The Next Leg Of The Housing Crisis In Five Simple Charts - <AUTHOR> http://www.zerohedge.com/article/next-leg-housing-crisis-five-simple-charts

<comment><USER3> So maybe I shouldn't buy this $200K foreclosure?

Some actual actionable advice from a comment there:

"" If you are agonizing about whether to buy real estate now or later, maybe you'd better define "real estate"

It's hard to see the value in buying a "suburban middle class home in CT" right now, or a year or three down the line if/when prices dive again. You may as well rent it and save a lot of money (and headaches) if all you are gonna do is park your car, watch TV and sleep there. Call that "fake estate"

If you want your real property to produce anything of real value, the best time to buy was yesterday, and you could already be at work building the soil, planting fruit trees and garden beds, installing some distributed energy source like solar or wind, and improving the structure. It takes a few years at least to get this sort of thing going, especially if you are doing it after work and on weekends. Invest in infrastructure during this so-called "deflationary period" and take advantage of gov't subsidies and tax breaks for energy efficient appliances, insulation, solar panels, whatever.

If things really are gonna be so grim, you are probably soon going to be at best "underemployed" and maybe even a little hungry...

Here's another idea - rent your house, and buy some cheap agricultural land within an hour's drive or less (go in with your friends and/or family maybe and it'll be even cheaper) and lease it to an organic farmer. That property may actually appreciate quite a bit in the coming years.

Or if you are not cut out to be a farmer, buy a multi-unit that you can fix up, live in and rent out the other units.

The whole point of real estate ownership used to be that it was a factor of production, not a financial abstraction that magically provides some rate of return while you rent it from the bank. If you are not going to improve the property in some way, and realize some income from it, don't bother buying it. If all you are willing to invest in life is fiat currency, you may eventually get lucky and get it back by the wheelbarrow full, with many more zeroes on it. ""

<comment><USER4> If you plant fruit trees, be prepared to kill every squirrel in a two mile radius!

<comment><USER5> For sure. The little buggers are robbing me blind. Somehow they know when I think to myself "the peaches are almost ready, I'll start to harvest them tomorrow".

For some reason they mostly leave the plums alone. So go with the plums.

<comment><USER6> Big problem with plums is that as far as I can tell the entire tree goes ripe the same millisecond, and you have about three days to pick them all and figure out what the hell to do with a million plums before the birds get to them and they fall off the tree and make these terrible little lumps on the lawn.

<comment><USER7> Sauces and alcohol. Plums are good for both. Oddly, plum-coriander sauce is pretty good (try a small amount before you take my word for it -- I love it, but YMMV).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The last point seems to indicate he thinks less new home sales volume leads to lower prices on houses in general.

This makes no sense to me. I see that as a good thing for home prices. If less new homes are sold then more existing homes will sell which means more demand and rising home prices.

The fact that there is less new home sales is just a result of home builders starting fewer communities out of realization that there is too much inventory already.

<comment><USER9> I think he believes that the lack of new homes is _evidence_ that people don't expect prices to go up in the future.

It is a "good thing" for home prices, but it is also evidence of a much larger "bad thing".

<comment><USER8> Yea, I think you are right that that is his thinking, but I still think the logic is flawed.

Sales of homes by homebuilders are under a much different dynamic than existing homes sold by homeowners. Homebuilders can and will reduce supply while they wait for the prospect of better profit margins even while existing home sales are showing increased demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No one has mentioned this, but if you buy into the argument that the housing market is in for another downturn, there is plenty of opportunity to cash in. Not sure what the CDS market is like these days, but I know that congress hasn't got around to regulating it yet and a small number of investors made out really well by taking large positions last time around.

Some additional data on current housing trends here: <http://www.nnnrent.com/2010/02/housing-crash-profits/> ...charts galore too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Take zerohedge with a HUGE grain of salt.

<comment><USER12> Evidence?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The ratio of existing to new homes makes sense since no one's been building the last couple of years, but that shadow inventory is definitely worrying.

<comment><USER14> Take the shadow inventory stuff with a grain of salt. Mostly speculation.

Keep in mind that Zero Hedge is a very controversial finance blog, and the writer has a dubious past.

<comment><USER15> I half agree. Yes, it's speculation absent access to banks' actual balance sheets. But we do know that a good many such homes are in foreclosure due to official filings, and that a high proportion of those have yet to be brought back to market, plus we can speculate that banks are generally sticking to their policy of not forgiving debt - although they may recover less than the outstanding loan value by selling the house, they don't want to set a precedent of wiping out (say) 25% of the debt on mortgages by mutual agreement, because then everybody will try to take advantage of it, even those who are not yet underwater.

Anecdotally, I've been househunting for a few months, and just in the last few weeks I've started getting calls from real estate agents to inform me that the asking price for property X or Y has dropped, and would I care to make an offer? I find this startling - I'm looking around the low end of the market (by San Francisco standards...it's still expensive here) and only a few months ago the typical attitude was 'at this price, everything goes fast - <USER2> increase your bid a little if you really want it'. Now I'm getting called at least once a week about 3-5% price cuts.

Some of this is doubtless due to the public perception that the first-time homebuyer's tax credit was expiring in November (in fact it was extended to April). But the ratio of new properties on sale to foreclosures has been < 1 for a while now. I think the increasing pain of the commercial real estate market is creating a glut of inventory for banks, which they are increasingly anxious to get off their books.

<comment><USER16> Take a look at Redfin trends for San Fran: <http://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco>

Specifically, # Sold, # For Sale. If I'm reading this right, seems the market peaked in mid-December, has dropped 25% in the past 1.5 months and now inventory is coming back up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _...the sole reason why mortgage rates have been as los as they have, has been due to the Fed's constant manpulation of the MBS market via the $1.4 trillion MBS/Agency QE purchase program. With this program set to expire in 2 months, rates are set to explode._

Uh, yes but it's old story - when the end of a program would mean the end of the economy ... the chance are they'll continue the program(duh).

That's not saying this crash isn't coming, it's just saying you can't be sure it will come on schedule. The US economy is becoming depend on more and more things - the state injecting money, China buying bonds. This kind of situation _can_ go on, it can go on longer than you'd think. It just will eventually go under. The housing boom lasted five years. While the present ad-hoc, artificial economy seems much more fragile, we could plausibly give it a couple years to crumble. 2011, better watch out...</comment>


Allow Open Carry of Firearms During the RNC Convention in July - <AUTHOR> https://www.change.org/p/quicken-loans-arena-allow-open-carry-of-firearms-at-the-quicken-loans-arena-during-the-rnc-convention-in-july-2 <comment><AUTHOR> I think this guy must be a wizard level troll.</comment>


Show HN: CloudMagic Email for Mac - <AUTHOR> https://cloudmagic.com/k/mac <comment><USER2> After trying different email clients (Sparrow, Mailbox, Airmail, etc) just to see most of them getting abandoned, I've decided to simply stick to the native email clients provided by OS X and iOS and use fastmail.com with a custom domain name. Fastmail is about as flexible as it can get, their IMAP support for OS X mail.app is fantastic and their push notification service is actually better than Apple's (Fastmail pushes 'new/read/unread/delete' notifications, whereas Apple only pushes 'new'.

<comment><USER3> Seriously, try [https://www.uniboxapp.com/](https://www.uniboxapp.com/). I've been using it on my Mac since beta, and now they have an iOS version. I haven't looked back since. It organizes email by person, like text messaging.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Looks like a neat app for personal use; doesn't seem to be geared for my own use case though (multiple domains/companies). And while they might or might not stay in business, I'm reasonably sure that mail.app won't be abandoned by Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does it require a CloudMagic third party server to operate, or it is a plain vanilla email client?

<comment><USER5> The FAQ seems to imply that having a CloudMagic account just makes it so that you don't have to set up your email accounts on each device: [http://help.cloudmagic.com/article/create-cloudmagic- account...](http://help.cloudmagic.com/article/create-cloudmagic-account-2/)

They definitely use "the cloud", but their FAQ may be able to answer some of your questions there too: [http://help.cloudmagic.com/section/security/](http://help.cloudmagic.com/section/security/)

<comment><USER6> The FAQ is very light on details. No mention on how the mail is stored on their end

<comment><USER7> We store metadata of the last 14 days email on a rolling basis.

<comment><USER6> What about message content? Is that passed directly through or stored on your servers as well?

<comment><USER7> They are proxied through servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The mobile apps are free. How does that work? Developing an app takes time (especially one that looks this polished), and running servers costs money. I don't see any ads in the client, so you must be making money some other way.

Combined with the fact that my emails would have to pass through your server, that makes me uncomfortable.

<comment><USER7> Yes, mobile apps would be free, serving as 'trials' for the desktop app, which is paid.

CloudMagic Mac app has already reached #2 in Top Paid App on Mac App Store within hours of launch.

Over a period of time, we'll introduce more power features like email tracking, CRM integrations, etc.

I think we are building a ethical independent business here.

<comment><USER8> Your privacy policy makes some of that apparent, and it's clearly worded. I appreciate that.

I didn't initially notice your privacy policy because there doesn't seem to be a link from the Mac app page. I had to go to the homepage by deleting the path from the URL in my browser, since I couldn't find a link to the main page on the Mac app page. I scrolled to the bottom of the page, as that's where these things usually are, but all I found was a trio of social media buttons. I scrolled back up and noticed the three-horizontal-lines symbol, which I correctly assumed would bring up a menu. I found the privacy policy under that.

I can only speak for myself, but I would have found it valuable to have an obvious link to the privacy policy on every page. I really wanted to find the privacy policy, because I felt a bit guilty about how tersely worded my previous comment to you was. Had I not been so motivated, I might have just looked at the page, thought it looked nice, then closed it when I couldn't find an obvious link to a privacy policy.

Anyway, thanks for answering my question. I hope I didn't come across as rude. I feel like a parent sending my kid to a sleep-over. I just want to make sure my data will be safe while it stays with people I don't know.

<comment><USER7> I will forward your comment to by website team. This is definitely something we can improve. Thanks and have a great day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love the minimalist approach - but not for business use. I use MixMax ( [https://mixmax.com/](https://mixmax.com/) ) every day and the additional functionality its provided has been a big deal for me. More is more in a business use-case I think.

<comment><USER7> Rohit from CloudMagic here. To build these 'additional functionality' on all platform, you need to roll out your own clients. We've started with the table stakes, stay tuned for those power features, across all devices. Extensions don't work on mobile devices and 70% of emailing is done on mobile today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [call for ideas] Got any idea for what an email client should do? Add yours to the list of issues on [https://github.com/alain94040/coolbox](https://github.com/alain94040/coolbox)

<comment><USER4> I will drop by and write some of my ideas. What I absolutely _do not want_ is for the client to rely on, yet another, third party servers/services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the demo I see the mouse move around over too many icons. What about Gmail shortcuts?

I rather not use the mouse at all during any email interactions.

<comment><USER7> [http://help.cloudmagic.com/article/mac- shortcuts/](http://help.cloudmagic.com/article/mac-shortcuts/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was sure that "focussed" was a spelling error, but it's apparently allowable, if less common than "focused".

</comment><comment><USER13> Hopefully someday I'll understand why such apps are released for a system with less than 5% market share.</comment>


Leasing Begins for New York's First Micro-Apartments - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/realestate/leasing-begins-for-new-yorks-first-micro-apartments.html <comment><USER2> nothing micro about the price. $2975 for a 360sq ft apartment off of 2nd avenue, 10 minutes walk to the closest subway stop. The only saving grace is the fact that the apartments are new builds with decent finishes (from the pictures). Housing situation in Manhattan is certifiably nuts.

<comment><USER3> What can we actually do about it?

<comment><USER4> It depends on what you mean be 'we' and 'can', but Manhattan could have significantly higher population density without overwhelming the infrastructure. In fact, IIRC it isn't even currently at its maximum population density.

One barrier among many to that is the overreach of the preservation movement. Of course I think it was a tragedy what happened to the original Penn Station but the pendulum has swung way way too far. Buildings, blocks, and even entire neighborhoods that don't have much compelling about them at all have had preservation related restrictions put in place. To take a specific example, much of the East Village is downright ugly and is historically significant only for being an affordable place for newcomers to live. The best way to honor that legacy isn't preserving blocks and blocks of four to six story walkups but by allowing a lot more density to bring prices down -- particularly towards the south-west part of the neighborhood where there are more subway options.

<comment><USER5> I'm starting to notice there is a general pattern of anti-development NIMBY almost everywhere. It's either an instinct, not liking change in general, not liking newcomers, irritation at construction or national incentives that cause it. It's probably a combination of all of them.

<comment><USER6> And I suspect most of this isn't anything new. What is at least somewhat different is that, in general, a Robert Moses [1] can't come into a city and remake it to his vision while largely ignoring those who think differently. This change is not entirely a bad thing. On the other hand, it often makes things like large-scale transportation projects much more difficult to accomplish than in the past.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Question to all you HNs readers... what's the situation in your city/country like when it comes to communal/shared living, particularly with 'strangers', i.e. two young professionals who share a home for economic reasons?

Here in the Netherlands it happens but it doesn't seem to be the standard. It's extremely popular for students, and some of the leases remain after the students graduate and it effectively becomes a young-professional's home, and rooms get filled up when someone leaves, usually via FB connections. But actually applying to live with strangers say as a 29 year old is rare... either you have your own place, or one with a partner.

The reason I ask is because, theoretically and often in practice, shared living is more space-efficient. The living room is shared, the kitchen, the bathroom, the washer, all the little things, and then you attach 4 bedrooms to it, and you can get a footprint that's smaller than 4 studios with a similarly sized kitchen/bathroom etc. But it only works if, culturally, people can stomach living together with other people they're not family or intimate friends with. While undoubtedly many people want their own place, in a time (and city) of scarcity of space, I wonder if part of the solution should not simply come from shared living, rather than more space efficient solo-living. What's it like in your town?

<comment><USER8> Here in DC (One of the most expensive US metro areas), it's super common to rent a room in a 'group house' in your 20s with 2-5 other young professionals or students. I'd say the majority of my 25-35 year old friend group started that way, and the single ones still do.

That's partially a quirk of fast gentrification making housing super expensive, combined with lots of housing stock that fits well (row houses), and the fact that not many young people own cars, so parking isn't a problem.

Given the choice I'm sure virtually all of them would prefer a 1br apartment, but that starts at $1800+/mo in the desirable parts of the city.

Previously I lived in St. Louis, which is a much more spread out, cheap suburban city, and most of my friends had apartments.

If I had to guess I'd say the 'group house' model (whatever the local nickname) is predominant in New York, SF, DC, Seattle, and a few other expensive, dense cities, and rarer in the more suburban cities of the midwest/south. In NYC people often share small apartments since even a row house is out of reach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I cannot wait for tiny house living to take off. I want to sleep in a tiny box, have access to a super clean shower and spend 100% of my free time and money doing fun things around town. I don't want to force other people to live in those conditions... so how do you allow it without making it mandatory for poor people?

<comment><USER10> As someone who lives in a Tiny House, its cute until its not. Your life grows, but your place doesn't. Its like being planted in too small a pot. By the time you move on, market rates for larger places to live have gone up a lot.

Its a bad solution all around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How is 25-30 m^2 considered a "micro" apartment? Sounds more like a medium- large studio to me.

<comment><USER12> From the article:

>Apartments in New York City ordinarily can be no smaller than 400 square feet, but the city waived those restrictions for this development.

>Small apartments are not new to New York. Thousands of apartments that predate the city's 1987 zoning restrictions would be considered micro units by today's standards.

So they basically are just moderately sized studio apartments, and the only notable bit is that they're the first new construction moderately sized studio apartments in nearly thirty years.

<comment><USER13> that isnt true - i currently live in a 220 sqr foot apt in the lower east side

<comment><USER14> You live in an illegal unit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Every time I see a story about miniature homes in Hong Kong, freight containers, Manhattan, etc. is that I would have to give up almost all of my hobbies if I lived like this. They are really only convenient for people who spend very little time at home.

<comment><USER16> But that's what NYC life is about for many. Rents are so high that having a lot of space means you have to be quite well off. But for most, the magic of NYC is outside your home. When you throw a party, you don't do it at your place, you do it at a bar. Minimizing rent means you can spend more on going out. It'll be wildly popular for the unmarried/childless set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hmmm. A studio for 2700-3000 in that area of MH is basically market rate for existing, 400+ sqft studios if not even a little bit high...kinda defeats the purpose, no?

</comment><comment><USER18> These are almost what were called "coffin hotels" in Gibson's Neuromancer, but there at least they were cheap.

Nobody writes cyberpunk fiction anymore because it's no longer fiction.

</comment><comment><USER19> _The development is the product of a 2012 design competition intended to address one of the city's more vexing housing problems: How do you build safe, legal and reasonably priced apartments for single New Yorkers who do not want to double — or triple — up with roommates?_

This is actually not that hard: the solution is to reduce or eliminate height restrictions and build more subways. That's it. I wrote more about the issue here: [http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a- futu...](http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-future-in- seattle-do-millennials-have-a-future-in-any-superstar-cities/) and do see the links within it.

The failure to understand basic economics is amazing.

<comment><USER6> You mean like the $4.5 billion 2nd Avenue subway that is nearing completion after being discussed for something like a hundred years.

And, while one can always build more and build higher, Manhattan isn't exactly a study in low-rise construction (although much of the city is low/mid-rise). And if you stay in NYC hotel rooms where you're looking out at some narrow shaft between buildings, it's not hard to understand why there are some limits on just building skyscrapers willy nilly.

<comment><USER17> "nearing completion" is an enormous stretch, if not just plain wrong. The very first phase is still under construction and only consists of 2 miles of a planned 8.5 total.

<comment><USER6> I had seen some headlines about 2016 completion. Didn't realize it was only the first phase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting that the pop-up ad that appeared for me was for a leasing of apartments in the US $1.275 million range.

Home hunting in Manhattan must be a challenge.

<comment><USER4> The thing about NYC that may not be quite familiar to people from other US cities is that mass transit is pretty good. It may be the case in SF that if you want to work in SoMa your choices are living in SF proper or spending at least an hour to get to work with a large standard deviation, but in NYC you can live in Astoria (Queens) work in Midtown (Manhattan) and have a twenty- five minute pretty reliable commute.

So choosing to live in Manhattan is a luxury rather than a necessity for most people. That's one reason why I think keeping affordable apartments in Manhattan isn't the right thing to be optimizing for (though it may well be part of a larger picture).

<comment><USER5> If you live close to a BART station, you can have the same 25-30m reliable commute like you would in new york.

Source: personal experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> See also: [http://crasstalk.com/2012/07/nyc-to-residents-live-in-a- matc...](http://crasstalk.com/2012/07/nyc-to-residents-live-in-a-matchbox-you- small-thimble-person/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Smaller than my basement home office. I do not regret living in Chicago's suburbs.</comment>


Descartes – An experimental library for writing CSS in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://descartes.io/ <comment><USER2> _Descartes is just over 30KB when minified and just over 300 lines of code._

For comparison, there's 12KB of text on the page.

There's something about writing 30KB+ of code, plus chunk of CSS-in-JS-syntax, and then using the energy of every single visitor's machines to duplicate the work at a massive scale to generate another chunk of CSS that the browser then has to parse, _after_ executing that JS, which you could've just generated once on the server, that feels fundamentally wrong. IMHO this flagrant disregard for resource consumption is one of the reasons why the "Modern Web(tm)" is as unpleasant as it is.

<comment><USER3> Its called 'scaling'. There are 1B personal devices and only 1 server. So anything that unloads the server is a good thing?

<comment><USER2> How about just serving the CSS directly? It could even be generated from JS with a tool like this one. Now you don't even have to serve the JS that generates it.

<comment><USER4> It would seem that Descartes allows you to change the values of the CSS _after_ page load, which no amount of precompiling can do!

This is what plugins like Descartes are trying to solve - how do we inform CSS of values on the page which may be different between different browsers or users, or may change on the page after it loads as users interact with it.

[http://elementqueries.com/demos/variables.html](http://elementqueries.com/demos/variables.html)

Here's an example using EQCSS of accessing JavaScript Variables from CSS - I'd __~LOVE~ __to see what CSS you could prepare and send in advance that would produce the same thing.

It can't be done :)

<comment><USER5> Thats not was CSS is supposed to do. I am happy its not possible, else even more people would exploit it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems like we've come full circle by reimplementing JSSS, Netscape's disused Javscript Style Sheets ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript_Style_Sheets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript_Style_Sheets)).

JSSS failed as a practical competitor to CSS, which would be better _if only we could generate it via javascript._

<comment><USER2> Also notable is IE's "CSS expressions", which let you embed JS in CSS property values, but they were deprecated and then removed completely:

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dn384050(v=vs.85).a...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dn384050\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

</comment></comment><comment> lf-non Writing styles in javascript is a very natural consequence of web applications becoming more and more dynamic. It is unfortunate that they are not more mainstream.

We have pushed CSS pre-processors to the extent that they now have variables, loops, modules, interpolation, conditions etc. which have always been present in javascript.

It makes a lot more sense to just fully embrace all these features from standard javascript instead of building entire ecosystems of css pre- processors with superficial syntactical differences.

<comment><USER7> > Writing styles in javascript is a very natural consequence of web > applications becoming more and more dynamic. It is unfortunate that they are > not more mainstream.

It's ironic that graphic tool kits for desktop or mobile apps are adopting CSS and declarative approach, when the front-end is desperately pushing for javascript everywhere.

<comment><USER8> It's a natural consequence of the former being typically written by more experienced developers than the latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Despite being a nice experimentation, I don't think there will be any practical use in a real project. CSS preprocessors already allow us to style things with minimal structure and complexity. We already have a large set of tools to do exactly that, and if you want to add JavaScript to your CSS, just don't. It doesn't add value to anything apart from making it slower.

<comment><USER10> One advantage that a JS system could have over a preprocessor is the ability to use real values from the browser; for example you could set things to be equal to page height.

It'd definitely be much slower but that's irrelevant so long as it's still fast enough.

<comment><USER11> To set an element height to the full viewport height, you can use `height: 100vh`. That unit is available since 2011. Please do your homework.

<comment><USER12> No need to be pedantic, onion2k's original point that you can use values from the browser is spot-on. If you've ever tried to interact with CSS transitions/animations with JavaScript you'll find rather quickly that doing the entire thing in JS is the only reasonable approach.

<comment><USER13> Okay, but then, since you're already animating individual elements, what's the benefit over jQuery's $.fn.css?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is REALLY cool stuff. There's currently a gap between CSS and JS that currently forces us to abuse HTML as an intermediary to get JS and CSS to communicate with each other.

I've been doing some experiments with closing the gap between JS and CSS from the opposite perspective of Descartes: writing JS from within CSS using a CSS- like syntax..

My take is that Descartes is the inversion of my plugin - Descartes lets you easily write CSS from JS and JS-style syntax.

Either way - being able write your responsive styles all in one place (whether entirely in JS, or entirely in CSS) is a lot better than cobbling together responsive support using a bunch of custom CSS + JS carefully duct-taped together.

I believe this plugin will help build modular (atomic design) elements that can be re-used on different templates/sites without much re-tooling once they're built the first time.

<comment><USER8> The "gap between CSS and JS" you are describing is called "decoupling" and it exists because the designers of CSS/HTML/JS have generally been experienced enough developers to know how bad of an idea it is to couple your styling and your business logic.

There are two kinds of developers: ones who think this is a reasonable idea, and ones who have written UIs in languages that allow this kind of coupling and learned from their mistakes.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I was forced to work with JS-in-CSS and i still dont get their reasoning behind it at all. All use cases in their examples were easily solveable with CSS if you fixed up a bit of the bad CSS they shipped with.

It was just a very lazy approach to handle something they lost control for.

<comment><USER4> Can you give an example where somebody used JS inside CSS for a solution CSS alone could have provided?

EDIT: I can't seem to reply down below, but in my plugin for example we've implemented a few responsive conditions:

\- min-scroll-x

\- max-scroll-x

\- min-scroll-y

\- max-scroll-y

So if you needed to trigger a style (or a whole block of styles) when the page, or any element you specify has a scroll position meets the conditions above.

By combining these conditions with other conditions, it makes it DEAD simple for CSS-only designers to be able to write responsive JavaScript!

@element 'body' and (min-width:900px) and (min-scroll-y: 100vh) { header { position: fixed; } }

<comment><USER5> I cant simply provide a solution for your edit thats true. But i assume this to create massive overhead just to enable CSS do something it never was supposed to? It maybe just does not fit into my world view, but thats simply wrong to my eyes CSS is not supposed to know that much about the view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> stylus? LESS and SASS are definitely limited, but Stylus is what I've been using and it's been amazing. [http://stylus-lang.com/](http://stylus- lang.com/)

I'm not sure why you would want to go all the way and create fully dynamic styles. I think that's just the wrong way to think about styles... If we take a design software like InDesign, you have a style palette, in which you create styles, for example 'red fill; black stroke 2pt; drop-shadow black 2pt fade'. You can then asign this style to almost anything, be it text, or a shape, or something else. CSS is supposed to work like this. You create your classes in CSS that are styles in a style palette of sorts, and then you assign these classes to your HTML structure with your JS Views (if you really need dynamic styles). I really see no point in Descartes other than to avoid CSS alltogether for whatever reason.

</comment><comment><USER15> After doing research on how to improve CSS I settled on css-modules. They are the mid-term solution and improvement I've seen so far.

[https://medium.com/front-end-developers/css-modules- solving-...](https://medium.com/front-end-developers/css-modules-solving-the- challenges-of-css-at-scale-85789980b04f)

[https://github.com/css-modules/css-modules](https://github.com/css- modules/css-modules)

<comment><USER16> Where do you think they fall short?

<comment><USER15> Addendum: I checked out tachyons now, which solves my abstraction-problems: [http://tachyons.io/](http://tachyons.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How often does everyone change CSS, and how complicated is your resulting product?

Because on our product, we tend to redesign the look and feel every couple years, and try to keep things simple. So just writing raw CSS is really not that painful.

I can see the use of tools like this if you are a design firm that churns out prototypes on a regular basis. But for a stable company with a product that has been around for years... CSS authoring just isn't a pain point.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's as much about authoring CSS faster - if your goal is to output a large amount of CSS you can just use a precompiler like SASS to amplify a shorthand into thousands and thousands of lines in a few seconds. We've got that covered.

What Descartes seems to be doing rather is allow you to build modular elements which don't require all that CSS to be output in the first place, while at the same time ALSO writing the styles that CSS can't reach, all in one spot.

My take is that if it can be written in CSS alone, that's best.

Descartes and other plugins are here to help you write the styles you _cant_ write with CSS alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So, it looks like at the moment Descartes is basically SASS or LESS, but in JavaScript. My reaction to that is, 'uh, okay, sure, why not.'

However, where Descartes starts to get really interesting, is if it began to provide a substantially higher abstraction layer over CSS. I'm probably not the only person who finds CSS pretty annoying. I would love to be able to do layout styling at a level closer to the way that I think about page design. That's not necessarily an easy thing to implement, but a little bit of functionality in that direction would go a long way.

</comment><comment><USER19> Every time I see something like this JSX and whatnot I wonder why these people don't just give up on JS and move on to some LISP - in the React world that would be clojure(script) but frankly whatever sexp language with macros for creating DSL would fix a lot of the pain points caused by annoying web standards designed decades ago.

You could say "legacy code" and what not - but frankly you're making a huge effort when you introduce something like this or React anyway - so you might as well go a little further and do it right.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hi

I think its great that you try new ideas in this area. Don't listen to those who didn't event try to create better tools, but rather just crying around that all the "css in js" solutions are bad, ignoring the fact that the current traditional CSS is bad for lots of cases too.

I am biased because I am author if jss [https://github.com/jsstyles/jss](https://github.com/jsstyles/jss)

What I understood from descartes is that you are trying to make styles dynamic by allowing listeners. So that when user interaction happens, styles can change accordingly, while the logic for it is contained in the style itself.

I had the same idea in jss too and ended up with this api for dynamic styles: [https://github.com/jsstyles/jss/blob/master/docs/js- api.md#s...](https://github.com/jsstyles/jss/blob/master/docs/js-api.md#set- or-get-a-rule-property-dynamically)

I am still looking for a way how to make this idea more usable.

</comment><comment><USER21> Gives me a reason to put CSS as JSON into Openchain.

I was also thinking that CSS Documents in this way could be scaffolded as JSONAPI. Or maybe we need a CSSAPI — etiquette for sending small bits of CSS. My work on Openchain makes this relevant — where your CSS is loaded dynamically based on Unitary Reference Architecture that is expressed in the cryptographic ledger.

Then I was thinking "css-sempai" where the CSS file is imported like a Python or JS Module, like here [https://github.com/kragniz/json- sempai/](https://github.com/kragniz/json-sempai/) — but for CSS... So like:

        >>> from csssempai import magic
        >>> import stylesheet
        >>> stylesheet
        <module 'stylesheet' from 'stylesheet.json'>
        >>> stylesheet.html.body.section['max-width']

Would be neat for server-side variable loading of dynamic CSS Sekizai conditionings in Django.

</comment><comment><USER5> I used to work with a CMS that supported Javascript within CSS, i dont know whats worse.

</comment><comment><USER22> Classic inner-platform anti-pattern?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner- platform_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect)

</comment><comment><USER23> As a side note, the scrolling on that site is very buggy. It looks like they tried to add momentum scrolling.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't get it. CSS is easy. Why make it more complicated?

</comment><comment><USER25> Isn't this a step back from declarative CSS?

</comment><comment><USER26> What's wrong with CSS, exactly?

<comment><USER27> There isn't anything wrong with it per se, however it's lacking in many ways. To see them look at how libraries such as LESS ([http://lesscss.org/](http://lesscss.org/)) and SASS ([http://sass- lang.com/](http://sass-lang.com/)) enhance the CSS experience. That being said it seems as though the purpose of this library is to bridge the gap between JavsScript and CSS that developers face when building moderately large systems (I know I have).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> to complicated and slows it down.</comment>


Best Physics Books of All Time - <AUTHOR> https://bookauthority.org/books/best-physics-books <comment><USER2> Wonderful list! Some great books there that I need to add to my list!!</comment>


You Can't Soak the Rich - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121124460502305693.html <comment><USER2> The Wall Street Journal needs to have its statistics license taken away. Every editorial manages to commit some sort of statistical fallacy.

 _highest_ marginal tax rate is charted against _total_ revenue as a percent of GDP. Absolutely worthless. Total revenue as a percent of GDP happens to be flat, so we can take any statistic we care to blather about, chart it against this line, and say: see? You can't get money from (fuel taxes | tariffs | mandatory minimum sentencing | software piracy).

<comment><USER3> The most heavily debated tax issue is the rate that the richest pay. Progressives argue that they should pay much higher percentages than they currently do. They fail to account for the added incentive to avoid such taxes and subsequent loophole creation and usage.

So the core issue of tax policy has been the marginal tax rates verses total revenue. It isn't the WSJ.

<comment><USER4> The argument is over what point we're at on the Laffer Curve, as well as the specific shape of the curve (i.e. is the right side so steep that we can tax at whatever rate we want up until revenues collapse entirely?), and about how tax enforcement policy can affect the shape of the curve.

"They," meaning progressives, don't fail to account for anything. They just disagree with your analysis.

Finally, the reason nobody knows or cares about this particular research is that most tax cuts were made with an eye toward maintaining revenue at a constant percentage of GDP. That is, the graph is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It doesn't predict what would happen with subsequent changes in the tax code.

Furthermore, this isn't even in any way connected to MTRs for the rich. All that this graph reflects is that as taxes were decreased for the upper %1 over the past half century, they were increased on everybody else. It doesn't illustrate increased collection rates, just increasingly regressive tax policy.

Brief mathematical analysis of what this article said:

TaxRateforRich x RichEarnings + TaxRateEveryoneElse x EveryoneElseEarnings = TotalRevenue

Then they told you that as TaxRateforRich dropped, total revenue remained constant, and thus concluded that the amount of earnings reported by rich people (RichEarnings) must have risen. What they ignored was a rise in TaxRateEveryoneElse.

<comment><USER3> "All that this graph reflects is that as taxes were decreased for the upper %1 over the past half century, they were increased on everybody else."

False.

We have a dynamic system where the incentives of the top 1% have a disproportional influence on GDP. Further, tax rates of the top 10% account for the majority of revenue. So I not only deny your claim but put forth that your rhetoric is emotionally manipulative - pitting the rich ("them") versus the rest ("us poor little everybody else").

The "rich", the top 1%, are the prime drivers of wealth creation. They are the reason GDP grows faster than population growth. The incentives on the top 1% heavily influence GDP growth.

Also, the percentiles used are very misleading. The top and bottom quintiles today are not the same people in the top and bottom quintiles 20 years ago. So most stats we track about poverty and wealth are fairly useless because they follow that faulty assumption.

Just in case anyone isn't clear on this: if you're a founder of a tech company, you're in the top 1% - perhaps not in income today, but in wealth generators and life-time taxes paid and to-be-paid.

<comment><USER4> ""All that this graph reflects is that as taxes were decreased for the upper %1 over the past half century, they were increased on everybody else."

False."

I have to disagree. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 (as well as the cut of 64) disproportionately affected the lower income brackets. As a matter of record, tax rates are higher for the lower income brackets, and lower for higher income brackets than at any other point in US history.

To cite wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Reform_Act_of_1986#Income_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Reform_Act_of_1986#Income_tax_rates)

"The top tax rate was lowered from 50% to 28% while the bottom rate was raised from 11% to 15% - the only time in the history of the U.S. income tax (which dates back to the passage of the Revenue Act of 1862) that the top rate was reduced and the bottom rate increased concomitantly."

"The "rich", the top 1%, are the prime drivers of wealth creation. They are the reason GDP grows faster than population growth."

Anyone who has capital gains from the labor of others. It is misleading to say that they are responsible for this growth themselves. Their wealth is invested in those in other income brackets, and used to drive up GDP. There's nothing morally wrong with this system.

I agree that incentives for the upper %1 have a disproportionate effect on GDP. That said, from an economic perspective, I happen to believe that the Laffer curve has a very steep right side, and that we are to the left of the peak. This means that by raising rates, more revenue can be collected. For example, the 1981 tax cut did not improve revenue collection.

I believe that we should raise rates in order to pay for progressive social programs. The upper %1 have benefitted from not only their skill and ability to drive wealth creation, but also a good deal of luck.

Progressivism is a form of social insurance. It is an acknowledgment that perhaps, through no fault of my own, I might have been born poor, or with skills not suited to the modern economy. It is the understanding that in the richest nation on earth, no one should want for food, shelter, or healthcare, no matter what their ability to contribute.

This is not rhetoric. It is a judgement of values, and an assertion of a logical argument.

Think of it in terms of human capital. Those born into poverty today lack the access to crucial resources, such as education, to contribute to the economy to their full potential. It is a colossal waste of human resources to allow these conditions to continue. Imagine if Bill Gates had been born in Compton instead of Seattle.

<comment><USER3> "It is a judgement of values"

The fundamental disagreement between libertarians and progressives is that libertarians do not find the values of a mob/majority justify violence upon a minority.

I used the word violence carefully: you don't pay your taxes, an armed man will come to put you in a pen for years.

The problem with asserting positive rights, versus freedom from oppression, is that they come at a cost to someone else. For example, asserting a right to health care is asserting the right to take from a health care provider.

"As a matter of record, tax rates are higher for the lower income brackets, and lower for higher income brackets than at any other point in US history."

Tax rates are still higher for higher income earners.

They make more, and a flat percentage would proportionally cover their wealth, but you insist on a _higher_ percentage. That is pretty hard to justify, especially considering the benefit of government is diminished proportional to increased income.

<comment><USER4> Ah, now we've come to the point of it.

"The fundamental disagreement between libertarians and progressives is that libertarians do not find the values of a mob/majority justify violence upon a minority."

The power of the state rests upon the willful consent of the governed. The constitutional structure protects minorities from the tyranny of the majority, and as such, when it is in the good of society, that force can be used, including to collect taxes.

"The problem with asserting positive rights, versus freedom from oppression, is that they come at a cost to someone else. For example, asserting a right to health care is asserting the right to take from a health care provider."

Here's the fallacy. Its not a zero sum game, and the market isn't an omnipotent distributer of goods. For example, asserting a right to health care provides more output for the society, as it takes away from the costs of untreated illnesses. Some things are common to all, and ensuring that everyone has access enhances total welfare. Surely you must see that defense spending is justified?

"They make more, and a flat percentage would proportionally cover their wealth, but you insist on a _higher_ percentage."

This is a form of social insurance. Just as defense spending insures us against risk of attack, social programs insure us against the risk of bad luck. Imagine yourself behind the veil of ignorance, before you were born, before you knew that you would occupy that top %1. Now design a tax system.

You have to take into account the decreasing marginal utility of income. $100 additional dollars to a person making several million a year has far less utility to them than $100 additional dollars to a person making twenty thousand a year.

Not to mention the political folks tell me that inequality is the chief cause of revolution. If we look at this from a practical perspective, we see that times of extremely low taxation and large amounts of inequality caused a breakdown in the market system. Those who accumulate most of the wealth become a law unto themselves and ensure oligopolistic control over industry. Too much of this and in Russia the farmers get their pitchforks and the mob takes to the streets. Here you get the New Deal. Some socialism is necessary to stave off communism.

<comment><USER3> "The constitutional structure protects minorities from the tyranny of the majority, and as such, when it is in the good of society, that force can be used, including to collect taxes."

You just said: 'the minorities are protected, and that means force can be used on them.' It's a clear contradiction.

What kind of government program isn't justified by that reasoning? Why doesn't the government start controlling or "guaranteeing" super markets, car dealerships, or house construction?

You take an unprincipled approach that scales to tyranny.

"For example, asserting a right to health care provides more output for the society, as it takes away from the costs of untreated illnesses"

That is complete unvalidated. Where is the evidence? Keep in mind, the comparison is to health with government management and with individual decision making (and not government coverage vs. none). One huge fallacy specific to health care is that health does not equal medical treatment. So you can't equate a dollar paid for medical treatment and a dollar improved in value of health.

"Some socialism is necessary to stave off communism."

And some sex is necessary to keep your virginity. Corporations that accumulate government power usually do so because of unprincipled approaches to what the government should and shouldn't be doing. Look up the history of railroads in the US, and specifically the rise of the Interstate Commerce Commission. A government entity went out of it's bounds to "protect" the people, and the new power was taken over by the rail companies. It's exactly what I mentioned before: What kind of government program isn't justified by that reasoning? And then who do you think is going to control it? Our benevolent senators? Or the people with a $$$ interest?

For health coverage, lots of policy decisions make much more sense if you just consider the AMA the largest and most powerful union in the US. They act for the benefit of themselves, and not their patients, often doing so with government force. One example, two words: drug war.

<comment><USER4> "You just said: 'the minorities are protected, and that means force can be used on them.' It's a clear contradiction."

This is the basis of constitutional government. Just holding a minority opinion doesn't necessarily mean the majority can't constrain your behavior with force.

For example, if I hold the minority opinion that "killing people for no reason is fine," then it isn't a violation of my freedom for the non-homicidal majority to arrest me.

Constitutional government includes a series of guarantees about what can't be done to minorities, and also usually includes checks and balances on the majority's power to prevent rash action.

"What kind of government program isn't justified by that reasoning?"

The answer is that all governmental programs are justified as long as they improve the public welfare. Those you have listed would not.

The fundamental difference is that in the progressive model the market is not the be-all-end-all of politics, it is just a means used to accomplish an end. The economy exists to serve the people, not the other way around.

""Some socialism is necessary to stave off communism." And some sex is necessary to keep your virginity."

Pretty much everyone on either side of the left-ride divide agrees about the need for the modern welfare state, even if they disagree about the extent. Communist orators used to draw crowds of tens of thousands before the New Deal.

"You take an unprincipled approach that scales to tyranny."

Your pure libertarianism scales to a far more direct form of tyranny, and doesn't come with the niceties of constitutional protections. What's the market rate on a police force? An army? A life?

<comment><USER3> "This is the basis of constitutional government. Just holding a minority opinion doesn't necessarily mean the majority can't constrain your behavior with force."

It's the exact opposite. A constitutional republic maintains that holding the majority opinion does not justify force.

If you don't understand this, you don't understand anything about the US.

Your examples are ridiculous. Stopping violence is not violence.

"Pretty much everyone on either side of the left-ride divide agrees about the need for the modern welfare state, even if they disagree about the extent"

You really don't know anything about this, do you? Who exactly do you think you're talking to if not someone who disagrees with that sentiment?

This thread is over.

<comment><USER4> "Your examples are ridiculous. Stopping violence is not violence."

If you don't like the previous (perfectly valid) example, how about one that doesn't involve violence on the part of the perpetrator? Perhaps theft, or public nudity.

The point is that _everything_ a state does is ultimately based on force. The whole point of preventing tyranny of the majority is to ensure that the only actions are taken are taken for the good of everyone, rather than a specific sect. It has nothing to do with denying the legitimacy of taxation.

It seems to me you don't understand the basic concept of a constitutional state. Reread On Liberty and Federalist #10.

"Who exactly do you think you're talking to if not someone who disagrees with that sentiment?"

I was pointing out exactly how far outside the terms of legitimate debate you actually are.

Now the thread is over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Huge beefs here:

1\. To suggest taxing the rich at a higher rate is the sole reason for a drop in GDP is simply ludicrous. Being that government spending is a part of the GDP equation, it's much too complex to attribute to a single cause. For example, given that the public's appetite for taxing the rich would increase in hard times, it would also stand to reason that governments are reducing spending concurrently, and that is the reason for the stagnation.

2\. The implicit suggestion that GDP increases are inherently good and GDP decreases are inherently bad is outdated. You could get a GDP increase by dropping a nuke on LA. The US doesn't even use GDP to measure economic health anymore, but rather GNP.

3\. I would love to see a graph that uses the total net revenue as an adjusted dollar amount, and leaves the GDP equation out of it. I'm pretty sure the results would be rather different.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Raising taxes encourages taxpayers to shift, hide and underreport income"

Uh, let's not forget about finding legal tax shelters and using wealth to influence lawmakers to define what actually is a legal tax shelter.

It's a pity that the article never explores the difference between income and wealth. Does anyone honestly believe that wealthy individuals haven't long ago figured out how to avoid paying the top rate?

</comment><comment><USER7> By my read, this means that we should raise the top marginal tax rate to 90%. Why? If it doesn't matter, then you might as well make the unwashed masses (like me!) happy that the rich are "doing their fair share".

Hauser fails to see that savvy political policy does not flow from "rational" economic policy.

<comment><USER8> Read more carefully. If you increase the marginal tax rate, GDP probably decreases and thus tax revenue decreases.

<comment><USER9> Except it didn't. GDP grew faster in the fifties, with a 90% "millionaire's tax", than it did in the eighties, as top marginal rates were being cut to their lowest levels.

Numbers from here:

<http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/var/rgdp-qtrchg>

But this is something I noticed around 16 years ago.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, finally someone is pointing to real data rather than just waiving a magic wand in the air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminded me of this old article about how the effective tax rate in the U.S. can be argued to be virtually 40%: [http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Taxes/Advice/YourRealTa...](http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Taxes/Advice/YourRealTaxRate40.aspx)

<comment><USER12> And flat!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article doesn't even seem to acknowledge the existence of economies other than US. If you are trying to propose an economic 'law' then you really need to look at more than one country. In fact there are many other succesful economies that have a higher percentage Tax/GDP ratio than 19.5%

</comment><comment><USER14> It's a shame small government is long gone from the US.

<comment><USER15> yeah, we'd be much better off if all these programmers we hire from state schools weren't able to afford an education.

<comment><USER14> Nice strawman argument.

<comment><USER15> How is it a strawman? I'm beginning to think your curt answers veil an inability to deal with the complexities of reality.

<comment><USER14> And perhaps your strawman argument veils an inability to debate the topic at hand. I never said anything about doing away with public education. Small government != the doing away of all social programs.

"yeah, we'd be much better off if all these programmers we hire from state schools weren't able to afford an education."

Your comment superficially sets up an argument I never made, which is the definition of a strawman.

Anyways...

I'm all for government sponsored programs that work along side the private industry (and force competition) in order to contribute to the general welfare, which is what the constitution states. For example: defense, infrastructure and education among others.

However, I'd love to rid our government of all the pet projects, pork, worthless organizations (and employees) and general waste that rape our income.

It's near impossible to fire a government worker, which is a crime in and of itself. Our government is so inefficient that consulting firms are rolling out in mass "staff augmentation" programs that take over the responsibilities of a given agency/department.

Think about that...you hire government workers to do job X. They are so incompetent at job X you hire high priced consultants to complete job X while not firing any of the workers. The end result? Job X is completed at two - three times the original cost. Ridiculous. If you ever want a first hand look at how inefficient the government is, live in DC for a few years.

<comment><USER16> Except that the constitution doesn't state anything about education, and defense accounts for nearly 50% of the federal budget. Cutting all the fat and inefficiency does not address the root problem, health care costs and defense spending. If you don't want huge taxes you can't have a military this size, and I haven't a clue on how to fix health care.

<comment><USER17> I agree, but want to underline that the military is pretty efficient. You CAN get fired from the military if you screw up, and compared to the armed forces of other empires, the US armed forces do a pretty good job of kicking ass when there's ass to be kicked, and doing pretty good research (ARPANET, jet travel, Manhattan project).

<comment><USER15> um, have you ever been in the military? I was in the army for 4 years, you can't really get fired. You have to do somethign way over the line to get kicked out. Out of many hundreds of people I knew only a handful got kicked out. The vast majority of those failed drug tests, usually twice. One guy got kicked out for sexually abusing a few women (sneaking into their rooms at night while they were sleeping and ...). And I think I knew one that got kicked out for being too fat (but I knew a lot of people that were too fat and never got kicked out.

Now let's address this efficiency claim. Do you want to know what we did most of the time? Absolutely nothing. We hung out, did some cleaning, hung out some more, played some play station, hung out some more, took a nap. Yeah, that was my usual day.

We can also attack this efficiency claim from another angle. The U.S. spends almost as much as every other nation combined for military purposes. No company that did such a thing would be considered efficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Finding laws in Economics reminds me of Psychohistory. I wonder if we'll ever have that field.

<comment><USER19> Psychohistory can work in a society very different from ours (and certainly not the one Azimov described). In our society randomness plays too big of a role. Some of the current sources of uncertainty (like technological progress, or the personal freedom we have) may disappear in 1000 years, but this is purely a speculation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Economists of all persuasions accept that a tax rate hike will reduce GDP [..]"

No.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting regardless of your politics.

Summary chart: [http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED- AH556B_ranso_200...](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED- AH556B_ranso_20080519194014.gif)

<comment><USER21> Ok, maybe I missed something, but what exactly does the blue curve show?

<comment><AUTHOR> The top marginal tax rate.

Yes, it was 90%+ for a while: <http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php>

<comment><USER21> Wow, that's some variation there. As a foreigner I always saw the US as a country of low taxes, I guess that's not the whole story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this is statistically relevant, as rich Americans pay a big part of taxes:

 _During Fiscal Year (FY) 2006, the IRS collected more than $2.2 trillion in tax net of refunds, about 44 percent of which was attributable to the individual income tax. This is partially due to the nature of the individual income tax category; containing taxes collected from working class, small business, self employed, and capital gains. Of the Individual Income Tax, the top 5% of income earners pay 60% of this amount. [8] [9]_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service#Tax_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service#Tax_collection_statistics)

The top 5% pays 26.4% of tax receipts, and changes in the marginal tax rate for the top bracket usually affect tax rates of lower brackets. I'd say this news is pretty relevant.

</comment><comment><USER22> "What happens if we instead raise tax rates? Economists of all persuasions accept that a tax rate hike will reduce GDP, in which case Hauser's Law says it will also lower tax revenue. That's a highly inconvenient truth for redistributive tax policy, and it flies in the face of deeply felt beliefs about social justice."

And the Nordic countries, with a highly redistributive state, and some of the highest GDP per capita rates in the world?

</comment><comment><USER23> Under the "who should pay for govt?" question is another question - is it good for a large fraction of the population to have essentially no role in paying for govt?

Suppose that we could get all of the tax revenue from 1000 people, should we? How about 1%?

<comment><USER24> people who don't pay taxes shouldn't vote. this would actually be an interesting opt out clause to experiment with. you can forgo taxes if you give up suffrage.

<comment><USER24> it would be self balancing in a supply demand curve too. the more people that opted out the more power the remaining votes would have until equilibrium was reached between money and votes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Even if the article were true, I still believe in 'bubble up' rather than 'trickle down'.

If you transfer money to the poor, then tend to be happier and thus cause less social problems (e.g. less crime, fewer beggars, etc.). The rich can afford it. Soak 'em :-)

<comment><USER24> what is this garbage? the poor tend to be happy when you give them money? you have zero basis for this. people tend to be happy when they earn success. people who are given money tend to be unsatisfied and lazy.

<comment><USER25> I said 'happier'. Besides what you do is not give (so much) money to the poor and middle class, but rather tax them less and tax the rich much more. The poor and middle will be happier as they keep more of their earnings and the rich, well, they will be alright.

<comment><USER24> well of course the bottom 5th income wise shouldn't pay tax as they contribute less than 1% of tax revenue and receive on average much more in government aid than they pay in taxes. seems like a silly little loop for the money to go in when you could just not tax them. warren buffet has advocated this program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The top tax bracket was _90%_ in the 1950's?!

<comment><USER27> Yes, but it didn't kick in until your income got up over $1 million or so. This was actually common around the globe before the Reagan/Thatcher revolution. Remember the Beatles song "Taxman"?

"I'll tell you how it will be/ that's one for you nineteen for me/ 'cause I'm the Taxmaaaan!"

The Beatles were actually paying 19 out of every 20 cents to Her Majesty's government, for a top rate of 95%.

<comment><USER24> well, they paid 19 cents out of every 20 after the first million dollars.

<comment><USER27> It's still obscene, ugly, wrong, and basically slavery.

<comment><USER28> Please explain how it's slavery.

<comment><USER29> As I understand the libertarian argument (I can't promise that this is what Prrometheus means), a sketch looks like this:

Money is your property

Your body is your property

Slavery is foreign control of your body

Taxes are foreign control of your money

Thus, by the transitive property, taxes are like slavery

<comment><USER27> I wasn't even going that far. I can see how people consider it hyperbole to call taxes "slavery" when someone is taking 40% of your earnings from you. You still have more than half of what you earned to do with as you will. But 95%? You're basically working solely for the good of whoever is stealing from you. It's true that they're not forcing you to work, but you either give over almost all your earnings or go without any benefit from your labor at all.

I'm not the first to make the comparison, you know. I believe Frederick Douglas compared income taxes to slavery in his autobiography. Unfortunately, I listened to it on CD so I can't pull up the exact passage at the moment.

<comment><USER29> > But 95%? You're basically working solely for the good of whoever is stealing > from you.

I don't disagree, and I'm a person of libertarian leanings. Although I grant I'm not as fully given over to it as you seem to be.

I really was just trying to elucidate the sense in which I see many libertarians compare taxes to slavery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> taxes wouldn't be an issue if the government adjusted spending to reflect taxes instead of adjusting taxes to reflect spending.

</comment><comment><USER30> Who is John Galt?

</comment><comment><USER31> Executive summary: newspaper of the rich arguing for lower taxes for the rich.

<comment><USER32> 1\. They are doing it with logic. 2\. Do you consider the New York Times, or Washington Post, or any other major daily to be the newspaper of the poor? Give me a break.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Uh, what if taxes sort of trend up everywhere?

And there's hostility towards tax havens? They get cut off from wires, and you have to smuggle in cash / diamonds in suitcases, and it's a total pain in the ass and you become a social pariah?

Not saying that _should_ happen, but it could happen.

Dumb article.

</comment><comment><USER34> The problem is not rich people, the problem is rich people who ability-wise are slaves. Class is a stupid idea, caste is a better one.</comment>


Ask HN: If your biz plan tops out at $10m/yr revenue is it too small for VCs? - <AUTHOR> How about incubators or accelerators? <comment><USER2> A company which can't grow to $100 million a year is generally uninteresting to VCs, because that's approximately what they need to achieve to make their economics work out. They can tolerate base hits but that doesn't mean they endorse bunting as a strategy.

PG and Naval Ravikant have written extensively about what drives the math here, but it's essentially 1) limited number of board seats available per LP at a fund, 2) target ownership percentage that has to imply, and 3) rarity of Google and Facebook relative to all the companies which did not drive the returns of the entire VC industry.

You can hand-simulate the math: if you invest $5 million at a $20 million pre and expect 3 investments to fail, 3 to 2X, 3 to 5X, and 1 to 10X your investment, then you're hoping to sell for $100 million to $200 million (factoring in dilution). It's generally difficult to sell for $100 million with single-digit million revenue unless something _very_ interesting happened in R&D.

Angels have very, very different incentives and, relatedly, prices they get to invest at. They can have very, very happy results with companies which are doing, say, $1 million to $5 million in revenue.

Accelerators/incubators are a mixed bag. In general, if they invest in you at low-enough valuations, then smaller exits work out pretty decently for them, particularly if you can get them at scale. 500Startups is pretty explicit about small exits being a planned-for driver of their strategy. YC has not, to my knowledge, been explicit about that, and to the extent they talk about desired company sizes tend to talk about Dropbox/Airbnb/etc.

An elephant in the room: it is highly unlikely that people can adequately predict the size of a market at the business plan stage. PG has a good example here: it doesn't sound like a company founded to write Altair Basic obviously has an eventual enterprise value of $400 billion.

</comment><comment><USER3> The question isn't whether your "business plan" tops out at 10MM/yr, but whether _you want it to_.

Scaling a profitable business to 10MM is a shitload of work. There are people who invest that kind of work because they want control over their life and don't want the ( _innumerable_ ) headaches that come from scaling a business to 100MM.

If that's you, you don't want outside investors of really any kind.

However, because so few people are actually able to scale a business to 10MM, being able to do that will add significant credibility to a claim of being able to scale to 100MM.

There's a pretty famous YC strategy of backing companies that can own up a small niche in the market, on the premise that what they learn in the process of doing that will teach them how to take over a larger market.

So if you're looking to raise money and your plan takes you to 10MM, consider changing your pitch so that the 10MM market is a stepping stone towards a larger one.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I spent too long doing agile development. What's the point in making a plan to 100m when it's all going change anyway.

<comment><USER3> There isn't one. That's the point. If you want to raise money:

* Don't _plan_ on stopping at 10MM, because there aren't that many investors that can make money on a company that is has a steady-state top line of 10MM.

* Pitch your current market as an obtainable beachhead, not the long term endpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The market is much bigger but are VCs only interested in large portions of large markets or if you have some idea of how to get to $5-10m with investment is there options? how much traction would you need?</comment>


IPhone 4 antenna Testing - <AUTHOR> http://www.paconsulting.com/our-thinking/pa-consulting-group-iphone-antenna-test-results/

<comment><AUTHOR> For those wanting a more light-hearted summary, it can be found on YouTube <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juytk2OA4GI></comment>


An Introduction to Arcade Security - <AUTHOR> https://utkusen.com/blog/an-introduction-to-arcade-security.html <comment><USER2> I think in many jurisdictions, you're describing a couple of crimes you committed here in great detail

<comment><USER3> I dislike write-ups like these where the "researcher" styles themselves some kind of roguish hero, protecting the world from the lazy and incompetent by exposing their vulnerabilities for all to see.

I'm not opposed to responsible disclosure. But I think there's a big difference between finding a vulnerability responsibly (during normal operations, during a sanctioned pentest/bug bounty) and discovering a vulnerability illegally and irresponsibly (spending multiple days, specialized tooling and building a target profile to attack by any vector necessary.) I think this behavior gets a pass from too many people because hey, it's a cool fun puzzle that shows how great and smart you are!

This absolutely would not fly in the real world. Imagine deciding to kick down the doors of small business owners and gloat that they don't have steel doors. "I'm not here to steal! I'm PROTECTING you! Imagine if I'd been here maliciously. I'm just going to go tell the world your door is open -- your customers deserve to know how insecure you are."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to work for them as a dev so I'll forward this to the right people since you didn't get a reply back.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good (programmer) jokes that you know? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/234075/what-is-your- best...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/234075/what-is-your-best- programmer-joke)

</comment><comment><USER3> reddit.com/r/programmerhumor</comment>


Ask HN: What is your preferred alternative to GoDaddy? - <AUTHOR>

With the recent news concerning GoDaddy, I plan to move all of my domains to a new registrar.<p>So I put to you this question: which registrar should that be? <comment><USER2> Namecheap

I reg'd one with Gandi but to be honest haven't used much of it, so can't say

</comment><comment><USER3> Gandi because you get full control of your zone file and SSL cert

<comment><USER4> Gandi is a bit slow, they don't obfuscate your name with private registration, and it's a giant pain to change the name of the owner. (Sign up for a new account and transfer all domains to the new account)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Internet.bs for me. Very cheap, straightforward management, quick to propagate changes.

<comment><USER6> +1 <http://www.internetbs.net/> easy and fast solution for my domains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think that most people won't have a problem with any domain registrar as long as the price is decent, they don't cause any problems, and DNS management is sufficient.

I personally use 1and1 for all my domains, but it's just because of the above reasons.

When I feel i need a little more DNS zone magic, i set Amazon Route 53 as the nameservers and configure it there as needed.

<comment><USER8> It's all dandy til it's not. And some companies really screw you over when it's not.

Price should be the LAST concern on something like a domain name. Considering the difference is a few dollars and most people don't register more than a couple, it SHOULD be a non issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> if you search HN you will find that Namecheap has good reputation.

NFS is good too, but is a reseller of Public Domain Registry [http://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/section/domainregistration/a...](http://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/section/domainregistration/accredited#accredited)

</comment><comment><USER10> NFS: <https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone looking for a UK based company, I use Heart Internet - <http://heartinternet.com> \- and they're always been great for me. I used to use their shared hosting before I moved over to Linode, and even that was good.

</comment><comment><USER12> <https://www.coffeeanddomains.com> as discussed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2970659>

</comment><comment><USER13> Name.com bought about 5 domains and will move my other domains there from godaddy and 1and1, network solutions as they expire.

</comment><comment><USER14> In my experience Godaddy has been fine with just registering domains. I have my domains there but use PHPFog for my hosting.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been happily using Moniker.com for five or six years now. They have really solid bulk domain management.

</comment><comment><USER16> iwantmydomain.com I can't believe these guys are not mainstream yet. Hooked up to my Heroku app in 5 seconds, then setup gmail apps in another 5 seconds. I has zero complaints with these guys.

</comment><comment><USER17> Name for international domains like .im and Namecheap for others

</comment><comment><USER18> dreamhost. super easy to use and they have awesome support!

</comment><comment><USER19> In Canada, Blacksun.

</comment><comment><USER20> name.com, as recommended to me by many on here.

</comment><comment><USER21> I use Jumba, a local registrar.

</comment><comment><USER22> Inmotion - excellent support</comment>


GBA by Example: Drawing and Moving Backgrounds - <AUTHOR> http://kylehalladay.com/blog/tutorial/2017/04/11/GBA-By-Example-3.html <comment><USER2> Another excellent article.

Of note is that you can use alpha blending to have backgrounds overlap. Combined with parallax scrolling, it produces a nice effect.

If I recall correctly, there was a demo doing so included with the VisualHAM IDE.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like I have some more to figure out :) I haven't touched alpha blending on the GBA at all yet, but that sounds excellent.

I'm especially interested to see what the performance cost of blending is on the GBA, given how expensive it is on present day phones.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Proxyman – Modify HTTP Request/Response by JavaScript Code with Ease - <AUTHOR> https://docs.proxyman.io/scripting/script <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I'm Nghia Tran - Creator of Proxyman ([https://proxyman.io](https://proxyman.io)), which is a native macOS app that allows you to intercept HTTP/HTTPS traffic from your Macbook, iOS, and Android devices with ease.

Recently, we have shipped the __Scripting feature __that allows you:

\- Modify the HTTP Request/Response contents (Headers, Method, Host, Path, Domain, Body, ..) by writing Javascript Code. Imagine that you can do all advanced tools programmatically by JS Code. 10x faster and more productive.

\- Built-in Addons and Snippet Code for common tasks: Hashing, Base64, Compression, ...

\- Rewrite the Core v2 with Apple Swift-NIO - high-performance more reliable.

Personally, it's one of the proud features that I've shipped. JavascriptCore framework enables Proxyman to communicate between the JS code and Swift code. You can write your own addons and libraries to achieve what Proxyman is missing.

Hopefully, Proxyman could help our work (developer) becomes easier and has more time for family and friends. Welcome all feedback

Documentations:

\- Scripting Tool: [https://docs.proxyman.io/scripting/script](https://docs.proxyman.io/scripting/script) \- Addons and Snippet Code: [https://docs.proxyman.io/scripting/snippet- code](https://docs.proxyman.io/scripting/snippet-code) \- How to write your own JS addon: [https://docs.proxyman.io/scripting/write-your-own- addons](https://docs.proxyman.io/scripting/write-your-own-addons)</comment>


Show HN: My weekend project, a graphics/cellular automata playground - <AUTHOR> http://demoseen.com/langton.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a quick, dirty hack I wrote up using JS. It's based on Langton's ant, but adds a lot of new, fun stuff. You can do all sorts of interesting things with it -- a command reference is included. The "docs" were written in 5 minutes, so feel free to ask for clarification. Enjoy!

One of my favorites: [http://demoseen.com/langton.html#+.............................](http://demoseen.com/langton.html#+.......................................................................).

<comment><USER2> This is awesome. I'd love to add color generation options.

Here's my favorite so far:

<http://demoseen.com/langton.html#*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/...>.

[EDIT: and its cousin: [http://demoseen.com/langton.html#*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/....+-+...](http://demoseen.com/langton.html#*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/....+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-) ]

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been thinking about color stuff, but just can't come up with how to really do it. However, I think sub-45-degree turning is gonna happen soon. Probably 15-degree to start, and see what can happen there. 45 degree turns do provide some fun stuff, though...

Edit: Just made a small change that will make things look prettier, though. If you have the command string XYZW, the command string XYZWXYZW is 100% equivalent, except for the shading (due to the cell values looping around). So when you put in a command string, it's automagickly extended to > 64 bytes now, guaranteeing smooth shading.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps a given automaton could be told to open a bucket of paint and then have that paint expend itself over time (drop in color intensity, increase in opacity, or whatever).

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh nice, I quite like that. I'll try it out. Thanks!

Btw, just implemented yet another new feature: the '@' command is an ant bomb. If there are multiple ants in play, @ kills the one that triggers it. That lets you fork without completely annihilating your system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! I love the ease in which you can send other people your creations using the urls. I wonder if anyone would be up for developing this same type of project, but centered around Conway's Game of Life instead (one of my favorite cellular automata).

</comment><comment><USER4> My favorite: [http://demoseen.com/langton.html#*/*/.......*/*/*/*/...........](http://demoseen.com/langton.html#*/*/.......*/*/*/*/...........*/*/*/!*/....+-+-+-+-!+-+-+!-+-+-+-!..).

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice. I like the "organic" feel of the images you get.

[http://demoseen.com/langton.html#+/.<..<....++.........](http://demoseen.com/langton.html#+/.<..<....++......<....<....+..+).

</comment><comment><USER6> Tiny circles: [http://demoseen.com/langton.html#/<./<..](http://demoseen.com/langton.html#/<./<..).

</comment><comment><USER7> I love it! How about the addition of a stop button?

<comment><AUTHOR> Done, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> ideas:

allow number suffixes to mean a repeat of the previous token.

.6 would be equal to ......

also, allow the ant bomb with a number to only allow that many ants. @4 means kill this ant if there are more than four.

maybe allow subgrouping?

[+........]12 means 12 of these?

random numbers: .{13,24} means between 13 and 24 of .?

</comment><comment><USER9> awesome, I made a virus: [http://demoseen.com/langton.html#+>$!-=](http://demoseen.com/langton.html#+>$!-=)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's beautiful.</comment>