You absolutely don't need to work 37 hours per week if you are willing to live 200km from the big cities in an old house.
You buy something dirt cheap for less than 80k USD. It's not great, it's old run down. But if you do minimal repairs and don't live the high life, you can get by with very little.
But if you want a new car and nice comfy house in a decent location, with all the modern amenities, well, that's expensive.
brother rusted out farm houses 2 hours from any office building, let alone one that hires programmers are like 350k in rural states. Idk where you live, but it ain't Earth.
For those who don't want to click, a house in Des Moines for $125000 - this was the very first house that came up when I searched des moines real estate, I didn't bother to look farther.
Houses less 400k DKK ~ 60k USD, granted houses at price range are small, worn down, far from cities and job market in area a bit challenged - but not impossible.
Personally, I'm happy with my 700k USD home, I'd probably be working anyways, since to me it's preferable to work full time and enjoy modern amenities.
I'll concede that of the two properties available in Turtle Lake North Dakota you can get a trailer on someone's property for ~100K, 417 Putman St, Turtle Lake, ND 58575 looks like you got me there.
EDIT: reporting back from Steele, looks like there's an undeveloped acre next to a highway and a power junction for ~75K, it's under 80k so I guess you know where to find me pitching my tent.
Productivity improvements have been partially eaten up by cost of living increases. We don't need everyone working, but how do we decide who has to work and who gets stuff for free? Should workers pay higher taxes to support more retirees?
Cost of living doesn’t wipe out productivity increase. Cost of living is a money transfer. People buy things from other people. The question is therefore where is this money actually going. A casual look at how richness is shared in the USA will give you the answer to that.
how are will still framing this as an ethical dilemma?! THE RICH should pay higher taxes to support retirees! there are people with hundreds of millions of dollars! we just turn down the dial labeled "how rich you get to be" until this shit gets figured out
If you’re willing to put up with 1925 living standards, you can get away with working way less than people worked in 1925, and way less than most people work in 2025.
What is 1925 standards? All organic food? Mostly tailored clothing? Custom fitted shoes? Only one spouse working? Brand new, incredibly high tech cars being made affordable to the average factory worker? Incredibly high tech entertainment centers? They even had washing machines. So are we talking giving up a dishwasher, a clothes dryer, and only having 1.5 baths in houses? Or are we talking the affordable city workers' hotels where man/women mingled, that enable people to live affordably with dignity in the city center, and actually have a life?
What does '1925' mean? No more shein plastic semi-disposable clothes that fall within what 1920's would consider sci-fi dystopian, universal basic income disposable clothes? Or hormone/chemical saturated 'food' that they wouldn't recognize as such? Or huge McMansions made of literal urea board and plastic extruded chemical 'luxury vinyl' floors? Brand new technology such mass produced cars, affordably available to the average person?
Only half of US households had electricity. I imagine many of the ones that were electrified didn’t have washing machines.
Likewise, about half of US households had indoor plumbing. So we’re not talking about giving up multiple bathrooms, we’re potentially talking about giving up bathrooms, period. Do you enjoy outhouses? I don’t.
Only one spouse working? That’s a myth. Who do you think was making those tailored clothes, washing the dishes, washing clothes by hand, and all that? Maybe you mean only one spouse getting paid to work, which is quite different.
You’re looking at a life in a small, drafty house that’s very cold in the winter and excessively hot in the summer (my houses were like that in the 1980s, even), crapping in an outhouse, and washing clothes by hand. But you won’t be washing a lot of clothes, because you’ll probably only have one or two sets.
If this lifestyle sounds attractive to you, you can have it right now for quite cheap.
Jevons paradox. Productivity has increased, but so has consumption because those productivity increases have decreased cost and made many things more affordable and normal.
Bring in more young people via economic opportunity and immigration.
Making kids easier to have really only has two real options:
1. Go back down the development timeline of a nation and remove rights from women (bad).
2. Implement more social programs to incentivize children.
The reason we need to do 2 now and not in the past is we've developed. Women have rights now, and we need real reasons for them to have kids, not fake reasons like we had in the past.
If everyone thinks that government will take care of them when they are old, they will prefer spending time on "self actualization" (whatever that means) instead of the boring dull work of raising kids.
Boring, dull, expensive and risky. We need to incentivize people to do it, not just give them vaguely nationalistic reasons to do so.
Pretty much the only people holding up births in the US is young people who accidentally got banged up. That demographic has only been shrinking as access to contraceptives and education goes up.
We don’t want to remove privileges from people, we want to add on incentives. Currently, there’s a million and one incentives not to have kids.
Not for the young people, no. Besides, countries like the US have made elder care a cash cow. We don’t actually want young people to care for the old, because we can’t bleed them dry that way.
How tiny of a fraction? Can you quantify this for us?
In principle I think some kind of wealth tax on fortunes above a certain level would be a good idea. But there are a lot of practical implementation problems in terms of identifying and valuing illiquid assets. Like for example I have friends who own forestry land (for softwood timber harvesting) in a foreign country. Those assets have some value but trade infrequently so there's no reliable market price. And they probably hold the assets through a foreign corporation rather than directly in their own names. What is a "fair" amount for them to pay in taxes, and how would the government enforce that in a consistent and cost-effective manner?
It's taxation, not brain surgery. If political will is present we can figure out the accounting. The central question is whether we want to drive the economic output of nearly the entire economy into the hands of the 50 richest people in the world, or if we feel that split should be more equitable.
It's always odd to see this dichotomy on HN comments:
1) I'm amazing, I can solve any problem, I'm enlightened by my own intelligence, I'm the mover and shaker who drives all worldly productivity, and I do it by wrangling the newest technologies in the most imaginative creative and intelligent ways, no problem is too great for my superior intelligence!
2) Pay taxes? Ah but, uhh, that's impossible; like ... who decides? There, there's a dealbreaker for you! Hah! And anyway how much? I.. I... there's complexity, don't you know how difficult and complex it is to ... own a forest? Nobody could make a decision, I can see already that the combined might of a nation's experts could not come up with a figure, forget AI, this is just ... give up already, come on, some problems are forever out of reach.
You are racist because you think that only the people who are born near you from people who share some lineage with you can participate in your culture, your people, your nation.
I also want all of those things to survive, but I really don't think that mixing with other people poses a danger to them. If anything I recognize that most of the food I eat, most of the words I speak, the clothes I wear come from some interaction with other cultures.
> If they don't share my lineage, how are they my people? my nation? my culture?
Because all of those things are a product of nurture, not nature. If your twin was adopted, raised in a different country and didn't speak your language would you still consider them part of your culture?
> You're wrong. Go to any city that experienced mass immigration, and then to a city that didn't. See which one is culturally rich.
Oh, like Paris?
Honestly I'm trying to come up with a large city that didn't experience mass immigration and the only thing that comes to mind is something like Pyongyang. At this point I'm not sure if you meant that seriously, but mass immigration is something that pretty much defines being a large, culturally vibrant city. I come from Rome, and the moment our city was richer both economically and in terms of culture was when it was at the center of the Roman Empire and it was experiencing huge influxes of people from all the corners of the known world.
I will yield that culture is nurture, but others are not. If my twin was adopted and raised in China, they will not be Chinese. They will still be European.
> Oh, like Paris?
Yeah, a complete shadow of it's former self. It is completely unrecognizable compared to even 15 years ago. Thieves everywhere.
> Honestly I'm trying to come up with a large city that didn't experience mass immigration
Tokyo? Warsaw (Before Ukrainian refugees)? Prague? All beautiful cities, safe and culturally rich. They have immigration, which is fine, but not mass immigration. Most of the people you will see are natives with some tourists.
> but mass immigration is something that pretty much defines being a large, culturally vibrant city
Completely false. Mass immigration is what kills cities. It's also illogical. Culture is built upon generations of people. When you mass import foreigners, you are diluting that culture, killing it. It's partially why US cities are less culturally rich compared to EU cities.
> I will yield that culture is nurture, but others are not. If my twin was adopted and raised in China, they will not be Chinese. They will still be European.
That's only true if you are racist. To me anyone who grows up fully immersed in Italian culture is Italian. Period. An American who calls themselves Italian, doesn't speak the language and has never visited isn't.
> Yeah, a complete shadow of it's former self. It is completely unrecognizable compared to even 15 years ago. Thieves everywhere.
15 years ago I used to live in Paris, every time I visited more recently I found it greatly improved. Not sure what Paris you've been to. Also mass immigration in Paris is a very old phenomenon. At any point in time in the past 100 years Paris was something like 30% foreign born.
> Tokyo? Warsaw (Before Ukrainian refugees)? Prague? All beautiful cities, safe and culturally rich. They have immigration, which is fine, but not mass immigration. Most of the people you will see are natives with some tourists.
Haven't been to Tokyo so I can't comment, but honestly Warsaw and Prague over Paris? Prague is cute, but it's not much of a real live city, with a bustling cultural scene. It feels a lot more like a museum for tourists. Warsaw, meh.
> Completely false. Mass immigration is what kills cities. It's also illogical. Culture is built upon generations of people. When you mass import foreigners, you are diluting that culture, killing it. It's partially why US cities are less culturally rich compared to EU cities.
If what you mean by culture is some old buildings you might be right, but honestly I'll take NYC, Chicago or LA over Prague or Warsaw any day in terms of culture being produced right now.
> The Roman Empire fell, so not a great example.
The Roman Empire still stood for far longer than any modern nation state.
That's not racism. That's being factual. Nations are bound together by common traits, including ethnicity. Italian, is an ethnicity. Chinese, is an ethnicity.
Racism is denying the European indigineous people the right to their own nation. Why do Europeans have to accept importing immigrants, who, statistically, commit more violent crimes?
> Haven't been to Tokyo so I can't comment, but honestly Warsaw and Prague over Paris? Prague is cute, but it's not much of a real live city, with a bustling cultural scene. It feels a lot more like a museum for tourists. Warsaw, meh.
Way safer and way nicer cities to live in than Paris, but the latter is a personal preference I guess.
> I'll take NYC, Chicago or LA
I remember visiting Google LA's office. There were junkies shooting up at the garage entrance.
What culture is being produced? The culture of gangbangers? Culture of homeless junkies harassing people on the subway?
> The Roman Empire still stood for far longer than any modern nation state.
And they were quite heavily xenophobic too. They did start giving our citizenship more broadly - preceding it's death.
I’m not the person you asked, but I feel very uncomfortable with the idea that cultures and societies should be subject to mass immigration in the name of economic activity.
Immigration when done right, can have a positive impact. Both economically and culturally. However, I think mass migration into declining populations risks having the opposite effect. I’d like to present a historical example.
Hawaii has a famously multicultural society. That being said, it became that way because rich plantation owners simply wanted cheap labor. In the span of a few decades the native Hawaiians became a minority in their own land. Traditional Hawaiian culture is practically extinct as a result. The economic situation of native Hawaiian communities remains impoverished to this day. They wound up being marginalized and almost all of the economic gains that resulted from the mass migration went to those who implemented it. Going further, the Kingdom was eventually overthrown. This was partially enabled by the fact that the new population was so fractured and disunited.
Since statehood, the politics of the state have been largely been controlled by Japanese Americans. Japan was the largest source of immigrants to the Kingdom. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, however. I allege no racism on the part of the descendants of plantation workers. I just wanted to illustrate how a society can be radically altered through mass migration in a relatively short amount of time.
I can only speculate, but I imagine if the Hawaiian people in the 1800’s had known this would happen, they would have chosen a depressed economy instead.
You raise great points here. It's very interesting how the term racist (from the post you're responding to) gets thrown around by people to shut down every side of the discussion depending on what their objectives are.
It's racist for people born in or who are citizens of a country - today - to resist the governing class allowing foreigners to immigrate to benefit the economy AND it's racist policy - historically - for a governing class to push immigration on a natively born population for economic reasons.
You could come out and say the B word. The British transplanted a massive number of people throughout their colonial possessions which later fueled ethic violence.
It's striking to me that a certain kind of person is willing to endure demographic collapse and all that entails, just so that they don't have to see so many brown people.
Instead let's try a hypothetical. Perhaps someone has a historically oppressed indigenous background (perhaps they even have brown skin) it is possible that they may not want any more immigration into their lands.
In my opinion that would be a very understandable position for them to take given the historical circumstances.
The economic argument isn't as clear cut as you suggest either. An economy with excess supply of underutilized labour isn't going to see many gains from immigration.. There's market distortion to consider with regard to housing supply as well, and plenty of other reasons someone may take a valid position against immigration without being racist
It's striking to me that a certain kind of person is willing to endure the genocide of their people and all that entails, just so they can enjoy cheap labour.
Mixing of cultures and ethnicities is good. It makes us stronger and our system has always been made more resilient by absorbing the most adventurous, those who are willing to risk it all. It's what has always actually made America great. We have a wildly inexpensive and rich resource in the form of our fellow humans who happen to have been born behind some different lines. We reject it at our own peril.
It’s comical how quickly some people resort to such extreme measures as if that were the only option they can conceive, rather than encouraging people to have families. Luckily more open minded thinking seems to be more common nowadays.
