The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> Some of the points about privilege might be accurate, but breaking economic status in to .1%, 9.9%, and 90% is arbitrary and misleading. The author tries to make the point that "the 9.9%" have the majority of the wealth and this issue is as big or bigger than the concentration of wealth at the very top. The problem is that this is largely an artifact of the division system. The distribution is highly skewed, and the much of the wealth in the 9.9 is going to actually be in that top .9.

In other words, the author just divides the top 1% into two pieces, and lumps one of them in with "the 9.9".

Edit: I did a little research and math. The top 1% holds 40% of US wealth. The top 10% holds 77%. That's 37% to "the 9%". I would hypothesize that even within this 9% we'd find the wealth concentrated at the top in the "2nd 1%", i.e., the top 2% likely make the middle class look mostly irrelevant.

<comment><USER4> I disagree.

What the article is trying to point out is that the 9.9% thinks he's not so wealthy, so he is against inequality, but he still, somehow, for his own comfort and merit belief system, likes his higher income.

Trying to talk about ranges of income, would it the top N%, is pointless.

You could strip out the hypocrisy like so: "I am not at the top, so I am still against inequality, but I am comfortable, but since I AM NOT AT THE TOP, YOU CANNOT BLAME ME, so blame the richest". This is the core problem about stretching inequality, because individualism makes people work for their own selves, and NEVER encourage anyone to "take one for the team". The whole story is about how people perceives their own selves. This is an important debate.

I'm sure those 9.9% would be very surprised they belong to the top 10%. The graph of income is always growing exponentially, yet for some reason people are throwing away the idea that they might be the ones to blame, because people will naturally find argument that they're not to blame. It's always the responsibility of someone else.

I personally have not lived the wealthiest life there is in term of income, but you know, at least I don't complain, because when I compare it to the rest of the world, being in the lower 50% or 60% or 30% in a modern and developed country is still a pretty good life.

<comment><USER5> This is a big debate in the HN world too, where tech workers in that top 10% think they are working class. The real breakdown here is that in todays day and age, there's hardly a middle class, there's the working class who struggles, lives basically paycheck to paycheck, and at the age of 45 has up to 40k in wealth to their name. Then there's that top 10% whose able to afford a million dollar home, take yearly vacations, send their kids to college, ect.

The things the upper middle class think should be a given to them because they are within a certain economic strata are actually just regular luxuries.

<comment><USER6> Yep, you see it a lot in San Francisco (I've noticed it creeps into my mind a lot more frequently than I'd like to admit).

The thing is, it's like the boiling a frog in water analogy. You get desensitized to it. I tend to work with salespeople, so there's a tendency to get flashier things than a lot of my programming friends, but it manifests in things like always having the latest iPhone (or it's Android equivalent), travelling internationally a couple times a year, going for brunch whenever you feel like it, being able to save a good $10-15k yearly without really trying. Maybe hitting Tahoe a few times in the winter. Going to Soulcycle or Equinox to work out during the week. But you still can't buy a house in San Francisco. So you don't feel rich, but compared to the average American you're taking home a multiple of what they're making. It shocked me to find out the average household income is about $60k annually.

We all live in a bubble. San Francisco is a bubble. Dayton Ohio is a bubble as well. And when you live in a city with a ton of rich people (and a sizeable population probably in the bottom 10%) it gets pretty easy to forget about the other 80% who live somewhere in the middle of it all, in Concord, or Pleasanton or whatever they call it in the East Bay.

<comment><USER7> "But you still can't buy a house in San Francisco."

Are you in a dual income family, and have you considered buying areas like the Excelsior, Ingleside heights (excluding Ingleside terrace), Oceanview/Merced Heights, Outer Mission, Portola, Silver Terrace, or other such neighborhoods?

I don't mean to dismiss your question, these are still expensive neighborhoods, probably between 800k-1.2mil for something decent. This is tough for two incomes, as the dual income thing means you're also stuck with high childcare costs, which will probably be ~25k per kid in San Francisco (I'm talking about the kind that allows you to go to work from 8am-6pm - <USER2> even then you will have to recuse yourself from meetings to be at daycare by 6pm, officially surrendering your membership in the _young people are just smarter and can focus on what 's important_ club in Silicon Valley companies[1).

I do think this is in reach of the group you just described, though. 250k+ family income isn't unusual for two tech workers or other professionals in SF (a programmer and dental hygienist pair, for example, should exceed this).

[1] [https://venturebeat.com/2007/03/26/start-up-advice-for- entre...](https://venturebeat.com/2007/03/26/start-up-advice-for- entrepreneurs-from-y-combinator-startup-school/)

<comment><USER6> I agree 100%. I meant to sum up the prevailing attitude on housing out here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Rebuttal from Slate:

[https://slate.com/business/2018/05/forget-the- atlantics-9-9-...](https://slate.com/business/2018/05/forget-the- atlantics-9-9-percent-the-1-percent-are-still-the-problem.html?via=gdpr- consent)

<comment><USER9> Key paragraph:

"He neglects to mention that many of them are actually just retirees. According to Saez and Zucman, whose data Stewart uses, more than 40 percent of all wealth belonging to Americans between and 90th and 99th percentiles is held by the the elderly, meaning age 65 or older. This is what makes wealth data a tricky way to measure class below the very tiptop of the distribution. Stewart's "9.9 percent" includes a lot of working professionals and business owners with gilded academic résumés, sure. But it also probably encompasses a lot of 75-year-old former accountants and nurses and guys with construction businesses who made a comfortable living decades ago, bought a house, and paid down the mortgage while saving for retirement. There's no real way to tell a consistent story about who these people are, which makes it a bit hard to blame them for the death of opportunity in this country."

<comment><USER10> I don't think that is a fair rebuttal. There has been a systemic transfer of wealth from the young to the older. Social Security and pensions get funded; universities and schools do not.

<comment><USER11> Citation needed?

Education is the 2nd largest expenditure in California:

[https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2018_CA_statel...](https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2018_CA_statelocal)

Number 1 expenditure in Texas:

[https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2018_TX_statel...](https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2018_TX_statelocal)

People perceive education to be underfunded, but digging at the data it definitely is one of the Government's highest spending priorities...

<comment><USER12> Student loan growth is arguably a decent proxy. Entire generations coming out of school with negative wealth is a pretty new thing.

<comment><USER11> Does this amount to a systemic transfer of wealth from young to old (OP's complaint?)?

Student loan growth correlates to the (seemingly unbounded) rise of college costs, along with the willingness of the Government to back loans for them?

I'd argue that college costs are rising specifically because it's so easy for students to get loans because of Government intervention. :(

Also to be considered is that it used to be the case that entire generations did not go to college (in fact we're only at 30% of folks now...).

<comment><USER10> One still has a generation who were educated on subsidised education now reducing those subsidies, per capita, to the next. The former then expects the latter to work to fund their Social Security, Medicare and pensions as opposed to working to redistribute those hand-outs over the broader population. (Not taking a stance. Simply eliding a policy theme. My bet is SS, Medicare and pensions will be dismantled within a few cycles to fund a UBI and universal healthcare, with total pay-outs to seniors going down to pay for broader pay- outs across the population.)

<comment><USER11> There has been no reduction of education spending on a per-capita basis (or any other form of measurement).

[https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1970_202...](https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1970_2023USd_19s2li011mcn_20t)

It has grown at an amazing rate (as have Medicare/pensions etc).

Half of the income of the middle 20% of retired folks (those making less than $65K) comes from the government subsidies you'd like to cut. The 2nd 20% gets 2/3rds their income from the government and the bottom gets practically all of it. Cuts here will materially impact the poorest elderly.

Citations: [https://usafacts.org/reports/annual/2018](https://usafacts.org/reports/annual/2018)

My personal TL;DR is that we've been throwing money at all these problems and they are still so far from being solved :( Actually throwing money around seems to make things much worse.

People are taking a NIMBY style stance (cut those programs I don't use and give me/people like me the difference -- definitely don't cut my programs) that is not going to achieve anything but further animosity and grief :(

<comment><USER10> You mention NIMBYism. I would regard that as the principal vector of wealth transfer.

<comment><USER11> Nimbyism is only a regional factor.

I think we agree this is a national conversation.

<comment><USER10> Local themes can manifest at scale. Many large cities are affected by generational NIMBYism. That collects to produce a macroeconomic effect.

<comment><USER11> But the data doesn't show that there's a bunch of rich old folks mooching on the labor of everyone else.

Basically the median elderly person has enough money to pay off the median house and then nothing else. After a lifetime of work isn't this acceptable?

Secondary source: [http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/time-to-bury-pew- report...](http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/time-to-bury-pew-report-on- wealth-by-age-group)

On mobile otherwise I would link in the primary data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wait, so 10% of the county is millionaires (more or less, if 9.9% are 1.2-millionaires), and these people have such "good family, good health, and good jobs" that they might as well be a different species? If I tell you how "good" someone's family or health is, you can tell me if they are a millionaire or not?

I think the author's intent was to acknowledge privilege, but the article is just making more weird caricatures. I think it's better to put a spotlight on particular ways people might not be able to advance themselves as much as the usual narrative would suggest.

<comment><USER14> >If I tell you how "good" someone's family or health is, you can tell me if they are a millionaire or not?

Yes, I can. That's the point -- the rich and poor are far more visually distinct today. Take for example obesity/overweight and marriage status. The poor are far more likely to have both an elevated BMI and to be single parents / divorced / never married

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't have thought this until I had kids, who "forced" me to greatly expand my social milieu beyond my fellow geeks and musicians.

Our kids got involved in some activities (e.g., violin lessons) that are almost exclusively the domain of the upper middle class. I remember attending a large group recital with maybe 100 kids, and virtually none of them were obese.

<comment><USER13> I have young kids. If violin lessons are apparently so expensive as to require you to be a millionaire (not merely, say, a six-figure-earner), what is a class or event I can go to to see all the poor, obese kids that I haven't come across yet? I don't live in a frou frou part of my town. It seems more likely to me that cultural forces are at play.

<comment><USER16> > what is a class or event I can go to

they are poor. they don't go to events or extracurricular classes...those cost money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Every piece of the pie picked up by the 0.1 percent, in relative terms, had > to come from the people below.

this statement is literally true, but aside from "in relative terms", the wording of the whole sentence seems to evoke a zero sum game. I see this type of writing in most articles about inequality and I wish the authors would strive to be more explicit. it's an important distinction, even if we agree that relative gains are just significant as absolute gains.

<comment> temp-dude-87844 The explicit invocation of the concept "zero-sum" is avoided because it's a lightning rod for criticism, where someone will inevitably chime in to point out the realization of absolute gains of utility among the losers also; specifically, that important metrics like living standards have been improving for wide swaths of the population, even those whose share of wealth declined over time.

And therein lies the disconnect: both can be true, because one of them is a tautology; and it just so happens that relative disparities in wealth among the pool of people in market for a service will cause the competition to attain some elements of an auction, and cause the poorer parties to lose out.

<comment><USER17> to be clear, I am not criticizing the author for not explicitly using the term "zero-sum game"; however dysfunctional the economy may be, it is clearly not that. I am criticizing the author for writing about relative gains using language (e.g. "pie", "taking from", "giving up") that is clearly evocative of a zero sum game. it encourages the uncareful reader to conflate absolute and relative gains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This was a very long article so it doesn't surprise me that most people are commenting on the 9.9% figure while missing the authors point. I've seen a similar point made several times recently and it goes something like this:

The "true elites" have constructed a social and economic system that syphons off the majority of wealth. The "wannabe elites" at the top of the remaining pile are actually complicit servants of the elite (who cares if it is 9%, 11% or whatever). These wannabes enjoy their privileges but realize their position is precarious. Their anxiety at losing this position makes them more eager servants to the elites and they become highly protective of their own positions. Maintaining wannabe elite status is more important than effecting societal change and it consumes all of their available resources and time.

The people at the bottom of the system are always upset and spend most of their time fighting amongst themselves and scheming on how to get into the privileged wannabe group. They spend all of their resources and time just trying to survive. There is a constant threat that if this rabble becomes angry enough then they will violently revolt. The elites like to remind the wannabes that when the pitchforks come out then it will be for the wannabes, those soft/weak knowledge workers who are unable to fly to their second home in Europe. So, it is really in the wannabes best interest to quell the dissent.

In this narrative, the alliance between the insanely rich and the dirt poor makes sense. The real elites let the educated wannabes know they have their finger on the button. They do so in subtle think pieces in the kind of magazines the rabble won't read. Don't forget, your comfortable lifestyle is predicated on serving the elites. If individually you rebel then you will lose your privileges. If en-masse you rebel then there will be a violent revolt directed at you. Good luck finding a way out of all of this is what the author leaves us with.

The wannabes are the dupes in a con-game. We think we are in on the con and yet we also realize that if things go bad then we'll be the ones left holding the bag. We're being taught to accept an inherit complicity as a means to convince us to keep going along with it. You already knew everything there was to know before you read this article.

<comment><USER12> This tripartite split (elite, bourgeois, poor) is a very old one. I am sure I read a paper in an undergrad poly-sci course that analyzed the fate of nations based on which two teamed up against the third. Elites+poor is a pretty dangerous combination because they end up catching civil society in the pincers.

<comment><USER18> The author did make the argument that revolutions that start from the middle are usually less violent and chaotic. I don't have the relevant education to know if that is true but I do know that I'd rather lead a revolution than be the victim of it. To be fair to the author, that is his ultimate point.

It feels to me that the idea of sacrifice has become a secular heresy. Humility as well. If the middle class has any hope of allying with the lower class then those two traits will have to ascend from ashes. The real questions is: are we too far gone and is it too late?

<comment><USER19> > If the middle class has any hope of allying with the lower class then those > two traits will have to ascend from ashes. The real questions is: are we too > far gone and is it too late?

I'd honestly ask a slightly different question : how much longer will the lower and middle classes pose a realistic threat to the elites?

To date, economic and social elites have always been at the theoretical mercy of the masses simply by virtue of vastly inferior numbers. We're not _that_ far off from a day when - as a result of technological advances of various kinds - a small minority could feasibly defend themselves both physically and politically against the rest of society.

To me, that's honestly the real ticking time bomb. People can change, grow and adapt to any number of situations - and are remarkably good at finding common ground with their neighbors when necessity dictates. However, once the masses lose their ability to meaningfully threaten the elites, the entire question becomes moot and the ship will have sailed for a long, long time.

<comment><USER20> > small minority could feasibly defend themselves both physically and > politically against the rest of society

Look no further than China. They've already instituted a social credit system to control the masses' political discourse, and to prevent dissidents from gathering together and to have neutral groups turn against them for fear of reprimands.

The future does not look good for the poor, and unlike yester-century, theres enough surveylance technology and automation to snuff any rebel group before critical mass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you pick 4.73% or 17.23% as the cutoff point you will reach the same conclusions, the numbers behave as you would expect. I read a similar article once that focused on the top 20% by income, this one focuses on top 10% by wealth... The reality is that there is no "aristocratic cutoff point" \- people get richer (and their incomes go up) faster _smoothly_ as you go towards the right on the curve.

I don't understand why the author feels his "top 10%" cutoff is somehow especially insightful and "smarter" than the 1% one. It is entirely arbitrary.

He says:

 _"We are the 99 percent" sounds righteous, but it's a slogan, not an analysis._

But if you do an analysis of the 1%, the advantages you ascribe to the 9.9% will hold much more strongly. If you do it for the top 20% they will also hold, but less strongly. You just picked a number and ran with it. There is nothing insightful there.

Income inequality has been growing but what the author is attempting to do is childish, although the article is surprisingly well-written considering how stupid the core idea is.

<comment><USER22> Most readers aren't in the 1%, but most (Atlantic Monthly) readers are in the 10%. Articles about the 1% are about "them"; articles about the 10% are about "us". That's a reasonable premise for an article: move the goalpost and show what it's like to be on the other side of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I believe very strongly in equality of opportunity, and the liberal tendency to zone everything to prevent development and keep out the poors is a glaring example of hipocrisy. I don't know if charter schools are the answer, but certainly letting the family choose where to stick their education dollars could alleviate the vast difference in K12 education that keeps the "9.9%" in continuous power.

<comment><USER24> > letting the family choose where to stick their education dollars could > alleviate the vast difference in K12 education that keeps the "9.9%" in > continuous power.

Could you elaborate what you mean by this? Wouldn't the best course of action to give each school the same funding based on the number of pupils, and additional funding for troubled areas in need?

<comment><USER23> I think that we should let students from poor towns go to awesome schools in rich towns even if they aren't residents of the rich town. The wealthy self- segregate by limiting low-income housing in their area to keep out the poors.

Similarly I think it should be easy to create a new school (charter or whatever you want to call it) to compete with bad schools in poor districts.

But even without option 2, option 1 would be great. Would also let rich kids interact with poor kids which will benefit everyone.

<comment><USER25> I disagree that it's segregating or done on purpose, but it is deeply unfair that the price of a good "public" education is being able to afford the real estate in that catchment area / school district.

<comment><USER26> But it's ultimately the high price of the real estate in that area that makes the schools good. We live in an economy where intelligent academic achievers do pretty well. So expensive areas are highly skewed toward intelligent academic achievers. Guess what kind of children they have...

<comment><USER25> I remain skeptical of that part. There are, however, plenty of cities in the US where the school district boundaries are drawn very precisely to enable the imposition of property taxes that support the schools. It becomes a sort of private-public school, in the sense that all the homeowners in the district pay extra and those schools have sports teams and labs and orchestra and field trips that the kids on the other side of the line can only dream of.

(This is impossible in California, however, because the property taxes are set at the county level and school districts have no control over their own funding.)

<comment><USER26> Having grown up in Los Angeles, I can tell you that the best schools there are also in the wealthy neighborhoods, despite the funding issue you mention not applying in California. And that's because the children of wealthy people have the genetics and culture to do well in school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The top 10% is 120k in income or 1.2m in net worth -- would be nice to see the demographics. In any case, 1.2m in net worth is a house with some retirement money, not exactly what I would call aristocracy.

<comment><USER28> And yet it's more than 90.1% of the population posesses...

Interestingly, some estimates of (formal) Polish aristocracy in the 17th century place it around 10% of the population. Maybe this is just some natural distribution of socio-econo-political status of human groups.

<comment><USER29> As another comment here pointed out;

90.1% possess about 30% of the wealth.

9% possess another 30% of the wealth.

The remaining 0.9% possess the rest.

Is the 9% to blame for inequality?

<comment><USER30> It's not about blaming the 9.9%. It's about convincing the 9.9% that they are part of the problem. The way the author writes, he is in that group, speaking to them. "We."

Compare to slavery. Obviously Southern slaveowners bear responsibility. But were non-slaveowners, Northerners, etc free of the taint? No. Ulysses S. Grant married into a slaveowning family and for years was supported by them. Northern factory owners turned profits off the products of slavery. Regular northerners purchased products produced by the system of slavery. Sure, some are more responsible than others, but the whole country from North to South bore the taint of slavery. Individuals giving up slaves didn't end slavery. Raising awareness of slavery's evil to the point where it hit critical mass, and then using power to force slaveholders to cease, that's how it ended.

This article is a member of the 9.9% speaking to others of the 9.9%, telling them they cannot absolve themselves; that they cannot expect to escape without consequence if the world turns again, as it has in the past.

In my mind the only question left to be addressed is how the power will be wielded. Will it be a politicolegal revolution or a violent one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In the past, nobody really attacked the rich because so many Americans think they'll one day be in their shoes. In 2003, we learned that 19% of Americans think they are in the richest 1% and a further 20% expect to be someday [1]. People have slowly woken up to the fact that their math was way off and class mobility doesn't really work that way. The brief "Occupy" movement and the identification of the 1% as a species largely unlike the rest of us shined a big spotlight on a class of people who would rather not receive so much attention. This article seems to be almost deliberately engineered to downplay the 1%-vs-99% narrative that once illustrated a distinct oil-vs-water class divide in the country. How better to confuse people about who the villains are than to muddy the water by adding "slightly richer normal people" into the mix with the plutocrats and Wall Street billionaires. This almost reads as a PR piece, straight from the desk of the Koch brothers or a Wall Street managing director: "Look over there! There's a hard working father of two who owns a few laundromats and a family doctor with a vacation home! Those guys are totally relatable to you poor people, _just like us billionaires_!"

1: [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of- ho...](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hope-over- self-interest.html)

<comment><USER32> > How better to confuse people about who the villains are than to muddy the > water by adding "slightly richer normal people" into the mix with the > plutocrats and Wall Street billionaires.

Eh, I feel that was done more by the increased focus on social issues and race/gender/whatever tensions to be honest. Isn't it super convenient that all these identity politics wars came about JUST after Occupy and the possibility the rich were going to be in the firing line? Or that class usually isn't mentioned there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Every piece of the pie picked up by the 0.1 percent, in relative terms, had to come from the people below"

The economy is not a zero sum game. Even though inequality is counter- productive and undesirable, it does not mean that wealth has been "transferred" to the top 1%/10%. The poorest quantiles have become more wealthy over time as well, just at a slower rate. Here is some data on this:

[https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/09/1...](https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/09/19/u-s- household-incomes-a-50-year-perspective)

<comment><USER34> "The poorest quantiles have become more wealthy over time as well, just at a slower rate."

For the last two decades, your source actually says the opposite. The lowest three quintiles peaked in the dot-com bubble, with the bottom quintile losing the most (almost 10%) and only the middle quintile just recently reaching those levels again.

<comment><USER33> Agreed, I meant over time as in over the last century. Interesting that the 90s was this much of a peak though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I couldn't help but think of Eyes Wide Shut when reading this. For those who have seen the film, the leading character, a physician who lives in Upper East Side in Manhattan, easily fits the bill (npi) of being a 9.9%er. But as Kubrick makes it clear, he is merely a well paid servant of the true hidden aristocracy, and very much preoccupied with matters that are of no concern to the aristocratic class.

I agree with the other commentators' critique of OP here. The 9.9%ers are the new Social 'Thin Blue Line' [1].

Here's the recruitment advert in case you are interested :) [https://youtu.be/LHtNFZ6K0pE](https://youtu.be/LHtNFZ6K0pE)

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

<comment><USER36> That was just a fictional movie, man. I wouldn't read too much into that.

<comment><USER37> Bit like Chekhov?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This headline feeds into knee-jerk tendency to assign a simple social class category to some combination of money, prestige, agency (ability to drive change) and status; from the ground-view, reality is nothing like that now. There is no simple formula for any of those things, being very well decoupled.

</comment><comment><USER39> I see this piece less as an identification of the 9.9% as being "the problem" so much as it is a call to get people who are doing well to acknowledge that we exist in a vortex of generational success that is rather exclusive of most of the country.

</comment><comment><USER40> A clever manipulation piece: It melds 1% multi-millionaires with upper-middle class to create some kind of bourgeois enemy. In reality these 32 million people have different lifestyles, sources of income and their networth does not indicate true wealth: they could be living in an expensive house that they bought much cheaper, but a few trips into a hospital will bankrupt them. The whole concept of "net worth" is highly deceptive and can be manipulated into framing economic importance as function of potential wealth(if "X sold all their property" vs actual currency reserves).

<comment><USER41> Not accounting for people's home equity when determining their wealth is one of the most bonkers bougie things I've ever heard. Should we not count their 401k savings either, because "if X took the early withdrawal penalty" isn't fair either?

If you're rich, you're rich. It makes no difference if that wealth is tied up in illiquid assets. If the precarity if your financial situation is based on the fact that you're worth millions but have decided for some reason to leave it invested in one large, volatile asset, then you don't get to claim you're in the same boat as someone who is pawning their wedding ring until payday to make rent.

Being rich but poorly invested (90% of your net worth is in your home equity) is a decision you made, not a situation you found yourself born into.

<comment><USER40> >If you're rich, you're rich. I'm not even middle class, i don't own a house or a car. I just see that people easily overgeneralize the well-off 30 million upper-middle class with truly rich people who have entirely different lifestyle. Believing the there is 32million strong aristocracy is delusional, all these SJW privilege Olympics make your kind seem insane and full of envy. You want to lump middle-class people with multi-millionaires with financial security and proclaim them the unified burgeios enemy that must be dealt with. "If they have some money, They're rich capitalist pigs" Its like some soviet union guilt trip: If you own jeans your dangerous bourgie class traitor! If you listen to foreign radio = capitalist lapdog. If you own foreign currency = speculator and capitalist. Soviet Union glamorized poverty and struggle, everyone was LARPing as some poor, honest worker despite a black market,blat and bribery being commonplace. If you dislike Bourgeois(aka Middle class) so much, why don't take one-way ticket flight to socialist paradise of Venezuela? They're getting rid of their toxic privileged Bourgeois class.

Just for the record i'm NOT some "free-market will fix it" capitalist: I'm in favor of sane, Scandinavian-like system of democracy(also promoted by Bernie Sanders as democratic socialism) which exist with support of high taxes. I'm against gulags, wealth redistribution and marking people as class traitors/privileged/"eat the Rich", to which any communist country eventually devolves.

<comment><USER41> Well that escalated quickly. I'm not saying "people with adequate, diversified retirement savings are evil capitalists." I'm just saying that "We shouldn't count the value of people's houses when determining how wealthy they are." is absurd. Clearly it should count. They own it.

It's not a political stance, just a pro-accuracy one.

<comment><USER40> The problem with it these people will not sell their houses. Its not a liquid capital. Selling their only house would be something like once-in-lifetime decision.

What i'm saying, and you're failing to understand is that a if citizen A has a million dollar house and 10K in savings but his income is very low, he is actually much much poorer than citizen B who has 1.01million in cash, 80K salary and rents an apartment.

>"Pro-accuracy" Its clearly obvious B has more economic impact, but with networth they seem as identical.

<comment><USER17> your argument essentially reduces to "$1.01mm net + $80k salary is much more well off than $1.01mm net + low salary". unless A happens to be a financial wizard, this is always going to be true no matter how A's assets are allocated. i'm not sure what your point is with respect to counting primary residences in net worth. if A were truly worse off for having the house (and they very well may be with that lopsided allocation), they could just sell it. a typical yearly return on $1.01mm is very close to the median household _income_ in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Which form of society would allow for complete equality?

Where everyone has the same things to eat, drink and learn and everyone is missing the same things (usually luxury).

I can't think of any social system like that mostly cos it all involves people and not all people are the same and will behave differently inevitably wanting different stuff which will lead to more more inequality over time.

Maybe someone has ideas?

<comment><USER43> Socialism, Communism? The workers owning the means of production and abolition of private property? Cuba is doing fairly fine despite decades of American propaganda & the embargo. It has its problems, but so does USA or any country for that matter.

<comment><USER42> Not necessarily existing system. Any system where people are _truly_ equal.

Even in communism you will have leaders, and leaders will enjoy some form of higher privilege. So collective ownership of the, in lack of the better word, stuff would still not abolish social privileges, which people renowned in some manner would have.

Likewise, different responsibility instiled in people by any means, will undoubtedly lead to different performance in the work place, which will, in some way or other, separate them from general social or material status.

So, it seems to me, best we could do is some form of society wich has low band of frequency in which people can move in any type of self emerging hierarchy so everyone enjoys nearly the same status.

But how do you deal with over achievers then? There would inevitably be people who, with their performance, go out of that band.

You might start by separating achievers that contribute or take from society which would then lead to having some form of arbitars which would in turn again enyjoy some type of higher status.

And so on... the only truly equal society is the one where everyone share the same thoughts and goals and do the same things, as any deviation into something new could spell special privileges for that individual.

And i do this only as a thought experiment, cos I am stuck in the loop of if not all people think and do the same thing how can we expect them to be same... So maybe someone has ideas about this. Maybe I am just crazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The reporting on this seems rather empty. Yes economic inequality is growing, yes the new rich are delusional about it, and yes that will lead to economic and social catastrophe. Elites like being elite because it excludes everyone else. That's the point of it. How do you convince those in power to not consolidate it and pass it on to their offspring?

<comment><USER45> Insurrection, if it comes to that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Those doctors, dentists and lawyers he mentions are drowning in loans - [https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-meru-has-1-million-in- stud...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-meru-has-1-million-in-student- loans-how-did-that-happen-1527252975)

</comment><comment><USER47> Many commenters have highlighted faults in this article. Maybe the 9.9% aren't to blame; maybe they aren't a meaningful classification to begin with; maybe there is more to the story than people hauling the ladder up after themselves. Yet these criticisms miss the author's warning: regardless of the causes, when substantial inequality obtains, opting into the social contract looks like a good idea for a smaller and smaller subset of people. That's when civil society falls apart. To not beggar thy neighbor is not only generosity, fairness, respect for human dignity -- it is also prudence.

</comment><comment><USER47> _It is entirely possible to get a good education at the many schools that don't count as "good" in our brand-obsessed system. But the "bad" ones really are bad for you. For those who made the mistake of being born to the wrong parents, our society offers a kind of virtual education system. It has places that look like colleges—but aren't really. It has debt—and that, unfortunately, is real. The people who enter into this class hologram do not collect a college premium; they wind up in something more like indentured servitude._

A surreal and sad vision.

<comment><USER48> What better way to teach kids how the real world works then scamming them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I really enjoyed reading this piece. The author poses several rhetorical questions that I think could use evidence to support their assumed conclusions, but overall this piece seems very well informed and sheds light on a class of people that I am very familiar with but had never divided out in my head.

</comment><comment><USER50> The embrace of neoliberalism in the 80s decimated the traditional middle class. Wages stagnated and labor share of income has taken a hit [1] while capital ascended.

Debt has become the biggest product leading to wide scale financialization and rent seeking. Lobbying and revolving doors has further added to entrenched interests benefiting at the cost of the whole.

This is at the heart of how you define a country, a collection of economic interests arbitrated by the market as an end in itself, or a 'society' with larger goals. The neoliberalism agenda has convinced many of the first.

[1] [https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/05/capitals-share- incom...](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/05/capitals-share-income-way- higher-think.html)

</comment><comment><USER51> Reading this article makes me think of the word choice that new button on Facebook that lets you report that a link is a "false" news story. Notice the subtle shift away from the populist phrase — the accusation is not that the news is "false", but rather "fake".

The facts in this piece are by and large true (although if you look closely you can see a few opinions and judgement calls that have calcified into facts). However, Stewart's class confessional is the essence of "fake news", in that it assumes a viewpoint, speaks authoritatively and factually from it, and ignores the gaping details that would contradict his story.

The assumed viewpoint gets slipped into the middle of a sentence like this: "Every piece of the pie picked up by the 0.1 percent, _in relative terms_ , had to come from the people below". Read: increases in absolute wealth do not matter; it's all about the Joneses. Just as when postmodernists academics obsess over power hierarchies, you can see the hunger for power at the core of their doctrine, so it is here: when pop-socio-economists talk to no end about inequality, you can see that they are driven not by a desire to improve conditions, but by envy and by (as Stewart projects onto the Trump base) resentment.

Where is the discussion of poverty here? Stewart cares not a whit about poverty. Ctrl-F for it: the single instance of is in the phrase "relative poverty".

Thus we get a sentence such as "We are the staff that runs the machine that funnels resources from the 90 percent to the 0.1 percent", which is dynamite verbiage if you clicked on this article in order to wallow in your upper middle class guilt. But read closer: the wealth of the 90% has, in point of fact, not gone down, merely stagnated. They have not been funneled from, except in these relative, zero-sum terms.

As far as the "gaping details", any discussion of inequality that is so myopically focused on one country in the global system is missing the big picture. Here's what's been going on with actual, absolute wealth since the 70's: huge swaths of the developing world have been raised out of poverty. A few lucky, skilled, well-positioned, and/or hardworking elites, both in the US and abroad, have gotten fabulously rich off the new global economy. And yes, incomes for the bottom 90% in the US and Western Europe, far from keeping pace with this global growth, have risen hardly at all.

(How does this story of massive poverty relief play out for the secondary concern of inequality? Exactly as advertised in every true-but-fake screed, wealth inequality has skyrocketed within the United States, and within China, and within [insert your country here, probably]. What is scrupulously avoided by Stewart and others is that, as the gap _between_ countries narrows, the overall contour and slope of the global wealth distribution has remained roughly constant).

If you do care to grapple with the messy data, you could pick worse starting places than here: [https://ourworldindata.org/income- inequality](https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality) (although you can see in the title that Roser and Ortiz-Ospina are already starting from two wrong premises: that "inequality", not poverty, is the topic at hand, and that "income", not wealth, is the natural locus of that inequality).

However, Stewart mentions none of this. If we assume good faith, we can chock the omission up to Stewart's ignorance and his meager qualification to preach on this topic. If we assume bad faith, then his careful aggregation of confirmatory true facts and dismissal of the big picture data is straight up mendacious, or as the tweeter of the best words puts it, fake.

Note that this characterization is not personally specific to Stewart. It applies also to the fake rebuttal from Slate in the link above. Both magazines assume the premise that inequality is the problem, not poverty, and then they bicker about the cutoff point. Of course the 1% gatekeeps against the 99%! You could write just as incisive (and factually correct) an analysis of the 0.1% gatekeeping against the 99.9%, or of the 5% against the 95%, and on down the line. But to say that gatekeeping is the _whole_ story is to succumb to the zero-sum fallacy. To say that violins exist merely to get my kid into Harvard ahead of yours is reductionistic, impoverished thinking that may help you sleep but will not, in the long run, win you any elections.

The wealth story is global. Progress is real. The pie has gotten bigger. Poverty, not inequality, is the issue to tackle. Teapot Dome and Enron are the exception, not the rule. Facts are messy. Class is a continuum. And to suggest otherwise is fake news.

<comment><USER41> I totally agree that we've made great progress in providing material abundance since the start of the fossil fuel era.

Unfortunately, we're heading toward the end of this era. Without some kind of miracle (this isn't totally unlikely, but we can't exactly count on it), we _will_ have to either dramatically lower our average standard of living, or reduce our population, in order not to totally overwhelm the planet's carrying capacity and therefore die out totally. Most likely, we'll need to do a bit of each.

The trouble is that it's hard to get most people behind a plan that says, basically "We are reducing everyone's standard of living, including those of you making $1/day and those of you making $100,000 a minute. We all have to do our part."

A still-difficult but much easier sell is "We're reducing inequality by giving some of us a hand up, and the richest of us are going to pitch in to help. We can't all live like Trump or the Sultan of Brunei but we can all be free from want without destroying the planet or suffering any mass-genocides."

The easiest sell of all is "We can all be _rich_ and live like modern-day Americans for eternity! All we need to do is de-regulate all of these job- creating, wealth-producing industries and boom! Invisible hand!" But that's a lie.

Unfortunately, the easiest sell is the one that gets sold, but that's not to say that the middle one isn't something we can shoot for when the Plan A status quo becomes coming apart at the seams. Whether that will be too late remains to be seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Class differentiation is the central meaning of life. The struggle is the point. You get up and wear nice clothes in the morning so that you're better than the slob that doesn't. Nobody wants to be the same as everyone else.

If everyone was equal, then there would be no point in your existence. You become a bag of mostly water.

Celebrate the fact that a few billionaires and royalty and celebrities exists. Life is more interesting and surprising that way. Can you imagine how terrible and pointless everything would be if everyone was middle class?

We should focus on the very bottom, not the very top.

<comment><USER53> It's possible for us to focus both on improving conditions at the very bottom and also trying to understand how a very small percentage at the very top is siphoning so much out of our shared system.

I would argue that both issues are worth looking at.

<comment><USER54> We have people very rich, more than ever before. And that is just by itself something worth of careful examination. But a lot of that wealth is new. There are effective mechanisms to not being poor. More people can access to self- improvement tools than ever before.

So yes, we should focus on the lower end of the scale.

<comment><USER53> > a lot of that wealth is new

Where is the "new" wealth coming from?

> There are effective mechanisms to not being poor.

That seems like a generalization to me that doesn't factor in location, race, access to good education, medical conditions, existing debt, etc.

> So yes, we should focus on the lower end of the scale.

Why not both?

<comment><USER55> Where I grew up there was around 60% poverty, and most of the poverty was communicated via terrible life choices passed one generation to the next. Every one I know who left have done well and that includes people who join the military to those who went to collage. So much of poverty is about the culture you are born into which translates into bad decision and poor outcomes. If we could do anything destroying the cultures that create these conditions would get us more for our buck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Dupe: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Birth%20of%20the%20New%2...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Birth%20of%20the%20New%20American%20Aristocracy&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

<comment><USER57> Apparently if it didn't create meaningful discussion it isn't a dupe.</comment></comment>


The Myth of Schema-less (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.planetcassandra.org/blog/the-myth-of-schema-less/ <comment><AUTHOR> The last few paragraphs were really spot-on (at least for me):

" _... Even without our schema explicitly defined in our database, it's there… somewhere. You simply have to search through hundreds of thousands of lines to find all the little bits of it. It has the potential to be in several places, making it harder to properly identify. The reality of these codebases is that they are error prone and rarely lack the necessary documentation. This problem is magnified when there are multiple codebases talking to the same database. This is not an uncommon practice for reporting or analytical purposes.

Finally, all this "flexibility" rears its head in the same way that PHP and Javascript's "neat" weak typing stabs you right in the face. There are some somethings you can be cavalier about, and some things you should be strict about. Your data model is one you absolutely need to be strict on. If a field should store an int, it should store nothing else. Not a string, not a picture of a horse, but an integer. It's nice to know that I have my database doing type checking for me and I can expect a field to be the same type across all records. All this leads us to an undeniable fact: There is always a schema. Wearing "I don't do schema" as a badge of honor is a complete joke and encourages a terrible development practice._"

I'm working on a codebase where I have to deal with both a schemaless database and the dynamic typing nonsense of Javascript which exacerbates the nastiness of the former, and creates a debugging hell.</comment>


How much did Twitteriffic for iOS cost to develop? Craig Hockenberry answers. - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/209170/how-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-an-iphone-application/3926493#3926493 <comment><USER2> As an Android consultant I'm always amazed at how much clients underestimate the effort involved in putting together a high quality "simple" app. It's actually worse for Android, for some reason clients can't fathom paying the same for Android as they pay for iPhone apps. I always have to explain that it is no easier creating an Android app than an iPhone app. Of course people get what they pay for which is probably why the quality of Android apps in general is so poor.

<comment><USER3> It's actually a bit harder to create an Android app of comparable quality, isn't it?

Apple gives you a boatload of really thoughtful, usable UI classes. What I've read is that Android's SDK UI code isn't nearly as substantial or mature. Can you confirm if this is the case?

edit: Then there's Core Data for object modeling and persistence, which is a huge time saver. Is there an Android analog of this with comparable power?

<comment><USER4> Mobile developer here: Most definitely android is costlier to produce feature for feature than iOS.

<comment><USER5> Can you elaborate? You develop for which platforms (iOS, Android, Symbian, etc)? What type of software (games, utilities, etc)? Thanks

<comment><USER6> Android is costlier because designers don't like Google's widgets, so every Android app (that involves a "designer") makes their own instead.

This results in shitty apps that are costly to develop. Fortunately, most of the apps that people actually use don't do this, so it's not really a big deal for users.

<comment><USER4> Android is costlier to produce because:

The API's have more gotchas and simple bugs than the Apple ones.

The 1.6 API in particular has some hairy bugs.

The debug cycle takes considerably longer (almost 3x as long as the iPhone debug cycle for a non-media app).

The debugger doesn't work as well.

The lack of a GUI UI layout tool (there are some, they don't work well yet).

The project setup is considerably more time intensive (barring signing issues, which experienced iPhone shops don't have issues with really).

Now it's not all against android: The lax approval criteria and ease of market publications are awesome. I'm just saying it costs MORE to do android, I'm not saying don't do it.

And yes, you're right, custom widgets are harder in android than in iOS. If it makes you feel better, I find the amount people change iOS custom widgets silly too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A few years ago I taught a short game programming class. Just for kicks we had a quizz where the students had to look at 10 small downloadable games and estimate how much effort had gone into each of them. PopCap's Bejeweled 2 stuck in my mind.

The estimates ranged from 'a weekend' to 'maybe a month'. The truth: pre- production with 3 senior people for 2 months, post-production and polish with a team of 10 for a year. There were a lot of little gem games at the time. There still is. But Bejeweled was the one that sold over 50 million units.

Polish, polish, polish.

<comment><USER8> I've seen several interviews with the PopCap founders where they've stated that they built the original in less than a year with just the three founders.

Maybe the polish came after the MSN games version?

eg -> [http://venturebeat.com/2008/04/21/popcap-games-executive- int...](http://venturebeat.com/2008/04/21/popcap-games-executive-interview- dont-forget-about-the-fun/)

<comment><USER7> Fixed, my memory failed me. You are right, it was Bejeweled 2.

<comment><USER8> That makes sense, upvoted :).

They've got such an intersting story especially for HN audience - bunch of taltented guys in their 20s at the time, working for the man, going out to build something new and doing their best to survive while they got traction - I think their first deal was just $1500 a month for the original online version of bejeweld

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm the dumbfuck that originally posted the 160 hours number. The only thing I'll say in my defence is that it was written in October 2008, two years ago. It certainly didn't take into consideration the many hours of development that have been done since, and the hourly rate was based on actual searches I did on freelancer sites.

I wasn't actually high. Just stupid. If there were a way to 'unaccept' an answer I'd have done so long ago. The user 'schwa' corrected me long before chockenberry noticed.

<comment><USER10> Wow, I hadn't noticed the time difference between the original thread and Chris's reply, thanks for pointing that out. I honestly don't think your estimate (I gathered that two months was more realistic) was that bad to get a first cut of a simple app out the door. I have never seen Twitterific but to your point it looks like it went through a fair number of iterations over the course of several years, plus a ton of design work, which you were not trying to account for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was discussing few days ago with someone who "work in IT" a project that he wants to get done. It's a Golf amateurs related website (JS/PHP App). I have told him that everything is simple and ready [can be found somewhere] (user login, querying a database, Image manipulation, user comments...) but the hard thing is putting all the functionalities together and making them really WORK. I estimated 1,500 USD, which I think quite low (pricing myself at around $15-20/hour), but I'm just starting and no kind of professional.

He thought it's quite high and he said he don't think such basic functionalities are quite hard to do. Yes, they are not. But testing, deploying, IE bugs, polishing and fixing are very expensive.

Software development is expensive, Polished Software is frikin' high expensive.

<comment><USER12> You need to price yourself higher. While $20 for you may be a lot (as I thought it was during school), for a reputable firm this is nothing, and it means you won't be taken as seriously. This manifests as them often wasting your time in terms of developing features they don't really need. This is probably going to happen in _any_ software project, but a higher per hour cost makes people think about your time in a better light.

Also, get a retainer. Took my 18 months to get money from a friend's company once. Retainers get rid of so much BS.

<comment><USER13> Mind explaining how the retainer would work?

<comment><USER14> If you're doing the work for a flat project fee, ask for 20-50% of the fee up front before doing any work. If you're going to be paid hourly, you probably would have provided at least an estimate of hours that the project will take. Your retainer should be 20% of the total of your rate times hours estimated.

Always request a retainer. Especially for new clients. Even more so for friends and family.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's another of those situations where _duplicating_ a polished application like that could indeed take 160 hours. It's downright _easy_ when it's in front of you. You could probably do it in that time frame while learning a new language and a new framework to implement it in.

 _Discovering_ what constitutes "polish" for your application takes _enormous_ amounts of time, iterations, failures, and attentive and intelligent developers / designers.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure I agree with you here. I think in general, if you're straight up cloning an app, you're probably missing out on what makes people like the app in the first place. Or you just don't care, and you're trying to shove something out the door as fast as possible.

Bottom line, if you cloned Twitteriffic in 160 hours, I'm certain I'd still rather buy and use the original, even if yours is free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Keep in mind, they are assuming an hourly rate of $150. However, this does put into perspective any jerk offering 5% equity for a developer who creates their "simple iPhone app."

<comment><USER18> Where do people get customers willing to pay $150/hr? Or is it a san francisco/new york thing and for the rest of north america/europe it's more like $50? (canadian here)

<comment><USER19> Canadian here as well.

If you're in any of the big cities and your rate is significantly under $100/hour, you're probably under-charging if you've got decent experience and rep and are doing something heavily in demand, like mobile work.

$150/hour for devs as well known and with as good a reputation as the twitterific guys is pretty much par for course.

<comment><USER18> I'm a couple hours away from vancouver. Should that make a big difference?

<comment><USER19> I guess it depends on the size of the place you are at. I don't doubt that the rates are considerably lower than Vancouver-proper.

In general your highest rates are going to be in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, and Montreal (not necessarily in that order).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For those unfamiliar with Craig Hockenberry, he is a talented developer with high standing in the Mac and iOS developer communities.

He writes at <http://furbo.org> and wrote the book, "iPhone App Development: The Missing Manual" (<http://appdevmanual.com/>).

</comment><comment><USER21> I am so glad to see someone that is not totally full of shit answer the "how much did x take to develop" question. I have made a few iPhone apps and I am always amazed by the low time estimates that non-iPhone developers give. Also, keep in mind that these are really good top notch developers. Double his time estimate for idiots. I probably fall somewhere right in the middle.

</comment><comment><USER22> Unfortunately the underestimation of time behind technology is nothing new and not just an issue with mobile development. We get the same thing at work nearly every day. People come in, want a 50 page website designed from scratch, branded, built on a CMS, and programmed with lots of forms, Java functionality (simple jQuery stuff usually), and SEO and expect to pay $1000. When people like this come about, it's the professionals job to educate the client and help others understand how much really goes into development. Looking at a "simple" app or website that they'll spend minutes on (or more in some cases) makes it very easy to think, "Well it took me 60 seconds to navigate this page OR I picked this game up in a few minutes and beat the first couple levels, therefore it must have been simple to build."

</comment><comment><USER23> The iPad example may be a bit of an anomaly because it was going to take 9 weeks / 60 days no matter what.

If Apple had given them 30 days, they would have released a product on iPad day 1 that cost half the money.

<comment><USER24> I know people who increase (>= 2x) their hourly rate if they're expected to do the same amount in half the time because of a deadline. Who's to say that Iconfactory doesn't do something similar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wish there was more awareness in the general business community about how much effort goes into developing mobile apps. So few potential clients I encounter fully realize how much work goes into it, and when you give them an estimate the gap between their expectations and reality is glaring...

</comment><comment><USER26> My first iPhone app was feature complete in about 20 hours. I've since spent an additional 100 hours on better graphics, better design, performance enhancements, and other polishing.

I haven't added a single new feature yet after the initial 20 hours, but the app is obviously much MUCH better and easier to use.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, some of the comments about the costs there are flat out insulting. A well done app is going to take time and money to create and polish, and a simple app is almost always anything but simple. Twitteriffic is a well done, "simple", polished app, and $250k seems like a good number to me.

Personally, I'm still learning how to bill my time out properly. I've got a serious case of underestimatitis. Maybe Craig's numbers will help me understand how much time I really spend on a project.

<comment><USER27> What level of granularity are you using in your estimates? Are you just calculating a number for the whole (eg "I think that will take 120 hours") or are you also breaking that down as much as possible? I've found that if I can get an estimate broken down into tasks of <10 hrs/ea then it actually turns out to be pretty close.

That being said, the larger the project is, the greater the probability of underestimatitis. As soon as you hit 250+ hours, I've found estimates to become increasingly less accurate.

<comment><USER16> I've been doing the former, and it definitely needs to change. I'm obsessing more about tracking my time to help me with future estimates, for one. I will also try breaking down into finer granularity and hopefully that will help as well. Thanks for the advice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Unless we are talking about templates and cookie-cutter apps, this whole thing has little meaning.

Really good stuff is done by hackers and painters, therefore when you estimate your costs, you only tend to see the canvas and a little gouache, which are a commodity—just like computing. And perhaps some of your time, most surely, if you don't have a good time doing it.

Saying, that the painting of a picture costs X€ is about a code monkey who has no idea about what the real work is truly about.

But yes, management does have an interest in the devaluation of productive work to leave room for their own overhead. There are thousands of apps out there in the world, and from that perspective it is nothing but throw-away- junk, warranting a low price.

 _Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?_ —Alan J. Perlis

 _Those who compete with slaves will also become slaves._ —Norbert Wiener

</comment><comment><USER29> In comparison, the first version of Dayta took a week of around 12 hour days. At $100/hr (I think you could find someone great, who works for that rate or less- hint: students), that's less than <$10000.

Of course Dayta is much less of an endeavor, but don't be phased because of the price of developing one of the best iOS apps out there.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is 2nd order conventional wisdom. No doubt maintenance of an app takes time and effort. But the numbers thrown around assume high hourly rates for all involved. The only real cost is time and a grad student living on ramen can knock out something pretty decent in a month or so (less if they already know Objective-C).

<comment><USER2> I've seen many a business plan fail using the "we'll just hire some college students" strategy.

<comment><USER24> And I've seen many spaghetti messes that had to be cleaned up by full-time "developers" who cared more about getting paid than if their code worked, let alone if it could be maintained.

<comment><USER2> This is true, there are many crappy developers out there. How do you find the good ones that take pride in the quality of their work? I don't know, except to say if you don't haven any technical know-how the best way is probably the same you might find a good plumber or auto mechanic or dentist or lawyer or any other professional service, hope you get lucky with some good references. I never hear people looking for those services ever saying "screw it I'll just get some cheap kids with no experience".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is unfortunate - that seems like a lot of work for a relatively simple, albeit well-done app.

I might have to think twice about whether I want to do an app to complement a webapp I'm doing in my spare time (no prior experience on iDevice development).

<comment><USER32> > _This is unfortunate - that seems like a lot of work for a relatively > simple, albeit well-done app._

It takes a lot of work to make things look simple. And even more to make them well-done.

<comment><USER33> Hear hear. The user interface for my first app took me 3x as long as I expected, despite finding (unexpectedly) that Cocoa Touch to be one of the nicest API's I've encountered. It was because I re-built it several times to make it feel "right", and after watching users try it. Each time it got simpler. It probably only took a few days worth of coding for what went into the final app (the editing interface, not the whole thing) but the road to get there was long. I guess that's the value of an experienced UX designer -- they can do that work beforehand with paper and intuition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A great read, but shocking in how much it costs on the App/dev/Infrastructure side. Each app seems like a startup in itself, yet, the risks seem far greater.

Are the dev tools _that bad_ that it costs that much, and requires so many people, to produce a concept to result?

Am I missing something? I _must_ be.

<comment><USER35> Writing a simple table view based app can be done in a night.

Making something that is actually useful, beautiful and performs well will take much longer. This is where things like writing the API consumer bits, handling persistent data stores and so on come in.

Then you need to polish it.

It's not so much about the language or framework as they are great once you learn them, it's just that the standards are set very high in the App Store (at least if you wish to be taken seriously).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I agree with the poster, but doesn't $150 an hour seem unusually high for a freelance developer? It is equivalent to about $300k yearly - no developer makes that kind of money by programming alone.

<comment><USER37> Freelancers can't rely on a steady 40h/week of billable work.

<comment><USER38> Not only is the lack of steady work a problem, but also there are other costs of freelancing that people don't consider when employed. I have to be pretty careful about _additional_ taxes, cost of equipment and other necessities (everything from my own computer and software to desk, chair, internet and more), and especially for me, health insurance in CA where I have preexisting conditions that insurance companies hate. (And yes I've done my research on group rates and such...that's yet another thing I have to do that I wouldn't have to worry about as much if I were employed.)

So yeah, I might seem ridiculously expensive when I go bill someone at $200/hour, but I make nowhere near $300k and out of what I do make, I don't get to save a lot after paying all the bills. But in exchange, I get a lot more freedom when it comes to working, which leaves room to do other things in my life. It's a tradeoff I'm willing to make because I _can_ find fairly steady work, but I would never do it if I had a family or if making money was my sole objective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Over-engineering - the most common, hidden cost.

</comment><comment><USER40> Okay now I wonder what they spend that time on, because I would never have guessed it took that long. Is it because it takes so long to get anything done in Objective C? Most IOS apps don't have that many features.

<comment><USER27> What's with everyone thinking Objective-C is inefficient (in developer-hours)? I have found it to be very easy to use. Granted, it does have its warts that make coming from a language like Ruby somewhat painful. But I second Craig's comment that "the notion that [the high number of hours burned] is the language's fault is laughable."

That being said, I have worked on 20+ iOS apps now and most of them were finished with a MUCH smaller total number of hours than this. I don't disagree that taking something from "it works" to "it's elegant" takes time, but 1100 hours of dev time does seem a bit high. I, too, would be interested in more info (like total lines of code, whether or not they built a Twitter engine from scratch for the app, etc).

To anyone considering making an app: don't use this as a baseline comparison. You can get a great-looking app done in a lot less time than this.

<comment><USER18> Objective-C is a bit irritating in it's dictionary & array/list syntax, it turns something that would be 20 characters in python or even java into something that is 100-150 characters. Similarly in string editing and xml parsing. TouchJSON works very quickly, but then you run against the obtuse array & hash table syntax when using it's result. Give us smalltalk binary & one character operators! The obtuse syntax hurts readability too.

<comment><USER41> You may find the following useful:

        #define A(obj, objs...) [NSArray arrayWithObjects:obj, ## objs , nil]
        #define D(val, key, vals...) [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:val, key, ## vals , nil]

I put these two macros in the prefix header for every Objective-C project I do. Say what you will about single character macros, these save me time and improve readability (for me, anyway... I'm not sure how others reading my code down the road fare, but so far there haven't been many of those).

<comment><USER18> One of those obvious things that you feel stupid for not realizing. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Well, Twitteriffic for Mac still was unable to do retweets last time I checked. Ditched it for TweetDeck. I know this is kind of off-topic, but after seeing these large figures they are moving, I feel something close to unimpressed.</comment>


How To Live (Comfortably) on $36 A Month For Food - <AUTHOR> http://andrewhyde.net/how-to-live-comfortably-on-36-a-month-for-food/ <comment><USER2> Something that always amazes me is how people are willing to sacrifice quite a bit when it comes to monthly food costs, when in reality these costs are incredibly low compared to the benefits you get (nutrition and health). Why don't people reconsider getting trashed on Friday and Saturday nights, where bar bills can run up to $20/night or find less convenient housing and save themselves $50/month. Or how about getting rid of the non-essentials like cable, internet, or a car. IMHO food is the one monthly cost that you should not cut corners, because the long term effects have actual measurable detriments to your personal well-being.

<comment><USER3> Super-mega-lol at $20/night as bar costs. Maybe if you and your date have a drink each.

<comment><USER2> I live in Gainesville, Fl which is pretty much the cheapest place to live and drink, and $20 is still the norm. $4 cover + 3 beers x $4.00 a piece + $4 tip = $20. Now, recently I found a good bar without a cover charge and if I drink straight Old Milwaukee then I can do 4 x $2.00 + $4.00 tip = $12.00. Even so, doing this once a week is about $48.00/month which is more than the OP paid in food costs per a month.

<comment><USER4> 3 Beers = Getting Trashed?

<comment><USER2> Hey, I'm your stereotypical thin and tall, nerdy hacker. However, when my bi- monthly stipend allows me, I will indulge a whiskey on the rocks and build my tolerance :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Big mistake.

A better title would be, "How to sacrifice you health for money." No thanks.

I can be cheap with a lot of things, but not with the food I put into my body. The kind of diet OP proposes may work OK for a while. The younger you are, the more resilient you probably are, so that can be quite a while. But sooner or later, especially if you're a little bit older, you will be trading quality of life for a few bucks.

AFAIC, the best possible use for limited resources is excellent food. This first thing this means is fresh produce, which, frankly is difficult to find "on sale". OP's advice to eat at home is excellent, OTOH, I'd rather spend 7 bucks on a restaurant salad bar than 3 bucks for a home cooked highly processed meal.

Almost everything in life, including work, is a marathon, not a sprint. I intend to be just as strong at any point in that marathon with proper lifestyle, especially nutritional excellence. Saving $ intelligently is always smart. Sacrificing potential health and well being for a few hundred dollars per month is just not a good idea.

Pass.

<comment><USER6> Most of the meals I listed are actually pretty balanced. If I listed 'eat mac and cheese and dollar menu items' I would be right with you, but salads, eggs, PB&J and rice and beef are pretty good staples to build any diet off of.

I'm not advocating anyone goes near as far as I did, but something to keep in mind for that friend that eats like shit out every night spending 10x what you could by making a healthier option at home.

<comment><USER5> I'm one of those "nuts" who insists that fresh produce comprises about 80% of what I eat, so that's my major source of disagreement. I have never found a way to eat like this for even 5x what you're recommending. Salads and frest fruit are definitely good staples to build any diet of. Eggs, PB&J, rice, and beef, OTOH are compromises. But that's another whole debate outside the scope of hn.

If I ate like most people then $36/month sounds difficult, but achieveable. But I don't and I wouldn't advocate changing away from eating excellence to save money.

<comment><USER7> I've been able to eat a diet of 80%+ fresh produce on $90/month.

A lot of it involved getting the reduced-almost-bad produce and cooking it day-of, state-level farmer's markets, and dumpster diving, though. Plus, being a college student where every week you can find something free...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The numbers you're using sound wrong now. In the last year or maybe 2 years food prices have skyrocketed. I'll go to store to pick up a few things and end up with a bag or two of groceries, and the bill is like $100 -- I know I could scrimp and figure out ways to spend less, but it wasn't always like that. The same stuff costs way more now.

If you want to talk about really healthy food, especially if you have a strange diet like veganism, then forget it, your bill will be huge.

<comment><USER9> No, you're just buying the wrong things. If I walk out of the store with $100 of groceries for my family of 3, it's an entire shopping cart full of food and lasts for weeks!

4-5 lbs of "on sale" meat, 10 lbs of bread flour, 5 lbs of sugar, 2 lbs of cheddar, a gallon of milk, cereal (from local mill, not the national brand stuff), vegetables, butter and lunch meat will cost around $60 here in the Upper Midwest. But if I spend that $60 on mostly processed food, I will barely get two grocery bags full.

With a bit of land you can go further. I keep chickens for fresh eggs, but I realize most people can't do that. However, my potatoes, corn, carrots, broccoli, squash, pumpkins, salad greens and some herbs come fresh out of the garden so for summer/fall at least, I don't buy those things.

<comment><USER8> This is pretty much what I mean. You buy fairly average food, but I wouldn't touch most of what you mentioned with a barge pole.

Meat? No. White Flour? No! Sugar? Hell no! Chedder? Maybe a little. Milk? Maybe, but expensive. Cereal? Probably not, unless it's real like granola or muesli, in which case it's expensive. Veggies? of course, but those also cost. Butter? Maybe a little. Lunch meat? No.

Try doing without white rice, sugar and pasta, and getting fresh greens and fruits, whole grain everything, brown rice, etc. Even if you make a lot of it from scratch, it adds up.

<comment><USER9> There's a huge amount of "food fear" going on in this country (USA).

What exactly is nutritionally wrong with white flour, sugar and meat (unless you're vegetarian)? In any case, I probably have 3-4 different kinds of flour in my pantry right now, plus wheat germ flakes. And the bread I'll be eating tomorrow will be home made sourdough. I'm neither fat nor malnourished.

What's a "real" cereal? This morning my 8 year-old son asked to make his own breakfast. He had Malt-O-Meal (a local Minnesota mill) raisin bran. Is that "real?" Generic corn flakes and oatmeal are probably the cheapest cereals on the market. Are they real? If you like granola so much, buy the oatmeal, honey & nuts and make it yourself. It's simple and infinitely cheaper!

To the earlier comment about organic vs. "pesticide ridden crap." Newsflash! Organic farming also uses pesticides, just different ones. That said, my veggies (pesticide free and fertilized with our chicken & horse manure compost) are no more nutritious than the (non-organic) ones in the grocery store. The difference is that the freshness makes them taste better and improves the texture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I a lot of people are suggesting that this diet is not healthy, but I'm not convinced.

Eggs, salads, veggies, fruits, rice, beans, cheeses, beef...As long as things are taken in the correct quantities I see very little problem here, am I wrong?

<comment><USER11> To me, I'd just be suspicious of anything sold at those prices. You're a bottom feeder on the dregs of the food-industrial complex, and that can't be good.

<comment><USER12> No, you're just buying at the right time and in bulk. Grocery stores run tight margins and frequent loss leaders. Just because someone at the grocery store over bought and has to run a sale doesn't make you a bottom feeder. It's the same food everyone else is getting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A trick I learned from a friend while in grad school. When they have football games, walk around the tailgate parties right before the game is about to start, people will almost pay you to take their extra food so that they can get to the game. And it's usually pretty good food...

For better results, go next to the ones thrown by corporations. They usually order too much food and the employees do not care and do not want to bring the food back home.

Oh.. and bring an empty backpack :)

<comment><USER14> I had a friend in college who went everywhere with two tupperware containers. When he was asked whether or not he wanted left overs he would feign a no, but as soon as he was asked a second time he would say "I guess so" and pull out his tupperware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is important to think about eating in terms of return on investment. You can spend more money on better food (you can also spend more money on worse food) and get better overall fitness and alertness and performance in general from your body. The important thing to know is what is the cost and what is the benefit.

Nutrition is a vast science.

* All carbs are not equal.

* All fat is not equal.

* All protein is not equal. Beans are not meat.

<comment><USER16> > Nutrition is a vast science.

It ought to be treated as a science but often it isn't. If you ask 100 nutrition experts how much protein a person should get in a day, you're not going to get a consensus based on empirical evidence, but drastically different answers and emotional passions bordering on the religious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a poor college student I'm currently on a food budget of < $40 per month. I rarely buy anything but bread, bacon, peanut butter, cheese, bananas, eggs, yogurt, and butter. It's a bit monotonous, but I was surprised how quickly I got used to it.

<comment><USER18> Try replacing some of that with seasoned brown rice and beans. It will be cheaper, healthier and (depending on what spices you use) tastier.

<comment><USER17> That's a good idea, I'll try that. Thanks!

<comment><USER19> My favorite thing to add to rice is curry powder. Gives the rice a completely new flavor. If you have peanuts add those, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Or you could walk next door and mow your neighbor's lawn for $10 (at that rate, who would refuse?). Focus on earning more, not spending less.

<comment><USER21> Unless of course you're an international student, in which case earning more is illegal, while spending less isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wouldn't exactly call it 'Comfortably'

</comment><comment><USER23> executive summary: base your meals around cheap food staples, such as rice, beans, oats. buy other cheap things, use coupons and buy expiring food in order to spice up each meal.

</comment><comment><USER24> Or go wash dishes/clean up the back of the house for a hour or so every day in a restaurant in exchange for breakfast and dinner. You'll eat a lot better.

</comment><comment><USER25> Where I live you die from eating deeply discounted ground beef a month after buying it :)

<comment><USER26> Do you live in a place without freezers?

<comment><USER25> No, but I bought my freezer for $36 ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The part about dumpster diving reminded me of when I used to help a friend of mine slop his pigs. He had arrangements with a few restaurants and old folks homes for their leftover food and we would drive around, pick it up in these large plastic garbage bins and feed it to his pigs. It would always surprise me when he would often pick over the food before we gave it to the pigs, looking for things like chicken legs which he would summarily devour. I never could bring myself to do it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Spending all that time working seems to be much more economical.

I just eat bread in the morning and afternoon and cook a different meal every night. Probably comes down to about $20 a week. I could eat for less that $0.75 if I want to, but I don't.

</comment><comment><USER29> Bread machine. Pick one up at a thrift store for a couple of dollars. Thrift stores always have bread machines because people love to buy them but never use them.

Put the ingredients in the bread maker, let the maker raise the bread and then throw the loaf in the oven to cook. Great bread for pennies.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is absolutely doable, but when life is stressing theres nothing like an extravagant meal to bring back some cheer. It doesn't have to be eating out, home-cooked is fine, but rib-eye ain't cheap either way.

Green olives, goat cheese, and crackers really do melt away my troubles.

</comment><comment> Devils-Avacado "PB+J can be priced at $.25...Rice cakes and cheese was a favorite. "

PB+J and Rice cakes = Living comfortably?

</comment><comment><USER30> Just curious how many calories in a typical day? That diet definitely looks very lean to me. One box of spaghetti is usually enough for 1.5 meals for me, if that. If I'm working out I'll eat an entire box in one evening.

</comment><comment><USER31> $36 a month is a nice number. It peaked my curiosity but he goes through a lot of work and his food suggestions basically mean you're going to miss out on a lot of delicious flavours.

I understand the premise but .. meh :)

<comment><USER32> "piqued"

...sorry...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> food is very expensive those days, i live in tunisia and i estimate it (my spending) to $100/month

I like to eat and spend on eating, i think it's better than spending it on some kind of mobile phones; isn't eating better.

so $36 only if you don't have money: the poor, however a hacker can write few articles or code few lines and get an easy $150 a month and feed himself well;

</comment><comment><USER34> a lot of comments focussing on health. one other issue is that finding all the best deals and using coupons takes time. if you treat it like a salary, maybe you could beat minimum wage(?), but it's not a good salary by any means.

</comment><comment><USER35> ...for varying definitions of "comfortable" and ignoring certain opportunity costs

</comment><comment><USER36> Except for breakfast, every meal seems to be above his own 33 cents/meal budget.

<comment><USER6> slightly, which is made up with a few skipped meals where someone else is providing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wish. I'm in the "eat well to avoid (huge) medical bills" crowd.

<comment><USER37> I don't see what the problem is with my comment. It's a sincere comment. I wish I could substantially cut my food bill. But I have a serious medical condition and have gotten off multiple prescription drugs in part by changing my diet (and doing a lot of research on what works for my particular condition). I know lots of people with my condition who are taking several thousand dollars a month in prescription drugs -- more than my monthly income in some cases. What I spend on food is high but it's cheaper than the alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> why not spending these efforts finding a side job which will add to your income $36 a day? This way you can eat anything you want as much as you want.

</comment><comment><USER39> Wow! Its cheaper than buying taco bell every day!

<comment><USER40> Quiet, if the rest of America realizes that - our plans for world domination are over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I stopped reading when he suggested dumpster diving.

<comment><USER42> I've gone dumpster diving on a couple of occasions with some friends of mine. I actually think most people should, at the very least, watch other people dumpster dive at least once. You will be absolutely amazed at the amount of perfectly good food that gets thrown out.

Go to a bakery right after they close. There will be garbage bags full of bread (and nothing but bread so it's relatively sanitary) that was baked that day. Even if you don't eat any, it will probably change your perception of waste.

<comment><USER40> When I was a poor starving student and worked in a supermarket the managers had to put all the expired cakes and cookies in the trash compactor to stop workers taking them. Not sure if this was so we would buy from the store instead or in case we sued if we got ill

<comment><USER43> I believe the reason is actually to avoid intentional over production. If the employees know that they'll be able to take home any left overs, then why not bake a few extra cakes... that kind of stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Too many carbs, not enough protein and fat.

<comment><USER26> Easy to fix: buy dried pinto beans and lard. Soak the pintos in water over night. The next day, pour off the water and simmer them in fresh water for about an hour. Strain your beans, put them in a pan (or cast-iron skillet), and pour liquid lard over top of them until the fat is about half-way up the beans. Cook over medium heat until the beans have exploded out of their skins. Now, take a potato masher to them. If they're too dry, add more fat. Season to taste.

Refried beans are a great source of protein, fat, and flavor, and are one of the cheapest foods around. Pair it with some rice and vegetables and you've got a pretty nutritious meal (assuming you need all those calories).

<comment><USER44> You'll be eating 2 grams of carbohydrate for every gram of protein that you get that way. Sure, getting your carbs from beans is not nearly as bad for you as getting them from sugar, but there are much higher quality, and more expensive, protein sources that one should prefer.

Then again, medical bills are expensive too.

<comment><USER26> Honestly, I don't really buy into the idea that getting your protein from a mix of beans and grains will somehow cause you to end up making up the cost difference in medical bills due to the amount of carbohydrates you're ingesting, given the huge number of people on this earth who do so and who appear to have perfectly fine results from this sort of diet. Just make sure you're getting some exercise (which you should be doing regardless of your diet).

That all having been said, tofu can be quite cost effective, low in carbs, and high in protein. Of course, you might tell me there's aggression issues associated with tofu ingestion, and that it contains chemicals that mimic estrogen. So, there's seitan, which is also high in protein, low in carbs, and can be made relatively cheaply from wheat gluten in bulk. Of course, there are lots of people who decry wheat gluten as well, not to mention people who're legitimately allergic to it.

So that brings us to meat and fish. Meat often comes along with saturated fats and often raises your blood's LDL cholesterol levels, not to mention all the health, environmental, and ethical concerns of factory farming. You could take part in a co-op for your meat, but that is not going to enable you to eat for especially cheap. Fish is generally better in the fat and cholesterol departments, but many carry with them mercury content that makes a lot of people nervous and the threat of overfishing. There are fish that avoid most of these concerns, such as tilapia, which fit most of the criteria, but is still not anywhere close to as price effective as dried beans.

If you don't want to get your protein from beans, that's fine. I personally advocate people pay a little more and eat a healthy, varied diet, including many (or all) of the above-mentioned dangerous foods. But this crap about "medical bills are expensive too" implying that somehow eating an incredibly traditional and largely vegetarian diet will send you to the hospital is just ridiculous.

<comment><USER44> Traditionally, poor people who couldn't afford meat have been much worse off health-wise. And the biggest health decline in human history occurred when we switched from hunter-gathering lifestyles to farming (see Jared Diamond). Further, the Keyes hypothesis about the dangers of fats -- weren't you the one suggesting refined beans? -- are not well supported (see Gary Taubes).

<comment><USER26> Poor people who couldn't afford meat have been much worse off health-wise because they weren't eating well in general, because they don't have access to medicine, because they don't have access to supplies for hygene.

Put another way: poor people are worse off for a great number of reasons, but I don't think that proves that rice and beans will kill you.

Jarad Diamond (among others) showed that switching to civilized society shortened lifespans. You're not advocating becoming a hunter-gatherer and neither am I, so it's not really germane. Civilized society has a lot of factors that contribute to earlier death, such as population density helping the spread of disease. To draw from his work that carbohydrates will send you to the hospital is to draw a totally unsupported conclusion.

"Weren't you the one suggesting refined beans?" I was the one who replied with a recipe when you suggested that the diet was lacking fat and protein.

You don't address the issues of cost and you still haven't shown that the level of carbohydrates present in beans are a problem. My point is that most foods present trade-offs and you should probably eat a reasonably balanced and varied diet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Get a bicycle, stop commuting and grow your own food.

Works for me. Costs virtually nothing. Keeps you fit and healthy. Provides 75% of our food needs.

Also stop the guilt complex on quality, organic foods and branded goods. People give you evil looks if you pick up the "value eggs" in Tesco in the UK. "Think of the chickens" they chant. Fuck the chickens.

</comment><comment><USER46> Poor kid. Went through all that trouble to get some schoolin' and he still can't write proper English.

</comment><comment><USER47> So this is how the Japanese save so much money.

<comment><USER47> This comment wasn't meant to be derogatory. That is effectively their diet and they are some of the best savers in the world.</comment></comment>


My startup makes texting and driving safe(r) - <AUTHOR> Hey guys, we launched Speak today and were featured on Product Hunt (currently #1 but we'll see...)
https://www.producthunt.com/tech/speak-2
Speak lets you message safely while driving using a combination of voice, auditory notifications, and gestures.
We quit our jobs, started 4 months ago with a beta and went through tons of iterations.
Our goal is to make it simple and intuitive (and fun!) to have entire chat conversations while driving. <comment><USER2> Currently in Argentina it's illegal to _talk_ with the cell phone while driving. After seeing the Mythbuster episode about it, I'm convinced that it's the right decision.

I still can't believe that in USA it's not illegal to _text_ while driving. You have to look at the screen, you have to look at the keybord, ...

I think that the problem is that when a moron has an accident while using this app, the press will highlight that he/she was using this app while driving, not that the alternative of using plain texting would have be more dangerous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your note, gus_massa. In our state it is illegal to text while driving. The good news is you don't have to look at the screen, and you don't have to look at the keyboard, in order to Speak.

Speak is safer, simpler, and more intuitive than even in-dash messengers in Carplay and Android Auto. It is about as safe as if you were talking to somebody next to you. Hope that answers your question!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The app might make an interesting "Show HN". Product Hunt status, not so much.

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

Good luck.</comment>