Ask PG: How has voting habit/volume changed since being hidden? - <AUTHOR>

It's been over a week since you started experimenting with HN [1]. It would great to hear some feedback on what significant changes (if any) this has caused to the voting habits of the user base.<p>[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333<p>Edit: Seems that PG answered a similar question recently http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465002 <comment><USER2> I personally do not like the fact that the voting process is being hidden. I hope PG will take it away soon. These are my reasons:

1\. From my experience, I stopped voting because I am not being educated on the fact that we need to vote (well I can't see the rating, so why vote). I have a feeling that other users act similar. Please confirm.

2\. The voting process shows the values of HN. Comments that are ok in techcrunch would be downvoted here within a second. And I feel that voting system needs to be open to educate new hackers & founders about what's acceptable and what's not. I know there are rules but we learn by practice.

3\. When voting process is open, good comments get even more votes, and irrelevant or bad comments get even more downvoted. I personally don't want to read irrelevant posts. I have limited time but now I feel like going through comments that really don't have enough information.

PG, I hope you take my personal opinion into consideration. Thanks

<comment><USER3> In regards to #2, I still think hiding low-value comments in some fashion would be the way to go. For example, how about hiding comments that fail to receive X upvotes within Y days? (And, of course, an obligatory link to display all comments, or perhaps all comments in a sub-thread)

Something simple like (for example) a comment needs 1 upvote per day to remain unhidden, until some number of days pass or some number of points are achieved (4? 5?), and then the comment remains visible in perpetuity.

I like the new no-points system, but I do agree #2 is a concern and could used some tweaking.

<comment><USER2> Yes. I agree that we need to hide some comments that really don't add any value.

On the side note, I got more votes right now than ever before. Go figure how people think about voting o_O

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My personal observation has been that, while blind-folding _might_ have been good for curation of the comments, by avoiding the bandwagon effect, but it has serious ill-effects on the readability, especially for the new subject matter for the reader.

In the past, there were 2 signals of the comment-quality in the thread.

1\. Vote count.

2\. Positioning in the thread.

Now, that Vote count is not visible, There is only one signal left.

1\. Positioning in the thread.

It makes it very difficult to segregate good comments from the bad ones, and decide which comments add to the topic, and hence worth reading/discussing, _especially_ on a large thread, on a new subject matter, reader does not understand very-well.

Few suggestions to improve the comment readability of the thread.

1\. Would it make sense to hide the comment count of a thread till a particular threshold (say votes < 7, comment time < 10 mins), or of the entire thread comments (thread time < 30 mins, number of comments < 30) and the likes, and make them visible to add to the readability/visibility of the thread?

2\. Would it help if the up-votes are capped?

<comment><USER5> There was always a huge first-mover advantage to getting a high scoring comment... so I think your #1 above was actually a misleading signal.

<comment><USER6> >There was always a huge first-mover advantage to getting a high scoring comment

It's right for good comments that are read by more people to receive more votes. Also that the first person to make a particular comment should be higher voted as repetition of the same insight isn't improving the thread.

<comment><USER5> _It's right for good comments that are read by more people to receive more votes._

I don't agree with this. Just b/c someone was first to post a mediocre comment doesn't mean it's good or worth reading.

Also, early posts are often knee-jerk and among the least thoughtful of the thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an interesting question. Thanks for the link here to a recent comment by pg on how karma scores are looking on various individual comments.

In sizing up what this means, let's all review together the stated reason for the experiment, expressed in a thread-opening post by pg titled "Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696>

He wrote, "The problem has several components: comments that are (a) mean and/or (b) dumb that (c) get massively upvoted."

How do the highest-voted comments visible in the bestcomments list

<http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments>

look to all of you recently? Are there fewer mean comments than before? Are there fewer dumb comments than before? Are the comments that are "massively upvoted" since the experiment began mostly comments that are reasonably kind and well-informed, helpful comments on the whole? In most of the treads you visit, do helpful, thoughtful comments seem to rise to a position of prominence, while mean or dumb comments gray out?

A link and comment in the thread referred to by the edit on this submission largely sums up the back-and-forth about visible comment scores as a signal on comments in active threads:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465357>

>> Please bring back the comment scores. It helps a lot in parsing the comments and assigning a proportional weight to each when reading them.

> I had to think about this a bit, and I disagree so far. I'm finding that I'm > not pre-judging comments as much. It's nice to be able to read someone's > comment without knowing first that 70 or 80 or 3 other people thought it was > worthwhile.

My impression too is that even with comment scores not visible, it is still convenient to browse threads to find thoughtful, informative comments, but now there is less anchoring bias

<http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/a/anchoring.htm>

of most votes on a comment converging to one score level that shows up early in a thread's development, and more engagement by readers of HN in actively reading comments and upvoting (or downvoting) based on each comment's characteristics in light of the context of the thread.

But the main criterion of the experiment is to "stave off decline of HN," and that is what will decide if the experiment was successful. For that every reader can help by actively upvoting informative, helpful comments, and also by downvoting comments that are either mean or dumb--and especially comments that are both. As I recall, the experiment has also involved some changes in the effects of flagging, so flagging inappropriate comments is also helpful.

<comment><USER8>
      but now there is less anchoring bias

I think this is a large one. I've been participating more in discussions lately because the content seems more thoughtful.

      How do I know what's important without vote counts?

Read and decide what is good and what is bad. For posters, being concise helps people reading. The higher voted comments should move to the top like in the past(?) Forcing both sides to be more thoughtful makes the quality content and participation better.

<comment><USER9> Agreed, I think quality has improved, and either by placebo or by reality, I dig it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To me, the site has gotten a lot less informative and interesting since the votes have been hidden. The voting numbers really help me understand what people are thinking: how strong the consensus is, how much support there is for dissenting opinions. Without that data, at least for me the value of the discussion here is significantly reduced.

<comment><USER11> I would have t agree. There was ask HN recently where someone was asking for advice. The advice I would give was already posted so I up voted, but now the guy doesn't know if the advice had 100 up votes and really well regarded or if he just got really few responses. I could have made a yeah what that guy said comment to make my agreement more visible but that is rather frowned upon.

<comment><USER12> I'd guess that "yeah what that guy said" comments won't be as frowned upon with the new system.

<comment><USER13> But how does that affect the "Decline of HN?" I would think that threads filling up with comments where the summary of the content is a "+1" or a "-1" detracts from the rest of the conversation thread. Especially with something that would have normally gotten 100 "me too" upvotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sorry guys, but YC interviews started today so I'm busy all day for the next week and a half. Maybe after that I'll write a little code to do some analysis.

<comment><USER15> Many people seem to be saying they've been voting less. Could you please include a script that counts total weekly votes prior to the change and post- change to see if the total number of weekly votes has shifted downwards?

<comment><USER14> Crude tests suggest there is about 20% less voting.

<comment><USER16> This seems like a good thing for comments. The goal for comments is civility, not democracy.

Actually, the goal is for the comments to be _interesting_ , but they will be because there are interesting people on HN. If interesting people are leaving, then that's a problem.

I feel that the tone of comments in general has improved significantly. Maybe that's confirmation bias, but I feel much more "at home" on HN now.

<comment><USER17> It's still a democracy if high-scoring comments float to the top though. Karma just adds to it by functioning as a reward system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My personal totally unscientific observation is that I seem to upvote less often. On the other hand, I seem to be getting slightly more upvotes than before the change.

<comment><USER19> I upvote more because I never think, "well, I'd just be piling on at this point". And it's more based on agreement or appreciation instead of righting karmic injustice.

<comment><USER18> That seems to be in line with pg's response in the linked thread with the same question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Since scores have been hidden, voting on a comment feels less like a contribution and more like talking to myself. I vote less. It seems like one dimension of the community -- an admittedly imprecise form of collective intelligence -- is missing. It's certainly not a dealbreaker, but the comment threads feel ever so slightly "flatter".

<comment><USER21> Agreed - I'm voting less. Voting seems to have less 'point'. Previously it would feel like voting was (in a minor way) helping the community, by helping to point out to others comments that deserve reading. Now only the comment writers see the score, it feels voting up is only to 'reward' the writer with a bit of karma. To me it devalues what karma is about and makes it feel very selfish. Its lost its value to the community. Whilst karma influences the top comment, this doesn't seem enough to make it valuable enough to vote regularly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Having done some redesigns of HN to see my own reaction towards the concealment of scores and other elements I have to come out in full support of concealing comment scores. After playing with a layout that concealed the scores for comments _and_ stories I'm also a big fan of ditching score display for stories.

My experience was what I think common sense dictates. Since I couldn't see a score I couldn't let that color my opinion of a given comment and _had_ to read it. This point alone has significantly increased my engagement in the threads I care to read and made me more carefully consider the top level comments on a story. Since pg turned off comment scores I've wondered if the primary reason people have reacted negatively is due to losing a positive status indicator. This is to say the score might have nothing to do with one's _own_ engagement with HN, but with one's concern for other user's perception of their comments.

One other change I experimented with was moving the score of stories and comments to the far right top of the story/comment so that it wasn't the first thing in my line of sight. This helped with my bias as well.

At the end of the day this all anecdotal, and your mileage may vary.

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't explain _why_ but it's pushed me away from commenting.

<comment><USER24> Is that a bad thing? I personally think the greatest threat to HN is not bad comments, but too many mediocre comments. I think the best case scenario is if only the people who had a lot of knowledge or things to say about a given thread commented. It's equally easy for HN to be dragged down in a comment deluge as it is for comments to simply become worse.

<comment><USER25> Thank you. One of the implicit assumptions of user-generated content sites is that every user should be given a voice. Unfortunately, this creates feedback loops around certain topics (around here, it tends to be Linux/C/vim) because there are too many benefits attached to discussing those topics; namely, karma and [illusory?] in-group status.

One idea is to give each user only a finite number of comments they can make in a time period. As their karma increases, so does their comment allotment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One idea I really liked from the previous discussion on this was to hide the Names of all comments for a few hours.

This way comments really can be voted on their merits rather than the fan club of the commenter.

<comment><USER27> This could become very confusing on new comments with several layers of response/conversation going on. That said, I like the spirit of the idea.

<comment><USER22> Perhaps the names on a particular thread in the discussion could be revealed once you vote or comment on that thread?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd be interested in seeing how we'd react with a logarithmic voting system.

Base 10 for example: the most-significant digit would be visible and the rest be zero's: '5' -> '5', '42' -> '40', '256' -> '200'.

That way, you could still see the impact of a comment while hiding the voting trends and other numeric details that keep you from unbiased (err, less biased) voting.

<comment><USER28> It might be more mathematical to use e=2.718 rather than 10, and perhaps even displaying the log value instead of the rounded number, e.g. 3 -> 1, 9 -> 2, 29 -> 3, with suitable fiddling for negative vote totals.

<comment><USER29> Why is it more mathematical to use e? (Hint: depending on what you're trying to do, it's not.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just to toss out an idea that addresses some of the complaints I've seen: you could always reveal the total score after votes are placed (and you could replace the score with a question mark until then, clicking on which would indicate "I don't want to vote" and would reveal the score). If hiding names is under consideration, you can solve the thread confusion problem by replacing names by letters in a consistent way. Again, real names could be revealed by clicking, removing the ability to vote. The main problems I see in this are when revisiting threads later (now you cant vote on new comments) and the possibly dominant strategy of beginning every post with an allusion to "my bingo card software".

</comment><comment><USER31> For me the amount of votes did matter - it gave you a quick idea as to where some of the most important comments were within the thread. Also HN seems to having far lesser activity - this someone with actual data might want to check and get back

</comment><comment><USER4> No votes showing up, is bad for "Ask/Show/Tell HN" type of submissions, where the submitter is asking to see what "wisdom-of-the-community" says (even if he has the entire knowledge for subject matter).

For example, asking for feedback or feature suggestions on the recently developed product to the community, will not be much helpful, if comment votes are not shown up.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have a few ideas, but first I will say that I like the hidden karma. 1) _Show karma after a vote._ I feel this would assuage the claims that voting has no meaning or impact. 2) _Order threads by replies/length._ Not foolproof, but in many instances longer comments and threads are more meaningful and relevant. 3) _Karma visible when not logged in, hidden when logged in._

Again, just ideas, I'm sure they can be improved or refuted (and I'd much enjoy the discussion). If you feel a comment is inaccurate or misleading, reply to it and explain. The reply will tell more than a number will.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm not sure I care about comment scores, but I am concerned by how much other people seem to. Relying on scores to choose which comments to read is like getting all your news from the most watched cable news channel. I might prefer that the comments be sorted chronologically.

</comment><comment><USER34> In being a participant in many of these online communities, these kind of things sometimes seem like a losing battle to me. There will always be a slice of the population that will try to game the 'karma' system on sites like HN. Slashdot went thru this years ago. Kuro5hin went thru it. Digg. Reddit.... All sorts of solutions are proposed, like hiding a user's 'karma' rating, having the user population meta moderate ratings on comments...

I do find it interesting that the comment score has been hidden. That's kind of novel, and it might be the kind of solution needed in this case.

</comment><comment><USER35> There was a similar thread couple(?) days back, PG replied. Search.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, here's the thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465002>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As someone who's been here from a while but not from the beginning, I find myself relying more on name recognition. For example, on this thread I saw tokenadult's, grandalf's, praptak's and criticsquid's comments first because I had a recognition of quality based on their history of commenting.

</comment><comment><USER36> Two ways the changes have impacted my browsing:

1) Removing "by" at the start of each comment stops me from trivially finding every other comment by the same poster in a given thread. Searching for just the name adds noise to the results. Usually not a lot, but I find it annoying.

2) Removing comment scores from our thread feeds makes it much more difficult to skim through all the things a given user has said recently looking for gems. Instead of a nice pre-filter (skim for posts exceeding some minimum score) you have to read every comment, no matter how inane.

</comment><comment><USER37> I agree with several statements here that the HN lost some information level since the removal of the karma. One more voice here would like to see some statements from PG and how the change affected the community. If there is a donation button to get the karma back I would contribute.

</comment><comment><USER38> PG might consider doing something similar to what I am doing on Hubski (<http://hubski.com>). -Scores have ranged values, only the user sees their absolute score.

Maybe I can give something in return for the great source code. :) Thanks PG.

</comment><comment><USER6> My given comment score average has plummetted yet bizarrely my actual average comment score is higher than the average before the alteration (due to one or two over-regarded comments).

</comment><comment><USER39> Unfortunately the changes have broken one of my most used Android apps -- HNDroid. I hope either the changes here revert, or the app developer updates it, cuz I miss it! :(

</comment><comment><USER40> Either get rid of the whole Karma business or allow everyone to both upvote and downvote. Anything in between is just a hypocrisy.

</comment><comment><USER41> I would be really interested to know if anyone is looking at the comment posting velocity of users before the change and after.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's harder to figure out what's worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER43> I have a suggestion: make it an option and give users the choice to view vote counts.

<comment><USER43> HN is going in the shitter these days. Negative karma for posting an on-topic suggestion. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've started (just now) using a stupid '+1' comment because I thought the reader should be looked at.

<comment><USER45> Hey, I appreciate you +1'd my comment but it's better not to do that. The ideal on HN is for every comment to be worth reading. If you want to draw attention to a worthy comment and are frustrated the votes are hidden, just contribute something to the discussion. The subthread will grow and more readers will notice the comment and your reply to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> ...notices that they have been hidden...</comment>


If Schools Don't Change, Robots Will Bring On a 'Permanent Underclass' - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/if-schools-dont-change-robots-will-bring-on-a-permanent-underclass-report

<comment><USER2> When I was in 6th grade, so early 1980s, I had a homework assignment to ask an adult (in this case my Dad) if they were worried that a robot would take over their job.

I bring this up because there's essentially nothing in the article that couldn't have been written in the 1970s.

Also, the idea of "this lovely future where robots do the work and humans design the robots and everyone has leisure time and lots of money" dates back to at least Marx ... or the Jetsons if you want a pop culture reference.

I was also a child of the 70s and 80s, which means I remember the classroom experimentation of that era, like arranging the seats in circles, students being able to pick which classes to attend, and teachers stressing that the point wasn't to "memorize what is told to them" but to understand the ideas. (There were also teachers who wanted use to memorize things.)

I am an adult of the 2010s. The high stakes testing and commercialization paradigm of the last 15 years - a generation of students! - was sold to us as the revolution needed to upset the old ways of 20th century factory workers.

I don't believe them. Why then should I believe the people mentioned in this Vice article, who sell their revolution using the same talking points?</comment>


What Would Happen if Social Security Disappeared? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2303391/

<comment><USER2> "Current workers and employers would see an immediate benefit, in the form of a 6.2 percent increase in income, because the tax that funds Social Security would disappear."

More than that. The Social Security "trust fund" is in fact a filing cabinet full of federal bonds (special ones, yes, but still federal bonds). Money from the general fund is used to pay those bonds when cashed in - and a lot will be cashed in starting in not to long. End SS, and those special bonds need not be paid.

Note that, being a Ponzi scheme, the amount workers pay for SS now isn't just their FICA but, one way or another, their cut of the total $695 billion (and growing) spent every year. That's (clickety clickety) about $10,000 per taxpayer per year.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a 28 year old...this scares the crap out of me. Wish I could opt out of SS now.</comment>


Show HN: We've launched Kanban for our collaboration and profit-sharing platform - <AUTHOR> https://crowdsourcer.io/lp/kanban-task-management/view?ref=hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

We've built a platform that allows you to make web apps, games, mobile apps etc. whilst working from the comfort of your own home, with teammates, on a fair and equitable profit-sharing scheme (video overview here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7ooZGyqflY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7ooZGyqflY))

We just launched our Kanban feature which we're hoping will allow projects on the platform to increase their productivity ten-fold, so thought we'd do a big launch and shout about it a little. Would appreciate an upvote on [https://producthunt.com](https://producthunt.com) if you have the time.

Anyway, I'm floating about all day if you have any questions or feedback.

Mike</comment>


Native HTML vs. Website Builder - <AUTHOR> Hi folks, we are a young start up currently with a simple native html website. We are finding it a bit time consuming for our technical founder to manage content updates and a/b testing. How do other startups solve for this problem, do you use a content manager or just go to a website builder like Wix, Squarepace etc.Any wisdom would be appreciated! <comment><USER2> WPEngine, a hosted WordPress provider, is great for blog type sites. If you're selling stuff with e-commerce, Shopify is easy, too. Both have plugins for A/B testing and other things you are likely to want.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Also just to clarify we are a b2b saas platform : )

</comment><comment><USER3> Use a builder until you have enough time and cash to pay for a serious branding effort.

SquareSpace is good, but there are lots of static site hosts/builders that are tailored to early startups and will have better landing pages for your purposes.</comment>


Ask HN: How Facebook finds my friends given it is a new email account? - <AUTHOR>

I had a facebook account some time back and I deactivated it once after I had some alternatives to get in touch with friends.
A month ago I signed up for facebook with a new email account to get FB developer key.. after a week or so, I started receiving friends recommendations from facebook and it was so horrifying that it suggests my friends' profiles exactly.. This email account was new and I had only one email communication with one of my friend's official email address which is also different from his facebook connected email account.. after few days, the recommendations became pretty obvious it sent the profiles of my colleagues from my previous company... I am totally on the black here.. Any idea of how its possible or Am I missing any piece....?
PS : The previous fb account was connected through a Gmail account and this new account was opened with an Outlook account.. <comment><USER2> FB's recommendation engine looks at the contacts shared by their users. If they see you in a friends address book, it will recommend them to you. I think it looks at name, location, email, cell etc... to make the connections.

As well as that, even though your friend is using a different email address to the one he uses to login to FB, I bet you that FB knows your friends other email and has made the connection.

Here is a fun little game to play - Create a brand new FB account using a brand new email and your actual cell number. The list of recommendations that FB will give you are people who have your cell number in their phone's contacts application. Really cool way of knowing who has your number.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are many possible ways that Facebook was able to aggregate who your friends were. Some of these are: Your history of searches, people you looked at, things you liked, your IP address, GPS location, facial picture, login patterns, people who searched for you with your new email account, sites you tried to connect to while on a page that linked back to Facebook that had the same cookie tracking information from your other account. Depending on the amount of information you made available in your previous account they could have used that along with tracking cookies or other stored data if you used your mobile device to associate your new account with your old account and friends.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does that mean, nothing is secret anymore?

<comment><USER3> Well the information you put on their site would only be private if you made it private. Though you set your information as private you and Facebook staff can still see this information. The system can still graph your previous account information to your new account if you have added similar or the same information which makes it easier to view any previous connections.

As some sites, they do not delete accounts but only deactivate or make them invisible as you can still reactivate your account if you wanted to [https://www.facebook.com/help/212666185422169](https://www.facebook.com/help/212666185422169).</comment></comment></comment>


[Good News] Now Get Free .in Domain + Hosting  from Google  - <AUTHOR> http://media.devilscafe.in/2011/11/good-news-now-get-free-in-domain.html

<comment><USER2> Might want to mention in the headline it's for Indians only, but, neat!</comment>


Our app for reliable train connections won the first German Railways Hackathon - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@highsource/reliable-train-connections-app-wins-the-first-deutsche-bahn-hackathon-3419ef275bfc

<comment><AUTHOR> I recently took part in the "Open Data Train Challenge" Hackathon of the Deutsche Bahn (German railway and transport giant). This was probably the first Hackathon of this kind in Deutsche Bahn and definitely the first one for me. Just like me a few other guys were there alone. Four of us formed the "Team Blind" date.

Over the next 18 hours we've implemented from scratch an app which adds train delay statistics into the travel information. So that the passenger could see, which of the proposed connections have a (statistical) chance of failure.

Our app won the "Public Choice" (one of the two main prizes) and the "Biggest Business Potential" awards.</comment>


Ask HN: Any resources to learn how to effectively use commenting? - <AUTHOR>

The Minecraft clone in C thread a couple of days ago had a discussion about commenting and it got me thinking about the fact that I don't know how to effectively use comments while writing code (I'm mostly self-taught and don't work for a tech company, yet). Does anyone have any tips or know of good resources where one can learn this? <comment><USER2> "Clean Code" by Robert C. Martin may be what you're looking for.

Basically: express yourself in code. If you feel that some part of your code needs commenting, ask instead if it's possible to rewrite the code so that it is self explanatory. (The book goes into much more detail about this and more, of course.)

Example of "bad" code:

      // days since initialization
      int d;

Better code:

      int daysSinceInitialization;

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent! Thanks - I'll definitely check it out!</comment></comment>


Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I think the article can be summed up by this sentence:

> We have no retirement savings, because we emptied a small 401(k) to pay for > our younger daughter's wedding.

The author isn't mysteriously broke. Money is not being stolen from his account. Rather, he's spending a _lot_ of money on things which he believes are necessities (like paying for a child's wedding), and sacrificing a lot of things which he believes is optional (like having retirement savings). Some would suggest both categorizations are wrong.

Also:

> we believed [our children] had earned the right to attend good universities

That's actually not how university tuition works, and the rhetorical tricks being deployed here leave me cold. Your daughters did not have the _right_ to attend those expensive private universities; they had the _privilege_ of doing so, because you spent a lot of money you didn't really have to obtain that privilege for them. Which is awesome for them! No doubt it will benefit them (which is why you paid all that money, I imagine). But it's not entirely clear to me how "middle class" paying for your children to go to some of the most expensive schools in the world really is?

<comment><USER3> There is no doubt that they have spent money foolishly, but bear in mind you are talking about them spending on a wedding and college. These are not trips to Vegas with hookers and blow, but rather core human experiences, closely tied to the concept of "middle class" themselves, and not financial back- breakers for middle class families in the past.

So, yes, there is some blame to be apportioned for the spending habits. However, there is also the systemic problem of real incomes declining significantly, with major life costs (housing, education, medical, taxation) increasing dramatically:

[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?wi...](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?width=880&height=440&id=MEHOINUSA672N)

This problem is significantly worse if you use the old CPI, which some people feel is more honest:

[http://www.soundmoneyproject.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/03/...](http://www.soundmoneyproject.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/03/Household-income.png)

Either way, the decline in real wages in the face of rising major life costs is a major contributor to the increasingly precarious position of many middle class families.

<comment><USER4> None of that excuses poor financial decisions. Raiding your 401k for frivolous (yes I'm calling a wedding that) expenses is against any personal finance 101. I'm willing to bet that the author's financial illiteracy did not start at whatever age they happen to be and that they likely have made a series of poor financial choices throughout their life. Financing your kid's college when you have no savings will have a crippling effect on you as well as your kids when they have to not only pay back the money you borrowed but also pay for your retirement because you didn't save any money.

<comment><USER5> When did it become normal for parents to pay for college? I always thought that was something you do as basically a huge gift. I came out with a bit over $100k but I chose that school knowing full well it would mean 10 years of higher payments and it was worth every penny in my opinion (I got so much out of college - I feel like the only person who came out with a huge loan that's happy with it). My parents paid the interest on my loans all through college and made the first couple payments while I transitioned into the real world -- I am eternally grateful they did even that for me.

I see it more and more that parents are expected to pay for their children to go to school - which also means that a big part of my loans are probably because of my father's income being counted when I did the FASFA. If the non- dischargability of the loans is based on a lack of finanical history (which I know I'm in the minority but I do feel that's fair), then the applications for financial assistance really shouldn't take it into account unless your parents are actually paying for your school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stories like these terrify me, mostly because I am very concerned about what will happen to the retirement savings of people who did the responsible thing and did save, and lived well within their means, and contributed to their 401k (or other retirement savings).

The most active voters are the older groups, and as people like the author reach their elder years with nothing to retire on, they presumably vote in their own best interest.

As it stands now, there are ~$4 trillion dollars[1] in 401k savings. It is currently not being taxed, with the assumption that it will grow during a person's working years, and be taxed when it is withdrawn, as income tax.

However, as people like the author reach a certain age, I am fairly convinced that there will be a significant tax on retirement savings from the responsible folks to pay for those who didn't save appropriately. Politically it's fairly straightforward: we have millionaires who can "afford" to help pay for the less fortunate! This ends up hurting the people who saved so that they could properly afford to send their kids to schools, to be able to go on vacations in their retirement, etc.

As much as the story has been "max out your 401k!", I'm fairly convinced that it's going to end up being a worse deal than people count on. I don't really have a solution other than to "diversify investments", but stories like this do terrify me. I plan for retirement and try to be responsible about how I live my life so that when I choose to retire, I'll be able to enjoy it and spend time with kids/grandkids or golfing/traveling/whatever.

[1] [https://www.ici.org/policy/retirement/plan/401k/faqs_401k](https://www.ici.org/policy/retirement/plan/401k/faqs_401k)

<comment><USER7> Two words: Roth IRA

<comment><USER8> I can almost guarantee Roth IRA holders will get screwed in the future. At least 401k holders got a tax break on the front end. Also, most middle class workers have at least something in a 401k, especially since companies are moving towards an opt-out model on 401ks. Relatively few Americans use Roth IRAs and most are "high" income types.

Politically, it will be a slam-dunk to tax the crap out of money coming out of Roth IRAs in the future.

<comment><USER9> I'm trying to imagine under what political circumstance the Roth IRA would have its basic premise completely up-ended. Between a breach-of-contract and a gaggle of irate retirees, I see no slam-dunk here at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Discussion on a frugality forum: [http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/antimustachian-wall-of- sham...](http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/antimustachian-wall-of-shame-and- comedy/the-secret-shame-of-middle-class-americans/)

In my friend group, our incomes vary by about a factor of 5. We all _spend_ about the same, though. Which means those that are making more are much more comfortable, putting money away for a rainy day.

In contrast, a college friend that keeps in touch makes more than any of us, but she _likes_ to lease new cars every three years, and she _must_ spend money on the poshest pre-school in the area, and she is _shocked_ to hear about people saving $2/3/5k a month. That's money that could be _spent_!

I don't think I have a point here. I just can't wrap my mind around people making $150k and not being able to "raise $2000" in a month's time.

<comment><USER11> > I just can't wrap my mind around people making $150k and not being able to > "raise $2000" in a month's time.

A person making $150k who has no savings/retirement/etc is a someone with very serious money management problems. In every state in the US, a $150k _household_ income places you above the "middle class."

Source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/middle-class-in-every-us- stat...](http://www.businessinsider.com/middle-class-in-every-us-state-2015-4)

<comment><USER12> We make much less than that and we saved nearly that much a month saving for our own wedding last year. I don't understand where the money goes with some people.

<comment><USER13> It's really easy if you purchase lots of little things using a non-cash form of payment. It's even easier if what you're buying is non-physical, like streaming movies or video games for a tablet/phone. The key is to remove the physicality on one or both ends of the transaction and keep the single transaction cost in 2-digit range or the low 3-digits. And of course, never budget, ever, and try not to mentally track how many purchases you've made over the past few weeks. Do that as a pattern, give it some time, and money will evaporate Brewster's Millions style.

<comment><USER14> Only the rare whale can make a huge debt in savings buy spending on digital goods. The real money goes out on car payments, rent payments, vacations, and eating out every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think a lot of folks are missing a big point: The author understands that he spent more than his income:

> _In retrospect, of course, my problem was simple: too little income, too > many expenses. Credit enabled me to forestall this problem for a time—and > also to make it progressively worse—but the root of the problem was deeper. > I never figured that I wouldn't earn enough. Few of us do. I thought I'd > done most of the right things._

The article is really about grappling with having "done most of the right things", yet not being able to afford "the right things", as well as the ensuing penalty.

I think the real point the article is missing: The standard-of-living in the US relies on unsustainable spending, compared to the 1990s-2000s. A deeper article might explore why the standard-of-living was being artificially inflated (a credit bubble, with its roots in the 80s). As a bonus article, consider if society turns against debt-as-a-way-of-life (like the generation that lived through the depression) or if the securitization-of-debt market begins to falter. That would be a true horror story.

PS. I think this is one of the meatiest articles to come out on personal finances in a long time, and it's far too meaty for the full discussion it should have (it'll be gone in a day on HCN, way past the 10 minutes or so any of us will spend on it.)

EDIT: Changed the bit about standard-of-living, which distracts the point. Yes real earnings are down, yes the employment ratio is down, yes college is unaffordable. But Total sq ft per house is way up, cell phones are a tech advance, so how you measure standard-of-living turns into another big topic.

<comment><USER16> Standards-of-living may have dropped dropped (though I'm pretty skeptical) but if so the drop is pretty small. This guy's financial problems are much bigger than this drop. I think that the personal responsibility deficit we have in this country is a much bigger deal than whatever issues we have with middle income wages.

For a variety of reasons (easy access to credit, the media, who knows what else) a great many people are living above their means. And that's a big problem.

<comment><USER17> > And that's a big problem.

Is it? Then why does it continue? It's a problem for the debtors, but not for the people and system that encourages, enables, and profits from their bad decisions.

Consumers must consume!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The author repeatedly expresses regret at having made poor financial decisions using the savings or debt as a metric. But it seems to me he has done quite well in fact: his daughters went to private schools, elite universities, had a nice wedding. What family, poor or well off, wouldn't sacrifice as much for their kids? Then he managed to stay true to his calling of a writer without compromising or cutting corners (this is a big one!). Look at the many quintessential immigrant families who used to be doctors or lawyers in their native countries who take up menial jobs to scrape by and still do a lot worse than the author. Or others who swallow their pride and go into more well-paid professions that they don't necessarily have passion for.

I'm probably lowering the standard of living target reasoning like this, which is not fair to the article which focuses on what middle class should be like, or was in the post-war boom decades. But still it could be a lot worse.

<comment><USER19> His specific complaints seem pretty reasonable to me:

 _We haven't taken a vacation in 10 years. [...] We have no retirement savings, [...] We eat out maybe once every two or three months. Though I was a film critic for many years, I seldom go to the movies now._

They're not destitute, but shouldn't most people expect to get at least some of those things more often than that?

The lack of retirement savings seems particularly bad, as the author notes they used their parents' savings to pay for their children's educations. Their children won't be able to do the same.

And as another commenter has noted, it's not just a "woe is me" sob story, the idea is that the author is representative of a secret 47%(!) who are ashamed to admit how badly they're doing. The comparison with impotence seems apt.

 _[Edit: spelling]_

<comment><USER20> It's a choice.

Is private schooling for children worth losing out on the opportunity to eat out as a family of 4 at a good restaurant every week (that's 250 per meal, so $1000 a month)?

Is funding your daughter's wedding (2000-10,000), worth skipping a vacation?

I think being middle-class is all about making choices between giving up luxuries of the body (e.g. resturant food), for luxuries of opportunity (e.g. schooling). If you are rich, you can have both your yatcht and private school. You can go to the country club, _and_ keep a maid at the same time.

Being poor on the other hand is about making choices between _necessities_ like "should we have water or power this week? pick one" or "should our food be nutritious or should we clean our clothes? pick one".

<comment><USER21> What planet are you living on where a wedding only costs $2,000, and no more than $10,000? In the US, the _average_ wedding cost is $30,000 ([http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/12/pf/planning-for-wedding- cost...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/12/pf/planning-for-wedding-costs/)) now. That being said I personally think that's ridiculous and I'll do my damnedest to try to keep mine under $5k, but I know it won't be easy, and there will have to be many things sacrificed.

If they're even wanting to have a modest wedding with 80-ish guests nowadays, I can't imagine paying less than $15k (which is why I'm going to try to make it less than 20 people for mine. Hell, I'd be happy with 2).

That being said, I wouldn't want to eat out at a $50/person restaurant with a family of four once every week. You could take them to a bbq or pita or chinese restaurant and they'd eat well for under $15 per person.

I don't really disagree with your main point, just your numbers seem to be bad estimates to me.

<comment><USER22> > What planet are you living on where a wedding only costs $2,000, and no more > than $10,000? In the US, the average wedding cost is $30,000

The idea of spending $30,000 on a wedding seems insane to me, and it reminds me of the Dave Ramsey quote "If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else."

> That being said I personally think that's ridiculous and I'll do my > damnedest to try to keep mine under $5k, but I know it won't be easy, and > there will have to be many things sacrificed.

My wedding (2 years ago, in the midwest) had about 100 guests and cost us about $5000 total (doesn't include the rehearsal dinner or the bar tab, which our parents covered). There were probably some things that we could have spent even less on, but it would have required us doing more things ourselves. A few things we did that might be different than the norm:

* My wife, mother, and grandmother made many of the decorations themselves

* The reception venue was less expensive because we had the wedding in April, because it wasn't during "wedding season"

* We had the grocery store make our cake for us

* We didn't pay anything for the ceremony location (there are many beautiful public venues that you can book for free)

* My wife chose a dress that was beautiful, but wasn't obscenely expensive. She also recovered about half of the cost by selling it afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > nearly one-quarter of households making $100,000 to $150,000 a year claim > not to be able to raise $2,000 in a month.

When people say these things, I wonder if they are perhaps not thinking about taking drastic action.

For me, when I do disaster planning I think about extra-ordinary measures.

For example, when I was in my 20s if I _needed_ 2000 in the next month I would have planned to at:

\- At age 21. Break my lease and move in with my parents. The lease was month- to-month, and would have instantly put an extra $1000 per month in my pocket + food savings.

\- At age 25. Break my lease taking a $6000 hit, but that'd be paid in installments over the next 12 months whilst I could certianly find a place that's worth less than $3,000 per month in rent.

\- At age 29. AirBnB my house or co-let. It's a good area, I'd be surprised if I couldn't scrounge up $2000 that way fairly fast.

That's just an example of focusing on housing.

Another thing to do in desperate need would be to cut digital communications and sell equipment. Do you have an iPad or Macbook? Can you sell one and use the other? How about a smartphone. Sell it (300+ dollars back) and switch to cheapeer services (maybe around 50-80 back).

\----

Tl;Dr.

People with $100,000 a year income have assets that they can sell or lease to cover a $2000 transaction, but they answer the question as if thinking "if I change nothing at all, can I come up with $2000".

That's not how budgets work.

<comment><USER23> The point is to be able to come up with $2,000 without taking drastic action. The $400 example in the article was being able to come up with $400 without selling stuff or taking out a payday loan.

I could sell my house and come up with tons of money. That doesn't count. I can also just pay an unexpected $2,000 expense (like my $3,000 unexpected tax bill) out of savings.

The point is that a lot of Americans don't have liquid assets they can use in the case of a minor emergency.

<comment><USER20> They don't have cash. They do have liquid assets. Anyone who owns a car has a liquid asset... they just don't think of it as such because they "need" it.

<comment><USER24> How fast do you think I can get a fair price for my 97 Sable? Fast enough to cover an "emergency" expense?

Cars aren't very liquid. You can sell them to a huckster with a lot in the shady part of town for 1/3 of what you could get by putting an ad on Craigslist and waiting a few weeks. If you don't have a few weeks, this is a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The real problem with debt is not the interest. It's that it keeps you comfortable when you shouldn't be, so you don't make lifestyle adjustments when you should.

These lifestyle adjustments aren't easy, and the way to be good at them is the same as for anything else: practice.

But people don't practice when they are young because they have easy credit. By the time the problems can't be brushed away any more (even with borrowing), they have children, making the decision that much harder. And without practice, they don't even know how to downsize.

There are so many perfectly reasonable things people can do to save money that aren't even considered. What about moving into a small apartment, eating beans and rice, and riding the bus for a few years while you get back on your feet? Sounds bad to a lot of "middle class" people, but I bet it's more pleasant than a downward spiral. And if you do it soon enough, you can get back to a good place quickly.

And I don't buy in to the "whatever college you want" guilt. I'll tell my children they have a guarantee of state school (assuming they get in), or education I Germany (where it's free). Anything else they need to get creative or lucky.

<comment><USER23> If my kids are smart and they do good work, why would I want to limit their college opportunities by forcing them to go to a state school? In my state there is one really good state institution (University of Maryland, College Park), and that's how it is for many states (or there are zero good state schools). And if my kids want to do research or study engineering or computer science, it's a very good school for that, but almost every school has weaker areas (and some have none they are particularly good at).

On a micro level, sure you can say maybe send your kids to cheap schools. On a macro level, college costs are getting way out of hand. Private schools should be able to serve more than the 1 percent and the really poor on full rides.

I graduated 10 years ago from an elite private university. It was expensive then, but it's a complete bargain today. Prices are raising much faster than inflation. I'm trying to save a few hundred thousand for each kid for college, but in 16-18 years, that won't go that far.

I'm only going to pay to send my kids to a private school if its a really good one, but I'm not going to tell them there is a whole class of schools they can't go to just because I'm cheap.

<comment><USER25> I live in California, so state schools are very good and can even be prestigious (Berkeley, UCLA).

I'm not limiting their options. I guess if one of my children is absolutely determined to jump into big time debt to go to Harvard, I probably wouldn't stop them.

But I won't destroy myself financially just because I'm afraid to explain to my children that choices have costs (list price of Harvard is something like $80k/yr). Also, my children are more different in age, so if I go broke on the first one, the next one wouldnt have the same opportunity.

The choice I'm offering is really not a bad one. I'll pay something reasonable, and if they can make up the difference with work and scholarships, great. If they want to do research, they can always go to MIT for grad school.

Also, by the time they go, things might be different. So many people got burned by the "go to whatever college you want, regardless of price" idea that it might shatter the prestige of any private school below ivy league. Or more people might do the first two years at CC before going to university, and that might carry less stigma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> People's spending habits are so broken, I think there must be some equivalent adult financial schooling/courses to give people right training on the most important in their life.

I frequently run in to relatives and bosses and other senior people who complain of not having money or expressing surprise when they learn some one earning far less or doing a job that they think is beneath them makes/has made a good investment. Finally they tend ultimately complain of life being unfair to them. Forgetting the fact that they make 5-6 times more and their state is their own doing.

Yet more I look at their lives, I see a spending pattern that co relates to borderline nonsense. They take vacations because some one else is, and not taking one frequently means losing brag rights in social circles. They have cars they don't need, they buy expensive cameras and lenses they are likely to never use or even know how to. They buy clothes which they are going to not like a month later. They change gadgets every year. They seem to spend money on everything which they don't need, or use or even remotely derive any value from.

Its simply a never ending cycle of upgrades and added finances time after time, which isn't unsustainable.

Even some very intelligent people I know are very poor in understanding large timescales, how investments work, how their own spending can be destructive to them.

At the very same I see people making far less, but a home early in life, start contributing to that retirement fund early and come out on top.

Honestly in the free market economy, freedom seems like something most people are incapable of handling. People have themselves to blame.

</comment><comment><USER27> Good lord, I expected more from HN commenters. Yall are talking about how he is a bad spender and should have done better with his money. Did any of you read this all the way through? I'll excerpt what the author _literally_ says is his point of the article.

"I don't ask for or expect any sympathy. I am responsible for my quagmire—no one else. I didn't get gulled into overextending myself by unscrupulous credit merchants. Basically, I screwed up, royally. I lived beyond my means, primarily because my means kept dwindling. I didn't take the actions I should have taken, like selling my house and downsizing, though selling might not have covered what I owed on my mortgage. _And let me be clear that I am not crying over my plight. I have it a lot better than many, probably most, Americans—which is my point._ Maybe we all screwed up. Maybe the 47 percent of American adults who would have trouble with a $400 emergency should have done things differently and more rationally. Maybe we all lived more grandly than we should have. But I doubt that brushstroke should be applied so broadly. Many middle-class wage earners are victims of the economy, and, perhaps, of that great, glowing, irresistible American promise that has been drummed into our heads since birth: Just work hard and you can have it all." (emphasis added)

The point is that though the author screwed the pooch on his finances, he assumes that he is a lot better off that most Americans. If true, that should be shocking to us all.

Other commenters point out that those that did save will have to rescue those that have not and that is a BS thing to have to do. I think that is probable, though not certain. However, like this student loan time-bomb, I think that forgiveness is the best path. Yes, we can lord over those that were dumb and did what others told them to do without really thinking. But I would rather have happier and less-stress neighbors and fellow citizens with the forgiveness even knowing that they will do it again and thinking to themselves that they cheated the system and won. We can be 'right' but have to sit in the mud, or we can forgive and all be happier and wiser for the next round.

</comment><comment><USER28> Did he really have to pay for his daughter's wedding? It's like 4000 words about how poor he is then somehow he finds many thousands for a totally unnecessary expense

<comment><USER12> Hah, if only my parents or wifes parents had paid for our wedding. That would have been pure luxury. We saved for three years to pay for our wedding. We were very frugal and it was beautiful. Paid for the entire thing without a cent of debt. It's certainly doable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I admire this guy for making sacrifices to educate his daughters well. (And it seems like he's succeeded...Rhodes Scholars aren't exactly common.) It looks to me, however, like he's might have failed in one important aspect.

He should have taught them from an early age about budgets and outlier expenses and the real costs of things (e.g., good school district for them, not much work for his wife). Instead, he's kept them in the dark, to the point of burning retirement savings on a wedding.

No one is born knowing how personal finance works, and learning the hard way sucks. Parents have an obligation to educate their children about this stuff. It's tragic that so frequently, after learning the hard way themselves, they hide everything from their kids, and in doing so, set the kids up for the same set of hard knocks.

</comment><comment><USER30> It seems that Americans have a serious issue with debt. I'm Italian and I live in France... and there are only 2 things I would get in debt for: a car (only if strictly necessarily) and a house. Nothing else. If you do not have the money for something just wait till you have saved enough to buy it without getting in "financial peril". My golden rule is to always spend as if you had only a third of the money you actually have... and thx to it now (just got 30) I could live with my savings for at least 2 years without working at all maintaining the same lifestyle. An emergency of 2000$ (or euros) is really no big deal.

</comment><comment><USER31> "We don't make [choices] with our financial well-being in mind, though maybe we should."

Uh, hello? The paragraph consists entirely of "I" statements about the bad choices he made and concludes with a "We".

There's no "we" about it -- I made (make) choices to improve my financial wellbeing. If you don't, that's your problem.

<comment><USER32> I think the author's idea is that he is representative of the 47% of Americans that don't have even a $400 dollar emergency fund. And that "We" is the people in that 47%.

If survey is accurate, that large of a percentage of the population means that society has a problem. That does not just impact the individuals that don't follow good financial practices when they could. So it ends up being your (people that make wise financial decisions) problem to a degree.

<comment><USER33> >> that large of a percentage of the population means that society has a problem. That does not just impact the individuals that don't follow good financial practices when they could

Just because it's 47% does not mean that the majority of those 47% are not entirely responsible for their own situation. The things people are mentioning (children's college/university, weddings, houses, cars) are completely dependent on the individual's own decisions. That people actually _go into debt_ or spend their _entire life savings_ on a bloody wedding of all things is certainly not indicative of a problem with society.

Nobody is forced to spend beyond their means to strive to place themselves above middle class. Spending is not justified because you fit the "middle class" demographic and should thus be entitled to "middle class things". There is no endemic here, only individuals making poor choices. There's no huge secret to stashing away some money. It's _really_ not difficult. I can sympathize for someone making less than $50k/year who genuinely struggles with basics. The $50k/year earner who buys a new iPhone every year? Not so much. Someone making $150k/year who is unable to withdraw $2000 from their chequing account? Not a single ounce of sympathy for them. Unless one is in a truly sticky spot like having to pay ungodly amounts of money to manage a severe illness, there is no excuse other than an introspective look at one's priorities.

Society cannot be used as a scapegoat here. The system is not flawed. The way people try to position themselves at a higher level within the system than they can afford? There's the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > You look at these people and they are young professionals," Lusardi said. > "You expect that people would say, 'Of course I would come up with it.' " > But many of them could not.

I know when I go to work I'm pretty much surrounded by millionaires. I know when I park my car there, it's surrounded by Lotuses and Teslas. What I really want to see is a venn diagram of the two, because I suspect a large portion of the latter are being mortgaged by people who don't have any real exit strategy.

<comment><USER35> I think this is a side effect of having jobs which are, relative to the rest of the country, extremely well paid, combined with very high cost of living.

In the UK if you told someone you'd be moving to the Bay Area on a _starting salary_ of $130k you would be looked at like you were minted for life. For most tech graduates that's more than their parents' final salary and that's where you get in at! However there's a disconnect between what seems like a high salary and your spending power in somewhere like San Francisco.

Over here tech salaries are a lot lower, though still good compared to everything except finance. Anyone who lives in London will assuredly _not_ be buying a Tesla on a Google starting salary.

People like saying "Oh he earns a six figure salary", it's a status symbol, and the natural response to earning that sort of cash after going through college and being dirt poor is to splash it a little.

It's a fairly common question on Quora:

[https://www.quora.com/I-just-received-a-full-time-job- for-10...](https://www.quora.com/I-just-received-a-full-time-job- for-100k-year-and-I-really-want-to-get-the-Tesla-Model-S-Should-I-buy-one)

<comment><USER14> Some people have natural reaction to hoard their money after being dirt poor and remember onf how hard it was.

"Natural reaction" is a cop out. People who get hired for being really freaking smart should be smart.

<comment><USER35> I should rephrase "a" natural reaction. Plenty of people don't waste their money, but I think for a lot of others there is at least temptation to live a little with their newfound windfall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think the lack of assets explains the angst shown by many Americans this election cycle much better than the employment rate. Enough people are working, they're just not making enough.

Reminds me of Mark Cuban's Ultimate Stress Test: [http://blogmaverick.com/2016/02/08/some-thoughts-on-the- pres...](http://blogmaverick.com/2016/02/08/some-thoughts-on-the-presidential- race-and-sociocapitalism/)

</comment><comment><USER37> > But recent research indicates that when people get some money—a bonus, a tax > refund, a small inheritance—they are, in fact, more likely to spend it than > to save it.

Not recent at all. I first read about it in The Millionaire Next Door book. Referred to as the "better than" theory [1].

Plain and simple, people don't like to save when they have the option. They like immediate reward. If you make $500 more a month after a raise, many people will reward themselves for the raise, justify buying something they've wanted, etc. After a while, the mindset that they are living just fine while spending the extra money sets in and they end up never saving the extra $500.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_Next_Door#.22B...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_Next_Door#.22Better_Than.22_theory)

</comment><comment><USER38> My own practice in recent years has been to analyze trends and convert them into investments. So for instance, I have substantial positions in McDonalds, Altria, Philip-Morris, Exxon Mobile, Facebook, and Service Corp (none of which do I patronize). People be gorging, smoking, posting online, and dying. To invest in rampant financial ignorance, I looked into pawn shops and payday loans, but those are all privately held (e.g. super-lucrative, don't need outside capital). I'm looking into banks, Visa and MasterCard, and other facilitators of credit and payments, as possible growth areas.

</comment><comment><USER38> People (even those who reject Marxism) ought to recognize the fact that money is the crystallization of labor, nothing more, nothing less. It gets more complicated and abstract from there onward, but if one starts each financial interaction with that "swing thought" then perhaps one will make better decisions. I know I do.</comment>


How one Indian city cracked the problem of urban spread - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/11/24/how-one-indian-city-cracked-the-problem-of-urban-spread <comment><USER2> _But the Atlas of Urban Expansion, a project based in New York University, estimates that roads built in Ahmedabad after 2000 are 8.5m wide, on average, compared with 7.2m for roads built earlier. Roads also take up more of the land area in the newly developed suburbs. Because wide roads can carry more cars and buses, future suburbanites in Ahmedabad ought to be spared the awful traffic jams that frustrate large Indian cities such as Delhi and Mumbai._

I grew up next to a three lane street(roughly 18m in total width) that lead to the suburbs which in turn experienced rapid growth during the nineties, continuing a few years into the 21st century.

The additional few tens of thousands of new inhabitants commuting each day to work were enough to turn this place into congestion hell.

I don't think 8.5m - even each way is going to cut it in a city of well over 5 million.

<comment><USER3> Thankfully, if there's enough room, you can repurpose roads into light / heavy rail when density increases enough.

Especially if the roads were laid out with foresight instead of organically tangling.

<comment><USER4> Good luck with that when everyone already has a car...

<comment><USER5> Actually motorcycle are popular in India. Most people use motorcycles in India. It wosen the traffic as bikes can cut between cars.

<comment><USER6> Motorcycle aren't as safe as cars.

<comment><USER7> My impression of India isn't a population that prioritizes safety. Just look up footage of trains in India, there are as many people clinging from the outside as there are inside.

<comment><USER8> I've travelled on a few different trains in India. More than a few actually, though not close to a hundred. Without seeing a single person clinging to the outside.

I've seen those in films and on photos, yes, just not in person. So maybe it's not that common, really? Except when a million people need to flee from the latest flood in Bihar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article has it backwards. Long, straight, wide roads are great for speeding cars but terrible for humans. It's the different between walkable places like and suburban American car sewers. But confidently wrong is completely on brand for this magazine, so thumbs up for them.

<comment><USER10> Pedestrians will also have a shorter walk if roads are straight, won't they? And, unlike cars, which can easily drive a kilometer or two further with no strain, pedestrians and cyclists are sensitive to this.

<comment><USER11> In the limit, you build roads too small for cars, like in the old walled medieval cities in europe. They are in general great places to walk and terrible places to drive.

In the other limit, you build like e.g. Detroit suburbs, where it's essentially impossible to do anything on foot, ever.

If you have to choose which one to be more like, curvy narrow roads are the way to go if you care about pedestrians.

Add to this the fact that, if you provide space for cars, they will take it up: adding lanes / width / parking increases car usage to a greater extent than the space added, such that you end up drawing more congestion to the area than before it was improved.

<comment><USER10> We can control polluting vehicles by imposing a pollution charge, or even banning them from some roads. Or by limiting them to only one lane.

I was trying to think in an idealistic or "from first principles" way as opposed to the practical / realistic approach you took. From that point of view, I'd want all roads to be straight lines to minimise travel distance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a counter argument i propose you read the book "Seeing like a state" by James Scott.

It clearly lays out the flawed thinking as done in the article and why this systematic kind of urban planning/engineering almost always fails.

Having been a resident of ahmedabad for a decade and having several friends here let me point out that the residents here have seen commute times increase despite all the planning and expansion of roads here.

</comment><comment><USER13> Happy/sad here. European cities are shifting to bikes to cut pollution (noise, brake dust, emission ...) amongst other things so that they are "livable" again. They are definitely putting in kinks in straight roads to prevent speeding and other rash driving. Unfortunate; Looks like Ahmedabad is aping the west (or US more precisely) by prioritizing cars and might end up with problems plaguing these cities now.

</comment><comment><USER3> The biggest problem seems to be preemptively cutting out speculators.

It'd be nice to see some kind of eminent domain clawback for someone who bought land solely for speculative zoning change.

Whether financial (e.g. compensating landowners on a multiplier scale according to how long they've owned the property) or legal (e.g. land recently sold is more easily seized via eminent domain, weakening the new owner's bargaining position).

Land development in a coherent, socially productive manner is the ultimate tragedy of the commons -- the individually optimal move is always to be enough of a dick so that the social utilities get built on your neighbors' lands, then reap the benefits.

<comment><USER14> It may seem unfair that speculators exist, but the losers there are the previous owners and not the rest of society. For those who buy flats in a residential building, the price will be the same regardless of who gets to pocket the land appreciation, a farmer or a real estate investor.

The best way to protect the owners is to make the development process as transparent and impartial as possible, so that everybody can act on that information not just those with privileged access. For example, the local government could mandate that infrastructure development proceeds in concentric circles radiating from a virtual center point of the city, and layout a plan for a decade or two, with a number of stages. After this, money is awarded according to the plan, as the city needs to grow.

So the information about a future urban development is known a decade in advance and the true owners can enjoy a steady growth in value as the events unfold. Speculators can still invest, but they need to do so well in advance, driving the whole land appreciation by providing liquidity.

<comment><USER3> I do believe it's unfair, but my point is more about it being _inefficient_.

A measured and transparent expansion system would be one way to help that, although complexity would vary widely with locale (plains vs river cities).

The problem with (independent) speculators is that the city is trading a largely rational actor (agricultural land owner) with capital / a solely profit-driven actor (speculator).

My point is the latter is less inclined to compromise than the former, to the detriment of urban development.

One could make the point that aggregating speculators serve a necessary role, but I don't see much value delivered by "smaller than a planned community" types.

Furthermore, I _have_ seen them hold up urban progress. It only takes one landowner to prevent a contiguous utility from being constructed...

<comment><USER14> Rational, in this context, means profit maximizing - both kinds of landowners should act in a similar way. If the owners compromise to less than the value of the land, sure, that's a way to redistribute the savings back to society, but it's still unfair to them. It also opens a major conflict of interest for those controlling the negotiation to get involved and grab some of that money on the table.

I much rather empower all owners to maximize the value of the land, but at the same time, have sane eminent domain regulation that prevent them for getting rich at the taxpayer's expense. So any inefficiency is the result of legislation that allows speculators to abuse the process.

<comment><USER3> Rational only means strictly profit maximizing under simple economic treatments. In this case, we're talking about improvements that boost land value, but must be agreed to / enforced on all.

Consequently, you deal with local optima, when everyone is perfectly individually greedy, no improvements can be constructed, and everything is less "good" than it could be (for the individuals and society).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The solution looks good. But the remaining problem is density. The higher the density the easier is to provide services for the population. New York, Tokyo, Paris, etc, have several store tall buildings with people living in apartments. For what I see these new cities are more similar to Los Angeles or Mexico City than anything else. Single-family homes spread all over the place without access to trains or subways.

I have lived all my life in apartments. So, for me, it feels normal and it is very practical. I guess that if you are used to single-family homes that is a difficult step to make.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's a shame that Indian cities aren't designing themselves around public transport. Road projects ensure a continuous under the table paycheck, unlike public transport....so roads are easier to fund. But, they really aren't the answer.

India is perfectly structured for public transport. High density, massive village -> city migration, a primarily lower-middle class population and some of the worst pollution on Earth .

Mumbai and Delhi are 2 cities that are now entirely dependent on public transport. Many rich people in Mumbai take the local train, because of it being faster and more reliable than roads during peak times.

Despite the public demand for it, it is very hard to now retroactively construct public transportation infrastructure in Mumbai.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think there is any much "innovativity" in that approach, just urban development done right.</comment>


Debt ceiling: Why the Great American Ponzi scheme might just keep running - <AUTHOR> http://www.firstpost.com/economy/debt-ceiling-why-the-great-american-ponzi-scheme-might-just-keep-running-1179989.html

<comment><USER2> Sigh. So much writing and yet his logic train goes off the rails right out of the station.

The crucial difference between what the U.S. is doing and a Ponzi scheme is that the U.S. is actually generating income, to the tune of 1/4 of the world's economy. That income stream is missing in a Ponzi scheme. Paying off maturing debt by refinancing it with new debt is nothing unusual--corporations do it all the time. It's fine because there is the underlying income stream.

Now, the fact that it's not running a Ponzi scheme doesn't mean the U.S. can continue borrowing forever. Creditors might get nervous if the debt levels get too big relative to the income stream. What the U.S. has to worry about is not how much debt it's taking out now. What the U.S. has to worry about is some other country becoming a more attractive place for the world to stash its cash.

<comment><USER3> The US doesn't really even have to worry about another country becoming more attractive to park its cash; its financial obligations are still all denominated in dollars and the Federal Reserve can still continue to print them. The only real concern is that if there are deep structural problems the economy it might have to raise taxes to combat inflation (simultaneously cutting the deficit) even in an environment where there's no economic growth. As you point out, the US economy is plenty big enough to pay down debts with tax takings instead, but the government might have to hurt the economy to do so.

<comment><USER2> Right, but my point was that we get to consume more than our GDP because we're an an attractive place to park cash. When that ends, we can pay off our dollar-denominated debts but we won't be able to keep spending more than we generate.

<comment><USER4> That's in theory. In practice the shock that ending that will cause will end any hope the US has of paying back it's debt, or even the interest on it, immediately. So it will cause an immediate default and destroy the economy that promised to pay it back in one fell swoop. There's no way out of that situation that doesn't involve reneging on repayment. Either directly (any sovereign nation, like the US, can simply legislate it's debt away like Greece -partially- did, and counterintuitively investors have no choice and will immediately reinvest, again, like Greece demonstrated)

So the US, like every other nation on this planet (barring a few, but only a few exceptions), has zero hope of ever paying back it's debt. So it won't.

That doesn't mean the illusion can't last a few more decades or even a century or two (though only a few states managed to make it last even a single century, the most famous being the Roman republic).

The reason that everybody's happy with this state of affairs is that it allows, at this moment, an economy that's factors larger than it would otherwise be.

This situation came to be as an "accident" (that has happened hundreds of times before in history), and there simply is no conceivable way out. Anybody who can rattle the boat risks losing big, even if it's monetary interests are protected, so the situation keeps existing until someone really, really goes too far.

Apres nous, le deluge. (google this sentence)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The good times will keep rolling for quite some time. 12% of the debt is held by the Fed (aka. they printed money), and inflation is still 1.5%.

The solution to our fiscal woes is simple: we keep printing money. Eventually the markets will tire of this, and interest rates will go up. When that happens, companies and rich individuals will have a disincentive to hoard money and will begin to do something with it, which may increase inflation and interest rates more. The risk is that countries, companies and wealthy individuals will stop hoarding funds and start spending money, further increasing the money in circulation.

The gamble is whether this happens before or after the demographic bubble that is weakening the ability of schemes like Social Security to fund their benefits. Once the boomers go away, the entitlement programs will be more self-sufficient.

<comment><USER6> That's not cool. People here want to hear about how the US is doomed. They are absolutely crazy for it, regardless of reality.

Edit: This post is an interesting case where people upvote it because of the title and then flag it after they read the comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Governments typically spend more than they earn_

Funny how at the end of the 90s, we had set things up to pay down the national debt, and how one of the issues in the 2000 election was what to do with the projected surplus. I believe it was Gore Vidal who referred to the "United States of Amnesia."

<comment><USER8> Well, one would assume that had the US not stumbled into 2 expensive foreign wars we probably wouldn't be in the situation we are in now. We went into massive debt during WWII as well we just weren't able to borrow the money from foreign markets, we had to settle for US war bonds.

<comment><USER9> That's true -- although it highlights just how ridiculous the decision-making around those wars was.

In World War 2 the United States was facing other world powers who were capable of converting their entire economies to war purposes; in 2001, the United States was facing a tiny pocket of wealthy and determined radicals who would occasionally try very hard to blow something up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting article. Particularly this:

"The way this entire arrangement evolved had the structure of a Ponzi scheme. China and other countries invested money in various kinds of American financial securities including government bonds. This has helped keep interest rates low in the US. This helped Americans consume more. The money found its way back into China (like a return on a Ponzi scheme), and was invested again in various kinds of American financial securities, helping keep interest rates low and the consumption going.

Foreign countries have an incentive in keeping this Ponzi scheme going."

TLDR: When nearly all parties have a vested interest in continuing to kick the can, the can will likely be kicked for a very long time.

<comment><USER11> But it's wrong. It's a good description of a how a Ponzi scheme works, but in a Ponzi scheme that's _all_ that happens - there's no actual economic activity taking place. The US, by contrast, has a very large and productive economy.

Also, bear in mind that the treasury borrows at a fixed interest rate. When you hear of rates going up, that's the rate that will have to be paid on future bond issues. With inflation as low as it is right now, it makes good sense to borrow. In fact, we should be borrowing more, probably much more, and investing it in major infrastructure upgrades that would yield higher economic gains over the lifetime of the bond than the puny rates of interest we pay on current borrowings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "This money printing adds to the money supply. This excess money can ultimately lead to high inflation with excess money chasing the same amount of goods and services."

I'm in the process of writing a blog post on this. For now, the printing hasn't led to an increase in the money supply. Banks are holding record amounts in reserves and aren't lending the way that they were in 2008, so the money supply hasn't increased.

<comment><USER13> > _so the money supply hasn 't increased._

The money supply has indeed increased: [http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/)

Perhaps you are thinking about monetary velocity, which is decreasing: [http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V)

<comment><USER12> Yes, I meant that it hasn't increased in the way that it "should" relative to the monetary base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> interestingly of all developed countries only the US and Denmark of all places have a debt ceiling.

<comment><USER15> Your comment prompted me to actually learn a little about the history of the US debt ceiling and why it was implemented.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_debt_c...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_debt_ceiling)

> In 1917 (and during World War I) the Debt Ceiling Law was passed, which > allowed the executive branch to issue bonds and take on other debt without > Congressional approval, as long as the total debt fell under the statutory > debt ceiling.

I find it interesting that a law which was passed nearly 100 years ago to free up the executive branch from being constrained by congress has now resulted in the executive branch being bent over a barrel by congress.

<comment><USER5> Consider the alternative -- every bond issue would require congressional approval.

Congress isn't going to cede it's power to control spending -- the debt ceiling is a hack that gives the President the autonomy to operate while continuing to give Congress the power of the purse.

<comment><USER15> True. But that is only one alternative, not "the" alternative.

Take Australia. The government proposes a budget and the senate reviews it and after making any changes they decide are required and the government agrees, it passes.

In the situation where a deal can't be made and the senate blocks supply of money to the government the "politically neutral" governor general can dismiss the government and force an election.

This has happened once:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A simple solution to increase immersion in VR - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vrgo/vrgo-the-chair-that-redefines-movement-in-virtual <comment><USER2> How is a purpose-built, high-tech chair a simple solution? I should've known better since it's a Kickstarter link, but I thought it'd be, like, "Allow users to configure rings/bracelets/watches on their avatars' hands to approximate what they're wearing in the real world" or something.</comment>