Some jobs place restriction on your ability to trade individual stocks - I discovered this when I went to work at an investment management firm. This was a policy applied to all people that worked there.
I see no reason not to do the same thing for Congress. The legal space is well-traveled and the fundamental concern - namely, the perverse incentives resulting from asymmetric access to valuable information - is present in Congress the esame way as in a sizable investment firm.
Index funds and mutual funds are often exempt or subject to less scrutiny, and that could be here too.
It seems to me we're stuck in an international prisoner's dilemma with climate change policy. Economies that defect and disregard environmental consequences will grow more quickly in the short term, especially so if other major players cooperate. So there is a perverse incentive that becomes increasingly impactful as scarcity increases. Poorer economies will have an extremely strong incentive to defect and ignore ecological consequences.
Measures like this will proliferate through an economy in proportion to how angry that population is. If your average voter feels like they can't even afford their groceries (whether or not this is actually true, in fact, is irrelevant), they will get angry at any administration that passes any GDP-hampering policy, and will support any administrations attempts at stripping away these policies.
I don't know what the solution is, but its clear that, from a game theory perspective, there will be large defectors to any kind of international cooperative agreement.
Solar and wind are cheaper in most of the world, TCO on EVs is lower too.
So, paying more to poison your children may not win in the market.
This is mentioned in the article:
> But the EPA's own regulatory impact report says limiting emissions for cars and trucks is expected to generate more than $2.1 trillion in net benefits over the next 30 years, including $820 billion in fuel savings and $1.8 trillion in public health and climate benefits.
I’m, of course, interested in an optimistic answer, but I think it’s clear that there is no solution. Humans are, by and large, really stupid and really selfish. You will never get enough of them to care more about each other (and, in this case, each other’s grandchildren), than care about their own immediate wants.
There was an Opinion piece the other day criticizing Mamdani's NYC city-run grocery plan.
It focused on the incompatibility of what he was proposing with how the grocery store industry operates at large.
But I think the comparison was too focused on dynamics of large supermarkets. Of course a city-run grocery cannot and should not attempt to operate with the SKU count of a larger chain. Running a simpler operation with a smaller SKU count, like Trader Joe's does, is orders of magnitude more feasible and probably delivers exactly what most customers are looking for. Cost-effective, no-frills local produce & household staples. There are plenty of places to buy frozen foods, cereal, snacks, drinks, prepared foods, etc.
A model like Traders' that eliminates middleman, while leveraging city funding to subsidize the infrastructure, could deliver fresh local produce and household staples at near cost. And aren't those the things we want to encourage people to eat? Aren't fresh, simple foods the most deserving of subsidy?
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
I don't think this is an example of curious, good-faith comment. If you'd like to have a substantive discussion on the practical merits/drawbacks of a program like this, I'd be happy to.
I am not the GP, but I will offer some concerns for a "city operated" grocery service:
1. The incentives for good service and product are not well-defined other than paycheck and goodwill. This must be a very high priority.
2. The city has many responsibilities--some critical to life and civil order--which are of much greater importance than grocery service. Therefore the competition for money and resources is weaker.
3. A large percentage of state and city residents and taxpayers--who are ostensibly the benefactors of the grocery service--may not see any benefit at all from the grocery service because of location, selection, convenience, etc. This immediately creates an antagonistic relationship with a class of people--may leading to legal challenges.
4. Starting a grocery service requires very large investments of capital. Typically, that capital investment has a potential ROI, e.g. a bond. If the goal is to sell groceries at lower prices (and profit margins), this may not be sufficient to satisfy the financing requirements--which can lead to bankruptcy.
I mean I think it's all in that video, but if you want I can lay it out for you:
The grocery store in Cuba shows a REAL life example of what communism does. The eventual failure mode means you will eat the same 15 different possible things at the grocery store. You'll wait in line at said store because the hours are unreliable, and only open for 20 hours a week.
I think what the top poster was saying "And aren't those the things we want to encourage people to eat? Aren't fresh, simple foods the most deserving of subsidy?"
I don't think he quite understands when this mindset extends out to its eventual failure mode.
Why can't we turn people that are in victim/failure mode into thriving business leaders that want to CHANGE the world.
Some people fix a problem with a bucket under a leak in their roof. Some people fix the roof. I want a country filled with people that FIX THE DAMN ROOF!
The mutagenic human quality for self success I believe you are looking for is “the grind.” Everyone wants to clever their way out of the work, and every upstart should try, though we often fool ourselves into putting off the real work when it would be easier to just do “the grind.”
Who could really start calling themselves successful programmers before mastering the grind? Ordinary people are more comfort and convenience prone.
I think you're right - but there will always be a percentage of the population that wants to outperform for extra rewards (I mean that is Capitalism in a nutshell). We want to set up society such that this is possible. If you start with grocery stores, and later add a city subsidized Target, Apple, Walmart, etc... then those special out performers will move out of NYC.
What you want isn’t target or Walmart (okay, maybe Apple), it is their logistics chain. You tap their logistics (supply and demand) and slap your local brand upon it!
I think NY wants to move out to escape the enshitification of global reality. However your right, we need our conveniences!
> you're not doing something you WANT to hide from law enforcement.
Why should law enforcement have the privilege to know arbitrary information, especially deeply personal information, about law-abiding individuals?
It is a core requirement of democracy to be able to conceal information from the arm of the state. Political retribution and targeting of ones opponents is not just hypothetical, it's happening now, in America, right now.
Why should law enforcement get to search my phone to find out that I'm critical of the administration? This is information about me that is completely allowed under law, but can be used to discriminate against me.
The definition of legal also changes over time. Giving someone an Uber ride in Texas to an out-of-state abortion center is now a crime. Definitely wouldn't want information on my Uber ride history to be freely available to Texas police. Even if I've never given such a ride, my entire ride history, and possibly my life as a whole, is now subject to deep, targeted scrutiny. Facts would not protect me here, as even if I have done nothing wrong my life could be irrevocably altered. Corruption exists. People make mistakes. Sometimes they have hidden agendas that supersede our shared values of common decency.
> Why should law enforcement have the privilege to know arbitrary information, especially deeply personal information, about law-abiding individuals?
They don't and that's called privacy. Seems I didn't make my point clear that saying "I don't have anything to hide" is perfectly fine when applying to anything criminal.
It's NOT the same as saying "I don't care about privacy".
If you commit a crime and hide that, that's a crime.
If you give out your address, that's not a crime and yes stupid to do, but you're not going to prison for it.
Highlighting that people conflate hiding things with privacy and they're just not the same.
Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with Venn diagrams. The area of overlap between the two concepts is called having something to hide.
You can quibble with the word "hide" but it came from the original post, and it serves just fine. You're free to write your own post that doesn't use that phrasing.
Because Israel is both a critical component of our global surveillance and information warfare programs, and a convenient shield against criticism and investigation.
How is it a critical component of our global surveillance and info warfare? If anything they steal so much from us and give very little in return. They have sold our military secrets to China, stolen nuclear material and secrets from us, and hacked American journalists and citizens and American big tech companies. I don't even think China has done that much damage to us
I'd point out that the data for homes is averaged nationally. Historically, there have been Good Places and Bad Places to buy a home. Home price growth in in-demand coastal areas is very different than in rural areas. In the US, "Flyover states" I'm sure skew this number heavily.
Part of this is captured by the Volatility Index mentioned
> Individual houses are 4x the volatility of a housing index, close to the same volatility as the stock market.
But it bears calling out explicitly. Economically depressed areas will have very poor growth relative to inflation. Economically prosperous, desirable, growing areas will, by definition, have an increasing population and a finite area to accommodate that population. NIMBYism exacerbates this effect by reducing supply of new homes.
If you pick a good location, buying a home is a fantastic purchase. It ties up that investment money in an asset that you can actually USE. You can improve it, make modifications and tweaks to your liking, which renters cannot. And often times these improvements result in positive net positive return.
You'll never get forced out because your landlord wants to sell.
You'll never have to deal with toxic landlords at all.
You'll get to deduct all that mortgage interest from your taxes (if you itemize).
And in California, your monthly payments will never rise YoY more than $MONTHLY_TAX * .02
I'd point out that while an asset, yes, it is a liability. Not in the typical financial sense, either!
I'm hesitant on buying because I have next to no certainty in my role. If I be a good little Business Man and make someone else filthy rich, have all the make-up beers, and show up on time: at-will employment is still a thing. I may still be forced out by circumstance.
Equity might make the hit softer, I don't know. I do know a rainy day fund will be useful.
I bought recently. Mortgage lenders seem to be much more willing to work with people who can't make their mortgage than landlords are. Deferred plans, interest only payments, and more. In Texas, landlords can evict you within three days of missing a rent payment. THREE. DAYS! I got hit with this letter when auto pay screwed up. It's pretty scary.
I've found landlords both more auditable and flexible than jobs or even lenders, sadly. I'll buy something when I can afford it (in more than one sense, too). That frees me to pick a place not tied to financing or any particular location.
All roads lead to uncertainty, I'd rather travel it with a heavy purse. Good for smacking away problems or making trades on the way.
If it becomes less fashionable to force people to relocate, maybe I'd find it wise to invest. Until then autonomy is valuable. Days? Cute! Three hours is no problem with a could-be down payment in your pocket and no attachments.
With RTO/AI/Actually-Indians... it's an arms race for those of us who 'survive'. I'd rather buy when it dips or with less competition. Not directly contribute to building Company Town 3.0 while my peers and I try to outbid each other and suckle from the same teet.
Game theory is telling me either I'm getting laid off or someone else is, there may be advantage in waiting. Costs nothing but opportunity, funny: provides that too.
A couple more tropes to close: accounting tricks all the way down, money plays.
that sounds like a Texas and a "non-tenant-friendly" problem -- plenty of states ain't like that.
and as someone who owns and rents property, finding good renters is hard and costly. if one of my normally good tenant gets screwed and needs a little patience and wiggle room I'd rather work w/ them then roll the dice over some noob. e.g. if they're out of work for a longer than expected then they can help paint the place, finish up some landscaping, etc.
The ugly thing is that you're most likely to get laid off when the market is down. I've argued this with people so many times and I think some of them are finally starting to see what I was saying.
btw I don't think getting rid of at will employment will change that. These cycles are so long they'll certainly find a way to get rid of you during a down cycle if they want to.
Thank you, absolutely. Contrivances abound. I was wrong to stop with at-will employment; RTO policies are a notable miss.
Say I buy somewhere affordable and am now officially remote. No longer conveniently in the same city as the office, but at home... truly elsewhere. The calculus has changed!
Then we get into fuzzier topics like AI use. It's absolutely not just about productivity. The non-minded gap between my peers and I shows that to be irrelevant. I sandbag, they grind. It's a wash. In the end, a weird litmus/loyalty test that I can't quite articulate.
Well if you have to move to take a new job then you can always sell your home or rent it out. You'll take a hit on transaction costs or property management fees but you're unlikely to lose all of your equity.
> Well if you have to move to take a new job then you can always sell your home or rent it out.
Right, that's 'forced out' with extra steps :) I'm buying a home to live in (and if we're honest, die). Not employment. It may not even pay!
> unlikely
Hence the hesitation [for certainty]. This is half a statement about the market and half about my capacity for it. If I lost my job - the more likely case - I don't want this burden, too.
To your/OPs point: this can be an opportunity... but so is that fat down payment! Losing the position with savings/options: video games and burn-out recovery for the next three years. Comfortably trying on the next fad.
Without savings/options but a house/debt: panic, hot potato, and paperwork with a much more urgent job search.
The mortgage interest deduction is incredibly over rated. For most people the last few years of high standard deduction + salt cap mean few people really get much benefit from it. At lower tax brackets it's a pretty minor discount on your interest to begin with.
The much bigger tax thing this article doesn't consider is the $250k/$500k single/married capital gains exemption on sale of primary residence.
> If you pick a good location, buying a home is a fantastic purchase. It ties up that investment money in an asset that you can actually USE.
Also: It's a leveraged investment for most people (mortgage). If you put in 20% and your house tripled in value over the last ten years (which is what happened in SF & Seattle afaict), you make an annualized return of 27% (for a whopping 1070% total, i.e. more than 10x), after accounting for your payments (with realtor fees the number is slightly less but not meaningfully). Meanwhile as a renter your rent would likely have at least doubled over the same period, doubling the size of the nonrecoupable leak in your financial hull.
That's 1070% as opposed to 224%, i.e. 10x vs. 2x in the S&P. This is the reality of what has happened over the past 10 years, by the way, I am not using hypotheticals. Do note that home values tripling in price over the last decade is not common, even among these expensive cities, you have to be looking at specific types of housing in "luxury" neighborhoods.
People underappreciate how valuable access to leverage can be in terms of boosting returns from a home. Putting 5% down, claiming the interest on taxes, and keeping 100% of the price appreciation is a solid deal.
Furthermore, since they're a hard asset, homes generally scale with inflation and thus serve as a hedge.
The home value didn't triple. Their equity did. Put $60,000 down on a $300,000 home. Live in it three years. Sell it for $540,000. Just made $240,000 in three years by investing $60,000. Granted there's also costs associated with carrying the home and mortgage one needs to count against the full profit and return.
> its not nearly as fabulous an investment as you are suggesting
In case it wasn't clear, I'm not trying to give investment advice (my comment is very focused on what happened, not what will happen). I am however, implying that a lot of people made bad financial decisions by misapprehending their situation and consuming the wrong "content". I believe many people can be spared significant regret if they double-check, disbelieve, or replace much of what they’re told by the internet.
I had the double whammy of property taxes AND insurance increases on my last house. Budget was a bit tight, but that almost sent me over the edge. I learned my lesson on my next house purchase, and made sure there was a ton of leg room in the budget, along with things I could very quickly drop from the budget if needed.
Not for those of us who like our home and have made a life here.
What you're advocating for is treating potential club members better than current club members. It doesn't make that much sense.
If you really were advocating for sensible policies, you would be advocating for many many more multifamily dwellings and/or taxes being directly proportional to the cost of the infrastructure needed to support it--generally by linear feet of roadway taken instead of property square feet.
No I'm advocating for the prevention of feudalism where a permanent landed gentry can extract wealth in perpetuity through no contribution whatsoever than having a deed.
I agree that property square feet is a bad metric. The right way to do this is actually to tax based on the unimproved value of the land, which would in fact create many many more multifamily dwellings by virtue of increasing the carrying cost of land as the market demand for density increases.
In my opinion, a person should not be forced to move just because of economic circumstances outside their control. Unless you're a spry 20-something with no real connections, moving will be incredibly disruptive and potentially traumatic.
One person's "landed gentry" is another's "housing stability."
In my opinion, options should be balanced against each other and then we should pick the least-bad or most-good ones.
The "allow zero carrying costs indefinitely on any land" option entails runaway wealth inequality, skyrocketing housing costs, major impediments to family and household formation, and destruction of the payoff period for any capital expenditures made in a geography as younger generations have to create new cities from scratch over and over again, creating enormous financially unsustainable infrastructure sprawl (see: Houston) as redevelopment is too difficult against the vested interests of the landed gentry (see: NYC and SF). This of course causes decay, bankrupts cities and states, and ends up reducing the quality of life for everyone, including the landed gentry.
The "incur carrying costs" option entails old people reverse mortgaging their property until they die, or selling and moving into something more suitable for their needs.
What's especially negative about population growth from immigration as compared to domestic population growth, or simply productivity growth from technological advancement?
All of these increase the value of land. Why are you singling out immigration?
(I suspect I know what's special, but curious to hear your answer anyway)
Getting kicked out of your house being necessary to support it is one big issue. This never seemed to make sense when we had domestic population growth and if we can't fit people without taking drastic measures like that maybe we're just out of room.
Just because you didn't come across this idea (or exist) when there wasn't high immigration doesn't mean "it never seemed to make sense when" there wasn't high immigration.
Regardless if this is the cost of migration it's an absolute loss for the native population. Suggesting it before suggesting net emigration is absolutely insane.
It's the cost of growth, including growth by domestic birth or by technological advancement.
Net emigration is bad for its own reasons. Namely that municipalities, states, and business financial models are all dependent on the reverse. The perils of population decline can't possibly be unknown to someone so "interested" in immigration dynamics.
That's why I didn't suggest it. Not only does it not solve this problem, but it creates several more.
So this is a huge problem, and one worth tackling, but I worry very much about the timing of this post in the context of the bill being brought before the Senate now.
We should not implement horrific legislation just because we agree with a single provision. Calling your representatives is the right path, but you MUST be explicit that you do not support the current bill being brought forth that addresses this.
Please, I beseech my fellow Americans, do not vocalize any support for this bill. We'll correct the ills of the 2017 administration in time, but this is not the way to do that.
It didn't become law (no 60 votes in senate), after Schumer sat on it for 6 (!) months. And there were earlier attempts to fix this, for example at the end of 2022 using budget/reconciliation - like what the Reps are doing here; but that was blocked by progressives because of "bad optics".
The Democratic party needs internal reform, that much seems clear to me. But since then we've had just a single term of Biden, and his administrations focus was on COVID, Ukraine, and getting CHIPS+infra bills passed.
It takes time to undo damage codified into legislation. We're still dealing with the aftermath of Reagan. But we have to stop the bleeding and take Congress back, or the size of the hill we have to scale increases drastically.
The opposite of what you're saying is "perfection is the enemy of progress", so let's move past them. I'm asking for more than "this is not the way". What is the way? How will we do this? This is critical, and we've failed to do anything since early 2022. Democrats are clearly not at all interested. My (Dem) congressman responded directly to my enquiry with "fixing section174 just wouldn't be good optics". I agree republicans can't be taken very seriously either if OB3 is the highest of highs. But we all want this fixed. So: how?
Not in a way that makes us even easier to hate, for a start. You really want a big noisy political carveout in what is already being called the largest upward wealth transfer in history? You want to find out what it's like to be in a line of work that has the reputation for having to steal from the American people to survive? We have enough of that reputation already.
If you want a better answer, tell me who our friends are in Congress this decade, and how much it matters. From what I see, the answers are "few" and "little." The Americans who don't blame us for giving Trump the country blame us for not giving him enough of a platform. The appearance of demanding favor on our part at such a moment seems unwise, but that moment does sufficiently explain why we find ourselves facing the aforementioned paucity of well-wishers.
>Not in a way that makes us even easier to hate, for a start. You really want a big noisy political carveout in what is already being called the largest upward wealth transfer in history? You want to find out what it's like to be in a line of work that has the reputation for having to steal from the American people to survive? We have enough of that reputation already.
This is bullshit. The carveout already exists and it's designed to attack software engineering specifically.
This is politics. Perceptions matter. Changing the status quo is more difficult because it is the status quo, and that also matters.
If you want to sell this change, the way to do it is to hammer on the fact that it was Trump's own TCJA that created the current situation, or that it was the machinations of a hostile Congress that so perverted the original intent of the TCJA, depending on audience. But even that is not likely to work, not in a post-"Twitter Files," post-Careless People world.
I don't know what kind of bubble you live in but if I were working this year I wouldn't be super comfortable talking about it, the same way if I had previously made the mistake of buying a Tesla I would by now have unloaded the damned eyesore even at a loss.
No one is upset to see us suffer. If you think that should change, fine. Complaining at me about it won't achieve that. I did not ask how you think things should be. I'm telling you how things are.
I don’t know what bubble you’re living in but the “narrative” here is easily defensible. “The software engineering profession has been gutted by layoffs that explicitly make them 5x more expensive to startups than lawyers, electrical engineers, and doctors. This hurts both workers and employers while benefiting nobody other than foreign firms.”
Nobody of relevance is mad people in tech get paid well. The only slice who are is a small percentage of people in housing constrained areas who attribute the housing failures of California to 5% of the SF workforce.
> I'm telling you how things are.
Claiming something is “how things are” is just assuming the conclusion and is one of the dumbest ways to engage in discussion. It’s literally, “I’m just telling you how I’m right.”
I hadn't seen they were asking for a retroactive carveout! For eight years. A decade's worth of massive, post facto tax clawback? I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but they really must not love YC or Hacker News, to put those names on the public face of this...
While the law with the tax change was passed in 2017, that specific change didn't go into effect until 2022. So it's 3 years of retroactive carveouts (2022, 2023, 2024).
I see no reason not to do the same thing for Congress. The legal space is well-traveled and the fundamental concern - namely, the perverse incentives resulting from asymmetric access to valuable information - is present in Congress the esame way as in a sizable investment firm.
Index funds and mutual funds are often exempt or subject to less scrutiny, and that could be here too.
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