Bernie Sanders's Tax Plan Would Test an Economic Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/upshot/bernie-sanderss-tax-plan-would-test-an-economic-hypothesis.html?smid=tw-nytimesbusiness&smtyp=cur <comment><USER2> """ Mr. Sanders has proposed a headline top tax rate of 52 percent, applying only to incomes over $10 million ... "We do not assume taxpayers change their behavior," said Warren Gunnels, the policy director for the senator's campaign. """

... why?

The top marginal rate before Reagan was ~50%, and was lowered to 28%. Given this logic, you would expect that the US net tax revenue would have declined significantly in this period, which it did not. Basically, money just shifted from capital gains and corporate taxes to individual returns. If we increase the marginal rate again, it will likely just shift back without changing anything.

<comment><USER3> Sanders would also seek to double the capital gains rate for the richest 2%, and close various loopholes.

<comment><USER4> By what freaking magic is Congress going to pass ANY of this???

Has no-one been paying attention the past eight years?

You think he can do any of these changes with an executive order?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, change is hard, so we should just elect someone who isn't pursuing any.

<comment><USER6> I'm not american, so I may be missing the point. But isn't ck2's point that this a President doesn't have the authority for this? Are't these supposed to be congressional authorities? IE, to get these policies people should elect legislators with these views.

<comment><USER5> It's not an either-or thing -- you need to elect both local representatives AND a president who is interested in change.

A president cannot single handedly pass these changes, but he or she DOES exercise considerable influence on the kinds of things congress passes via the ability to refuse to sign things that congress does pass, so a president interested in change is a vital part of the process.

Consider that Barrack Obama campaigned on health care reform, and a health care reform package was passed during his first term. It's not a coincidence that that happened, even though the package had to be introduced by congress -- the electoral mandate handed to a president necessarily informs the legislative pressures congressional members feel, be it to support such a mandate, or to obstruct it, depending on the political inclinations of their base.

<comment><USER4> Health insurance had been attempted by the democrats a few times so there was definitely existing support. Also passed for children, also exists as medicare, medicaid. So it had examples for things being better, just needed a huge push.

Now the health insurance we ended up with is a horrible compromise (this is personal for me, I still cannot get health insurance).

And that's with so many congress people throwing themselves into the fire and literally ending their careers by voting for that horrible compromised bill.

How in the heck do you think the radical ideas Bernie is proposing is going to get 51% of the house and 51% of the Senate?

Everyone needs healthcare, so they can relate somehow.

Now compare that to the radical reshuffle that would be needed for "free" education (which to be clear I think is a good idea).

No way senate and house throw themselves into the fire for most of what Bernie is proposing, no way.

It's a non-issue anyway, there is no way in hell America is going to elect a 78 year old Jewish man who constantly waves his arms around when he talks.

He's a great guy and a great senator and he should be proud but this country is not going to make him president, hell the democrats won't even let him win the primary, no way.

ps. he also ran 4.5 minute miles in high school which is amazing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> High income tax rates do not "discourage greed", they merely cause it to manifest in different ways. Compensation structures in high tax jurisdictions like Europe reflect this, with myriad forms of lavish compensation for corporate executives that are technically not income, much more so than in locales where the taxes encourage people to simply write a check. An argument could be made that direct cash compensation in tax jurisdictions where that makes sense has the benefit of being a much more transparent kind of compensation.

Tax rates don't change human nature, they merely change incentives.

</comment><comment><USER8> Even the 73% optimal tax rate proposed by Saez and Diamond is based on bogus analysis. The point of taxation is not to maximize government revenue -- if the government wants to maximize revenue it could just print dollar bills. The point is to maximize purchasing power. Thus the downside of high taxes is not manifested in lower government revenue in dollar terms. It is manifested in fewer startups and fewer risky investments, and thus fewer new technologies and new products. Overly high taxes change the equation for risk taking -- why try to start a business when if you succeed, you won't keep that much of the winnings? If fewer people start businesses, the economy becomes more sclerotic as big corporations no longer have to face competition from upstarts.

The problem is that it is fundamentally impossible to quantitatively measure the impact of taxes on startups and economic dynamism. We know that if we taxed at 100%, we would likely have very few startups. But we do not know how much any given incremental change will hurt the economy. But as rough estimate, if the current tax rate is ~33%, and a tax rate of 100% would kill all startups, then a tax of 73% (the max rate proposed by Saez) would kill about half of startups (or rather, mean that they never exist. Immigrant founders would choose to start companies elsewhere, other founders would sell out early to a big company, and the big company would then just ruin the product like they normally do, etc.) Very roughly, such a tax rate might raise around an additional $100 billion. Would increasing total government revenue by 2% be worth killing half of all startups? That doesn't sound like a good trade to me. (Of course I am personally biased on this issue).

<comment><USER9> > why try to start a business when if you succeed, you won't keep that much of > the winnings?

I'd call $9.9 million or less a year pretty big "winnings" without hitting these tax thresholds. Plus the way tax brackets work mean you get a pretty big payday on the money below the top most threshold.

It is completely unrealistic to claim that people won't start businesses because any personal profits they make over $10mil/year will be taxed too highly. It is completely out of touch with the financial position that most normal people are in.

<comment><USER8> _It is completely unrealistic to claim that people won 't start businesses because any personal profits they make over $10mil/year will be taxed too highly. It is completely out of touch with the financial position that most normal people are in._

If the high tax rates only apply above $10 million, then the big impact would be on:

1\. The most skilled global talent, who might choose to start their business elsewhere, where there would be the prospect of becoming super rich. 2\. Angel investors and second-time founders. A major reason these founders would want to take risks, reinvest, and double down is to hit the home run, and have change-the-world amounts of money. 3\. First-time founders who sell-out early to a big company, rather than try to go big. This could really do great damage to the pipeline of new and great products, since big companies are often where innovation goes to die.

I do agree that a high percent tax rate on income over $10 million would not do much to discourage run-of-the-mill new businesses, such as restaurants and landscaping companies. But I think it could majorly discourage the types of startups which drive the continued advancement of technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am a Sander's supporter so I say this more theoretically than as a criticism of his plan:

It scares me that in our political structure that we feel like we need to experiment with the whole country. I understand that if we don't the super high income earners, in this case, would flee to cheaper areas but I sure prefer the idea of trying out large shifts in policy in more gradually widening areas than completely wholesale as we've been doing.

On a related note, what are the good software platforms for running economic simulations? Are any of them decent?

<comment><USER11> Federalism.

<comment> vezzy-fnord In practice, a marble cake federalism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Successful entrepreneurs often make huge lump sums when their company is acquired, usually after many years of hard work and low pay.

Sanders' plan to make taxes on capital gains equal to those on ordinary income and to increase the marginal tax rate to effectively > 80% (once state taxes are included if you live in CA or NY) is effectively a wealth transfer from the most productive part of the economy (new enterprise creation) to the least productive part (government).

Its a shame that we have a presidential candidate with this level of economic illiteracy that is still taken seriously by a large part of the country.

<comment><USER13> Government does not hold the money, though, it redistributes it again through contracts, credits, and payments.

All taxes are redistributive. If they weren't, they wouldn't need to exist-- i.e. if private income is already paying for everything the country needs, there is no need to use taxes to move it around. But of course, private income is not already paying for everything the country needs.

Consider a basic function of a national government: self defense. Protecting the nation benefits all citizens. But not all citizens have the same amount of wealth and income. So any taxes that pay for national defense, even if applied with one flat rate to every person, will redistribute wealth. It will confer the benefits of national defense equally on a person who paid $1 in taxes and a person who paid $1,000 in taxes. Security is a form of wealth; the $1 payer got a better deal than the $1,000 payer.

So, the concept that taxes are bad if they redistribute wealth is flawed, because redistribution is the entire point of taxes. Instead, to critique tax policies, we need to be specific about the taxes and payments and outcomes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am a Bernie supporter, but I have 2 issues: 1) I'm having a hard time understanding how such a policy shift could happen purely from the POTUS 2) Even if it did happen and we got single payer, I have a feeling it'd just turn in to another benefit for the employer. When employers no longer provide health insurance they'll just keep the money for themselves and the employees won't see the actual benefit, just the higher taxes. If my employer is currently paying 13k/yr for family coverage and all of a sudden doesn't have to, I doubt they'll be adding that, or even some percentage, to my salary.

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately, my founded belief is that if a Democrat gets elected president, the gang of Republicans that shut down government will also act to stop any action the D-President does.

We've already seen this with Obama. It's not hard to see them doing more of the same.

<comment><USER16> It's worth noting that any tax increase has to start as a bill in congress, so it wouldn't so much be Republicans stopping the action of a D-President as just not doing what he/she wants them to do.

Which...sounds like how the system is supposed to work? Checks & balances and all...

<comment><USER15> Well, it depends.

The POTUS is the head of the executive branch. And as far as I understand it, can order anyone of that branch to do stuff. That's also how "executive orders" work: because the POTUS is their boss.

It's also what Obama's doing to break the gridlock: make rules that you have to go to SCOTUS to solve, or pass bills that supersede them.

<comment><USER16> Sure, there are lots of things that can be done by executive orders. Changing tax rates, however, is not one of them.

<comment><USER15> But "Fees" are well within the POTUS purview.

So, make "Fees" that are means-tested (charge exorbitant those whom are rich). They aren't considered taxes. They're 'something else' (bullshit, but that's what the courts say).

<comment><USER17> > But "Fees" are well within the POTUS purview.

No, they aren't. (Except to the extent that fees have been authorized by statute and the authority to adjust them given the executive in the statute, but that clearly isn't what you are referring to, since you are talking about arbitrarily introducing new fees.)

The executive has very little independent (that is, not dependent on Congressional action) domestic policy authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A hypothesis that has been tested and proven in many countries around the world for decades.

Not long ago my Dad was paying 50% income tax on ~$75k+ AUD. We had a nice upper-middle class life, no worries.

<comment><USER19> But I'd hate to give up all these top rated hospitals. The US has more expensive health care, but the US also has most of the best hospitals.

[http://hospitals.webometrics.info/en/world](http://hospitals.webometrics.info/en/world)

<comment><USER18> Too bad tens (hundreds?) of millions of citizens can't afford to go there.

<comment><USER19> I don't know about most of the hospitals for sure, but I would assume they are similar. MD Anderson which is the top ranked cancer center in the world according to patient outcomes, doesn't turn anyone away based on their ability to pay. They either work it out or do the work as charity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This would be devastating to athletes. Take the NFL as an example. A player's earning window is very short. Once their career is over, they often suffer from health problems and lack of training to do anything else. I don't like the idea of taxing these guys at 70%+ when they're giving up their bodies for money to last them a lifetime.

I know many athletes continue to get endorsements, speaking fees, and other income after their playing days are over. But that is only really significant money for the stars, and continues to decline as they age.

Obviously pro athletes are a very small percentage of the population, but it's still interesting to consider how this impacts different professions.

<comment><USER21> > they often suffer from health problems and lack of training to do anything > else

So do millions of Americans who did _not_ have the chance to make millions playing sports in their twenties. A new tax plan would have the intention of making lives easier for folks struggling with low wages, ex-footballers included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Won't this push a lot of highly payed professionals into early retirement? Doctors, lawyers, and managers, at the point in their careers where they are the most experienced and capable, will likely decide in meaningful numbers it is no longer worth putting in the hours if they only get to keep 27% of what they earned.

<comment><USER22> Good, more room for the next generation.

<comment><USER23> Why would the next generation want to take up that room? Would you take up a career where despite long & expensive education, long hours, hard work, and lives-in-your-hands responsibility, you kept just 27% of your income? would you put in a million dollars of effort to net a quarter of that in return?

<comment><USER17> > Why would the next generation want to take up that room?

Because they want the things money can buy.

> Would you take up a career where despite long & expensive education, long > hours, hard work, and lives-in-your-hands responsibility, you kept just 27% > of your income?

Maybe, maybe not, but, anyway, that's not how marginal rates in a progressive tax system work. Even if the _marginal_ rate that kicks in at $10 million is 73%, that means you only keep 27% of the amount _after_ $10 million, and some greater amount of the part below $10 million. Obviously, an increase in the top marginal tax rate decreases the incentive to work to _increase_ income once you've reached the annual income level at which the higher tax rate applies, but doesn't it really hurt anyone that people already making at least $10 million/year prioritize making _additional_ income less over other priorities?

<comment><USER23> Ronald Regan, as a movie star, regularly _didn 't_ make movies precisely because the progressive tax system would head into confiscatory levels making the effort worthless to him. Such rates denied both the public at large from products they wanted, and the government tax revenue. I don't want my world to actively discourage the talented from producing.

I want to _encourage_ people to make insane amounts of money, because that is largely the result of far-and-above productivity which everyone else benefits from. Jobs are created, desirable products/services are generated at affordable costs, money is invested (even banked "cash" gets loaned, and extravagant luxuries create markets), and the general standard of living is raised.

The cost of discouraging effort is _never_ included in these "soak the rich, redistribute the wealth" equations.

<comment><USER17> > Ronald Regan, as a movie star, regularly didn't make movies precisely > because the progressive tax system would head into confiscatory levels > making the effort worthless to him.

Really, if the greatest cost to society you can point to of increasing the top marginal income tax rates is "fewer Ronald Reagan movies", I don't think you are making a very strong case.

> Such rates denied both the public at large from products they wanted, and > the government tax revenue.

The case that it denied government net tax revenue requires more than Reagan not making movies, it requires a whole-economy comparison of what activity occurred instead and the actual taxes applied against that activity.

> I want to encourage people to make insane amounts of money, because that is > largely the result of far-and-above productivity which everyone else > benefits from.

This "trickle down" concept is a widely held article of faith in some parts of the population, but not a position well supported by evidence.

> The cost of discouraging effort is never included in these "soak the rich, > redistribute the wealth" equations.

The "cost of discouraging effort" is very hard to empirically establish without ambiguity, and there are sharply different opinions on what it actually _is_. What proponents _think_ that cost is usually accounted for in where the various parameters are set; people who have different views of what the cost is, obviously, disagree that these settings are correct.

<comment><USER23> Pardon me for using a simple high-profile example to make the point. Detailing the failings of socialism in a mathematically provable form would take far more text than you are willing to read. As you note, it is very hard to empirically establish without ambiguity the economic realities of taking from those who earn and giving it to those who don't. Perhaps, given the understandable disagreements, we should adhere to the notion of individual freedoms which the Founding Fathers enacted for the USA and let those who wish to pool their wealth do so, and those who would rather decide for themselves do so; alas, we face the votes of those seeking to force, thru threat of government-sanctioned violence, others to adhere to economic principles they deeply disagree with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If the high tax rate only applies to ordinary income, won't this just shift compensation away from ordinary income and towards stock-based or alternative compensation?

<comment><USER25> Yes. In fact anyone earning that much has already shifted away from ordinary income. Famously, this is what Warren Buffet does to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. The solution is taxing capital gains the same as ordinary income.

The next level beyond that is to shift earnings into personal corporations which are taxed at a corporate tax rate and enjoy other protections. This is like what Zuckerburg recently did.

The final dodge is to move earnings overseas much like most corporations do today.

With enough money there are always loop holes to exploit. I'm in favor of closing as many as possible. If there's someone out there rich enough to found their own sovereign nation in the Pacific, there's not much we can do about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _" Mr. Sanders...proposed a...top tax rate of 52 percent...When you combine it with other taxes that apply to income...it would add up to a combined tax rate of over 73 percent"_

I'm trying to imagine the scenario under which this would get through Congress unscathed.

<comment><USER17> The scenario is this "the idea is aggressively sold during the campaign, and is a key issue in not only the Presidential election but a substantial number of Congressional elections".

Of course, even if Sanders is elected, its likely that there won't be sufficient support to.adopt his programs unmodified in Congress, and some alternative or compromise will be necessary. The same is true, for that matter, of any Presidential candidate.

Part of why you campaign on plans is to shift the public dialogue and set the groupies ds for the eventual compromises that are necessary as part of governing when you aren't a dictator. Holding back preemptively doesn't help that, it just cedes ground to the other side before the work of compromise starts.

<comment><USER26> >> is a key issue in not only the Presidential election but a substantial number of Congressional elections

Are there a substantial number of Democratic congresspersons that would line up behind Bernie's tax proposals?

Edit: Yes, I get how it works. There's a point, though, where reaching too far is counterproductive.

<comment><USER17> The key question is "will their be in 2017"; there is an election for 100% of the House and 1/3 of the Senate at the same time as the Presidential election, and the policy proposals of the Presidential nominees of the various parties are likely to be salient issues in each of those elections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I saw this article listing the proposed new tax brackets.

[http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2016/02/07/bernie- san...](http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2016/02/07/bernie-sanders- income-tax-brackets-how-much-would.aspx)

Personally, I can't afford a house in the valley, and the new brackets would cost me an additional $10-15k/yr, putting home ownership out of reach for a long time. In fact, the additional $10-15k/yr would put me close to not being able to afford my rent.

That's even before looking at the change to capital gains, which would tax them at the marginal rate.

</comment><comment><USER28> It seems a lot of people are misinformed in this thread about Bernie's plan. Here is a quick video explaining Berine's plan to change Washington (by Robert Reich): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfIhonVoFSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfIhonVoFSg)

tldr; Bernie wants a political revolution of voting progressives which will put new Senators/Congressmen(women) in DC, which will allow for new FDR like changes to occur.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love his spirit but absolutely nothing Bernie is selling can pass Congress which means absolutely nothing will change if he is elected.

You really think he could survive running for re-election at 80 years old?

Anyone old enough to remember Reagan will know what happens to people that old in the white house.

Not crazy about Hillary but I could live with her.

If Trump is elected, I'm somehow moving to Canada, not because of him, because of the 51% of people who elected him and having to live with them after surviving Bush.

</comment><comment><USER23> Being halfway thru reading "Atlas Shrugged", I find it bewildering that on a site devoted to promoting the best of capitalistic productivity, so many posters adhere to compulsory redistribution of wealth confiscated from the productive.

<comment><USER29> It's 'Hacker News', not 'Objectivist News'.

<comment><USER23> It's a branch of Y-Combinator, funding startups with the expectations of high rewards for high risk & effort _without_ strangers confiscating some 75% of profits. It's the discussion forum for real-world objectivism in action.

<comment><USER29> Holy crap! I only wrote that half-jokingly, not expecting that you were took objectivism seriously, but you do!

I don't take Rand's philosophy seriously for much the same reason I don't take postmodernism as a whole seriously: the Continental approach (which she employed) lacks any real rigour[1]. Great for fiction, but not so good for being _useful_. As well as that, we objectively (see what I did there!) know that some of her important points (such as on causation, determinism, and free-will) are bunk, and it's not as if she was even particularly consistent on them anyway.

The best I can say to you is to go read Hume and come back to me: he was a much better philosopher than Rand, and had much more interesting and useful things to say about the world. Alternatively, maybe try to broaden your horizons with the Rationally Speaking Podcast ([http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/](http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/)). But if you don't want to, that's fine: you do you.

[1] Even with the continental school philosophers I _do_ take at least a little more seriously, such as Nietzsche and Camus, it's more on the level of 'oh, that's an interesting idea', 'hmm... that's an interesting line of though', and 'oh, that's an interesting story' rather than anything seriously _useful_. And Rand doesn't even get to that level. I'm totally OK with her loathing Kant[2] and thinking Marxism sucks, but she doesn't offer much else of any depth, which, I guess, at least nothing that's been published.

[2] My personal opinion of Kant is that he was a stick-in-the-mud prude, and that deontological arguments, such as those Kant made, fall down when exposed to the real world, even though deontology itself can be a useful tool.

<comment><USER23> Rand makes for a convenient & well-known reference when making a brief point on a casual discussion board.

I have a similar reaction to many of the "soak the rich" types posting on this thread: I don't expect they take Bernie & Bolshevism seriously but...they do!

<comment><USER29> If Rand is the best reference, then I'm not sure those boards are all that well worth taking part in.

Sanders isn't a Maxist/Marxian by a long shot. He might _describe_ himself as a democratic socialist, but he's really a social democrat with much more in common with the aims of the Fabian Society than anything else: his ideas are pretty much those of any European social democratic party (such as the British Labour party, Dutch PvdA and GroenLinks, German SPD, French Parti socialiste), and whatever you might somehow think, _none_ of those parties are hives of Bolshevism.

Also, whatever about the 'soak the rich' thing (which I haven't seen much evidence for), only one commenter seems to take Marxian though seriously here, and even they said that he's doing himself a disservice by using the label 'democratic socialist'[1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11066351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11066351)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This might work in other countries but I am skeptical it would work in the united states. I do like sanders ideas of reforming wall street:

[https://berniesanders.com/issues/reforming-wall- street/](https://berniesanders.com/issues/reforming-wall-street/)

If he gets elected and can actually deliver on that promise, hopefully he can manage to siphoned off enough tax base from wall street alone to fund some of his other ideas.

</comment><comment><USER31> As most middling earners, I'd support taxing people at extraordinary incomes, but at the same time, I don't think it's prudent to shock the economy with such a thing. Gradual does it, also work with other OECDs so that you have framework whereby you don't have people becoming Russian residents for the purposes of evading extraordinary taxes, thus defeating the whole purpose of the hikes.

<comment><USER32> The U.S. taxes citizens on worldwide income, so becoming a Russian resident is not likely to help. There is also a significant expatriation tax for those wishing to renounce their citizenship. I suppose you could move to Puerto Rico or expatriate well in advance of any expected earnings.

However you're absolutely correct that there are unfathomable unseen costs and effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a progressive (but a highly-taxed one) I'd like to see defense spending cut by 50%+ first. That's not going to happen either.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would like to see Mr Sanders proposed rates for the middle class and what range of income he deems to be middle class. Middle class in SF or NYC is much different than say Detroit, MI.

Housing costs, cost of living, and local taxes are not really factored into the current federal tax rates, and higher rates on the middle class could hurt a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER35> Of course, this assumes Sanders even makes it to the general election. Despite his polling, the skeptic in me thinks that the Clinton campaign will be the Democratic candidate on the ticket in November....public support be damned, she's the candidate that the establishment wants.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think Sanders has radical ideas that will not work in America... I also support him for this reason.

We do not need to be the next Norway, but we should have much better healthcare, education and intolerance of greed. I think that his fresh ideas will really bring this to fruition.

<comment><USER37> He is running a propagandistic campaign that seems to be more about 'bending the stick' of public perception of what is mainstream political/economic thinking in North America.

And I think that is good and I wish him well.

But for myself, as someone who would call himself a kind of Marxian socialist, I wish he'd stop calling himself a socialist. He is doing both himself (at best a Euro-style social democrat) and socialism a disservice.

<comment><USER38> _' bending the stick' of public perception_

I prefer the term "opening the Overton window". ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It bothers me that our politicians always talk about taxing labor income but never talk about taxing land values and/or capital. We need more economists coming up with tax plans rather than politicians.

(I say this as someone who will vote for Bernie Sanders)

<comment><USER40> That's a real problem. Wealth and income are radically different numbers for people at the top end. High income taxes end up punishing the upper middle class instead of the truly wealthy who own assets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The US already tested the "trickle down" economic hypothesis.

<comment><USER23> "Trickle down" was a deliberate mischaracterization by opponents of Regan's economic plans. What it construes wasn't implemented.

<comment><USER15> Yes, and the Capitalists whom Reagan's plans helped ended up doing what with the gains?

That's right. They saved it. They didn't "invest" or whatever crap was spewed then. They didn't hire more people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Maybe we should move into doing a luxory sales tax instead? 100% sales tax on yatches and cars over 100k? 20% tax on homes over one million?

<comment><USER42> People might also be more supportive of taxing things they'd never dream of buying.

<comment><USER43> Unlikely, a lot of americans believe they'll be rich soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why not make it cheaper to pay taxes than to pay accountants, lawyers, and financial strategists to avoid those taxes in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER45> there's a fundamental flaw in the reasoning: if single payer healthcare plans save money, why do we need higher tax rates?

<comment><USER46> There's a very simple answer: the middle class pays very low income taxes in America. Nearly all of the income tax burden is on the top 25%. If you want to shuttle over half the population into a new single payer health insurance system, they're almost all going to be a (big) net drain. It's an inherent consequence of a highly progressive tax system.

Your typical middle class single person is now spending $300 to $400 per month on health insurance (employer sponsored is closer to $100 per month, but that's merely subsidization), and you want to shift them into single payer, then you have to recover that $300 to $400 via taxation.

The median in the US has an effective income tax of about 3% to 5%. Put another way, putting all of that toward their new single payer insurance, wouldn't come close to covering how much they'll cost you (and that's before getting into family cost structures).

<comment><USER15> > the middle class pays very low income taxes in America

Citation needed.

There's "fees", "taxes" and all sorts of hidden ways that eat into the middle class. Not only that, but how much "Fees" were in the eggs you bought? None, right? Not really: they're just bundled in and hidden.

Ever get a speeding ticket? That's a fucking tax. Property __tax __, car "license plates" \- tax. Gas has taxes, and a lot of them. As does alcohol. And then there's sales tax- just because you sold something. Hell, there's taxes for dying.

But myopically, it looks small. I'd wager that these 'little bits' here and there by far exceeds the percent paid in taxes than the top 1%.. and we know it hurts the middle class far worse.

<comment><USER47> The top 10% (over $125K/yr) pay 70% of all income tax in the US. In 1990, it was 55%.[1]

[1][http://www.ntu.org/foundation/page/who-pays-income- taxes](http://www.ntu.org/foundation/page/who-pays-income-taxes)

<comment><USER15> But they at most work with IRS numbers regarding federal income tax.

Lets be real here: any money that's leaving my pocket that goes towards "compliance", "fees", "fines", "tickets", or what have you is __Tax __.

Now, I don't have a problem with tax itself (as a concept). I get that services need to be paid for, and that's us.

But what I want to know, is out of my paycheck, how much really is taxed? No one can answer that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programming Doesn't Suck Or At Least, It Shouldn't - <AUTHOR> http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/programming-doesnt-suck-or-at-least-it-shouldnt/

<comment><USER2> Programming in Java and C/C++ feels like putting my balls in a vice, personally. No language is perfect (Mostly because languages tend to copy from C/C++ or Java (See: Go)), but damn do those two make it hard.

<comment><USER3> It would give your statement more weight to know what paradigm you prefer.

<comment><USER2> I started with Ruby, and Python, so I like open and clear reading/writing, but even Ruby/Python tends to lay it on thick. It's like the developers think they have to add all this syntax just to be popular.

      define fib_seq with (x,y)
        ..
      end

I guess what I really want is a programming language that's really fucking easy to teach people.

C/C++ and Java are absolutely not it.

<comment> loup-vaillant Chris Okasaki wrote such a language. One of it's features was mandatory indentation (like python). Why mandatory indentation was effective at making a language learn-able, he didn't really know for sure, but he suspected it is because there is less visual noise.

If you want to make a super easy-to-teach, I suggest you try the following:

(1) Mandatory indentation. This is one of the most influencing factors.

(2) As little syntax as you can afford.

(3) An interactive loop. It makes Tinkering easy.

(4) A simple, probably dynamic, type system (numbers, chars and functions are probably enough). If you go the static route, there is no other way than Hindley-Milner based type systems. They are quite complex and their paranoia annoy some students, though.

The closest I can think of right now would be a scheme without parentheses, like in <http://www.genyris.com/>

<comment><USER2> This is great advice, thanks :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Greenwald: Snowden Has Provided 'Thousands' Of Docs, 'Dozens' Are Newsworthy - <AUTHOR> http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/greenwald-snowden-knows-he-s-going-to-end

<comment><USER2> I feel really jaded for daring to think it, but I really hope he has the releases set up on a deadman's switch.

<comment><USER3> Well he did allude to all of the insane things he supposedly had access to like operative names, safe houses, etc. even saying something to the extend of bring the NSA down in an afternoon. If I was going to have deadman's switch, it would be all that stuff. He doesn't seem like the type to do it outright, he doesn't seem to want to cause that level of chaos and damage (if indeed he does have the power), but who knows what will happen if he shows dead somewhere.

<comment><USER2> I missed that; can you provide a link?

<comment><USER4> It's in the video interview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really excited! I like the incremental release, I think it builds momentum in the way that a full dump could not. Just as one story has been thoroughly explored, the next one comes out.

<comment><USER6> Basic PR. Dump bad news (at a time when reporters are unlikely to pick it up), trickle out good news, and it gives you a more positive image. They are doing the opposite - trying to get maximum outrage over the stuff they leak.

That's why companies often need PR consultants. Because they are tempted to try to keep stuff under wraps, even when it's slowly trickling out. They need an adult to tell them "people will find out anyway, so just dump the whole thing in a press release on a Friday, so you get it all out in one headline". Plus, reporters will be reporting _your_ spin on it, and you look like you've made an honest mistake and are coming clean.

The NSA should probably figure out what's getting leaked, then spoil the PR attack by coming clean. Somehow, I can't see them doing it.

<comment><USER7> I think this is a pretty sophisticated PR strategy, actually, especially with regards the timing of the disclosure of Snowden's identity. It's not as formulaic as you describe...

They release some tantalizing tidbits (they are tidbits, aren't they? we already had heard about the metadata in 2006, didn't we?), and at the peak of interest (where did this come from?!?) release Snowden's identity in a carefully crafted video. They maximize control over his story before the government even has any idea who he is, before they can even think how to paint a picture of him in a negative light. Once the media has spent its powder covering Snowden (letting him speak for himself in a gorgeous HD video), there is little the government can do to add to the story; Snowden's identity is largely frozen in the picture that Greenwald et al have painted, while the government PR machine is struggling to come up with a cohesive strategy, let alone a response.

Then, after the Snowden story has run its course (at the point where talking about Snowden any more will mean losing viewers), they drop the big disclosures. At least that's my prediction. So what might the next disclosures be? This is pure paranoid speculation, but I think Snowden hinted at it in the video: the government _is_ recording all telephone conversations, but storing it according to a legal theory that says that as long as no one actually listens to the recordings, they don't need a warrant. They obtain a warrant that is individual-specific, but instead of using that warrant to capture evidence of current actions, they use that warrant to retrieve all of the target's past activities.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't hurt that he presents very well on camera, either.

<comment><USER9> It's amazing how calmly he talks. Alex Jones could learn a thing or two.

<comment><USER10> I think Alex Jones just acts like that because he's trying to rile up the rubes as part of his act. Or cause he's crazy, but I tend to think his shtick is a moneymaking act.

<comment><USER9> He definitely plays it up for entertainment value, but he's been a true-blue believer for a long time. I even agree with most of his principles and small portion of his facts (I don't like to use the word "crazy", which can equally apply to all of us or none of us), but he's missing proper barometers when it comes to skepticism, empathy and tact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Scary that Greenwald has to be quite so specific about Snowden's state of mind. Between the lines, he's not about to jump off a bridge. It suggests that they're genuinely worried about what someone might do to Snowden.

<comment><USER2> It's bordering on conspiracy theory territory, but "threat to the government commits 'suicide'" is so expected, it's cliche.

<comment><USER12> And as such I wish Snowden had a verified Twitter account.

<comment><USER12> I hope I wasn't misunderstood. I'd want the Twitter account so he could verify to the public that he was still alive.

<comment><USER2> I don't think it would be terribly difficult for the NSA to gain access to a Twitter account if they wanted to.

<comment><USER12> I was going to say something about PGP signature but obviously not going to fit in 140 characters. G+ Though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really dislike the way Wikileaks and this journalist get huge dumps of information then trickle feed it out, and ultimately don't end up releasing most of it. It's almost like they are deliberately giving the USG enough time to shut them down. Infuriating would be an understatement.

<comment><USER14> There was an NPR interview a few years ago with someone at Wikileaks (must have been Assange, do they have another public face?). They used to release information in dumps, nobody paid attention. Teasing it out was the only way to get the media to bite. It's not a very appealing strategy to those who just want the information, but a response to the current state of affairs, I guess.

<comment><USER13> Well...provide the dump to as many other journalists as you can first, then trickle it out. It just doesn't seem like a valid reason to sit on the whole lot yourself, surely providing a guarantee that the information will get out eventually is more important than the media management aspect.

And besides, based on this theory, the stream of information being released should speed up, as once you have the worlds attention, they will pay attention to more. But we tend to see an initial release of explosive information, followed by a gradually diminishing stream of information - I am thinking back to Cablegate in particular - until it basically switches off and you never hear anything again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Less talk and more publishing. The longer they discuss just how great the additional documents are going to be, the more time the NSA/USA has time to try convince the guardian not to publish...

<comment><USER16> If the Guardian didn't publish him, @ggreenwald still has some 171k followers on Twitter.

<comment><USER17> If anyone reading this doesn't have strong allegiance to either political party, you might enjoy his twitter as much as I do [https://twitter.com/ggreenwald](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald)

I'm almost disappointed by this leak because of how it might affect the diversity of mr greenwald's tweets.

<comment><USER18> For a while. Don't worry, Greenwald will always have plenty of slimy things to report on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is disappointing how news organizations seek to gravitate towards making themselves the center of whatever story they're telling.

Isn't the role of narrator an incredibly important enough part of every tale?

<comment><USER20> I am not sure if there is a more effective method of spreading the knowledge however. If it was all dumped at once very few people would be able to absorb it and understand it in a timely fashion and many would probably give up and move on. Yes they benefit by drawing it out, but the same technique seems to elicit deeper impact on the public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems like many have missed some things about the slides that were leaked. Only five pages of the 41 page presentation has been released so far[0]. The fifth page was released after the initial release and contains the phrase "directly from the servers"[1]. The rest of the presentation allegedly also contain more technical details[2].

[0] [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/snowden- powerpoint/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/snowden-powerpoint/)

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism- server...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server- collection-facebook-google)

[2] [https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/343410562245480449](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/343410562245480449)

<comment><USER22> Is Greenwald technical enough to understand the content? Or is it just going to be buzzwords that have no real technical meaning?

The slice deck already looks like someone was presenting to non-technical management - why would they have put highly technical details in there too?

<comment><USER23> That the slide deck isn't technical doesn't mean Snowden didn't have access to the technical stuff too.

Greenwald presumably has plenty of access to technical advisors at the Guardian and elsewhere who can help sift through.

<comment><USER24> Haven't you got the memo yet? According to the media we can't trust Snowden because he didn't graduate high school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there any sense of the law which would allow US authorities to seize or otherwise prohibit these additional documents from being published?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure Peter King would say yes. He, or some others, would probably try to spin it to fall under the Espionage Act[1] or something.

Whether or not that would stand up to Supreme Court scrutiny is, I think, an open question.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917)

<comment><USER26> Peter King makes my teeth hurt. I'm really shocked that guy says what he does without any irony for his obvious authoritarian overtones.

<comment><USER27> Also the fact that he is a supporter of the IRA, both in his statements for the past 40 or so years, and also materially (back during the Troubles). How the hell does a guy like that end up as Committee Chairman for Homeland Security?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Maybe this time around they'll ask for comment or whatever from the concerned sources so that they can avoid publishing so much incorrect info this time around.

I found it really hard to get angry at the PRISM stuff considering that pretty much every major article went through major revisions over the following 48 hours. Also, the "direct access to servers" meme that was categorically false doesn't help to take it seriously.

When the people behind the scandal can spend the entire news cycle raising legitimate criticisms and contradictions to the published articles, it's hard to get mad.

<comment><USER5> >Also, the "direct access to servers" meme that was categorically false doesn't help to take it seriously

I don't think this was ever determined. The documents _specifically_ stated that access to the servers is "direct," and Glenn Greenwald seems to be sticking to his guns on that point.

<comment><USER29> Please describe (in a sketched terms) a technical method by which anyone could get "direct access" to the user-data servers of Facebook, AOL, Google, etc.

Remember that each company has its own homegrown user-data data storage format, homegrown distributed data storage system, homegrown datacenters(!), and firewalls. These companies aren't running MySQL or Oracle, and these systems are constantly being updated with new features and data model migrations.

Does that seem plausible? Contrast against what has been freely admitted since NSLs started appearing:

Each company sets up a "safe-deposit" server for delivering specific one-off subsets of subpoena'd data, and the company's engineers deliver data to that server upon demand.

<comment><USER5> I am a "big data" engineer, and I have _no idea_ how they could do something like this. However my inability to theorize a potential method of collecting this data is not evidence for/against its existence. Remember the NSA employs some of the most brilliant software engineers and mathematicians on the planet whose job it is over the course of years to figure this sort of stuff out. I'm sure they've got a few tricks up their sleeve. Time will tell of course, and more revelations are reportedly "imminent"

<comment><USER30> This. To paraphrase a favorite Daniel Dennett quote: don't mistake lack of imagination for insight into feasibility.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pondering Homejoy's Failure - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rockstox/an-inside-look-at-homejoy-s-failure-391d74524a19 <comment><USER3> I think a theme that I keep hearing re: HomeJoy (I was a customer in 3 cities over 3-4 years) is they weren't solving the right problem.

My problem as a customer wasn't finding a cleaner, but finding and retaining a cleaner I liked, was good, and I trusted. Their platform did none of the latter, and barely did the former.

I couldn't pick cleaners based on rating. I couldn't even see rating. It took forever until I could request the same person come every week. And, I knew in the back of my mind I was paying Homejoy a premium that the cleaner didn't see. For what? They were begging clients and cleaners to setup an outside relationship. Price goes down for the client, cleaner gets paid more. Win/win.

In my opinion what Homejoy should've done is paid for the connection - <USER2> my time preferences, match me with the best cleaner in my price range. Then I pay the cleaner directly. If Homejoy wants to setup stripe, collect just the 3% fee.

Charge the cleaner for access to the platform, or charge me for the matchmaking. Or both.

How do you get around the 1099 -> W2 issue? Have a series of training classes that the cleaners can optionally take, list this on their profile, allow them to level up.

Provide services to allow individual cleaners to differentiate them from the pack (having dealt with dozens or more individual cleaners, there were clearly some that were just doing it as an experiment and some that made this their career).

Yes, HomeJoy maybe wanted to treat cleaners like replaceable robots, but humans don't work that way. As the author stated, Homejoy was solving a human problem with engineering.

<comment><USER4> What you are talking about is essentially what Thumbtack does, and not surprisingly Thumbtack is a much healthier business.

It is also nice that such a platform works pretty similarly across hundreds of different service categories, whereas such an ultra-specific platform like Homejoy only works for a few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This epitomizes the arrogance and drowning self-absorbedness of Bay Area startups. And it does it in a Medium post.

And wow, there are some real gems in this post. For example:

"Customer interactions happen inside of their homes (anything that went wrong was grossly amplified)"

What did you expect? THIS IS WHAT YOU WERE SELLING.

"Client expectations vary wildly"

Yup, different people like different things. News at 11.

"High cleaner turn-over when product quality demands consistency"

What did you expect? Any warm body off the street can be trusted to go in some stranger's home?

"I could go on, but the point I am trying to make is that the Homejoy team was exceptionally talented and did amazing things given how punishing the industry was."

Oh I'm sorry. What you were trying to do was _hard_. That's because you were doing it wrong in the first place.

"To be fair legal constraints did throw a wrench into some of our plans."

For serious? _To be fair_? Fair to whom?

"Given what I've taken away from Homejoy I don't look at it like a failure. I think there's a morbid curiosity about what went wrong with a failed startup."

I don't give two shits about your failed startup. You failed for patently obvious reasons. _You trivialized the problem_ which, for a company founded by so-called two engineers, is the ultimate sin of engineering.

"Homejoy will always be more synonymous with success than failure."

Delusions of grandeur.

<comment><USER6> It's very common for the reasons for business failure to seem obvious in retrospect. That's because building a successful business requires getting _a lot_ of independently trivial things right, and doing so under very tight time and resource constraints. If you're a commenter on Hacker News or a student in an MBA course, you have the time to focus on what went wrong, and of course it seems obvious. If you're an entrepreneur building the business, your attention was probably elsewhere, and it's likely that the you didn't even think about the things that killed your business.

<comment><USER7> > If you're an entrepreneur building the business, your attention was probably > elsewhere, and it's likely that the you didn't even think about the things > that killed your business.

Great point, and it also explains the "always a success rather than a failure in our minds" perspective. From their point of view, they just kept fixing one problem after another, which looks (and feels!) like progress.

Unfortunately, feeling good != doing good. It's unenviably difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, even after it had failed Homejoy was one of the few startups YC specifically called out as on the home page as examples of what the program could provide. I've only just now seen it updated not to include that section.

What was it about Homejoy that got it so much attention, promotion from its investors and press from the media? What's the underrated startup that everyone has been overlooking during the same period?

</comment><comment><USER9> Two years ago I was wondering why there was such a glut of these cleaning startups. The entire idea of applying the Uber model just didn't make sense - one is a commodity product with no way to bypass the middleman while the other requires letting someone into your home and encourages going off platform.

Dug up the old post for those interested - [http://dangoldin.com/2013/12/09/why-are-there-so-many- cleani...](http://dangoldin.com/2013/12/09/why-are-there-so-many-cleaning- startups/)

</comment><comment><USER10> > _Getting to that consistent Homejoy Cleaning proved to be way out of reach. > As a result each product interaction could be wildly different, unlike the > consistent factory packaged product vision that we were pushing. As a former > colleague put it "Our product should've been positioned closer to finding > the right match on OkCupid, as opposed to finding the right macbook"._

Interesting quote that IMHO nicely sums up the differences between something like Homejoy and something like Uber. Not everything can be neatly packaged in a one-size-fits-all service.

<comment><USER11> Homejoy would not have succeed even if every one of their customers were to fall head-over-heels in love with their cleaner. Homejoy's business model was fundamentally flawed and no tweaking or pivoting could ever solve this. There was no problem that could be solved with technology. No solution = no business.

The only interesting thing out of the whole homejoy experiment was in exposing the shallowness of some VC's business acumen. I wish we would see a reasoned explanation from the investors of why they put their limited partner's money into Homejoy.

<comment><USER7> > I wish we would see a reasoned explanation from the investors of why they > put their limited partner's money into Homejoy.

"There's a 0.1% chance we could 10,000x'd our investment. It might be the next Uber or Airbnb or [[insert_supposed_unicorn]]. You don't want to look like a dinosaur who missed out on the next big thing, do you? It'll only cost you a fragment of your $$. C'mon. For Glory! For Frodo!"

When it fails: "Eh, what can you do. Startups, amirite?"

<comment><USER11> This might be accurate, but it is hardly reasoned :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A couple things stood out to me about Homejoy: -When seeing the founder Adora speak at YC female founders day, she talked about doing cleaning herself to learn how things worked, and something along the lines of it being embarrassing if she'd been "seen" by someone she knew. That underlined to me there wasn't really a respect for cleaners. It seemed strange to start a business where you think it's embarrassing to be one of your own staff. -When I did order Homejoy, the cleaner was sooo bad/slow that I felt that they'd secretly sent me one of their engineers who'd never cleaned an apartment before. He just seemed lost. He spent an hour and 45 minutes just cleaning my bathroom which was really strange. When he left, I realized that he'd moved the plunger out of the bathroom and left it on the bedroom floor and I had to move it back! It was just weird, an experienced cleaner wouldn't move a plunger into a clean area and just leave it there! I wrote a long email to them about the experience and they offered to send someone back to finish up the clean - of course I'd finished cleaning myself by then and said I wasn't interested. I didn't feel they really took my feedback to heart - it was detailed an took a while to write, but they didn't respond to any part of it directly.

</comment><comment><USER13> _> Homejoy was led by two software engineers. Both wildly talented humans, but both wildly out of place given the nature of the problem we were solving._

A tangent: This is something that scares me about many Bay area startups. What do software developers _really_ care about home maintenance? This is a serious question. Some startups you can tell the founders are in love with the idea. The founders ARE the idea, and they're devoted to it. They believe it entirely independent of making money.

Home care seems like a nuisance and a real world problem. But why devote your life to it? Again, this is a serious question, not a stab at Homejoy. It doesn't seem like a problem that anyone could seriously put their life's work into. It's not like you're a home repair person crafting the finest cabinets you can for clients. From an outsider's perspective, this seems like the founders could only superficially be in it for the money. For the

 _> majestic startupville spell_

, but not for for the true, deep love of the idea.

I've seen the Stanford engineer dropout start the clothing company. The bored engineer spin up yet another time tracking app that they don't use themselves. The car-less developer vagrant try to "disrupt" auto sales. I've been there before, brainstorming "startup" ideas. I'm glad none of them panned out, because I can't imagine being attached to any of them. Fringe ideas to make money and solve problems I didn't have.

I don't know what makes a company successful, but to me a red flag is a mismatch of founder lifestyle and true, obvious investment in the idea. Can a successful startup be founded by someone who's only in it for the money? Probably, and many Bay area startups are probably in that category. The money's here, after all.

Is it an unattainable ideal that the founders of a company truly believe in the product, entirely independent of financial success? Does that correlate with company success? I'd like to think so, even if just a fantasy. As an outsider, Homejoy doesn't appear to fall into that category, because I have a hard time believing two software engineers cared about the idea at their core, outside the obvious desire for something you build to succeed.

<comment><USER14> I don't know much about Homejoy or its founders, however, I wouldn't assume that they weren't dedicated to their idea. I believe that being excited about something is largely a choice. I, personally, could easily be excited about a cleaning related start up. And trust me, I hate cleaning... but there is a huge difference between the act of cleaning and making a cleaning service.

Maybe you are right, but I think it is awfully speculative to say that they didn't "[care] about the idea at their core."

<comment><USER13> I'm actually hoping someone will reply and show me why I'm wrong, because it's a scary view. As a software engineer in the startup scene I personally don't see how they _could_ care about the idea deeply, based on all of my experiences. I'm hoping someone has an experience that proves me wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This (both the post and the comments here) are very interesting to me from a "some people are intrinsically optimistic and some people are intrinsically pessimistic" point of view.

> Homejoy and 'fail' have gotten tethered together in the tech headlines > recently but for myself and many of my colleagues Homejoy will always be > more synonymous with success than failure.

Rationalization is a hell of a drug And I don't mean that in a snarky way– synthesized happiness every bit as "real" as "genuine" happiness. The brain doesn't discriminate.

Dan Gilbert did a great TED talk [1] about this:

> "Who are these characters who are so damn happy? The first one is Jim > Wright. Some of you are old enough to remember: he was the chairman of the > House of Representatives and he resigned in disgrace when this young > Republican named Newt Gingrich found out about a shady book deal he had > done. He lost everything. The most powerful Democrat in the country lost > everything. He lost his money, he lost his power. What does he have to say > all these years later? "I am so much better off physically, financially, > mentally and in almost every other way." What other way would there be to be > better off? Vegetably? Minerally? Animally? He's pretty much covered them > there."

Startups are often started by wildly optimistic people, while Internet messageboards tend to be populated by wildly pessimistic people. I'm not saying that either is better or worse, but it's an interesting phenomenon to witness.

So the interesting thing here is... while Homejoy is obviously a failure, I legitimately believe that OP feels good about himself, and probably better than some successful founders feel about their successful startups.

Rationalization is a hell of a drug. [2]

PS: Another lesson I think the cynics and pessimists could take away from this (but, by definition, probably won't) is that you can get away with a lot more failure in this world than you imagine, and still probably end up on top. OP is still probably better off than a lot of us career-ily and in many other ways.

I wonder, if blind optimism could be sold in a drink like coffee, would it be worth buying (in terms of net impact on well-being?) Seems like it might be. Curious for your thoughts.

\---

[1] [https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy)

[2] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont- delay/200912/downs...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont- delay/200912/downside-manufacturing-our-own-happiness)

<comment><USER11> It is fine for the team from Homejoy to be wild optimists, but not the VC investors. They are supposed to be a fiduciary with their limited partners money.

<comment><USER7> > It is fine for the team from Homejoy to be wild optimists, but not the VC > investors.

Hmm... I don't know if I agree or disagree. I think a VC's experience must be pretty unnerving– she probably turns down seemingly lousy deals and then watches them go on to be staggeringly successful. And that makes her wonder if she's too conservative, maybe. I don't know.

I believe that the partners also expect their VCs to take risks, and would rather burn money (which is difficult for common folks like us to relate to) on 100 bad startups than miss out on 1 home run.

After all, if the VC screw-ups are not tolerated, the partners will just cut off their money supply. This isn't happening, or hasn't happened yet. Which signals to the VCs to continue taking risks.

<comment><USER11> I would love to be a VC. Someone gives you 100s of millions dollars which you don't have to give back for 10 years and which you can spend on whatever crazy ideas you like. Just follow the herd and no one will blame you if you lose the lot and if the herd is right you make out like a bandit. It is a game of heads you lose, tails I win.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure I'd hate it. (I had the opportunity a few years back but turned it down because it wasn't the right time to leave Google. Also, my wife is an institutional investor, but in philanthropy and not tech.) Some of the downsides:

Your life is consumed by pitch meetings, and you have to say no to the vast majority of them. You have to constantly be out hustling for deal flow. If you miss the wrong startup, you've probably missed your chance to get a return.

You are a support role. Your job is to direct resources to the people who actually make things happen, not to make them happen yourself. You don't usually get to build things yourself, and when you do, nobody can know about them.

When things go terribly badly, you are frequently on the hook for cleaning them up.

Your compensation _can be_ pretty awesome, but your liquidity sucks. Many times, you have to buy into the fund with your own personal money. The fund is locked up for 7-10 years. During this time, you basically can't leave, or if you do, you better be comfortable with someone else calling the shots for a significant portion of your assets. You draw a salary which (if you're not a GP) is fairly generous & adequate but is not going to make you wealthy. The way to get wealthy is off the carry of the fund, which, of course, requires that you got into one of the hot startups of your era.

I would much rather be building things. Even if I wanted to get rich managing money, I think that running a hedge fund, doing prop-trading for a big company, or managing the endowment for a pension or university is a much lower stress, higher-return option.

<comment><USER11> This sounds like hard work - I think I might just have to keep running my own business :)

Out of curiosity why can't anyone know that you built something? Do you mean for your own company, or you can't help your portfolio companies build things?

<comment><USER6> When you build stuff, it's usually to gain a competitive advantage over other firms, and so it's only useful as long as you keep it secret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 600 days ago Exec pivoted and left the game.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7380912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7380912)

Can we stop now?

</comment><comment><USER16> > ...the point I am trying to make is that the Homejoy team was exceptionally > talented and did amazing things...

> Homejoy was led by two software engineers. Both wildly talented humans...

> Homejoy and 'fail' have gotten tethered together in the tech headlines > recently but for myself and many of my colleagues Homejoy will always be > more synonymous with success than failure.

The entire post describes a litany of horrible business decisions and mistakes that are hard to reconcile with the author's compliments of the Homejoy team.

<comment><USER17> It is entirely possible to have an extremely good team and talented, knowledgeable people as leaders, but that doesn't make good businesspeople or imply a good vision.

<comment><USER11> This is true and it is where the investors should have stepped in. A good investor would have said to the Homejoy team "we believe in you and will back you in any viable business venture, but the home cleaning market is not a problem that will be solved by technology. Go and find something better and we will talk - here is $50K so you don't starve in the mean time."

<comment><USER16> Yes, investors should be putting twenty-something would-be founders who think it's a good idea to "lock customers into discount rates that even with infinite retention won't become profitable" on $50,000 retainers to come up with ideas that they can then fund.

That's an efficient way to deploy a nine-figure fund if I've ever heard of one. I'm sure LPs will love it.

<comment><USER11> Well considering the 50K is basically a rounding error to most VCs the money is not an issue. Given the difficulty of assembling a world class team to let one disintegrate just because their current idea is poor is not a good use of a limited resource.

Actually why VCs think good ideas and good teams should come as a package has never been explained to me. The is no reason to think that the best teams will have the best ideas. If the limiting factor in success is the quality of the team then why let great teams work on anything but the best ideas.

<comment><USER16> > Well considering the 50K is basically a rounding error to most VCs the money > is not an issue. Given the difficulty of assembling a world class team to > let one disintegrate just because their current idea is poor is not a good > use of a limited resource.

You do not seem to understand how fund management works in the real world. A venture firm simply cannot deploy a nine-figure fund by writing $50,000 checks to keep on ice every entrepreneur it thinks has potential.

Furthermore, I don't see how you can conclude that founders who thought it was a good idea to "lock customers into discount rates that even with infinite retention won't become profitable" represents a world-class team. The post- failure behavior of one of the Homejoy co-founders[1] is even more damning.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468700)

<comment><USER11> VCs don't have to lock up every entrepreneur, just those they think are world class with a bad idea. If the team truly is world class then they should be as rare as unicorns. To let a world-class team explode over just because they had a bad idea is silly if 50K would keep them going until they came up with a good idea.

I don't think the team at Homejoy was world class, but I also didn't back them. We have to assume that the VCs that did back them thought they were a world class team or else they would not have given them the money they did.

I am more lenient towards delusional founders (especially young ones) than delusional VCs. The team at Homejoy would have done very little damage if they had not been backed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


TraceGL: JavaScript code flow visualisation in WebGL - <AUTHOR> https://trace.gl

<comment><USER2> This is an amazing app, extremely underpriced for what it delivers! One thing I'd love to see is the ability to do profiling, so I can see exactly how much time was spent in each function invocation.

<comment><USER3> It is also nice to see how much great work is going on WebGL these days[1]. Hopefully, tools like this will help even more create amazing things with it.

[1] [http://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/webgl-...](http://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/webgl- breaking-into-the-real-world/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an incredibly useful tool! I was trying to decide how the huge amount of logging was handled in the display when he mentioned using WebGL - a cool idea to this WebGL newbie. Then there is the ability to jump up and down the stack, even through callbacks. This feature alone would be worth 15 EUR because you don't have to set breakpoints in the browser's web inspector to see exactly what is called and how - you just run the program and then look up the traces!

I wonder how hard it would be to have the browser's native inspectors do the same thing?

</comment><comment><USER5> Name of the app threw me off. I thought this was designed to attach to GL context and show that is actually happening. Like Nvidia PerfHud.

Here is some criticism:

\- Your site straight up asks for my credit card number. Small line below "Secure connection using Paymill GmbH" not enough for me to trust you. Believe it or not PayPal or Amazon Payments would work better. At least i can get a refund that way.

\- Where is the demo? I'm getting ripped off ?

\- I hate when people compare price of their products to a commodity. I don't know how much coffee cost in your world but i can buy 100 cups of coffee where i live. This kinda of comparisons always comes from the bunch that creates long lines at Starbucks. Just don't assume 15 dollars aren't that much. That's half the money i make in a day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Saejox, \- the name came from the domain, since its a GL UI it fits well enough imho. \- tried to make it 'as simple as possible to buy' using the same way Stripe does it (i dont touch CC's) \- can't solve international wage/price discrepancies, unfortunately. \- i tried to pick a payment solution that didnt' suck too much to integrate, paymill is 'the stripe competitor in europe' and its a pretty clean process compared to paypal. And then there is bitcoin too. \- As its not a trivial product i decided to make a video demo to show what it can do.

Thanks for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Vote up (down) if you'd ever (never) dreamed of writing this kind of thing yourself. :-) I'll report the number.

EDIT: 5 - 1 = net +4 votes as of 10:23 PDT.

<comment><USER7> Most people can't vote down.

<comment><USER6> Ah, I guess I can only do so sometimes as well. So feel free to leave a comment, I'll register your downvote then you can delete your comment.

This experiment in ad-hoc polling is kind of showing the limits of the idea.

<comment><USER8> I think an easier way would be to make two posts, Vote one up for each choice. Wouldn't prevent double voting but the difference between the two would still be accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, I'm completely blown away by this tool. The utility of it. The speed... Amazing.

I think it's great that the developer decided to charge money for this too. It has real value for me, it's going to save time, so why wouldn't I want to pay to show my appreciation and to ensure it's being worked on?

</comment><comment><USER10> For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't have paid with a credit card (too much hassle!) but since I could pay with bitcoin you converted me into a customer.

:D

Thanks for accepting bitcoin!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :) I just added it this morning. Now if only coinbase payment callbacks would work, it would be much faster (not manual.)

<comment><USER10> Cups and Cakes Bakery uses BitPay.com- check out our video of it in action. Payments are verified in about 30s-1m

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCYE4V6C8a8>

Also, Kai Ryssdal did a segment on us! marketplace.org/topics/business/cupcakes-meet-bitcoins

<comment><AUTHOR> All i really need is a wallet API where you can create a receive address, and get a callback when something arrived. Everything else is just fluff :)

<comment><USER11> <http://blockchain.info/api/blockchain_wallet_api>

Blockchain.info has some really nifty(and free) API methods.

When a payment is received blockchain.info will notify the http URL specified in [Account Settings]. The parameters will be supplied in a http GET request. The callback url is limited to 255 characters in length.

Parameters value The value of the payment received in satoshi (not including fees). Divide by 100000000 to get the value in BTC. transaction_hash The transaction hash. input_address The bitcoin address that received the transaction. confirmations The number of confirmations of this transaction. {Custom Parameters} Any parameters included in the callback URL will be past back to the callback URL in the notification.

<comment><AUTHOR> ah nice thats exactly what i need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks great, just purchased.

+1 for coffeescript/source maps, we do everything in Coffee.

+1 for charging, i hope you get the support to work on this full time. Maybe consider an open source basic / premium closed version though.

+1 for a sublime plugin that does code completion/inspection based on previous runs of the code.

Nice work!

<comment><USER10> +1 for typescript instead of coffee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The name seems like a bit of a misnomer, I only just now realized this wasn't a WebGL debugger.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its a GL javascript tracer :) plus there is the domain.

<comment><USER14> The name also confused me and I thought it would just be for tracing WebGL.

From a developer standpoint it's cool that it's in WebGL. As a developer-user I don't care, it just works well and fast!

I would genuinely suggest de-emphasizing the WebGL except in a behind-the- scenes way.

(I've bought and played with it, and can't wait to chase down a bug!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks incredible. Do you think it would be possible to utilize source maps to allow this to work with coffee (etc) source directly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its theoretically possible, although not easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The "Get it now" page immediately redirects to a 404 for me. <https://trace.gl/undefined/getitnow.html>

Firefox 20/Mac

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi i'll do a quick test in firefox, i haven't seen that one yet

<comment><AUTHOR> Found it. i'll go fix it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This looks nice! Watching the video I was just wondering if it would be more useful if all code that is executed would be highlighted instead of the 2 colors for conditionals. That way one could identify the actual code path more quickly.

</comment><comment><USER18> That looks like an awesome tool, good job.

You said you use VBOs for text rendering. Do you use some library for text rendering or is it just coded from scratch?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm rendering font-textures using canvas, and using GL POINT sprites with x+y+texture offsets (the ascii) in the vertexbuffers to store text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pardon the off topic and probably downvoted-into-oblivion comment, but

Rik, je bent een botpad.

<comment><USER20> Wie is Rik en wat is een botpad?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is a pricetag that comes with the software, which is definitely not in line with the typical javascript ideology, in my opinon.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm against showing banners in my app ;)

<comment><USER22> Why not open source it like most other JS tools? You've built on top of other open-source such as node.js. Just a matter of good citizenship in the JS community.

<comment><AUTHOR> This tool has taken quite a lot of my time, and i though i'd try an actual business model for a change.

<comment><USER22> I certainly appreciate that. But also, open source and business models are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps you can open source the core code and then charge for support or extensions, like many others do with Linux, Apache, etc.

Plus, if you have more people contributing changes/additions, you might have less of a workload.

One last question for you: if I pay, do I get the source that I can tinker with/extend, or is it in a minified/obfuscated format?

<comment><AUTHOR> No i left the code unminified/unobfuscated on purpose. If you paid for it you get the freedom to hack on it if you want.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A complier using LLVM for the esoteric language Whirl - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bigzaphod.org/2009/05/12/whirl-and-llvm/

<comment><USER2> Wow! This reminds of Knuth's MIX, core wars, Post-Turing machine et al.

In <http://bigzaphod.org/whirl/llvm/whirl-llvm.cpp>, I'm intrigued by the block:

extern "C" {

#include "whirl-runtime.c"

}</comment>


Ask HN: Are you applying Startup Metrics for Pirates (AARRR) today? - <AUTHOR>

I'm wondering if anyone is doing this at their startup and willing to share how they are implementing, their experiences with doing so, etc.  Interested to hear what others are doing here.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> First of all, you're missing an R in the title. And if it is the last one you are missing, well, that's not good.

AARRR is a nice conceptual schema for organizing activities-- I don't really see it is as something that is "applied", as much as a reminder that: a) each of the five areas is important in its own right, b) each of the five areas has separate goals, and c) each of the five areas has separate metrics.

At least, that's the way I'm using it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that... fixed the title (oops.) Agree that that last R is pretty important! Thanks for the feedback!</comment>


Facebook and the Irish Data Protection Commission - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-public-policy-europe/facebook-and-the-irish-data-protection-commission/288934714486394

<comment><USER2> Compare this with the item submitted as <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3377699>

The BBC says:

        The Irish data protection commissioner has
        recommended widespread changes to improve
        privacy on Facebook.

Facebook says:

        [the] Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) ... report
        demonstrates how Facebook adheres to European data
        protection principles and complies with Irish law.

These don't seem entirely consistent, and to put it simply - I don't trust Facebook. They are a company, hence they are trying to make money. The users are the product, and Facebook is in the business of getting, keeping, and in the long run, selling as much information about them as they possibly can.</comment>


Packaging Food with Food to Reduce Waste - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/dining/packaging-materials-food-waste.html <comment><USER2> Good!</comment>