Why Can't Americans Get a Raise? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2017/07/why_can_t_americans_get_a_raise.html <comment><USER2> A large factor of the answer to this problem is in the second paragraph and the author glosses right over it:

"This state of things has left analysts stumped. For nearly a decade, the Federal Reserve has kept interest rates at extraordinarily low levels in order to initiate growth and rising demand, inflation, and ultimately higher wages. But the higher wages have been stubbornly slow to materialize."

Interest rates have been dropped into the ground, and it hasn't increased investment(growth). We have the highest savings in the history of capitalism and the lowest level of investment.

This is the wheel of capitalism literally coming to a halt because the oligarchs are staring each other down waiting for someone to go first.

And I think there is a lot to be said about Wall Street leaching most of the investors' money because it promises better returns than actual investment into actual things with utility.

Wall Street is 'supposed' to be the mechanism for recycling profits into investments so that this wheel keeps spinning. Does anyone honestly still believe it's functional?

<comment><USER3> The solution to this is plain and simple wealth-tax that can only be avoided if their investment creates X% jobs.

There are corner cases to it but the underlying reasoning is, if your investment is just lying around accruing wealth, it's bullshit wealth.

<comment><USER4> So if I invest money into a manufacturing process and build an automated factory that can do with 100 people what used to take 500 people, and then I therefore lower costs to all the people buying things from me...that's now bad? And I get to pay an extra special wealth tax for my trouble?

LOL

<comment><USER5> In some ways, yes, it actually is bad. Depends on your perspective.

As a very simple example, imagine that you were able to fully automate, such that you required zero workers. Imagine further that all other businesses did the same.

<comment><USER4> If literally all imaginable human work was 100% automated then the cost of goods and services compared to today would be tiny. The poorest member of that society would live like a king from our present day world.

<comment><USER6> The problem is, the plebians would not be able to get a job to pay for the goods/services no matter how cheap they may become.

If you had robots making everything you could possibly want, why would you bother selling any of it to people who don't have any land, natural resources, or rare skills? They wouldn't have anything you want.

<comment><USER7> Why bother selling it at all? You could just give away the things for free. The marginal cost of an item is just the energy needed to produce it. With robots building solar panels or something like that, those costs are negligible.

<comment><USER6> Because it still takes effort to give things away for free and as a robot owner, natural resources, land, rare skills can't be automated away.

<comment><USER8> Effort is a human skill, which the premise states is already automated. As are rare skills.

<comment><USER6> If you can even automate giving things away without worrying about people hacking/stealing/vandalizing your robots, then wouldn't it also be likely for you to spend all your resources on combat robots to take resources/land from other robot owners instead of wasting them on people that aren't giving you anything you want?

<comment><USER8> Why would the elite worry about that, life is good in a monopoly, no need to upset the balance.

<comment><USER6> Because resources don't last forever? Nor are they distributed among the land equally (for example oil,rare earth elements, uranium).

<comment><USER8> Those are all current resources. The general currency is "energy" and "materials", and even materials are based on the energy in creating them (I don't think REEs are that rare, but they are hard to process).

<comment><USER6> There is no research to even suggest that we are going to be able to synthesize one type of matter to another arbitrary type without expending an absurd amount of energy, making it useless to do.

The idea that you could do something like that is even more outlandish than having robots that could automate everything a human could.

<comment><USER8> > one type of matter to another arbitrary type

But I didn't say this.

Certain materials can be _substituted_ for another, but for high energy costs in making them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of an article in Aviation Week recently bemoaning the lack of new pilots coming into the profession and saying how this was completely baffling to the companies involved.

A few paragraphs down they mentioned the starting salary at regional airlines: $26000.

 _I think I can solve your mystery_

When the wage of the person responsible for 40+ lives and millions of dollars worth of equipment isn't enough to feed a family (many pilots are on _food stamps_ ) you aren't paying them enough. Never mind that they also have to pay for their own education and that includes several thousand hours of Pilot in Command time. Renting a plane is typically > $100/h. Which is why flight instructors are often cheaper than tennis instructors: the main benefit for the instructor is that the student pays for the plane.

And that's one of the main reasons why Sully said he can't recommend the profession to anyone.

<comment><USER10> I think the low price can be justified because flying has been going to automation.

<comment><USER11> Not really, you still need extensive training. Requirements have rather increased over the past years.

The reason why pilot salaries are low nowadays is because the job is so popular. It's a dream job of many so that airlines could access a pool of self-trained pilots (i.e. paid for aviation school with loans) for low salaries. This pool now seems to slowly exhaust so that airlines will have to start training their own pilots again at some point.

<comment><USER10> Sure they need training. But not something like an engineer, doctor, or lawyer. Apparently only ~250 hours flying and "commercial training can be accomplished within 4 weeks if full-time and 4-8 if part-time." [http://blog.wayman.net/how-long-does-it-take-to-become-a- com...](http://blog.wayman.net/how-long-does-it-take-to-become-a-commercial- airline-pilot-in-the-us)

You also make a good point that the supply of pilots have increased, and that can also explain why so many people are becoming pilots. And part of the reason for the increase in people being able to become pilots is back to my original point that it has become easier with automation.

Maybe in the old days, high salaries could be justified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The most obvious answer seems to be that the workforce keeps growing relative to the demand for that work. Wage stagnation began at the same time the number of women in the workplace started to grow. While a corresponding increase in demand with the supply of workers would have kept incomes moving upward, women were actually already consumers. They had to eat, be sheltered and clothed, etc. even when men made up the vast majority of the workforce.

The rate of the growing female workforce itself started to stagnant around the 90s and 2000s, but a new worker had fully emerged on the scene by that point: The robot. It's a slight misconception that robots eliminate jobs. In reality, they compete for them just like people do. They are another worker in the supply of workers. And while robots bring new demand, as they didn't exist before, it is not proportional to what they can create like with humans.

And so, increasing supply over the rate of what increases to demand exist, and you get downward price pressure.

<comment><USER13> Except the article cites several examples of where demand isn't being met.

-Farmers in Alabama are fretting that crops may rot in the ground for a lack of workers to bring in the harvest.

-Despite high demand, home builders in Colorado are throttling back activity because they can't find the workers to erect frames.

-An airline canceled flights because it couldn't find enough pilots to steer them.

Those aren't demand problem but supply problems.

<comment><USER14> >\- Farmers in Alabama are fretting that crops may rot in the ground for a lack of workers to bring in the harvest.

The oil field boom in ND didn't have a problem getting skilled workers from across the country to live in tents because they paid them well.

They AL farmers are not worried about finding workers, they want to lowball American laborers so they can throw their hands the air and claim that they need a supply of immigrants laborers, which they can exploit.

<comment><USER15> Not entirely accurate.

The migrant farm laborers are actively avoiding Alabama as a result of anti- immigrant legislation that passed a few years ago. Even though it was subsequently voided by court order, the workers remember it, and are not stupid, so they will demand a premium for dealing with Alabama's racist, protectionist bullshit.

And even paying that is cheaper than offering the sort of labor standard that a citizen--even a high-school dropout or ex-con--would expect in America.

That's pretty much what they deserve for voting the same party in every election, without regard to their own economic self-interest.

Edit: The state raised the perceived _cost of working_ for migrant laborers, to the point that the prevailing wage offered by the farmers is no longer sufficient to entice those workers to come to work. They aren't lowballing to preferentially employ migrants, they are just lowballing all labor, period, because as commodity producers, the labor expenses cut directly into their profit margin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another fundamental issue is that business has never been structured for high wage elasticity. When the market clearing price for wages becomes volatile, which seems to be increasingly the case, it is generally very difficult for business to track the market because their operating models are predicated on the relatively non-volatility of wages. Adjusting to that is generally not easy or quick as it often forces companies to change the way they do business at a pretty fundamental level.

I've seen this play out at companies big and small when changes in market wages force them to change the way they think about hiring. Ironically, the replacement strategy is often to eliminate positions from the bottom half of the wage pool and to add a much smaller number of positions in the top half, at least in my experience. (It is increasingly widely believed that this latter strategy is superior in any case and there is evidence to at least suggest this is true.)

<comment><USER17> If a business was structured to deal with wages elastically, that's great for business, but can you imagine working for such a corporation? In theory, the reason we allow business to profit is because we all share in the benefits, but if a significant chunk of the market were structured like this, a large benefit to ordinary people (i.e. the ability to stabilly eat and shelter themselves) would be removed, removing a large chunk of legitimacy from the economic system.

<comment><USER18> If businesses were structured for high turnover, then we'd have to structure society for it too. This means providing all of the normal benefits to people via government services. Then, all employers would simply bid on workers with piece work or hourly contracts. People would continue having their medical care, food, and housing covered by the government, perhaps from a basic income.

<comment><USER17> I'm down with that. I just cynically expect that only the part that favors businesses gets delivered and the other stuff gets ground down to nothing over time. Just look at what's happening with the AHCA and Net Neutrality right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's really silly to think of labor prices as just being a matter of "people knowing what they're worth." The example given was painting jobs. If you're someone that maybe could offer such a job, there's a price at which it makes more sense for you to do it yourself. That price is a hard limit to the amount you can offer for such a job. If someone demands more, then you can't satisfy them because then you're losing out on the deal.

Only growing commercial concerns can afford to hire new employees. The world used to have a way of keeping people who would otherwise be economically impotent engaged, and that is cheap service work, but we've decided as a society that such things are not politically palatable.

So instead we just place more and more expectations on the people that participate usefully in society, and less and less on those who can't. The older I get, the less sympathetic I get to this viewpoint, but I suppose that's a quite common moral journey so I won't belabor the point too much.

<comment><USER20> > The world used to have a way of keeping people who would otherwise be > economically impotent engaged, and that is cheap service work

Service work is up over the decades. What we used to have was manual labor/manufacturing jobs. [https://cdn.static- economist.com/sites/default/files/images/...](https://cdn.static- economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20140118_FBC169.png) [http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...](http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/01/waiters%20vs%20mfg%20workers.jpg)

<comment><USER19> Manufacturing and the Industrial Revolution is what destroyed cheap service work. Factories had such a big thirst for labor that they outbid families for the same labor that used to go into households and farms.

Eventually it got stigmatized. Now most countries' labor laws prevent anything like what used to happen. Probably for good reason, some of these people toiled in horrid conditions, but I don't think re-allowing them is going to recreate those conditions.

<comment><USER21> What do you mean by re-allow?

Do you mean cutting minimum wages so that people can hire staff for their homes?

(Because lots of people are perfectly happy to hire part time staff at higher prices, cleaners that come once a week, lawn care, delivered/take out food, etc.)

<comment><USER19> This is true. A lot of people are. But part time gigs do not make for stable employment situations for people that need them.

I really don't know the answer. Nothing seems politically feasible at the moment.

People need stable jobs. Would-be employers need to be able to afford to keep on 'the help'. Allowing full-time, below-minimum-wage service staff seems to give a lot of people economic viability that otherwise would be constantly teetering on ruin.

Can we bring those days back? Or at least try it out? I don't know.

Perhaps the real problem is employers' tendency to over-negotiate. So the only thing the new service class can really expect is to be oppressed by their bosses. Edwardian-period England was not a nice place for servants. Maybe new tech tools will give employees an advantage that pre-industrial servants didn't have.

<comment><USER21> Maybe spend $100 a day if you really want a servant?

<comment><USER19> It's not just about finding market-clearing rates, it's also about the regulatory environment. If you directly employ people to work in your home, then your home is a workplace with all that entails.

This is the reason that even people who can hire full-time service staff, such as nannies, often don't, and instead rely on part time contract service. It's an arrangement that better suits employers than employees.

I'm trying to think of ways we can offer people who aren't economically competitive in the workplace the ability to find stable employment. The current job market is just getting more and more hostile to the less- advantaged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They hit the nail on the head right here: "Companies are psychologically and emotionally geared not to raise wages as a matter of course." Our current business culture is basically to maximize profits and minimize expenditures.

<comment><USER23> For whatever reason, maximizing profits and minimizing expenditures is a popular trend among many successful companies

<comment><USER24> It's popular until a company loses its market. Minimal expenditures mean minimal investment and retainment. That's not healthy in the long-term for a company.

If you'd like to discuss further then please provide more than a summarized sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Those employers don't want employees, they want _CHEAP_ employees. If you pay $100/hour, you _will_ get employees. So, the only question is "where is that wage number?"

Employers aren't stupid. If they could make more money by hiring employees, _they would_. What this tells me is that demand isn't high enough for an employer to calculate an increased return from hiring someone.

So, what this tells us is that _demand_ is dead. That's what happens when you hollow out the middle class.

<comment><USER4> This is wrong. Employers are adding employees, at a consistent rate of 200k or so per month for 7 years:

[https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=ne...](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth)

The issue is that even with all these hires there is still a fairly large pool of people that want to work that don't currently have jobs. This is why wages aren't rising.

<comment><USER6> Filling cheap/temp jobs doesn't mean demand isn't weak.

If companies were truly desperate for people they would offer higher prices or even pay to train people to their standards.

I remember in the 90s, someone telling me that tech companies (even established ones like IBM) saying they were hiring anyone with a pulse, and that they were trained on the job instead of being asked for 20 years of experience with X, Y, and Z.

If you can afford to be so picky to only hire people that can answer absurd questions like why are manhole covers round or coding a minimum spanning tree operation on a whiteboard with 0 screwups, you do not have a very large demand for people.

<comment><USER26> I don't remember hiring being that lax in the 90s.

Microsoft used (and still uses) lots of contractors, but those were not secure jobs, nor did they provide much training opportunities.

Yes, during the dot-com boom, "HTML programmers" could be hired at startups with a minimum of experience, but this was hardly a long-lived trend.

<comment><USER6> Microsoft was the Facebook/Google of that time, they had the most stringent hiring requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think this is part of the equation about illegal immigrants which nobody in the US seem to talk about. They dont talk about all the companies exploiting illegal workers. We had a situation in Norway with exploited Polish workers. It was when Norwegian unions started targetting polish workers when things turned around. With polish info about workers rights, salaries and conditions improved. If you get unions more actively involved in the US you might not need big walls. Businesses are not going to hire mexicans if they cant pay them shitty salaries. If salaries and conditions are better americans are going to take those jobs instead.

</comment><comment><USER28> Getting a raise and bargaining for a starting pay, and offering a default pay for a job, these are three different things, I think.

Most people don't ask for raises, or draw no consequences from being mad about not getting a raise. So after a few generations companies adapted and simply don't offer raises anymore as default.

People who really want to make more money, still get more money. Just not in the same job. While working less in their current job they start to look for other jobs with better pay, and since they have a current job they can proactively bargain for the pay they want. If they don't get it they just don't switch.

And last but not least, but I hope at least here people have noticed that now we have a method called Start-up. That is a way to get a lot of raises in a very short time frame as well. The only requirement is the cruel real life fairness of having a growing marketshare.

So we have everything, non-increasing incomes for lazy people, regular raises by job switching from dedicated people, and fast-lane high-risers for people who can really take a risk.

And of course we also have a problem. But that problem has nothing to do with any of the three things (raises, job offer bargaining, default pay): We have more and more jobs that are automated and replaced by machines. If you have autopilots in airplanes that do a well enough job, you simply don't really need the pilots any more, for instance. I honestly don't know if we can find a solution for that, or if we are heading for another period like feudalism where only a small percentage of people actually have a good life.

But, well, as long as we don't talk about that problem we certainly won't resolve it.

<comment><USER26> The opportunity to job hop is not as universal as you might think. Until fairly recently I also had the false impression that anyone could do it to achieve a pay raise. There are plenty of occupations and industries that preclude job hopping.

1\. Company towns, heavy industries, monopsony; many regions have one large employer or customer offering a variety of jobs to the inhabitants. Think: auto workers, chicken farmers. There is nobody else in the region to buy their labor or product, so unless an individual moves, they cannot change jobs without retraining and/or liquidating their assets.

2\. Ultra-specialists. There are many occupations where turnover is low and the total number of people in the field is low. Compensation may be high due to a scarcity of qualified applicants, but the overall number of positions may be low. Changing jobs in a region might be exceptionally difficult since there may only be a total of a dozen jobs for a given region. Example: speech pathologists, radiographers, elevator repairers.

3\. Middle management. Once someone enters the ranks of middle management, job hopping can be destructive to a career. Instead, it is expected that a manager will move to different departments. A middle manager or company officer is expected to quantifiably add value to a company. If you look at the successful managers in tech, you will find most have only been managers at 2 or 3 companies in total, with a tenure of at least 5 years at each.

<comment><USER28> In theory yes, but in practice I think people who want to make a good amount of money don't work in these jobs, or at least not for long. For instance, you aren't born as ultra-specialist. You get there by dedicated work and the goal to stick to that kind of task. People who want to earn money know a little about a lot of different things.

About the middle management I can only suggest to read the Gervais Principle. They may be mostly the people who are not smart enough to get to the top and not socially skilled enough to job-hop easily enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> When healthcare premiums are rising double digits annually, there is no money to increase salary.

We have to decide a basic level of healthcare every Citizen is entitled too and if you want more, the individual pays for it.

Cutting taxes on the already wealthy isn't a stimulus, but putting $18k ( avg annual HC premium ) back into pockets the middles classes will stimulate the economy because they will spend it all.

Cutting taxes on the wealthy just slows the Velocity of Money.

<comment><USER30> That sounds great on the surface (putting $18k "back" into middle class pockets), but where will that money come from?

Every example of universal healthcare I've seen so far pays for it with huge payroll and income taxes. Payroll taxes have a direct and demonstrable effect on wages and hiring, and income taxes would just wipe out the benefit.

The problem with your idea is that it doesn't actually do anything to contain healthcare insurance costs. Those costs have risen dramatically faster under the ACA than before, and they were already going up quickly.

I'm not opposed to universal healthcare at all, but you can't just hand-wave and make it 'free', and with those costs I don't think you'll see the benefits to wages you're looking for.

<comment><USER31> Sure there are subtle implementation details, but let's not put the cart before the horse. The political and moral will to do it comes first, the details of how to work it out happens later. If we get to the point where the actual ruling class (not just the vast majority of Americans when polled) is willing to give in to the citizenry and give them universal healthcare and starts saying healthcare should be provided as a right to all Americans, there will be no issue getting the financial details worked out. They have an easy job; it's inherently more efficient (larger risk pool, no middleman), implementing even the expensive policies being proposed right now lead to savings of trillions. Though those savings are concentrated among the poor and middle class for whom health costs are huge and taxes are smaller, not senior vice presidents of health insurance companies . As it turns out in aggregate, it's not only already "free", it saves money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My observation in the US is that there is a pretty big gap in perception of how professionals or managers should be paid versus ordinary workers. You'll find people who would never consider paying workers more than minimum wage, and yet consider the bills from lawyers and consultants perfectly reasonable.

Part of it seems to be a general belief that some sorts of expensive professionals are better, much like how people assume pricey wine tastes better, but I suspect most of it's just class issues.

<comment><USER33> Someone above mentioned it, but basically, for low skill/manual labor, there is a level at which you'll say "I can do it myself", or "I can hire some intern or random kid to do this". And that's the hard cap ofr those jobs. While you can represent yourself in court, it's probably a bad idea (and you can't legally do it for someone else, so you HAVE to cough up t he $$$).

On the other hand, I personally have a very high appreciation for high quality manual labor (eg: carpentry) and I'm always looking for the best money can buy in those areas....and it's impossibly hard.

Since no one else seem to value it, no one does it. Everyone's optimizing for cost. I had a very difficult carpentry job that needed to be done recently, and I went hunting for the best of the best, offering well over what a lawyer or software engineer would make. Crickets. It took over a year to find someone. Those people no longer exist since there's no market for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Remember, if you do end up quitting your job, be sure to tell your employer that they weren't paying enough. Then when they hire to fill your position, they may be more likely to offer a better wage.

<comment><USER35> More likely, they'll try to offer less to your replacement, given the opportunity to pay less for the same labor. This is why many employers ask potential hires about their salary expectations and prior wage history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Most employers have been giving their workers steady pay increases for years - those pay increases just happen to go to health insurance companies.

</comment><comment><USER37> Perhaps the phrase "six-figure salary" has caused wage stagnation.

Once a manager, for example, hits their personal goal of "six-figures", they feel they have hit an important milestone. So they are content year after year to privately make $100,001 but publicly/subconsciously use the misleading phrase of "six-figures". A manager's salary is implicitly the upper bound of their subordinates' pay so the whole work-force suffers.

If the goal is inspire a higher paid workforce, let's stop with the "six- figures" vagueness and use concrete income milestones (e.g., $250k a year, $10k a week, etc.) instead.

<comment><USER31> I've never heard of a manager who is content with $100,000 and does not immediately wish for the position a couple rungs up up on the ladder where they can make $150,000 or $200,000. Nobody is content with stagnant wages, management or labor, especially when costs are constantly increasing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Part of the problem is that people are much more reluctant to move for a new job, because job security is now so low. Also, moving to a town with one major non-union employer is like signing up for indentured servitude.

</comment><comment><USER39> In the industry I work in it's a skills gap. I work for an Industrial Electrical Contractor. We cannot find enough skilled electricians out there. The good ones have jobs and don't seem to look to change. We've had to start our own 5 year apprentice program because of lack of qualified candidates. A real problem is too many school counselors and society in general tell people you can't make a living doing skilled blue collar work.

<comment><USER40> Well given the fact that many of those skilled blue collar jobs have either been outsourced or supplanted by illegal immigrants, and given the fact that their wages have either been stagnant or on the decline since the 70's, it makes sense that the schools would push the kids into careers resistant to those forces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm just glad I have a way out potentially as a developer. Starting to build up client base still far from being able to be self employed but I'm grateful to be aware/know where to look to learn.

I'm not a fan of my day job with regard to, regardless of their customer input (say they did a lot of business) I don't get a bump or tip or anything. No incentive to try harder also my day job any kid off the street can do so what can I say.

</comment><comment><USER42> A lot of employers try to offer so little for unskilled jobs that it costs more to commute to the job than you could make. Those jobs will go unfilled because no rational human is going to pay someone to be their employee even if they dropped out of high school most people can do enough basic math to know whether a job will cost more to commute to than they can make.

<comment><USER43> That may explain unskilled labor, but what about "skilled" labor, such as plumbers and electricians? Huge shortage of these workers and they pay _very well_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> No new markets where to expand. Since Russia got re-grouped with Putin, the Russian (and former USSR) markets started to close for US exports. Chinese had their own dynamics. The labor participation rate is at the 70-ties rate again. Go for the maiximal time period here to see the dynamics. [https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force- parti...](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force- participation-rate) Also check who's getting all the gold recently [https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gold- reserves](https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gold-reserves)

</comment><comment><USER45> Labor has no pricing power in the USA and it's _partially_ responsible for the candidacy of Donald Trump & Bernie Sanders - for what it's worth.

All the spigots for cheap labor in the USA are turned on full blast and have been increasingly so since the late 1970's when labor power was at its zenith. Those spigots are: free-trade agreements with other countries, automation, anti-union actions, flow of illegal labor, flow of legal immigrant labor, globalization.

It's the cause of social turmoil, but that's not much of a concern (in fact it's something to be harnessed and consumed) for the ruling (and chattering) classes.

</comment><comment><USER46> You have to also consider the money supply and creation of commercial credit in the system. If the currency was a true stable store of value, the savers would be rewarded. Over time, the value of their money would purchase more due to innovation and reductions in price.

Historically, before the Gold Reserve Act of 1933, the one ounce double eagle gold coins were valued at $20. You could buy a good suit with just one of those coins. Fast forward to the present, if you take a current double eagle one ounce gold coin that is produced today, you can still buy a good suit with it.

<comment><USER30> I don't know what kind of suit you could buy but I 1933 for $20, but I know that today 1200 is far more than you'd need for a 'nice suit' due to price reduction and globalization.

<comment><USER46> my point was that you could buy a suit for the $20 prior to 1933 and with the same coin today still buy a suit. The currency was stable, so it protected a person's savings.

You hear all these horrible stories of elderly people having to choose between food and medicine. Prices keep escalating, and these elderly people live on fixed incomes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> They track "average hourly earnings" which leaves out a number of non-monetary benefits, such as

* health + dental + vision insurance

* 401(k) matching

* ESPP

* other stock-based compensation, such as options

* number and flexibility of vacation days (i.e. if someone didn't get a raise, but got 5 extra vacation days, it certainly has value for them)

* free food, massage, yoga on premises, etc.

Tracking average hourly earnings also means that $1 annual salary CEOs such as Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page are dragging down averages quite a bit. Every startup that pays sub-market salary in exchange for a generous options package is also dragging such average down.

<comment><USER48> The vast majority of startups paying sub-market salaries are either going to fail, or be acquired in such a way that the workers don't see anything meaningful from their "generous options package".

And this article is about the broader labor market in general. Not just startups. And a lot of workers won't see any of those benefits that you listed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Not just America. In Canada too salaries have been flat forever. I work at one of our big three telcos and we were told last year that nobody is getting a raise for at least the next 3 years. Like, none of my costs of living are going to go up in the next three years either?

[http://globalnews.ca/news/3531614/average-hourly-wage- canada...](http://globalnews.ca/news/3531614/average-hourly-wage-canada- stagnant/?utm_source=GlobalNews&utm_medium=Facebook)

</comment><comment><USER50> Sales is a science. The writer is doing a great job of categorizing "objections" to the sale. That's terminology that any trained salesperson should understand.

This categorization helps the salesperson do two things: \- De-prioritize leads whose objections they're unlikely to overcome \- Craft responses to objections they are likely to overcome and prioritize these leads

In this particular case they're unlikely to convince a soon-to-retire or luddite vet -- they should de-prioritize these, maybe put them in the CRM to ping in six months to see if anything has changed. They should also be aware that their target market doesn't include these vets, so if the proportion is high enough they might want to find a different market.

For the others, it seems they're already crafting responses to the objections - presumably they'll get a sale fairly soon if the market is big enough.

<comment><USER51> Wrong article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> so what are the chances that a significant portion of the population was being paid more than they are worth? Whether because of skill set or simply the industries are adversely affected by more competition?

there are certainly people getting raises, so is this limited to specific industries, regions, or other category? Is there a break out where raises are occurring versus where they are lacking?

anecdotally, personally I have no friends in my circle who made mention of no raises. poor raises sure, but that is always relative to expectations

</comment><comment><USER53> This is all temporary - as the fed raises rates, we'll finally get back to 'normal'. This is exactly the fed playbook.

</comment><comment><USER38> Because Republican state legislatures are keeping minimum wages down.[1]

[1] [http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/07/12/minimum-wage-hikes- by-c...](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/07/12/minimum-wage-hikes-by-cities- getting-rolled-back-blocked-by-state-lawmakers.html)

</comment><comment><USER54> Profits ?

</comment><comment><USER55> Any ideas for a tax system that makes raising wages attractive?

<comment><USER56> Our current one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The author has a degree in history. Perhaps it would be helpful to have an economist write an article about economics. I am not one, but at least have training in jobs that require analysis and not dogma.

1\. Wages are just part of the overall benefit package per worker. Healthcare costs to firms have been rising dramatically and these higher healthcare costs (even as employers are having workers pay more out-of-pocket) have resulted in a flat overall wage payout.

2\. What should be focused on is overall standard of living and not wages. In cities such as my own, NYC, but also SF, LA, SD, Boston, DC, the price of housing and commercial real estate (an increasing cost to businesses which can result in lower wages paid out) is caused because of "rent-seeking" that causes an artificial scarcity of land through politics that limit zoning density with the resultant higher proportion of income going towards housing costs. The rent-seeking benefits special interests which in this case are wealthy landlords such as Donald Trump.

3\. Importing illegal immigrants holds down wage costs among the working class. Except for Trump, almost all Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates wanted to import illegal immigrants.

4\. Exporting factory jobs to China and Mexico have also kept wage rates low.

5\. The abuse of H1-B Visas have helped to keep wages lower among STEM workers. H1-B Visas are supposed to be used only in the case where there is no American with the skill set to fill the job. Many Democrats and some Republicans actually want to increase the number of H1-B Visas to further depress STEM wages. Trump campaigned against H1-B Visa abuse and spoke against Disney replacing 250 American IT workers with H1-B from India, a clear abuse of H1-B. Clinton did not speak out against H1-B Visa abuse.

6\. Raising minimum wage by law to $15 per hour as the author suggested demonstrates to me that he wants to take this simplistic solution which ends up with higher costs to poor people who have to buy goods and services.

In summary, instead of focusing on wages alone, focus on standard of living much of which is poor because of rent-seeking which benefits wealthy landlords to the cost of everyone else. When focusing on wages, deal with the structural issues which are 1) increasing costs of healthcare and other benefits 2) increasing real-estate costs to businesses, 3) eliminating illegal immigrants 4) eliminating H1-B Visa abuse and decreasing the number of H1-B Visas.

Raising the minimum wage through law simply lowers the standard of living to the poor such as retirees on fixed incomes as the grocery store costs and other costs increase.

<comment><USER58> Just watch what Trump does with H2-Bs, that's where he hires foreign dishwashers, gardeners, and waiters for his resorts.

If Trump is largely using the presidency as a stature and money making scheme without truly divesting from his private companies, I expect you'll see a big difference depending on whether a particular piece of policy affects his own wallet.

<comment><USER57> By far the greatest part of Trump's wealth comes from the "rent-seeking" that I mentioned. The sources are all political: 1) zoning density restrictions, 2) overregulation (e.g. in a city with mass transit and Uber, parking spaces, and lots of red tape to increase time of construction) and 3) overuse of historic landmark status. This rent-seeking is all implemented by cities run by Democrats.

Thus, it is Democrats who are most responsible for making Trump far, far wealthier than he would be without their assistance. This while adding to inequality and making rents for even small apartments very expensive.

Incidentally, in Japan in 2001 or so they passed a federal law which overruled local zoning density restrictions. The result is that in 2014 140,000 housing units were built in Tokyo compared with less than 90,000 _for all of California_ and 20,000 for NYC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Its a consequence of all risks on the individual. You get a raise with the implied alternatives you can show up with - and to consider playing this poker game, you need to have no risky cards on your hand. No wife or children that can get sick, etc.

</comment><comment><USER60> wow and slate has no understanding of basic economics.

take a macro class sometime.

</comment><comment><USER61> One word - immigration.

<comment><USER62> Two words - prove it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> We will never move out of this situation until we repeal the de facto currency and go back to real money based on gold. We have had only legal tender since 1933. Lincoln got killed for printing Greenbacks. Kennedy was assassinated for exposing secret socities. We are under the rule of a fictional commercial entity incorporated in a land taken by war and therefor the laws of admiralty are the true rule of this land. The Fed, IRS and US CORP are Vatican/British entities. The world continues to be conquered by the Roman Empire. Lets get rid of US Debt Currency and move into real money. That's the real solution, a true independence. We are nothing more than a subsidiary of the IMF and WorldBank. If the people of US don't realize this basic truth nothing will ever change. The reality is that those who control currency are in power. Before you judge do some research on Puerto Rico and IRS. Also look at the US code itself. The creators use the loopholes (remedies) to remain in control.

<comment><USER15> Buddy, I feel for you. I really do. I caught this kind of crazy about 20 years ago. But then I got over it.

Yes, a great many people are essentially ruled by the lies told by the rich and powerful. But ferreting out and exposing those lies won't do you a bit of good. The bullshit you are repeating here is likely to be spread and encouraged by those who stand to profit by increased consumer demand for gold, and for disaster preparation supplies.

You took the red pill, and now you think Zion is the real world. It isn't. It's the pressure release valve--the special program loaded to house "problem" residents of the Matrix. You're in an oubliette made of your own thoughts.

It just doesn't matter if the world has a secret emperor supported by a cabal of Illuminati. If you want to survive in it, you get a job or start a business that transacts in the commonly accepted currency, and you pay your taxes--not because they are just, but because you will get beaten, caged, or killed if you don't.

If you truly believe that those who threaten the system are assassinated by it, then who are you to escape that fate? You can play the game by the rules defined for it, even if they are not fair, or you can flip the game board off the table and get dogpiled into a bloody pulp by all the players who thought they had a chance at winning. You're not going to get anywhere by spending your whole turn whining about changing the rules. You'll just piss off the other players as the gamemaster waits you out.

The world is not fair. Knowing it is not fair does not make it more fair. Going back will not move you forward. The unethical asses of this world already know about gold, and have planned ahead to negate it as a threat to their influence. You would be far better off tossing out all the conspiracy theory, and trying to puzzle out some Etherium smart contracts that would obviate the kind of power one may wield by exerting private control over fiat money. Good luck.

<comment><USER64> This is a beautiful response, but would seem to indicate that truth is not worth pursuing, and that social reality is all that matters. Disregarding whether this particular conspiracy theory is true, do you not think (hope?) that knowledge of what is actually true can at least help to inform effective strategies for change? That a model that stays tight to reality can lead one to a better place than a black box that makes decent predictions and provides steady paycheck?

<comment><USER15> In this society, at this time, knowledge of truth is only effective as motivation for action. Truth as an end in itself is fine, but if the truth isn't something you're comfortable with, there you are, uncomfortable with it. So... now what?

A lot of the people suffering from same type of misinformation-fueled perceptions as OP don't know what to _do_ after learning the "truth". Topple the system by buying gold and burying it in your backyard? How does that work?

Armed rebellion? Versus professional US military? How does _that_ work?

Guerilla warfare against the system? Great, now you're considered terrorists, and the FBI informant in your group gets all of you shut down and imprisoned.

Amass huge numbers, organize protest marches, form a new political party or take over an existing one, and get elected into power? Okay, yes, that will probably work, except you'll never get enough people to join just by seeking the truth. That route requires money and rhetorical acumen, which is in no way related to truth. People don't vote for truth; they vote for what feels good.

As the old GI Joe cartoons often repeated, knowing is half the battle. You still need the "doing" half. Knowing that the whole world is run by money in the interests of those who have a lot of it is like knowing that the tides go in and out twice a day. What do you actually _do_ with that information? Treasure hunting in tidepools? Fishing? Moving your beach chairs and umbrella? Designing an engine to harness power from wave energy? Collecting driftwood? Standing in one spot and slowly drowning yourself over a span of 6 hours?

You may be surprised at how often people espouse a plausible, believable hypothesis to explain some part of world politics, and then follow it up with either "so give me your money" or "so go build an intergalactic interocitor and infuse it with orgone energy and essential lavender oil". The former is preying upon the fears of weak people, and the latter is just useless lunacy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's embrace of MySQL could kill it - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10402551-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

<comment><USER2> > The larger point is if Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Google, Cisco, > EMC/VMware, or Oracle/Sun offer a simple and supported cloud service for > running MySQL, Tomcat, JBoss, Mule, or Apache HTTP instances, what reason do > customers have to acquire "enterprise subscriptions" from the vendors > developing these open source projects?

Well, that's simple: Not everybody wants to host their stuff with supported cloud services. This is the exact same issue with every other 'hosted' open source package, from PHP to Apache and the linux kernels underneath it. Microsoft has nothing to do with it.

There will always be a demand for paid support from those using those services, and I'm pretty sure that if you run into mysql issues on your 'hosted' service that you are not going to get support unless you pay for it.

Who you pay is less of an issue, whether you pay the hosting party or the vendor directly is up to you.

Mysql is a pretty weird example anyway, since it was bought by sun and is not a property of Oracle (or it will be if the EU lifts the barrier).</comment>


John McAfee introduces EveryKey - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/30/technology/john-mcafee-everykey/index.html <comment><USER2> "It's called "Everykey," and it's raising funds from backers on Indiegogo. It's a thumbnail-sized gadget that sits in your pocket and wirelessly connects to your phone, laptop and digital door locks."

Wouldn't there therefore be a high premium to criminals to attacking (or _killing_ ) you to take your Everykey and thereby have access to all of your valuables, in all forms?</comment>


The Long Tail of the Attica Prison Riot - <AUTHOR> http://www.themorningnews.org/article/the-long-tail-of-the-attica-prison-riot <comment><USER2> > As the prisoners collapsed, choking and retching, the police opened fire. > Over the next several minutes, officers poured hundreds of rounds of gunfire > into the yard, including, a judge later estimated, between 2,349 and 3,132 > pellets of buckshot. The prison yard was transformed into a charnel house. > The prisoners, who had no firearms, were sitting ducks, as were the hostages > that the police had ostensibly come to save. As hundreds of police and > corrections officers stormed the prison, they sometimes paused to shoot > inmates who were already on the ground or wounded. "Surrender peacefully. > You will not be harmed," a megaphone announced as unarmed prisoners were > mowed down.

This isn't surreal, this isn't random, and it's also not "man being a beast". Some are. Many more are made so, on purpose.

> _Behind the blind bestiality of the SA, there often lay a deep hatred and > resentment against all those who were socially, intellectually, or > physically better off than themselves, and who now, as if in fulfillment of > their wildest dreams, were in their power. This resentment, which never died > out entirely in the camps, strikes us as a last remnant of humanly > understandable feeling. The real horror began, however, when the SS took > over the administration of the camps. The old spontaneous bestiality gave > way to an absolutely cold and systematic destruction of human bodies, > calculated to destroy human dignity; death was avoided or postponed > indefinitely. The camps were no longer amusement parks for beasts in human > form, that is, for men who really belonged in mental institutions and > prisons; the reverse became true: they were turned into "drill grounds," on > which perfectly normal men were trained to be full-fledged members of the > SS._

\-- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"

</comment><comment><USER3> Things are not much different today, unfortunately. See e.g. [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/nyregion/fishkill- prison-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/nyregion/fishkill-prison- inmate-died-after-fight-with-officers-records-show.html).

</comment><comment> crooked-v The header on this site is really annoying with a trackpad. It vanishes with any downward motion and reappears with even the smallest upwards motion, so the tiny upwards "bounce" that some scrolling motions can have makes it keep flickering in and out.

<comment><USER4> This is becoming far too common. It seems like every good long read I see these days is on a site affected by this problem. Even the tiniest scroll jump causes these things to appear and disappear, moving or obscuring the relevant content underneath. I've been thinking of making a Firefox extension that allows you to whitelist "position: fixed" on a per-site basis, but that won't help much on Mobile Safari!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> *tale

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone else getting vibrating text in this article on mobile? An entire paragraph is shaking up and down. I'll check it out on desktop later.

Edit: Try zooming in and out on the paragraph below "There seemed to be a revolution underway, but, like many revolutions, it would end tragically." chrome on android, can't replicate it on other pages on tmn, just that one.

<comment><USER7> Hey, I'm the publisher of the site. We just replicated the bug, and it sure is weird. Working on a fix. (Open to ideas, though!) Thank you!

<comment><USER8> Thanks in advance!

I'm experiencing the same problem on iOS. If i keep a finger on the screen and try to scroll gradually as I read, then it jitters. If I just scroll then release, read, scroll then release, etc. it is smooth.

<comment><USER9> (I'm a developer on the site)

Although Andrew (above) can replicate this, I haven't been able to. But I know it's not just you. Are there any other details you can give? Do other stories on the site do the same? What kind of iOS device do you have?

Sorry about this! It's the first we've heard of it and I wonder if it's something in this article.

EDIT: I just recreated it. It looks like a continually switching class causing the text to re-flow. I'm going to disable that JS temporarily while I figure out why it's flapping. Thanks for reporting it!

EDIT 2, 1:23PM Eastern US: I deployed a hotfix. We'll do a more permanent fix on Monday. If anyone else has trouble, let me know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article says, " ... already disintegrating over Vietnam and the Kent State shootings a year earlier. "

I sure wish it said "...Jackson State and Kent State shootings..." White lives matter. So do black lives.

<comment><USER11> White person here.

White lives defacto matter which is why there was never an explicit white lives matter movement. When black lives matter, all lives will matter.

Edit: I was unfamiliar with Jackson State and mistook your point.

<comment><USER12> Half white person here.

I think that is the same kind of thinking that leads to people saying that minorities can't be racist, or that women can't be sexist.

I think all lives matter too.

<comment><USER11> It's not the same kind of thinking. Black lives matter doesn't mean other lives don't. It doesn't mean white lives don't matter or that blue lives don't matter. It's a response to systematic racism.

As a white male, I've never had to worry or been bothered by black racism or female sexism because I live in a society where the white male has power. The reality is that this is America today: [http://i.imgur.com/zrTnEkW.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/zrTnEkW.jpg)

<comment><USER13> > I live in a society where the white male has power

What power do I have as a white male? Please be specific. Don't show how I'm treated better than others, show how I have _power_.

I've never shown up at a job interview unqualified... and been told "Yup, you get the job because of your skin color and your genitals".

While there are systemic racial differences in the US, they're not always what you think. Which race has the highest average income? Is that because that race is part of the majority?

It's not. So... how come if society is here to keep "white men" in power, that Asian-Americans have the highest average income? Are they the secret power behind the throne? [1]

Well, no one on their right mind would say so. Yet people are happy to claim that there's some kind of conspiracy to keep another race in power. I dunno... I've never been contacted and asked to join the conspiracy.

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

<comment><USER14> Let's see...

For starters, If you're convicted of a crime, you are much more likely to receive a shorter prison sentence than a minority. The sentencing difference between whites caught with cocaine and blacks caught with crack is an example of this. In general, when interacting with law enforcement for whatever reason (traffic stop, suspicion of drug possession of marijuana, etc.), you are much more likely to receive a warning and not be arrested or given a ticket compared to a minority. Also, when driving across the panhandle of Texas, the police are less likely to stop you. Whenever I've driven through there, police take one look at me and like clockwork, pull me over, often times calling their K9 unit out.

On dating websites, you're more likely to appeal to more women than a minority. And if you date outside of your race, the parents of your significant other are more likely be more accepting of you than someone who is black.

If you were accepted to a prestigious university or received a job offer for a lucrative position, you wouldn't have to endure people questioning your abilities and whispering "He's only here because of affirmative action." I've experienced this despite scoring above the mean in all relevant categories. If you want a recent example of this type of behavior on HackerNews, look here and ctrl-f for gydfi: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13779165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13779165)

> "Yup, you get the job because of your skin color and your genitals".

I don't think anyone has ever said this specifically. I believe that you're falling into the same trap as the individual that I pointed out above, assuming that you are at a disadvantage for a job because you don't get extra consideration for being a woman or a minority. There is no advantage. In fact, it is still a disadvantage. Even in Silicon Valley, a woman gets paid less for doing the same work as their male colleagues. If you want a recent example, look at the revelations coming out of the sinking ship that is Uber.

That not withstanding, In my experience as part of the team that does hiring where I work (tech company), I find other members show a bias for those who resemble their culture, that culture being people familiar with dank memes and who play video games. They don't realize that when choosing their preferred candidate that they have a preference. It doesn't mean they are racist, sexist, etc. It just means that they have a cognitive bias that they may not be aware of.

> Yet people are happy to claim that there's some kind of conspiracy to keep > another race in power. I dunno... I've never been contacted and asked to > join the conspiracy.

It's not a conspiracy headed by some cartoonish, mustache twirling villain. It is just the historical remnant of a time when the social order was segregated by race. Just because the civil rights act was passed in the 1960's does not magically wash away the effects of institutionalized racism. Institutions take time to change. It's certainly better than it was, but it's not perfect.

<comment><USER13> I asked _Don 't show how I'm treated better than others, show how I have power._

Your argument is largely that I may get treated better than others. How, exactly, does that show I have _power_ , as the GP comment suggested?

And did you read my other comment? The overwhelming better treatment is due to sex, not gender. Being _male_ means you're treated much more poorly than being female. Being a minority is just (nasty) icing on the cake.

> Even in Silicon Valley, a woman gets paid less for doing the same work as > their male colleagues.

You are are that that's been illegal since the late 1960's, right?

If you want some comments as to where those "gaps" come from, see Thomas Sowell, who's been deconstructing that gap since the 1980's:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_pQ7KXv0o0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_pQ7KXv0o0)

> It just means that they have a cognitive bias that they may not be aware of.

Sure... but how does that give me, the (alleged) recipient of such bias... _power_? How do I use that bias to become one of the .0001% of society which is ruling the country?

The short answer (of course) is I don't. Saying _I_ am powerful because share the same skin color and gender as politicians is just a ludicrous statement to make.

> Just because the civil rights act was passed in the 1960's does not > magically wash away the effects of institutionalized racism. Institutions > take time to change

Well, they take a short period of time to change if the _people_ involved are willing. See the changes in the LA police attitude since the Rodney King riots. It's not perfect, but it does seem a lot better;

And you're also discounting my comments about Asian-Americans. If society is so controlled by The White Male, and is so racist, how come Asian-Americans are doing better than white people on average? Is The White Male secretly biased in _favor_ of Asians? Or is something else going on?

I think the answer here is at least in part poverty. If you're poor, it doesn't really matter what your skin color is. You get treated poorly by _everyone_. And it's damned hard to get out of the trap of poverty.

That fact alone explains why the descendants of poor ex-slaves have a hard time getting ahead. Their families have been poor for 130 years... getting ahead is hard.

<comment><USER14> > > I live in a society where the white male has power What power do I have as > a white male?

You're being a bit disingenuous. I don't know if this is purposeful or not. Would we agree the Sunni had power in Iraq under Saddam and today the Shia have power? In China, is it far to say that the Han have power? That doesn't mean that every Shia today in Iraq has power.

I was mainly trying to rebut your argument that minorities and women receive favorable treatment in society due to policies such as affirmative action and relaying that to you with details from my own personal experiences.

> Your argument is largely that I may get treated better than others. How, > exactly, does that show I have power, as the GP comment suggested?

You don't take the logical leap. Receiving preferential treatment affords one greater mobility whether it is in the social, professional, or administrative realm. Accordingly, I think we can both agree that being treated better gives one greater access to power, increasing the probability that you can exercise power. I cannot prove how you specifically have greater power because I don't know you.

> And did you read my other comment? The overwhelming better treatment is due > to sex, not gender. Being male means you're treated much more poorly than > being female. Being a minority is just (nasty) icing on the cake.

I showed you a specific example on this very site on how women are not treated better, it is the opposite. Jennifer Widom's worthiness for being Engineering Dean at Stanford was questioned, despite her impressive credentials being just a google search away. I also don't know what you're insinuating by calling minorities a "nasty" icing on the cake.

> If you want some comments as to where those "gaps" come from, see Thomas > Sowell, who's been deconstructing that gap since the 1980's: > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_pQ7KXv0o0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_pQ7KXv0o0)

He makes a fair argument over the traditional wage gap but some of the conclusions he comes to are a bit wonky. Especially the argument he makes that if women make . 75 cents on the dollar, firms would be falling over themselves to hire the cheaper labor. He makes the assumption that hiring decisions are based chiefly on getting the most for your dollar when it is somewhat obvious that people hire for individuals that they get along with. I was specifically referring to today's climate. Again, I offered an anecdote. If you actually care about the truth, not what anyone else says, if there is a woman where you work in the same position as you what she makes.

(Side note) I actually have a degree in Economics from Stanford and had the opportunity to chat with him while meeting with one of my professors (John Cogan). I don't take academic economists seriously. It's good for explaining the broad strokes of history, but it just does not accurately model human behavior. As a field, it's closer to philosophy than science and often times it is treated like a religion. I'll be brief as to why,..(1)Economic models make simplifying assumptions without explicitly stating them, the rational economic actor being chief among them (2) Economics theory is better described as hypothesis since hardly any vidence by way of experiment is ever presented (3) Preponderance of a cult of personality

> Sure... but how does that give me, the (alleged) recipient of such bias... > power? How do I use that bias to become one of the .0001% of society which > is ruling the country?

I'm not making any claims about your specific level of power. It's the .00001% as you state, By definition, you don't get in the club ONLY because of your skin color. Being born to the right family helps (I'll leave to you the demographics of those families), If you aren't born into it, you need not only a certain ability, but the will to exercise power. I You do have a greater chance of getting into that rarified group than a woman or a minority, who face additional hurdles. How much weight to give them, I don't know.

> If society is so controlled by The White Male, and is so racist, how come > Asian-Americans are doing better than white people on average? Is The White > Male secretly biased in favor of Asians? Or is something else going on?

> I think the answer here is at least in part poverty. If you're poor, it > doesn't really matter what your skin color is. You get treated poorly by > everyone. And it's damned hard to get out of the trap of poverty. That fact > alone explains why the descendants of poor ex-slaves have a hard time > getting ahead. Their families have been poor for 130 years... getting ahead > is hard.

You're putting a lot of words in my mouth, making assumptions about things I never said, and veering into the political. I believe that we agree on most points. All I'm trying to say is that women and minorities do not get preferential treatment. Poverty is likely the most significant factor in mobility, but not the only. People do not cross the street when they see a group of asian teens coming towards them. People like me do face the type of cognitive bias that causes others to go on the other side of the street when they see me approaching.

<comment><USER13> > You're being a bit disingenuous.

I'm trying to understand just, what, _exactly_ people mean by "power". You've used it repeatedly in subsequent examples. But haven't given explanations.

Your examples largely amount to "people in charge have power", or "the majority of the population has power". That's nice, but it doesn't mean a whole lot.

> I was mainly trying to rebut your argument that minorities and women receive > favorable treatment in society due to policies such as affirmative action

I never said any such thing.

> You don't take the logical leap.

Exactly. I'm asking you to _explain_ the logical leap. And to explain what, exactly you mean by "power". I'm not sure I buy the argument that being treated better is "power". At least, "power" in the way many people mean it.

When I (as a white male), get accused of being part of the "patriarchy", or "having male power", I question just what the heck people mean by that. The answers tend to be tautological statements, or sophistry.

It would be more accurate (and more honest) to say that the people in power tend to keep it. (i.e. rich, upper class people). And that the majority race / religion / whatever in a society tends to get by as the "default" group, which makes things easier for them.

Is that "power" in the same way that a king has power over his subjects? I don't think so. Yet that is _precisely_ how it's commonly being used. And it makes me worried.

> I showed you a specific example on this very site on how women are not > treated better, it is the opposite.

One data point does not a conclusion make. While individual anecdotes are compelling, we should not draw larger conclusions from them.

Instead, we should draw conclusions about society by examining... society. i.e. via statistics.

> He makes a fair argument over the traditional wage gap but some of the > conclusions he comes to are a bit wonky. Especially the argument he makes > that if women make . 75 cents on the dollar, firms would be falling over > themselves to hire the cheaper labor. He makes the assumption that hiring > decisions are based chiefly on getting the most for your dollar when it is > somewhat obvious that people hire for individuals that they get along with

The unstated implication here is that there _won 't_ be women that employers can get along with.

i.e. Given a pool of qualified applicants, employers will find a subset that they can get along with. In those subset, there are some men and women. If they can hire women at 75 cents on the dollar, why wouldn't they?

The only way to refute that conclusion is to say that there are no qualified female applicants. In which case you _can 't_ do wage comparisons, because the men applying will have different skills than the women who don't apply.

If you care to look, about 95% of the wage gap is explained by people doing different jobs, or who have different education, or different work experience. And, unmarried childless women under 30 make the same (or now slightly more), than men their same age. That's been true for about 30 years now.

But if you don't believe that, you've go to believe that despite it being illegal for almost 50 years, and despite the overwhelming propaganda about the wage gap, and despite most HR / accounting departments being a majority female, that the wage gap still exists _for people doing the same job with the same experience and the same skills_.

The only way you can believe that is to posit some massive secret conspiracy. That way lies madness.

> Being born to the right family helps (I'll leave to you the demographics of > those families)

Because most of the people who immigrated to the US before 1880 where white (ish) European? And most of the blacks before then were slaves?

Hmm... so the people that were rich and powerful 150 years ago tend to be the related to the people who are rich and powerful now. Gosh, how the heck does _that_ work? It's almost like it's _hard_ to make money. And that it's hard for a poor person to make money in the face of entrenched and wealthy opposition.

Where you see racial divides, I see demographic divides. I think my view is a little simpler, and explains history a bit better.

> You're putting a lot of words in my mouth, making assumptions about things I > never said, and veering into the political.

I was making a point by using an extreme example.

> All I'm trying to say is that women and minorities do not get preferential > treatment.

I think that in many aspects of society, women _do_ get preferential treatment. And the statistics (CDC, DoJ, department of labor) support this position.

> People like me do face the type of cognitive bias that causes others to go > on the other side of the street when they see me approaching.

Sure. I've had people do the same thing to me... as a large white male walking alone down a street late at night.

People fear the unusual and unknown. Evolution shows us that people without such fears get eaten.

It's not _nice_ to have people avoid you. But their reasons are not just racism.

I've had similar experiences with religious relatives. 30 years ago, it was "What are those damned gays doing? Why are they trying to destroy our society?" Now, it's "My next door neighbour is gay. I don't understand any of it, but he gave me some nice petunias".

Familiarity helps a lot. Along with understanding that there are reasons why such behaviors are economically encouraged, or evolutionary adaptations.

<comment><USER15> Man, I just gotta say, I'm glad someone's got the energy to keep arguing with you.

Watching this play out, it's like watching a flat earther--that would be you in this situation--argue that the world couldn't possibly be round, we'd all just fall off it!

<comment><USER13> You think that referencing stats from the CDC, DoJ, Department of Labour, etc. makes me a "flat earther"?

Let me guess... you think there's a secret government conspiracy to watch your every movement, and you have this magic tinfoil hat to protect you?

If you were to discuss this rationally, I'd ask that you summarize what you think my argument is. And I predict you'd get it 90% wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'People Were Bleeding All Over': America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/nyregion/action-park-movie.html <comment><USER2> Action Park's most notorious rides mostly had design flaws that made it quite easy to hurt oneself. The Cannonball and Tarzan Swing dumped riders into ice cold water from about 15 feet, temporarily paralyzing many of them. Alpine Slide had no speed regulator to prevent a rider from taking a curve in excess of the max speed, causing a ton of cart flips and literal slides down the concrete, tearing off wide patches of skin. Surf Hill's runoff area was too short to prevent riders from slamming head first into the minimally-cushioned wall (like gymnastics pads).

Although the rides were dangerous, the most lethal attraction was actually the simple wave pool. The problem was the huge size of the pool and large crowds, making it difficult for lifeguards to see everyone. Then the waves made it harder for lifeguards to see who was underwater from a wave vs from exhaustion or lack of skill. And plenty of the guests had literally never been in a pool before and lacked any swimming ability.

With all that said, Action Park was fun as hell.

</comment><comment><USER3> This place was so much fun and so crazy as a kid; I can remember some kind of ride where you were in a tank and could shoot tennis balls at other tanks at close range which 'paralyzed' your tank if you got hit and then everyone would shoot at you at once, etc. Would never fly in today's world.

</comment><comment><USER4> We (my best friend and I) lived at that lola track for a couple of summers, I still remember my best lap and my best 10 lap average. I also remember nearly flying off that insane alpine ride the one time we tried some other rides.

</comment><comment><USER5> Removing the paywall: [https://beta.trimread.com/articles/252](https://beta.trimread.com/articles/252)</comment>


I have chosen the wrong flight dates because your date picker is broken - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/pugson/status/1091699189166174208 <comment><USER2> I ended up booking two flights recently because Kayak sent me a "booking failed" email after I tried once, it failed, then tried again, and it worked. Then an hour later I got an email from Kayak saying my flight booking had failed. So of course I booked another flight. They would NOT admit the slightest wrongdoing. Never using them again.

<comment><USER3> If you're never using them again, why not do a chargeback? (Apparently services like Uber or Airbnb ban you if you do this, so it's "mutually assured destruction"). Or call the airline and tell them how Kayak messed up.

<comment><USER4> I find it hard to believe there is any combination of words you can say to an airline company to successfully refund a non-refundable ticket.

<comment><USER5> It can be done. I've cancelled non-refundable flights for medical reasons. There is also a 24 hour period where you can cancel your flight, which I believe is by law.

Summary: [https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/all-major-u-s- ai...](https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/all-major-u-s-airlines- offer-free-cancellations-within-24-hours-except-one/)

Full text here: [http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/Notice_24hour_ho...](http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/Notice_24hour_hold_final20130530.pdf)

<comment><USER6> As far as I know, the 24 hour cancellation rule is not international. I think it is mostly applicable to North America. If this was an international flight, it is possible that the law did not apply.

European airlines have different policies regarding cancellations, often based on the type of fare you select. Sometimes you get a full refund, other times only the taxes and fees.

<comment><USER7> It applies to american-based airfare companies so if you book with kayak, orbitz, expedia, priceline, etc then there's a 24 hour cancellation period

<comment><USER8> I'd love to get a source on that for the next time I encounter this situation.

<comment><USER9> It's easy to find: [https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/notice-24hour- res...](https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/notice-24hour-reservation)

Edit: I should add that I don't know if this specifically applies to Kayak, etc. I'm not sure if that's what you were specifically looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seriously, UI components are _hard_. Even a lowly button is difficult to get right, where "right" means "whatever smart people have converged on after 30 years of GUIs". Anything more complex than a button is much _much_ harder. There are a lot of things wrong with the whole "web app" concept but to me maybe the most important is everybody trying to implement their UI widgets from scratch. And I say this as someone whose job used to be writing and maintaining a webapp UI framework.

<comment><USER11> UI components might be hard, but typing <input type="date"> into a HTML document is not hard, and it's enough for the browser to do the right thing here. This screwup was entirely self-inflicted, a consequence of ignoring the well-known best practices of authoring semantically-meaningful web documents, forms and apps.

<comment><USER12> Regarding input type="date"

> Recommendation

> While convenient where it works, the failure mode of type="date" and its > associated date and time types is very poor. This makes it a risky choice > that could leave users struggling to meet validation criteria.

[0]: [https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/01/html5-input- types/#...](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/01/html5-input-types/#a8)

<comment><USER13> I remember desktop Chrome 'implementing' date input a few years ago by using the number input's spinner. If you press up the date goes to 0000-01-01. It was worse than useless because you can't even polyfill in a JS datepicker since the usual feature detection would detect Chrome as having support for date input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I purchased tickets on the AirAsia website recently, and I am confident that at least on Firefox, their date picker for the passenger's date of birth has an off by one bug. At least in my case, customer support was able to change the date.

Edit: I am confident because I purchased multiple tickets with multiple passengers and also had someone double check that I filled out the info correctly. All the date of births ended up being one day later than they should have been.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like a time zone round trip issue. They're likely using timestamps (say epoch millis) to represent dates and converting it incorrectly on display.

<comment> dan-robertson This mistake is quite easy to make in JavaScript. Dates are internally milliseconds since epoch but if you construct a date by giving year, month, day, you get midnight in the local timezone which may well be on a different day from midnight in UTC, so if you send back a unix timestamp or (trying to be clever) use UTC functions to get a date from a Date object, you may likely get an off by one error.

<comment><USER13> Another consequence of this is that JS Date objects don't understand the concept of timezones, and only allows you to output dates in either the client timezone or UTC. This makes it extremely hard to, for example, display the arrival time of a flight in the destination timezone.

Intl.DateTimeFormat[1] is a godsend for this.

[1]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/DateTimeFormat)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Even just labelling the days would help.

There's room for confusion with unlabelled days even when it's "right", though. The author says "Since when is Feb 2 on a Thursday", but I assume that's because he's used to a Sunday->Saturday layout on a calendar, whereas for me I'd assume the 2nd were a Friday based on that position as I'm used to Monday->Sunday calendars.

 _(Update: OK, the days ARE labelled - incorrectly. You have to click on the screenshot on Twitter to see the full screenshot. Keeping this comment here for posterity only ;-))_

<comment><USER17> The thing is, the screenshot _has_ labeled days. The calendar helpfully labeled February 2 as a Thursday.

<comment><USER18> Not the screenshot I'm looking at from the link. [ADDED: Ah, you have to click through on the twitter image. Yes, it's just flat-out wrong.]

<comment><USER19> you need to click it, otherwise it only shows a portion of the screenshot. above "February 2019" there's a menu bar with days on it (which is incorrect).

<comment><USER20> Wow, that is extremely bad UI from twitter to crop image like that.

<comment><USER21> Their cropping uses deep learning for the crop[1], but I often notice that screenshots are clipped weirdly. It makes me wonder if their training set was all photographs.

[1] [https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastruc...](https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastructure/2018/Smart- Auto-Cropping-of-Images.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's even more sad about the Twitter thread is that AirAsia Support is responding to everyone that commented in the thread. The responses must be automatically generated and triggered by any one of the comments... Something is definitely wrong with their system.

<comment><USER23> It seems simply employees got the task of dealing with it. But not doing anything would seem bad, so ... they reply as if every new subthread would be a genuine "bug report".

Amazing instance of how not to do teh twitter if you are a corporation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Charge back? "I purchased a flight leaving on a) Thursday b) Feb 2. Product did not meet requirements."

<comment><USER25> To play devil's advocate: this is tool for helping you to search for a product. The official transaction happens at the end when they show you the date, time, airports, costs, etc. all on one page and you click "approve". (Presumably, the date was correct there.) One can certainly argue that their sales process was misleading (if only due to incompetence on their part), but that's a slightly different complaint than they saying they didn't deliver the product you agreed to purchase.

<comment><USER26> Yes, that's an argument a lawyer might make, but I disagree with the premise: Any reasonable interpretation of "agreeing to purchase" takes into account the entire dialogue between the merchant and customer, in which case the merchant told the customer two different things, and the customer reasonably didn't notice that one was different. There's no reason to assume about which version the customer agreed to.

<comment><USER27> If both parties thought it was a different date There was no "meeting of minds"

<comment><USER28> Can't wait for airlines to add another confirmation screen to the checkout process. _Please type "Yes I want this flight and I double checked the dates are correct" to proceed._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> AirAsia is a flaming disaster. I remember booking a flight out of Bangkok. Well, it turns out that I actually booked a flight out of the once named Bangkok airport, which isn't actually even in Bangkok.

I complained and the "support" rep said "I hope you learned your lesson." So I called my bank and disputed the charge, getting a full refund. Apparently they never figured out how to challenge my dispute. I hope they don't learn that lesson.

<comment><USER30> Which airport is that, BMK?

Similar thing in Germany - I used to live close to Frankfurt-Hahn in Germany, which is _nowhere_ close to Frankfurt, it was renamed to Frankfurt-Hahn at the request of Ryanair.

Three times I bumped into people asking in which direction to walk to get in to get into Frankfurt - it's a 90 minutes drive...

<comment><USER31> That is nothing. Try flying to Australia and end up in Canada:

[https://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/north- america/co...](https://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/north- america/confused-tourist-bound-for-sydney-australia-lands-in-sydney-nova- scotia/news-story/83d1957c3369364b979a9b1371786a3b)

<comment><USER32> Or flying to Oakland and ending up in Auckland.

[http://articles.latimes.com/1985-04-02/news/mn-19265_1_custo...](http://articles.latimes.com/1985-04-02/news/mn-19265_1_customs- officials)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm very curious how a bug like this could even happen. At a glance it doesn't appear to be the classic "ISO week-based year" problem discussed on HN a few times before, but somehow the code thinks Feb 1 2019 is a Wednesday... weeks starting with Sun vs Mon wouldn't account for the off-by-2 error seen here.

<comment><USER34> I've been scratching my head about this too. I can't find a way to introduce such a bug in a date picker. The only one I'm thinking is a off by one when reading the month/year.

For example an API with 0-11 months, and one with 1-12. You'd get info of the wrong month.

<comment><USER35> Can't be the month, it has the right number of days.

Can't be the year, 2018 and 2020 also don't have February 2 on Thursday.

It can't even be the month but only for the starting day, neither January nor March have their 2nd on a Thursday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "session timeout" is the worst thing that can happen when you're trying to book tickets. The whole experience or booking flying tickets is awful and generally takes a lot ot time. When this happens and you need to refill information that's when you book flights for the wrong date. I'm wondering how common this mistake is.

</comment><comment><USER37> Hm. I ordered a hotel room for today (Saturday, Feb 2) earlier in the week, and was messaged asking what time I would be checking in on Thursday the 2nd. I wonder if the big is in a common industry tool.

<comment><USER38> Something's up. I got a letter a couple weeks back from my kid's school requesting a permission slip for a theater trip on Thursday Feb 2. Couldn't figure out how they landed on that date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's pretty ridiculous how long we've been stuck with javascript or dropdown datepickers.

I realize it's subtlety complex to internationalize but it's been a common input on forms for so long you'd assume native browser support would have been present in every browser at least a decade ago. It's baffling to me that you still can't reliably use the input type of date due to lack of support.

<comment><USER40> To be fair, custom Javascript on a website can do things that are too rare to be baked into general browser behavior, such as adding colors or icons or text to certain dates, date-range validation, disallowed dates, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is anyone else weirded out by how the AirAsia twitter account is responding to the comments? It looks like automated responses but then signs with an employee name.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is a discount airline. They employ all kinds of tactics to part money from the customer, excessive credit card fees on top of a lousy exchange rate, very small baggage allowance hidden in the fine print, useless insurance offers, etc.

You should be examining the confirmation screen extremely closely with an airline like this. Go ahead and blame them if you want to, but they make money on price, not reputation, and the market has chosen price over quality of service.

<comment><USER43> That's too simple a read. There are many many many low-cost airlines in Asia, and AirAsia is rarely the cheapest for any given journey. They are -- however -- pretty reliable, reasonably well organized, and I travel with them regularly on the basis that they're not as cut-throat as some of the other low-cost options.

<comment><USER42> That depends... to and from Malaysia they are often the cheapest. They also have the newly reduced 7kg carry on rule (from the pretty standard 10kg).

This is all subjective, of course, but I really don't see much of a difference between them and Peach, HK Express, or Scoot.

As a side note, Peach once double charged me for the same flight and wouldn't refund my purchase, saying it was because I used linux, and that is an unsupported OS. I contacted my credit card agency and they told me the best thing was to take the flight and charge it back _after_ I flew, or they might cancel both tickets. You really have to be careful with these types of companies, but in my opinion, it's worth it if you pay attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I once tried to book flights on a popular airline website. I used four different web browsers and each one displayed the content differently, all resulting in "unexpected error". The only browser that would work was chrome, it displayed the "missing" field (date of birth)...

<comment><USER45> I have seen this on Jetstar in Australia recently. Disgraceful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I ran into a similar issue applying for Global Entry. Luckily an appointment at 3am on Saturday suggested the times were in UTC. Nevertheless this was unnecessary uncertainty and anxiety - what about those who aren't familiar with UTC time?

How can we design datetime libraries to prevent these issues? Or at least make it so that error-prone behaviors must be very explicit?

<comment><USER47> Well, the problem is web apps, or seen another way, lack of good distribution mechanisms for desktop apps.

Write your frontend in Java 8 and you have access to a full blown date/time library that handles all the edge cases and has been well thought out. Do it in JS and you got bupkis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> A few months ago I had to book a round-trip and one-way trip with the same flight for the first trip. Naturally you cannot do that in one go so I book the two things in two different orders.

I made a mistake, during the booking my credentials were automatically filled in the passenger form, I didn't checked and I ended up booking two time the same flight for me, on the same plane, with the same passenger id.

Fun fact, when I check-in for the first ticket, then the second, the website told me that I was already checked-in (which shows that internally the two tickets were seen as one).

I called the support and they reimbursed me the second (one-way) ticket. I had to book another flight the same day which cost me around 300€.

KLM, if you read me, your booking system is really fucked up. I can't understand that with the volume of order and the price of the tickets we don't have a bullet-proof system in place for years already.

<comment><USER49> More than once over the years, my wife has given herself an ordeal with reserving airfares and hotels and then had to go through website or phone support to try to untangle it. I watched it happen once, and diagnosed it as a crappy website using cookies/local storage for what appears to be a normal HTML form. This recurring flaw makes the reservation system completely unsafe with multiple tabs performing searches in parallel.

She has an almost compulsive habit to go through the booking process, pause on the final review screen with the "submit" button, and research other options in extra tabs before returning to submit the original order. The result is that she is looking at that previously rendered summary, presses submit, and gets a completely different configuration booked because the activity in the other tab contaminated the state of the pathetic web app.

Due to these experiences and others, I mistrust web programmers and try to avoid complex state. I defensively complete all my research, and then I start a fresh booking sequence in a private browser window to directly snipe the selection I desire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> AirAsia used to store passwords in plaintext. I know this because they sent me my original password when I asked for a password reset

This was a couple years ago. I don't know if they've fixed it since.

</comment><comment><USER51> In the US by LAW you have 24 hours to cancel a non-refundable flight penalty free...not sure why you'd freak out in that case if you accidentally booked the wrong flight or date.

<comment><USER52> Did you know that only 4% of humans live in the US?

<comment><USER53> You are getting downvoted but bringing up a good point. A few commenters are talking about US laws when his Twitter profile says he is located in Poland.

Personally I think it's the same thing as assuming everyone is male. Also assuming everyone is a software engineer. etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I was heading back home for a month. I went and took my dog to the kennel, bussed down to the airport. Was all ready to go after a couple days getting ready.

Went to check in and realized my flight was 6 weeks in the future. They let me cancel, but a flight that day was hundreds more and I wound up sitting at the airport all day. I triple check when I book flights with google flights now.

</comment><comment><USER55> It's not a bug, it's they business model. Why do you think that are so cheap and so successful at the same time?

<comment><USER56> There is some truth to this. A couple years ago I bought three tickets from AirAsia. A week before the flight there was a volcanic eruption which canceled all flights at the destination. They issued me a credit voucher for future flights. Half the credit expired before I next needed to travel to an airport they service.

I still use them because sometimes they are $300 cheaper. And they don't play hardball with luggage weights, unlike some full fare airlines like British ("Your bag is 7.8kg, the limit is 7kg, if you want to carry it on you need to remove five pieces of clothing and put them on yourself").

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> They rebooked him for the correct dates: [https://twitter.com/pugson/status/1091946878072049664](https://twitter.com/pugson/status/1091946878072049664)

</comment><comment><USER58> This happens because people need pretty fancy UIs. And companies want to provide these UIs.

We should be using text and structured data for all services by default. Companies should be providing simple, very simple text (or JSON if you want that) APIs by default and people should and could learn to use them.

Web browsers or other apps should and could be packed with nice UIs to browse these APIs.

Optionally, after these default browsable easy-to-use APIs were working, people could translate them into more fancy UIs, but for most things, like booking flights, that wouldn't be necessary at all (who wants a flashy colorful experience when buying tickets?).

<comment><USER59> Many big companies barely get HTTP correct. (Side-effects on GET… site breakage on back button…) I have very little hope that most could get a more complex protocol working to even a basic degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> [http://yourcalendricalfallacyis.com/](http://yourcalendricalfallacyis.com/)

</comment><comment><USER61> This is what happens when you write your own datepicker library... or crypto library, for that matter

</comment><comment><USER62> Feb 2 is _clearly_ in the Friday slot in that picture. /s

<comment><USER63> It's obviously under the "Thu" label when you look at the uncropped picture.

Feb 2, 2019 is a Saturday in any event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> [OT] ...and I had to uninstall twitter to be able to read the linked tweet (because I didn't want to log in)

</comment><comment><USER65> > Reads headline

What?!

> AirAsia

Oh, yeah not surprised.

</comment><comment><USER66> Had something similar trying to schedule a phone interview. The confirmation email text gave a time 3 hours before the date picker time displayed on their site. I spoke to them on the phone to manually schedule me and then we ran into a problem where there were no daily saving time zones so I had to give myself a two hour window to be sure.

</comment><comment><USER67> Assuming people start their weeks on the same day as you do is risky at best, but interestingly this case looks like they corrected the wrong way around, resulting in a week that starts on Tuesday rather than Sunday (or Monday, which it may have been before the 'correction').

Edit: Apparently the image I was looking at wasn't the whole image.

<comment><USER68> Click through and see the whole image.

<comment><USER67> Oh, so they actually did indicate the weekdays. Sorry, twitter's crop of the image made it look like they just had a weirdly aligned calender.</comment></comment></comment>