I guess I'm not super concerned, because I stopped watching TV news a long long time ago. In general they do everything they can to spread fear, and this is just an extension of that.
Does it worry you that this kind of fear-mongering might be bad for society even if it doesn't impact you personally? You might not watch the local news, but many other people do.
It's just corporate media who no longer cares about informing the public in seek of profits. It guarantees a watcher all day to consume ads, on edge about extreme events to stay tuned and consume ads, while also normalizing severity. These things are already put out on TV, Radio, and over many SAME alerts by NWS in the event that there is a real emergency. There is also the easy to read convective outlook.
It's not really about spreading fear, per se, it's marketing. Stations want their weather team portrayed as the most accurate and most dependable with the most cutting edge 3D no 4D no HYPERCUBIC storm tracking technology.
They want viewers to rely on their station alone for weather forecasts simply as a means of ensuring viewership and increasing the value of their ad time, so they make those forecasts seem as critically important as possible. It's the same phenomenon that leads to all news being breaking news.
I used to live in Arizona. The traffic lights and crosswalks are an insane distance apart. There are bright streetlights basically everywhere. All the roads are straight.
It's all designed for cars, and not for pedestrians. And it's really tempting to j-walk if you're ever stuck walking somewhere.
Is it really true that the minimum wage before was JUST at the point where replacing workers wasn't worth the cost, and now it's going just over that threshold?
If they can find a way to replace workers with machines, my guess is they will. My local walmart has one worker managing about ten self-checkout stations now. Panera Bread has stations where you order your food; no cashier needed. And the wage they are paying here is well above minimum wage, anyway.
CEOs will eliminate all the employees they can, because they consider that their job. And then they'll give out executive bonuses as massive as they can get away with.
There is no reason why the minimum wage should be so low that no one could make a living off it.
The Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr. At 2,000 hours a year (a full time job) that's $14,500 which is above the poverty level for a family of 1 ($12,060) and pretty close to the poverty level for a family of 2 ($16,240).
Aren't most fast food restaurants franchises, and the individual corporations running them own a handful in a fairly constrained geographic area? There are 3-4 companies that own the various McDonalds locations in my area and I don't think any of them own more than 3.
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and ideological flamebait to HN? When I look at your comment history I see several of those, and also several substantive comments, though those are from years ago. If you'd like to keep commenting here, please drop your recent habit and go back to that earlier one.
I think you are mistaken. If I see a comment that is objectively false, then it ought to be pointed out as such. Not doing so would make Hacker News irrelevant. How am I to object to a false statement without getting flagged? Wouldn't the comment to which I'm replying also need to be flagged, since it states an ideologically driven false statement?
Please tell me what recent comments are flamebait because I've looked at my comment history. In context, I've always been civil.
If you work a full-time job, and I don't care what that job is, your employer absolutely should adequately compensate you, for the amount of time spent on your job.
Your employer is buying your time, the most precious and absolutely non-renewable resource you have. Don't sell it too cheaply.
So teenagers working part-time need to earn a living wage? Having a one-size-fits-all number is damaging. The problem is workers who don't hone a useful skill and create a record of reliability. Anyone that does that won't be making the minimum wage after a little while, at least in the current economy.
No person in their right mind would work a $5/hr full-time job in the western world, unless they were indoctrinated into a sick "trust us, trickle-down works!" society.
Let's flip it around: Why do you think it's reasonable in any way, that an employer wants to hire a full-time worker at way below a living wage?
Full-time job must pay full-time wage. Can't afford to run your business then? Too bad, find somewhere cheaper to run it. The city/countryside balance will adjust.
Minimum wage is less for teenagers. When I was 15 the minimum wage was $5.15 and I was paid $4.85 because that was the minimum wage for a 15 year old. And it wasn't because I received tips, where the minimum wage was even lower ($2.80 or so I think?)
Entry level worker who is not valued the fluctuating livable wage level; where they do not have basic work skills. In San Fransciso, a livable wage might be around $50,000 ($12k for housing, 20k for all taxes, $8k for food and other housing necessities, and 10k for savings, clothes, or insurance); this basically means an hourly wage of $25/hr. As an entry level job this is not a good option for employers and thus why they turn to automation, they know the robots skill and value, but estimating if an entry person can meet these skills is nigh impossible.
The other end is that someone is able to underbid you for your time. Which means you can believe you are worth $25/hr, but get no jobs because Jim Burnett will do it for $24 or someone in a lower livable wage area will do it for $5. In this case, you will have no work based on your theory.
Is being paid a non-living wage better than being paid nothing at all?
Say I am a one man shop. I would like an assistant, but I don't actually make enough to pay the assistant a "living wage". My options are to hire an assistant at non-living wages, or not hire an assistant at all. Which is preferable?
If I wanted to learn from this person their craft and wanted to make a desirable investment in being in their presence and knowledge, you would prevent me from accepting this opportunity?
Don't conflate apprenticeships with taking advantage of poor people. Are you pretending there is no difference between these two scenarios?
A) Someone is a gifted tattoo artist and you want to learn the craft from them, so you pay them to teach you. You're responsible for your living expenses and you get by with odd jobs or what-have-you.
B) Someone pays you $5/day to do office work for them.
C) Someone is a gifted tattoo artist and you want to learn the craft from them, but you don't have any money to pay them. So the tattoo artist takes you on as a full-time paid intern, making a non-living wage
Since you literally can't think of a single reason, I thought it would be fun if I tried to think of a reason that I had never heard before (or at least I don't remember hearing). So here it is:
Suppose that someone makes $20/hr but only works 20 hours per week. A second (unskilled) job that only pays $5/hr for 20 hours per week would be a significant increase in their income. In fact, where I live that would put them over what is considered a "living wage".
I think the really difficult part might be figuring out when to take it off the table. For example, let's say bitcoin goes up 10x. Then do you decide to sell, because it might crash back down the next week? But what if you miss out on another huge increase by selling?
Yeah, this is the dilemma, but can't beat yourself up too much over it. I mined my first bitcoin in February 2011 just out of interest in this cool experiment, not expecting it to go anywhere. I've always had a bit of btc in reserve but every time there's a big jump the impulse is "Better sell out of this silly bubble while I can". People who imagine that they'd have $50M today neglect that they'd most likely have had a similar reaction when it was $20, $100, $500, and so on, and it's unlikely they would've held a substantial portion until it hit $20k.
I think the part that's hard is that there is a stickiness to hype. Hype starts as baseless hype, but the belief and interest of others is frequently enough to sustain a company or project that has nothing of actual benefit to offer. This makes it hard to dismiss hype-fueled bubbles entirely. There's a circular effect somewhere here that converts the initial baseline hype into value just by the sheer force of will of "true believers".
This applies not only to bitcoin/litecoin, but also companies, software, and all sorts of other things. Generating hype, goodwill, and other mostly-positive forms of human attention is inarguably more valuable to a project or venture's long-term lifecycle than providing actual objective value. Get enough attention or interest on something and any objective value that may potentially exist is liable to materialize, at least in part.
Sell half after it doubles, then hold the rest until you need the money. Selling half returns your initial investment; what remains is pure profit and you can't lose money.
This is precisely what I did, so now I have a guaranteed net profit. Yes my potential earnings are lower but it feels good to be out of the group of potential "losers" in what looks to be a zero-sum game.
You most likely need to wait until it's close to 3 X the value you bought it because you'll need to pay short-term taxes after you sell it.
And once that happens, why sell half of it, vs all of it? 3 times the current value is a LOT of money and that usually takes at least 8-10 years in the equity market. Now that it happens, you're cashing out just to recoup your costs? Cash out everything, or cash out nothing and let it all ride until it's an even larger amount.
> And once that happens, why sell half of it, vs all of it? 3 times the current value is a LOT of money and that usually takes at least 8-10 years in the equity market. Now that it happens, you're cashing out just to recoup your costs? Cash out everything, or cash out nothing and let it all ride until it's an even larger amount.
I agree "just recouping your costs" is not really exciting by itself. The idea is that you think it might go much higher, but - crucially - you're not sure. It's just about reducing your exposure to risk at the cost of some upside potential. It all depends on your risk appetite.
This is a little fallacious because it assumes that the value of your money (Dollars or something?) won't continue to lose value against until it becomes worthless paper. This has happened in recent history e.g. Weimar Germany and is happening right now e.g. Venezuela.
At the end of the day, the rationality comes from a comparison of one currency against another. Just converting back from the currency you started with doesn't mean you "can't lose".
Exactly this. People should ask around for advice all the paper-millionaires from the 1999-2000 era. Lots of paper millionaires were made, most didn't materialize.
