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hfourmon Thomas Paine's Argument for Basic Income Explained

Well, the important threshold he isn't really commenting on -- but which is much more pertinent, is the further removal of blue collar labor.

You are totally right that for the most part, service oriented industries (design, marketing, etc) will remain long after those more labor and autonomous jobs have been transitioned into AI.

hfourmon Jobs that are disappearing thanks to robots

Another anecdote. Girlfriend recently got switched to a different generic birth control, which lead to her have super bad side-effects compared to her previous one. This was due to a Target pharmacy change in providers.

She tried to call the pharmacy to see if there was any other alternative, or chance to get on her old pill due to the nasty side-effects. All she got in response was heartless no's and not our problem.

So I totally agree with the idea that these soft-relationships are a thing of the past.

hfourmon Bernie Sanders’s Tax Plan Would Test an Economic Hypothesis

Economics is politics, not science.

hfourmon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2016)

http://www.raptmedia.com/about/careers/senior-engineer

Raptmedia | Boulder, CO Looking for senior level Ruby, Rails, React, Node type developer

Thanks

hfourmon Why Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions?

I hate the argument of the rich "leaving"

Where are they going to go? And once you come to the logical conclusion that only a few outliers will actually "leave", they will leave a void that someone will fill, and be taxed.

hfourmon Economic Inequality: The Simplified Version

Google searching reveals that while true there may be a lack of investment in startups in these areas from VC, there are still plenty of companies forming -- so there could be a few other variables at play then just "government regulation".

You keep touting the same rhetoric but i'm afraid you are unwilling to challenge your own ideas.

Like the idea of the wealth just leaving our country. Where are they going to go? China? Socialist european countries? The answer is NO WHERE. Unless they are wealthy enough to just decide to go retire in a cheaper country, the truth is that majority of business owners will find other efficiencies in their operations in order to retain access to things like their: non-immediate family, US workforce (cultural/communication barrier actually do become very important for many service oriented businesses), and the standard of living here. I find the conservative rhetoric that the rich will just "leave us" as absolutely insane. Even if they did leave in droves, good riddance -- short term losses followed my long term progress, are those really the type of American's we should be pandering too? The ones treating the country like an emotionally abused spouse that they will leave as soon as things don't go their way?

hfourmon How Paul Graham Gets It Wrong in “Economic Inequality”

"...yet the US is now the most prosperous nation on earth and our poor still have cell phones, a basic roof over their heads, and aren't eating rocks in the dirt."

Lot of reasons for this, don't need to go into it. People have written books on it, and I am assuming you aren't directly correlating it with the tax rate.

"The 'uber wealthy' pay more in taxes than they will ever use in their lifetime..and probably 10,000 or more people's lifetime."

This isn't true, yea maybe they won't pull or have the need for a social security check, but their businesses and investments rely on public infrastructure, education, and the federal military protecting their international assets and trade rights MUCH more then the average joe. This is compounded by the fact that our corrupt system of government you so aptly pointed out, has allowed the policy making to overwhelming favor the established crony capitalists.

"Instead of focusing on how much more money we can appropriate from the wealthy, we should first be making politicians and governments accountable for the money we are paying into the system now. Without this accountability, we will continue to run out of money."

You are totally right, we should be figuring out how to be less wasteful -- and there is also plenty of legislation that creates unnecessary waste and bureaucracy. I think this is beyond a discussion about taxes though, and more about restructuring our government in a bipartisan effort -- which starts with who we elect. I think you can separate the two arguments. But yea, totally agree. One thing to keep in mind though, all large human organizations become less efficient and wasteful -- so this is not just a government problem. See HP.

Lastly, I don't think that the NBA analogy really works here. Just because someone is born with athletic ability doesn't automatically make them draft ready. They spend 10-15 years honing their skills, spending time with world class coaches, and working hard to get to the NBA. Someone born into obscene wealth usually comes with years of investment management and financial teams built around the family to maintain that wealth -- with a high potential for the child to be very disconnected from reality and never have that same urge to work that the NBA player had. See the affluenza case for example. I am not suggesting we should punish someones children by any means for your own success, but there is a difference between providing your kids a nice life and supporting modern day princes and kings.

Obviously this last bit is more of a generalization, but I hope it shows the fault in your NBA analogy. Otherwise I do agree with the sentiment that yes, there are natural vagina lotteries, but being smarter or more athletic is a net positive for a society -- whereas being born into inordinate amounts of wealth could actually end up being a negative over the long term when your ruling class is further removed and further concentrated from the average.

hfourmon How Paul Graham Gets It Wrong in “Economic Inequality”

Yet the rate is a fraction of what it was 30+ years ago. While the wealthy may pay the "majority" of taxes, I thought it was common knowledge that the uber wealthy pay proportionately less of their income in taxes then the lower and middle class -- which is inequality defined.

I mainly just don't believe in vagina lotteries

hfourmon NASA not ready for dangers of deep space, auditors say

This probably makes the most sense. I still see sending a human to Mars as a likely precursor though. If we prove it is possible, alongside the advancements that come from the missions, would hopefully dramatically increase NASA fandom and funding.

hfourmon Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

Maybe, but I still doubt that equates to a 30% drop.

I am more a fan of the whole, increase in division between community and its police leading to lack of informants among other things, idea.

hfourmon Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

I think another big negative here is just the fact that it shifts police org's focus towards crimes where they can "fund" themselves.

I repeat this statistic a lot, but the solved murder rate has fallen from ~90% in the 60s to ~60% in recent years. You'd think with all our new forensic technology and lower overall murder rates it would be opposite.

hfourmon Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

The point someone else already made, it seems you are the only one presupposing anything here. Likely because you are abhorrently opposed to "wealth redistribution" or any type of socialistic policy. Based on your OP.

hfourmon Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

As the other response said, this isn't really a propaganda piece. Unless you are reallllly overanalyzing it, which it seems you are. Based on your comment it seems like your own beliefs and opinions were also hard at work projecting themselves on the intentions of the author. Maybe income inequality pieces are appealing so some populist yearning of the middle and lower class. But it is also frustrating because your comment seems to be linked with some underlying belief that socialism is an inherently bad thing. Which, IMO, belongs on a facebook thread of the uneducated and unthoughtful.

hfourmon Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

I would prefer HN to be a place where things like "socialist propaganda" aren't thrown around so loosely. Thanks.

hfourmon How Steve Jobs Fleeced Carly Fiorina with HP iPod

Well... I am not agreeing that his comment was a bit cray. But isn't it common knowledge that generally more educated areas of the country are also more "progressive/left leaning"? Obviously there are exceptions, but even an intelligent man can cling to the wrong idea ;)

hfourmon [dead]

I think I might have misread the article as the companies performance falling, not biotechs as a whole.

Knowing it was broader then that, It makes a bit more sense that the hit came after her comment around releasing her plan for pharmaceuticals.

hfourmon [dead]

So this story (not the Clinton tweet, about the drug price increase) has been everywhere today.

Why is this Clinton's fault?

hfourmon Ask HN: What makes Hacker News so special?

I also think its fascinating to think about where the source of "news" or some type of idea, picks up critical mass to become viral. Are they concentrated to tiers of sites for example?

hfourmon Show HN: Light Bootstrap Dashboard

Thats funny, I totally agree with your sentiment about frilly animations -- but for some reason the bouncing nav bar dropdown made me happy in this situation.

hfourmon Building Nuclide, a unified developer experience

"Last but not least, this initial release includes our universal search tool package. In a large, multi-language codebase like ours, finding files and symbols quickly and efficiently is important for our engineers. Here's a glimpse: SEARCHES INDEX.PHP"

sorry thought that was funny

hfourmon Ask HN: Using a mac as the main development system or not

That seems overpriced to begin with.

You can get a 15" MBP new, with the dedicated graphics card, 16gb ram, and the new SSDs for like... 2500 USD

hfourmon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2015)

Raptmedia - Boulder, CO

Looking for a QA engineer, great company, interesting market

http://www.raptmedia.com/about/careers/qa-engineer

hfourmon Apple Watch – What can you do with it?

its screen looks nice atleast

hfourmon Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane'

Also I think it would be hard to surprise a crew member in the confines of a cockpit... Most likely would result in at least some type of physical struggle

hfourmon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2015)

Lead QA Engineer - Boulder, CO Hiring a QA engineer to help automate our testing process and serve as our quality assurance lead. Position is full time.

More info: http://www.raptmedia.com/about/careers/qa-engineer

hfourmon Ask HN: Does working for big tech companies pay off more compared to startups?

I mean it just depends, I am making more at my current startup job by about 11% than my big corporate IT job I left.

But my startup is also through a few rounds of funding. I also feel like the experience gained here will translate into higher salary later should I transition back into larger organizations.

This is something not too straightforward to compare, and will be different for different individuals/situations.

hfourmon Programming for Marketers

Hey there is a typo in the about justin section

"myself myself"

hfourmon Show HN: Surge Pricing as a Service

What type of products / scenarios could you see this delighting the users?

My first thought is that variable pricing on many items, would do more harm than good -- I would much rather pick a higher price up-front, and miss out on some buyers, than confuse my audience with fluctuating prices on when they aren't expecting it.

I would hate two friends to realize they both bought tickets to the same thing, one whom paid twice what the other paid

hfourmon Is that whole gamification thing really over?

I agree with you for the most part, but I still think there is value in understanding certain motivating elements of different genres of games, from RPGs to trivia. I think in many cases we can leverage these learning's in workplace activities.

But just slapping some badges on a web profile and putting people in competition based on their everyday work activities is not very productive.

hfourmon Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

But at the same time we can look at other planets with atmospheres w/ much higher compositions of green house gases and the environment is OBVIOUSLY unsuitable for life. So why do we think we are immune to this? We pump a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, at non natural rates, what do you expect to happen?