't fantasize about them in the way I think previous generations did. They still represent some freedom, because they provide a space that's not controlled by authority figures in our lives, along with mobility. But we feel no need to own that car, it can just as easily be a parent's.

> So long Ferrari. So long Aston Martin.

I'm not sure this is true. My friends and I occasionally talk about, and appreciate things like the Model S, McLarens, and Ferraris. I don't doubt that several of my friends would buy them as successful adults. But given the choice of a nice apartment in NYC or SF or the nice car, almost all of us would take the better living location.

My job is three miles away, and my other work is all remote. Enough of my friends have cars, or access to family cars, that for any social outing someone can get access to a car. So buying a car doesn't provide much value to me. It's expensive, stressful, and any car a teenager can afford is mediocre at best. So instead of buying a car, I'm spending time in Europe with my two best friends next summer.

Cars are still viewed as a nice thing to have, but to us they're not worth working for months and months to buy. Driving is still very much a thing that many teenagers are interested in.

<comment><USER3> > Driving is still very much a thing that many teenagers are interested in.

> Myself, and most of my friends grew up going on road trips with parents and > now we're starting to take them ourselves.

> we feel no need to own that car, it can just as easily be a parent's.

> buying a car doesn't provide much value to me

I must say that many adults (older than you, but younger than the boomers) feel exactly the same. Driving is fun. Traveling is fun. No amount of web browsing and online social networking can replace the actual, physical experience of traveling and seeing the country for yourself. Moreover, there are so many cool places in America that you can only get to by driving. So the road trip is definitely alive and well.

And yet, many people in their 30s and 40s have chosen to forgo car ownership. Because they aren't going on road trips all time. They rent a vehicle when they need one, or maybe lease a car for a while. This is the grown-up equivalent of borrowing your parent's car, and it comes with all the same benefits, too: renting can be less expensive, less stressful, and lower maintenance than full ownership, even if you rent a car every single weekend. (A rental location near my University used to have a special where you could rent a mid-size car for three weekends for less than $200.)

tl;dr: Cars are still cool. Car ownership isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't know how it is in the US but in the UK, it was a real struggle to afford a car, luckily this year, my insurance dropped to a reasonable £800, compared to the £3000 I was being quoted for last year.

You can get your driving licence when you're 17, but at that point, (usually) you aren't earning enough money to drive a car.

So you're sitting on your license for 4 years, and when the insurers finally believe you can drive without crashing, you better be sure you remember everything you were taught 4 year ago.

I don't think it's cars that are going out of fashion, insurers are pricing 'kids' out of the driving seat.

</comment><comment><USER19> The article is rehashing the same tired old Y/millenials vs Boomers crap again. There's a lot more individuality amongst all the generations than articles like this give credit for.

</comment><comment><USER26> My anecdotal experience varies from the author's. Having taken up driving for Uber and Lyft for the past 6 weeks in Los Angeles, to earn some side cash, I can say I receive a lot of compliments about my car, and mostly from women in their 20's. I'm driving a 2010 Jetta Sportwagen TDI. I think the moon roof has a lot to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Eh, I didn't care about cars until I was in my 20s, but before then I wasn't in the market for expensive cars anyway. Kids not being into cars is not the end of the world.

<comment><USER28> Yea, wait until they get a job and have to figure out how to get to work. Then (assuming they live in 99% of the USA), all of a sudden, having a car is going to be pretty important. I wouldn't draw any conclusions if kids under 20 don't care about cars. Like E-mail, they'll suddenly start using it as soon as they get their first job.

<comment><USER29> But will they care about them? The article acknowledges the utility aspect, but that doesn't mean they will form an emotional bond with it, as previous generations have. If so, then it will be a difficult future for the automakers who play on that aspect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "All the young girls you want to impress will be laughing at you, you wasted all your money on WHAT?"

Actually, they DO notice the nice car. Not that it is super helpful, but still...

</comment><comment><USER31> Haha. A good laugh of a post. I did not care one bit about many things when I was 15. Yet your tastes and interests change as you get older. Why people dont realize that?

</comment><comment><USER32> I agree kids don't care about cars right now. They care about getting a job, which it's been harder for many of these Gen-R (recession) kids.

</comment><comment><USER33> I certainly view a car as a tool, nothing more, but I don't know why this author presumes to talk for all people under forty.

<comment><USER5> It's also a weird screed against cars as if they have no utility. I guess this person has never lived outside a big city in the suburbs or country where having a car is absolutely a necessity to get to work, the store, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> No need for status symbols anymore. If you want people to know you are rich, just post it on Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER35> You have to be careful not to extrapolate too much from your personal experiences. I screw that up pretty often.

Near as I can tell, there are about as many kids that are into cars as ever have been. They're maybe doing different things to them than in the past -- wheels, suspension, hydraulics, stereos -- but there are still a lot of young people that care a lot about their cars. Forums like stancenation ([http://www.stancenation.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?30-Meets...](http://www.stancenation.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?30-Meets- amp-Events-Photo-Coverage!)) seem to be mostly younger people. Not my thing, but hey, a lot of folks into it.

And near as I can tell, it's never been true that everyone knew how to work on a car. Mechanics have been around forever, and for good reason. One of my grandpa's favorite stories is the time he took apart the engine on his car, down to the bolt, carefully boxing and bagging and labeling every single thing, only to find he had no idea how it all went back together again. The mechanic showed up, took one look at it, threw it all into a box and brought the car back a few days later.

The 50's style family road trip has maybe suffered somewhat from the high price of gas and from the competition of touring abroad, but people still do road trips. My pa and I drove from Florida to California years ago; I just finished a brief tour of small towns in Oregon and California a few months ago, and bumped into someone else doing the same; lots of people take road trips to Burning Man every year; I still see the occasional converted hippy bus on the road; and there's even a company that specializes in renting RVs to people for trips, [https://www.cruiseamerica.com/](https://www.cruiseamerica.com/) \-- if you stop at a KOA or a Goodsam, you'll find plenty of those. If you don't travel much, it's easy to believe other people don't travel too, and if you travel, you'll meet other travelers.

Sure, some things are changing. Something always is. But just 'cause people can do the Facebook thing doesn't mean it's as fun as a LAN party or a game night or beer and barbecue with friends. I'm pretty sure the party scene isn't any less lively than before.

Jeep is still doing a brisk business domestically ([http://www.autonews.com/article/20140701/RETAIL01/140709987/...](http://www.autonews.com/article/20140701/RETAIL01/140709987/chrysler- up-9-on-strong-jeep-ram-demand)), and the main thing those vehicles have going for them is their brand identity. (Don't hate me, I love Jeeps ... but they're not really practical for the average use case.)

</comment><comment><USER36> It is not the sixties once again.</comment>


Why Enterprises Don't Like SaaS - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/06/26/26readwriteweb-why-enterprises-dont-like-saas-54452.html <comment><USER2> Short summary: Enterprises don't like SaaS because they have so many spare cycles in their datacenters. Thus they prefer when stuff runs on their hardware so they don't look as stupid for all the excess capacity.

Well, I guess any enterprise operating like that deserves what it gets.</comment>


'The Fatal Conscience': Julia de Burgos, Puerto Rico's Greatest Poet - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/04/26/the-fatal-conscience-julia-de-burgos-puerto-ricos-greatest-poet/ <comment><USER2> I come from the same public education described in this article and it is outrageous that we barely cover Julia's life work as part of the current academia.</comment>