I'm fortunate enough to be in one of the top percentiles of household income but I'm not independently wealthy and I have no idea how my kids are going to make it.
Like Atwood, I did not come from a well-off family; parents divorced in my early teens and father passed away in my late teens from cancer (smoking and alcoholism) and in many ways lucked into a very good career after attending a state university. My spouse's father -- a janitor in a public school -- and mother -- a crossing guard -- passed when she was in her 20's as well. There weren't any large fortunes passed down.
Some friends recently purchased a house in my township and I visited to drop off my kid for a play date. I walked in and thought to myself "wow, this is a $1m house" ... except it looked just like mine...that I had purchased 9 years earlier for a fraction of the price. It boggles the mind to consider when/how my kids will be able to have their slice of the American Dream.
There are clearly some fundamental things that have to be fixed in the US at a policy level, but there's seemingly no political will to fix them; everyone seems out for themselves and to enrich their own coffers. This is handicapping social mobility through the hostile policy positions towards social safety nets and foundational services (e.g. education, healthcare, childcare??). This is the sentiment that I feel Atwood is also feeling.
As a high earning software engineer (IC), I'm not sure how I can survive in the US once I can no longer find companies willing to hire me either because of AI or because of age (early 40's now so I figure maybe 10 years of high earning as an IC?).
Look to the stagnancy of the UK to see where the US could be in a few more decades. They have the same high prices for housing, but far far lower wages. When the powerful political class (homeowners) has all their wealth tied up in their homes, they see little wrong with such broken basic arrangements, because it doesn't hurt them and they see their number going up for wealth. Canada and Australia have similarly destructive housing policies and outcomes.
And since the self-immolation of Brexit, they have far worsened their financial future. Similar politics of self-destruction masked as the appearance of strength are gaining a loooot of ground in the US as well.
Are you accounting for things like free healthcare when comparing wages? (I wish I did't have to say this, but it's a genuine question, not snark). I always wonder when people compare other countries to the US.
Edit: I agree that Brexit was the most incredible piece of self-harm that I've seen a country do to itself. I certainly don't have rose-tinted spectacles about the state of the UK.
Yeah both the UK and US are notorious for NIMBYism. People filing lawsuits as like a hobby, because they want to stop all development. In these countries it's far to easy for a small group of complainers to grind the entire system to a halt and burn endless amounts of time and money. It seems particularly bad in the anglosphere.
I think the root of many problems is housing costs
I'm somewhere around your age, and I also wonder what the future of software development work looks like. I don't know that I'd direct my kids towards the field; maybe this is just a temporary bumpy patch and it'll improve, but it is hard to say.
One thing I think is that being 40-50 or so means that there is plenty of runway for a second career. Could retrain for something, nursing, cpa, lawyer, trades? Just have to have the savings for making that transition
My thoughts are similar, but I think the cost of commercial space is also driving costs up for everyone, so I classify it as "rent." I'd love to see data, but small businesses (at least in certain sectors) seem bare able to survive--opening and closing constantly.
But, to get to a root cause, I think we have to keep asking why. Why are rents high? One reason is that cities seem unwilling to rezone. Okay, why is city council/the mayor unwilling to rezone (sometimes vast swaths of single family homes?) Voters? Corruption? Something else?
There are several root causes we can potentially drill further down to, but making headway will likely require hard work and involvement in our communities. You could always try running for something and becoming a politician.
On the software side - I'm not sure I'd recommend CS as such, but I know plenty of software engineers that have some alternative kind of technical background and enough CS classes or self-taught knowledge that they were able to be successful. Like physics, electrical engineering. Disciplines like Aerospace eng or Biomedical eng have great systems engineering backgrounds and often CS coverage too.
I'd make a recommendation to hedge one's bets even if they wanted to go into software to see if they wanted thought an adjacent field with transferable skills would be a good fit and offer multiple opportunity paths.
> I think the root of many problems is housing costs
for us, family of 4, it's 1) housing, 2) healthcare (unless you're lucky enough to have a really good employer-sponsored plan that covers dependents or allows them to buy in at employee-negotiated rates, which I don't), 3) education (college for the kids, and the high cost of anything besides public school, I don't mean private schools but even just summer camps etc.)
I look to the future and have a lot of anxiety about how my kids are going to make it
Housing is a massive bomb because for so many people is is the singular investment that their net worth and retirement is held in. This idea has been so deeply entrenched for so long that a reversal will wipe out millions of people's net worth.
At some point the bomb will go off, but there's no incentive to look at the long term of 10+ years out when the explosion will destroy people's political careers in the short term.
I know so many people 20 years ago who "I'll sell my CA house and retire elsewhere" was a majority of their plan.
As of now, I can only count a very few who actually did it, turns out it's hard to leave where you've lived your entire working life to move somewhere you've never been, and the price differential isn't as amazing as it once was (since Covid flattened that out somewhat).
The ones who did end up doing it ended up following their children (who were priced out of where they grew up).
Normally you'd expect measured, predictable, steady inflation to be the method to "defuse the bomb" but so far that hasn't been really tried (if houses keep going up 1-2% a year, but inflation is 5%, you have a 3% drop in value each year even though on paper, you have an increase).
Technically multiple bombs explode here and there. Here's how:
* Family bought 1 house (assets), big mortgage (cause it's expensive), live until retirement
* Parents sell the house (lost the assets) to either a wealthier family or investors to downgrade
* Parents potentially share the proceeding to the kids to support their Housing endeavor but Kids will be forced to buy something smaller (usually Condos) because detached is expensive and kids wage just starting from the bottom of the paygrade.
The current global realpolitiks shows that unless you have a very heavy industry that you can invest in, to replace the cratering housing prices, no country is willing to blow it up on purpose. China is trying to strategically do it, but they still have so many more people that they can lift up, move around and put to work into different industries. It's just not really the case for developed countries. I'm assuming India will take the same course in the near future, but their challenges are a bit different.
Also, when supermajority+ have the same problem, it's in the interest of the government to do anything possible to delay the problem for the future generations. That's why I have reservations about US, Canada, UK, Australia and others doing the same thing. It also doesn't help when your entire population growth is depended on immigration, as you can, theoretically, keep the demand higher without many complaints, while limiting the supply.
There's also the Japan problem, but it's weird. In Tokyo we're seeing rental prices actually going up, as it's the only region where the population is growing for all the wrong reasons.
Regarding housing the problems are the same everywhere where the same "housing is an investment" policies have been propped up by lending. What an insane idea. We can all get wealthy by buying houses from each other with ever increasing prices. In reality the only winners in this game are a) banks b) early buyers who can cash out, liquidate and move somewhere cheaper.
In my country of origin housing is now so expensive that it takes 2 median income lifetimes to pay for it. Of course you can find cheaper housing in rural countryside or in some deadbeat towns but then there's basically no work either, so at minimum you need a car to commute. For someone making a below median income operating a vehicle is easily -300€ / mo cost.
And the funny thing the country is 93% forest. Unzoned land is plentiful and costs nothing but after zoning the price goes up to 20k € per each m². The townships and counties have a monopoly on zoning and use that to milk the constituents for money. Of course that money is all away from other spending so local communities and small time businesses (such as restaurants, hair dressers etc) are all taking a hit since (with the recent greedflation) people simply have no more purchasing power left over.
In my current country Germany, here in Bayern the situation is exactly the same. In Munich a small unit in is at minimum 1-1.5m € and it'll be bare bones. The cost is insane. At the same time there's a shortage of all kinds of laborers. How does a "bus driver" afford to live here. Well, they don't.
The whole economic system is biased against younger generations and while the older generations live longer they accumulate all the wealth. They are a large representative of the population (due to the upside down age pyramid) and active voters so they of course vote for politicians who will not topple this order.
In the past all empires have fallen when the middle class has fallen. When there's a critical mass of people with nothing to lose and who feel like the system has failed them the heads will roll and revolutions will begin.
> "housing is an investment" policies have been propped up by lending. What an insane idea.
Lending money for housing is not insane. Houses are durable goods where most of the cost needs to be paid up front. The builder of the house is paying for a structure that will house people for 50+ years. This duration mismatch is exactly what lending is supposed to help with.
Lending is not the problem. People were complaining it was when interest rates were at 0%. Now they are at 7%, but housing prices are still high.
> I have no idea how my kids are going to make it.
Brother, I feel the same way. The education system is broken, public discourse has degraded to illiterate thuggery and madness, and today's children and young adults are facing crushing economic rent-taking.
There are millions of people in the US that are making a lot less than you do who manage to buy houses, go on vacations, save for retirement and put their kids through college.
I’m 50 now, we purposefully “de-contented” our lives two years ago after our youngest graduated in 2020 and after Covid so we wouldn’t have to be in the rat race. I never made a lot as your standard enterprise dev and didn’t hit $200K+ until I was 46 and started working at BigTech remotely and we used the three years I was there to pay off debt, put some money in savings, etc.
I’ve turned down opportunities that would pay me close to $100k more in cash because I didn’t want the headache and definitely wasn’t going to ever be in an office. If you need me to be physically somewhere for a week, put me on a plane.
Even in 2020, I said no to interviewing as an SDE at Amazon because I didn’t want to relocate to Seattle after Covid lifted and I was only making $150K then. The remote position at AWS ProServe was then suggested.
We had the big house in the burbs of Atlanta in the “good school system” in 2016 built when I was only making $140K. True, when we sold it last year it was double the price. But we would have had to move further out if we were buying house in 2023. It would have been doable
Either way, we moved to a condo in Florida that is state tax free, we downsized to one car and now if I had to, I could pay all of our bills including our spending money with just my income and all I would need to make is $140K.
Making around $200k, I max out my retirement + catch up contributions + HSA and we have been on a plane to do something (mostly vacations, occasionally visiting friends) over a dozen times a year since mid 2022 and that trend is continuing for the foreseeable future
For those who don’t know, a new grad going into any of the BigTech companies can make around $165K straight out of college and should be making way more than me in three years. I’m not bragging.
I have no other income besides my job.
I have no worries about “AI”, I moved into consulting working full time for consulting companies in 2020 (well then the consulting department at AWS). I just have to be able to sell and/or guide implementations of whatever the shovel du jour is. Right now I’m leading a Kubernetes + AI implementation.
> For those who don’t know, a new grad going into any of the BigTech companies can make around $165K straight out of college and should be making way more than me in three years.
> For those who don’t know, a new grad going into any of the BigTech companies can make around $165K straight out of college
Maybe, if new grad is defined as:
- A remarkable programmer on their own time. i.e. Impressive Github profile, side projects, leetcode expert, etc. Just going through Comp Sci isn't going to get you hired at BigTech today.
- Someone with a fantastic network. Better hope you've got friends in high places or family with connections.
I am in a similar boat. Many of us in similar boats would be very thankful if you can expand on what are the names of these consulting companies and how can we breakthrough?
As a non American, I've always struggled to understand the "American Dream".
It is about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and going from poor to wealthy by using the opportunities that the US provides. Is that a correct assessment?
The problem I have with that is that it doesn't in any way include bringing your community up with you or letting your wealth be reinvested back into the environment in which you were poor. It solves the issue only for that single person without addressing why the issue existed in the first place. It seems to be inherently "selfish", no?
As an immigrant, I define the "American Dream" as "opportunity regardless of social class". I think Atwood also hints at this in his blog post (as this is the reason he called out his upbringing and family).
This is in contrast to the system of nobility and "old money" in Europe and why many immigrants sought to find their way to the New World.
The idea of public education started in the US and for a long time has been one of the key public services that enabled this social mobility. In the US, historically, there were opportunities even for immigrants to become self-made men and women and their children would be better off than they were. Immigrants might arrive in the US illiterate, but their children would at least have the opportunity to be educated and find better paths.
It's still possible, but it feels as if the cards are stacked higher and higher towards those that are already coming from some wealth. I increasingly feel like the chances that my kids are going to be better off than me are decreasing every year because the stepping stones to success are becoming eroded.
Get involved with local politics. Join community planning boards, go to city council meetings, and voice support for relaxing rules around zoning.
One of the small cities close to Seattle (Shoreline) just announced radical changes to their zoning laws! Change can happen. Right now Seattle is going through loud public debates over this, with NIMBYs going to meetings and shouting crazy accusations about what building more houses will do (recently: building dense housing will cause vitamin D deficiency...). Go spend an hour a month shouting back at them, it makes a real difference!
> Get involved with local politics. Join community planning boards, go to city council meetings, and voice support for relaxing rules around zoning.
I think the takeaway from the last few election cycles is that this really isn't effective anymore now that the channels of information and communication are controlled by a small handful of corporations who's objective is to simply make more money.
But even besides that, I feel that defeats the spirit of the American Dream. What good is making just my community better when the kids one town over are falling behind because they don't have the property tax base to fund better programs and wealthy parents that can pay for better early childcare, private tutoring, and more resources? I already live in a fairly well-off enclave; my concern is for the rest of my fellow Americans who are not so fortunate -- the same concern as Atwood; we've "made it", but we want a society that leaves behind stepping stones for others to make their way up.
So I am compliant when it comes to paying taxes and do not shun paying my fair share because in my view, taxes and government -- you know, of the people, by the people, for the people -- are supposed to be used to make all of America better and not just better for some Americans. But we've seen decades of policy bifurcating on this point. You may point out that spending on social programs have increased. Yes, but so has rent-taking on that spend and siphoning and accumulation of those funds in a few coffers.
I've been doing that for 8 years, and organized into local groups with others (the lone voice has little impact, but a contingent of people that politicians think will vote a certain way and tell their friends to vote a certain way have a much bigger impact). However, it's not been very successful, because there's an even larger contingent of people with more wealth, more time, and more experience. The tide is turning, but it's slow.
Minnesota is an example where it worked really well, and I wish that the people in my California town were as big-hearted and progressive as those in Minneapolis. Maybe we'll get there here some day.
In the meantime, state-level efforts are overriding the local NIMBYs far more effectively than the local efforts. It turns out that nearly every single local politician wants to override the NIMBYs, but can't due to the way that local elections work (small number of highly motivated folks usually determine the outcome). However, when elected to the state level, there's a broader electoral base and the politicians can finally start to force housing into cities.
I still recommend getting involved locally, whether or not it has a big effect. It is rewarding in its own way, and has lots of benefits in areas other than housing too.
It's not no will, it's no incentive, and usually incentivized to not fix them. The same people keep getting voted in. What other message should they hear than their constituents are happy with the job they're doing? Over half of the American people just voted for someone who lied to our faces and promised they'd make things better when they posses a track record that proved otherwise the last time (and also now a felony record, but I digress). If I decided my career was going to be politics, and I kept getting elected, why on Earth would I ever change what was working?
If you think software engineering salaries are low in the USA, try working in Europe. A 'good' salary can be 30K or even lower after tax per year, and electricity costs twice as much as in the USA. In some places, even bottle scavengers earn more than software engineers in Europe.
Yes, but my sense is that in Europe, you can "survive" easier than in the US.
There are several key differences.
In the US, everything is spread out so you absolutely need to own a car in many low cost of living (COL) places; there's no option for transportation. In the US, healthcare can absolutely destroy you and you cannot get quality healthcare at a decent rate without a job that provides it as a benefit. Access to transportation networks is also poor compared to Europe and Asia where trains are abundant, fast, cheap, and accessible by wide networks of public transport. The way the US has been built out is not amenable to that in low COL areas.
So I acknowledge that there are lots of problems world wide in different countries and wages are lower and taxes are higher in general in the EU, but there are more social safety nets compared to the US. The baseline "cost of existing" in the US is simply higher.
Get them a Roth IRA. Put $7k in it each year as long as you can. Invest the Roth in an index fund, dividend fund, or straight up picks. Have them put into the fund as soon as they are able (summer jobs, etc)
If you have enough, buy another property. Your kids can live in it or manage it later.
Put stuff in trusts or be sure they can manage it effectively. The thing you most want (probably) is for them to be secure into their old age, long after you are gone. But they will start feeling secure by middle age, and you will all be happier.
The idea that most people just have an extra $7k a year sitting around to put into a retirement account they won't be able to access for decades seems pretty out of touch. A lot of people are just getting by. Additionally, if you live in a high CoL area, you might be prevented from contributing to a Roth even though most of your income goes to living expenses.
You can't put money into an IRA unless the primary holder of said IRA has income, and you cannot put more into said IRA than was earned by the primary holder of the IRA.
My young children earn $0 annually. I wish I could do this. 3 IRAs is cheaper than daycare by about half.
you are me; down parents issues with smoking/etc and current career/age.
> I'm not sure how I can survive in the US once I can no longer find companies willing to hire me
My plan is simple: Retire. Avoid that 1m house when possible.
> I have no idea how my kids are going to make it
Same boat here, but I'm less concerned insofaras I'm doing everything I can to keep as many options/opportunities open to my kids as possible. This honestly significantly dampens the 'retire' plan; but what can you do? My parents would have no idea what I do if I tried to explain it; I expect the world to shift similarly by the time my kids are working. The goal is simply to give every advantage I can and keep as many doors open as possible.
> top percentiles of household income but I'm not independently wealthy and I have no idea how my kids are going to make it
It might not be too late to change this. I also lucked into being in the right place at the right time (interested in computers and programming when graduating in the 2000s). But from the start my goal has been to take advantage of this extraordinary luck and become independently wealthy. My wife (who's not in tech but has a solid $80k - $100k job) and I have lived very cheaply saving more than half of our takehome pay for more than a decade now, investing it in simple index funds.
I, too, don't know what the future will hold for my kids or my career, but I'm relatively confident I've got 10 more high-earning years in me. And my spreadsheet tells me that will be enough to generate generational wealth such that my kids won't have to work if they don't want to.
This obviously isn't a solution for everyone, and I realize much of your post is about US policy. But I just wanted to point out the potential blindspot that you may have from your upbringing where "independently wealthy" people are those people over there, and not me. But with a high income and the magic of compound growth, it's not so unattainable.
Considering your upbringing, you're making some confusing statements. Somebody who was brought up low income but is now wealthy ("one of the top percentiles of household income") should know better. It's called living frugally.
It sounds like you're fearful of losing your luxurious lifestyle if your income changes. Most Americans are fearful of affording clothing, food and shelter if their income changes.
Like Atwood, I understand my good fortune in life and I am ever grateful and humbled that I have achieved what I have starting from a 1 bedroom apartment where my entire family slept in one room.
Like Atwood, I want an America where the path of upward mobility and opportunity is available to all and not so blatantly biased towards the privileged and those that are already well-off.
I'm not concerned so much for myself, but for the two lives I've brought into this world and for the lives of the millions of Americans and immigrants that did not have my good fortune (and I'd say much of my own current status is a result of luck and opportune moments in life).
Like Atwood, I worry that we no longer have the will to create and pass legislation that benefits the masses at the expense of the few because those few now control so much of the channels over which our discourse flows (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Fox News, et al).
Atwood's solution and approach is to use his accumulated fortune to donate to organizations that seek to help other fellow Americans. Ostensibly, that's what good policy and taxation should solve instead.
The more I sit with it's long-term policy implications, the more I think it would solve the lack of productivity, progress, and prosperity with modern society. It also has supporters from across the political spectrum because it represents a tax shift rather than a tax increase(even Nobel prize winning economists Milton Friedman(libertarian) and Paul Krugman(modern keynesian) are both fans - and they're pretty far apart when it comes to most policies!)
Wages have been flat against productivity gains since the early 1970s in the US. The only way to make it here is to invest heavily over a long time horizon.
> I walked in and thought to myself "wow, this is a $1m house" ... except it looked just like mine...that I had purchased 9 years earlier for a fraction of the price.
Thankfull, Trump's new EO regarding housing has it covered. The cavalry has arrived.
Hey Jeff! If you are reading this comments, I just want to say thank you! Thanks just for being a nice person. In this over individualistic world, you just shared what you know and helped other people.
I'm your fan since the beginning of Coding Horror. Shared dozens of your blog posts. Stack Overflow changed how everybody programmed. I started coding in a pre-Internet time, when you got stuck, you just got stuck. I'm from Brazil and never went to USA, but I hope someday I can buy you a beer or a coffee.
Interesting, it seems that extremely rich americans are discovering what scandinavian countries solve through taxation and effective government.
They used to have it in some form with 'new deal' and 'great society' until ~1970, but now they can't because of the very same reasons that are making them extremely rich.
Plus there's some fetisishation of efficiency of the private sector vs public one and distrust in public institutions, while in some areas I don't think it's warranted, it's just that public insititutions are more transparent than the private sector imo.
"Like, the same font, right? And she points this out to the HR manager, and they’re like, Yeah, that means that this person’s the most qualified, because it’s the exact same language. And she’s like, This person is clearly unqualified because they didn’t even know to reformat. And this is not an outlier. Like, this happens a lot.
So first they’re looking for these exact matches. And then they take everybody who was really close in language—and also, by the way, who has something called a government resume, which is different from a private-sector resume, and you have to know that somehow, magically, before you apply. Then from that pool, they send everyone a self-assessment questionnaire, and everybody who marks themselves as master, and I literally mean master—I think that’s the top rating in a lot of these—they make the next down select, so they move on to the next pool."
This is not necessarily what I would consider transparent or fair. FWIW I do think government can provide value, but I think folks who don't live in America don't understand how dramatically different and worse the implementation of government is in America from many other countries who sometimes do get value from some aspects of government even if the goals are similar.
I’m at a private company and the process of resume screening done by clueless HR people is the exact same. I referred a friend for a job position, he got turned away because he didn’t have Java Version X with Springboot on his resume, I told him to re-submit with that on there and voila he got an interview. (For reference, he was a Java backend dev for 10 years and already had that on his resume)
Same exact thing (or worse) happens in private orgs. But we don't even have access to it.
I mean, we don't have to go far to see this. Nepotism is illegal in many countries for public institutions, and rampant on private ones.
This narrative that private corporations are better "just because" is so silly. We simply see the inefficiencies of the government and can't see the same ones on private entities. Especially the big ones.
I've never worked at a company that didn't have many absurd processes, incompetent people, useless bureaucracy and so on.
Policymaking is never discovered. It’s forced. Like class struggle forced the hand of actors like FDR during his presidency.
Then that was forced away by the reaction (class struggle) of the most right-wing capitalists and ideologues which ultimately lead to neoliberalism.
So sure, there are some set of relatively enlightened capitalists that want more of a social democratic status quo for the stability it brings. But the material conditions are not there.[1] So people like Jeff Atwood will write opinion pieces and give what is the grand of scheme of things token material support. But it can’t realistically happen right now in the US.
Of course the same principles apply to Scandinavian countries. They’re (our) false ideology is called the Nordic Model.
[1] Look at Bernie Sanders. The Independent senator who ran for the ostensibly left-wing Democratic Party as a mere social democrat and was shot down by the Establishment. Now that he is too old to run again and the presidential election is done for you see people in the Establishment say things like, huh I think that guy had a point!
America has a lot of taxation. Fortunately for the Scandinavian countries it spends it on "protecting Scandinavian shipping lanes" and "medical research grants that benefit Scandinavia", rather than solely on local welfare spending. The America First lot are learning a lot from Scandinavia there, though. I'm not sure we're all going to like where that could lead.
I can't immediately think of a major US naval deployment in the North Sea outside the big NATO exercises every 1-2 years. Were you thinking of a specific shipping lane?
It is very difficult to compare or extrapolate US with Scandinavian countries. US is socially super-heterogeneus, huge, and big population while Scandinavian countries are socially homogeneus, small size and population. And this is just the beginning.
I though America spends its taxation on destabilizing Middle East and flooding Europe and Scandinavia with migrants.
If Europe tried to do what America does for Europe it should dump military equipment onto various central and South American countries so they can fight among themselves and create droves of refugees traveling North.
This is a common misunderstanding. The US doesn’t send its military around the world because they want to protect freedom and democracy. The US does this to protect open markets that it then gets first right to exploit.
The US has benefited from this situation since WW2. It’s one reason why the US economy has been so successful.
It’s also only now that the US has exploited these markets that they can question the purpose to continue their military imperialism.
TLDR: the US military across the globe wasn’t done out of altruism. It was to expand US economic power.
This is just wrong, on many levels. If you look where tax revenues go, it's mostly defense (military industrial complex) and middle-class entitlements.
I prefer my higher wages and lower taxes, thanks. We need to get a handle (moratorium) on mass immigration into US before we care about handing out more of our money for welfare. Why would I want my hard earned wages to be given to an endless influx of poor foreigners? The problem with higher taxes is the money is not spent well. Solve that and people are more willing to contribute.
Look at how badly run are the high tax cities and states in the US. Talk of taxing more without discussion of bad governance is a non starter.
Although there is probably support for immigrants besides welfare, I believe that welfare itself is reserved for citizens.
And this is not a statement for or against immigration, but in response to what some people have said (not PKop, to whom I am replying): non-citizen immigrants do pay at least some taxes, in the form of sales tax. And, depending on how they are paid (cash or paycheck) they will also be paying taxes on their own pay. If they are getting cash it is easier to avoid taxes. It is harder if they're receiving a salary.
> 34% of adults in America did not exercise their right to vote. Why?
In the referenced news:
> ... “Currently my biggest issue with U.S. politics is the response to the Palestinian genocide," Rojas said. ...
Back to the article:
> I think many of the Americans who did vote are telling us they no longer believe our government is effectively keeping America fair for everyone. Our status as the world's leading democracy is in question.
> We should make it easier for more eligible Americans to vote, such as making election day a national holiday, universal mail in voting, and adopting ranked choice voting so all votes carry more weight.
Is there any serious polls show how many Americans choose not to vote for the same reason? is it a number so small that it can be ignored?
When Biden 2020 voters cast a ballot for someone besides Harris in 2024 were asked “Which one of the following issues was MOST important in deciding your vote?” they selected:
29% - Ending Israel’s violence in Gaza
24% - The economy
12% - Medicare and Social Security
11% - Immigration and border security
10% - Healthcare
9% - Abortion policy
5% - Don’t know
>These huge cost increases for healthcare, education, and housing are not compatible with the American Dream.
Yep, it's dead. Someone please make it official already. Don't worry about the autopsy or time/date of death - just get the death certificate already and let's move on.
Whether they want to replace it with something equivalent is frankly up to the rich people, college institutions, and home owners/sellers. Just guessing based on the trend, but that will also be a No.
Right now, it's really called "The American Survival Games". This isn't just fear mongering, you have to change your mindset. The American Dream meant you were assured some level of survival in exchange for work. Now that is not the case and you constantly have to reassess what your work trajectory is going to get you and if it will be enough to survive the next day, but also survive the volatility of a very polarized nation changing its policies on a whim. You also need a backup plan for your job in case you just get laid off due to no fault of your own. And a backup plan for the backup plan because the hiring landscape might change.
Come on, haven't you heard that Trump has declared the start of a new American Golden Age? You gotta have some faith!
No seriously, this reminds me of another "Golden Age" which according to the propaganda happened under Ceausescu in Romania when I was growing up (https://princetonbuffer.princeton.edu/2014/01/30/tales-from-...), while in reality everything was falling to pieces. I just hope Trump's age won't last as long as Ceausescu's (24 years).
Unless you're already minted beyond measure, selling anything at any time for $1.8B is a great deal, you and everyone you ever cared about are set for life.
Has there been any large business more decimated by the rise of LLM's than SO? Traffic in the tags I follow there dropped off a cliff pretty much the same day that ChatGPT was first released.
Get thousands of workers, to work thousandths of hours, to answer technical questions for free...In exchange for "Reputation". Sell for 1.8 Billion...The American Dream...
Stack overflow was an invaluable resource for me as a developer. I got a wealth of knowledge about a bunch of thorny problems I was encountering with out paying anything. The people who answered the questions I had were able to help far more people than they ever could have individually without SO. I’m having a hard time being upset about his financial windfall. It’s really only a bait and switch for people who answered questions with some other unstated expectation than helping others or receiving help.
In aggregate, Stack Overflow probably saved developers far more time than anyone ever put in, and saved companies all over the world far more money than the founders made in their exit.
You might find this hard to believe, but I find that helping other people is genuinely rewarding all by itself. And it’s rewarding in a way that money can’t buy.
Stack Overflow helped it to scale really well, too. You could answer a question, just once, and over time it could help dozens then hundreds then thousands of people.
It’s easy to be cynical, but actually that was really awesome.
I sometimes feel this way even about Google maps. On some level when I make a small contribution I'm aware that everyone doing so profits Google quite nicely.
But then again, I think that I've profited quite a bit from having Google maps as a resource, far more than the contribution I've made.
It feels much better to look at the fact that it's a place that people help share information useful to each other, which happens to profit a large company, than to only focus jealously on the fact that said large company has hit upon a way to monetize the sharing of this information.
Both things are true, and whether you think it's great or horrid really is a matter of perspective.
> You might find this hard to believe, but I find that helping other people is genuinely rewarding all by itself. And it’s rewarding in a way that money can’t buy.
There was a time when StackOverflow already had considerable size and it still felt as if Jeff knew and moderated every single post.
This is what made StackOverflow in my opinion. The excellent moderation in the beginning resulted in excellent quality.
Now, not taking away from the other early moderators, Jeff was definitely a huge part of it and one thing is for sure: He busted his ass off for this site and he deserves the reward.
I don't think anyone deserves 1.8bln reward. Norman Borlaug perhaps. But good for Jeff. I think SO was immensly societally and economically valuable and most people who actually got 1.8bln are less deserving than Jeff is.
I remember reading Atwood's blog around the time he launched it, and from his writing, he seemed genuine in his desire to build a tool that would help developers write code. This was also right in the middle of the original gamification craze, so of course internet points lol
I remember reading his rants about just how bad the current situation was (which was a terrible website called "developers exchange" or public phpBB internet forums). Never underestimate the passion derived from sheer hatred of the status quo.
Also his backup strategies around 2008 were quite interesting.
No one is forcing anyone to do anything, and everyone always knew what they were getting themselves in to. It was always a deal where everyone wins. That you don't like that choice for yourself is fine. No need to be so negative, dismissive, and cynical about how other people choose to spend their free time.
i feel like a lot of people have forgotten that that was its initial impetus, literally "let's get together and collectively build a better expertsexchange without the dark patterns trying to monetize your need for answers"
for a lot of us it wasn't the reputation, it was the idea of a gift-economy help desk and knowledge base. i enjoyed being a part of it, both helping and being helped, back when it was still good.
Isn't it fascinating how even people that consider themselves rational and intelligent like developers would be happy doing work for a company for free in exchange for internet points?
Many people landed good jobs that way. It was a good way for self-promo back in the day.
Jobs stackexchange section was also way better than most other jobs boards at the time.
It only went majorly downhill after the key people behind the site went away to work on other things and it got sold...
Not the least. Rational homo economicus pretty much doesn't exist in real life. The vast majority of us are driven by the essential motives and desires while the intelligence rationalizes already made decisions.
> Isn't it fascinating how even people that consider themselves rational and intelligent like developers would be happy doing work for a company for free in exchange for internet points?
Is this how you'd characterise open source software contributions as well (minus the points, of course)?
Back in the early days of SO, I listened to many of the podcasts by Joel and Jeff. Jeff always came across as an overall good dude. He seemed to want SO to be a helpful tool for developers, and wanted to do the right thing, regardless of the monetary implications.
Only 35% of Americans have a full time job. Also likelihood of being married falls and rises with income. The median of those full timers would be the 17.5% of that group. It would be generous to say there are 2.5% of retired Americans making more yearly income than that median couple, but let us say that. It would still be only 1 in 5 Americans that can afford that $357 thousand dollar house.
Also - around 50 is when earning power peaks. People in their 20s and 30s make less on average. So this median couple might eventually be able to afford a house, but they may be 50 when that happens.
$357000 house for a couple in their 30s. Both put $35k down - or have to pay PMI on top of principal, ~7% interest (if their credit is good!), taxes, home insurance, and in many places an HOA.
Also this is onerous even with two parents working full-time who may have to figure out how to manage raising 2.1 kids. Decades ago in the US, plenty of people were doing this on one income.
Readit News
Like Atwood, I did not come from a well-off family; parents divorced in my early teens and father passed away in my late teens from cancer (smoking and alcoholism) and in many ways lucked into a very good career after attending a state university. My spouse's father -- a janitor in a public school -- and mother -- a crossing guard -- passed when she was in her 20's as well. There weren't any large fortunes passed down.
Some friends recently purchased a house in my township and I visited to drop off my kid for a play date. I walked in and thought to myself "wow, this is a $1m house" ... except it looked just like mine...that I had purchased 9 years earlier for a fraction of the price. It boggles the mind to consider when/how my kids will be able to have their slice of the American Dream.
There are clearly some fundamental things that have to be fixed in the US at a policy level, but there's seemingly no political will to fix them; everyone seems out for themselves and to enrich their own coffers. This is handicapping social mobility through the hostile policy positions towards social safety nets and foundational services (e.g. education, healthcare, childcare??). This is the sentiment that I feel Atwood is also feeling.
As a high earning software engineer (IC), I'm not sure how I can survive in the US once I can no longer find companies willing to hire me either because of AI or because of age (early 40's now so I figure maybe 10 years of high earning as an IC?).
And since the self-immolation of Brexit, they have far worsened their financial future. Similar politics of self-destruction masked as the appearance of strength are gaining a loooot of ground in the US as well.
Edit: I agree that Brexit was the most incredible piece of self-harm that I've seen a country do to itself. I certainly don't have rose-tinted spectacles about the state of the UK.
I'm somewhere around your age, and I also wonder what the future of software development work looks like. I don't know that I'd direct my kids towards the field; maybe this is just a temporary bumpy patch and it'll improve, but it is hard to say.
One thing I think is that being 40-50 or so means that there is plenty of runway for a second career. Could retrain for something, nursing, cpa, lawyer, trades? Just have to have the savings for making that transition
But, to get to a root cause, I think we have to keep asking why. Why are rents high? One reason is that cities seem unwilling to rezone. Okay, why is city council/the mayor unwilling to rezone (sometimes vast swaths of single family homes?) Voters? Corruption? Something else?
There are several root causes we can potentially drill further down to, but making headway will likely require hard work and involvement in our communities. You could always try running for something and becoming a politician.
Here's the thing: if housing cost goes up but wage goes up as well (wage is controlled by the Rich), then things will be fine.
But things aren't fine because Wage gets depressed, everywhere.
Currently paying €1,300 per month for a tiny studio. (I'm told I'm lucky) So hard to build up savings.
The average price for a home in Dublin is now €600,000 according to our central statistics office. Unbelievable.
(The average annual salary in Ireland is €50,000)
I'd make a recommendation to hedge one's bets even if they wanted to go into software to see if they wanted thought an adjacent field with transferable skills would be a good fit and offer multiple opportunity paths.
for us, family of 4, it's 1) housing, 2) healthcare (unless you're lucky enough to have a really good employer-sponsored plan that covers dependents or allows them to buy in at employee-negotiated rates, which I don't), 3) education (college for the kids, and the high cost of anything besides public school, I don't mean private schools but even just summer camps etc.)
I look to the future and have a lot of anxiety about how my kids are going to make it
At some point the bomb will go off, but there's no incentive to look at the long term of 10+ years out when the explosion will destroy people's political careers in the short term.
As of now, I can only count a very few who actually did it, turns out it's hard to leave where you've lived your entire working life to move somewhere you've never been, and the price differential isn't as amazing as it once was (since Covid flattened that out somewhat).
The ones who did end up doing it ended up following their children (who were priced out of where they grew up).
Normally you'd expect measured, predictable, steady inflation to be the method to "defuse the bomb" but so far that hasn't been really tried (if houses keep going up 1-2% a year, but inflation is 5%, you have a 3% drop in value each year even though on paper, you have an increase).
* Family bought 1 house (assets), big mortgage (cause it's expensive), live until retirement
* Parents sell the house (lost the assets) to either a wealthier family or investors to downgrade
* Parents potentially share the proceeding to the kids to support their Housing endeavor but Kids will be forced to buy something smaller (usually Condos) because detached is expensive and kids wage just starting from the bottom of the paygrade.
Long-term, middle class will erode.
Also, when supermajority+ have the same problem, it's in the interest of the government to do anything possible to delay the problem for the future generations. That's why I have reservations about US, Canada, UK, Australia and others doing the same thing. It also doesn't help when your entire population growth is depended on immigration, as you can, theoretically, keep the demand higher without many complaints, while limiting the supply.
There's also the Japan problem, but it's weird. In Tokyo we're seeing rental prices actually going up, as it's the only region where the population is growing for all the wrong reasons.
Oh well, good luck to us.
In my country of origin housing is now so expensive that it takes 2 median income lifetimes to pay for it. Of course you can find cheaper housing in rural countryside or in some deadbeat towns but then there's basically no work either, so at minimum you need a car to commute. For someone making a below median income operating a vehicle is easily -300€ / mo cost.
And the funny thing the country is 93% forest. Unzoned land is plentiful and costs nothing but after zoning the price goes up to 20k € per each m². The townships and counties have a monopoly on zoning and use that to milk the constituents for money. Of course that money is all away from other spending so local communities and small time businesses (such as restaurants, hair dressers etc) are all taking a hit since (with the recent greedflation) people simply have no more purchasing power left over.
In my current country Germany, here in Bayern the situation is exactly the same. In Munich a small unit in is at minimum 1-1.5m € and it'll be bare bones. The cost is insane. At the same time there's a shortage of all kinds of laborers. How does a "bus driver" afford to live here. Well, they don't.
The whole economic system is biased against younger generations and while the older generations live longer they accumulate all the wealth. They are a large representative of the population (due to the upside down age pyramid) and active voters so they of course vote for politicians who will not topple this order.
In the past all empires have fallen when the middle class has fallen. When there's a critical mass of people with nothing to lose and who feel like the system has failed them the heads will roll and revolutions will begin.
Lending money for housing is not insane. Houses are durable goods where most of the cost needs to be paid up front. The builder of the house is paying for a structure that will house people for 50+ years. This duration mismatch is exactly what lending is supposed to help with.
Lending is not the problem. People were complaining it was when interest rates were at 0%. Now they are at 7%, but housing prices are still high.
Lack of supply is the problem.
Brother, I feel the same way. The education system is broken, public discourse has degraded to illiterate thuggery and madness, and today's children and young adults are facing crushing economic rent-taking.
I’m 50 now, we purposefully “de-contented” our lives two years ago after our youngest graduated in 2020 and after Covid so we wouldn’t have to be in the rat race. I never made a lot as your standard enterprise dev and didn’t hit $200K+ until I was 46 and started working at BigTech remotely and we used the three years I was there to pay off debt, put some money in savings, etc.
I’ve turned down opportunities that would pay me close to $100k more in cash because I didn’t want the headache and definitely wasn’t going to ever be in an office. If you need me to be physically somewhere for a week, put me on a plane.
Even in 2020, I said no to interviewing as an SDE at Amazon because I didn’t want to relocate to Seattle after Covid lifted and I was only making $150K then. The remote position at AWS ProServe was then suggested.
We had the big house in the burbs of Atlanta in the “good school system” in 2016 built when I was only making $140K. True, when we sold it last year it was double the price. But we would have had to move further out if we were buying house in 2023. It would have been doable
Either way, we moved to a condo in Florida that is state tax free, we downsized to one car and now if I had to, I could pay all of our bills including our spending money with just my income and all I would need to make is $140K.
Making around $200k, I max out my retirement + catch up contributions + HSA and we have been on a plane to do something (mostly vacations, occasionally visiting friends) over a dozen times a year since mid 2022 and that trend is continuing for the foreseeable future
For those who don’t know, a new grad going into any of the BigTech companies can make around $165K straight out of college and should be making way more than me in three years. I’m not bragging.
I have no other income besides my job.
I have no worries about “AI”, I moved into consulting working full time for consulting companies in 2020 (well then the consulting department at AWS). I just have to be able to sell and/or guide implementations of whatever the shovel du jour is. Right now I’m leading a Kubernetes + AI implementation.
What bubble do you live in?
"US Tech Layoffs Continue In 2025 With Big Tech Scaling Worker Counts And Fintech, E-Commerce Sectors Reporting Total Shutdowns" - https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/tech-layoffs/
"Computer science grads say the job market is rough. Some are opting for a ‘panic’ master’s degree instead." - https://www.businessinsider.nl/computer-science-grads-say-th...
https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1fylku5/are_most_...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/02/15/why-is-it-...
We need this to be possible for two people making 40k a year, not 140.
Maybe, if new grad is defined as:
- A remarkable programmer on their own time. i.e. Impressive Github profile, side projects, leetcode expert, etc. Just going through Comp Sci isn't going to get you hired at BigTech today.
- Someone with a fantastic network. Better hope you've got friends in high places or family with connections.
The chances of that are approximately 0%, despite being a much better than average developer/IT person.
Uhh yeah…
It is about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and going from poor to wealthy by using the opportunities that the US provides. Is that a correct assessment?
The problem I have with that is that it doesn't in any way include bringing your community up with you or letting your wealth be reinvested back into the environment in which you were poor. It solves the issue only for that single person without addressing why the issue existed in the first place. It seems to be inherently "selfish", no?
This is in contrast to the system of nobility and "old money" in Europe and why many immigrants sought to find their way to the New World.
The idea of public education started in the US and for a long time has been one of the key public services that enabled this social mobility. In the US, historically, there were opportunities even for immigrants to become self-made men and women and their children would be better off than they were. Immigrants might arrive in the US illiterate, but their children would at least have the opportunity to be educated and find better paths.
It's still possible, but it feels as if the cards are stacked higher and higher towards those that are already coming from some wealth. I increasingly feel like the chances that my kids are going to be better off than me are decreasing every year because the stepping stones to success are becoming eroded.
When you made it you would pay taxes, giving back to others. Not selfish.
One of the small cities close to Seattle (Shoreline) just announced radical changes to their zoning laws! Change can happen. Right now Seattle is going through loud public debates over this, with NIMBYs going to meetings and shouting crazy accusations about what building more houses will do (recently: building dense housing will cause vitamin D deficiency...). Go spend an hour a month shouting back at them, it makes a real difference!
But even besides that, I feel that defeats the spirit of the American Dream. What good is making just my community better when the kids one town over are falling behind because they don't have the property tax base to fund better programs and wealthy parents that can pay for better early childcare, private tutoring, and more resources? I already live in a fairly well-off enclave; my concern is for the rest of my fellow Americans who are not so fortunate -- the same concern as Atwood; we've "made it", but we want a society that leaves behind stepping stones for others to make their way up.
So I am compliant when it comes to paying taxes and do not shun paying my fair share because in my view, taxes and government -- you know, of the people, by the people, for the people -- are supposed to be used to make all of America better and not just better for some Americans. But we've seen decades of policy bifurcating on this point. You may point out that spending on social programs have increased. Yes, but so has rent-taking on that spend and siphoning and accumulation of those funds in a few coffers.
Minnesota is an example where it worked really well, and I wish that the people in my California town were as big-hearted and progressive as those in Minneapolis. Maybe we'll get there here some day.
In the meantime, state-level efforts are overriding the local NIMBYs far more effectively than the local efforts. It turns out that nearly every single local politician wants to override the NIMBYs, but can't due to the way that local elections work (small number of highly motivated folks usually determine the outcome). However, when elected to the state level, there's a broader electoral base and the politicians can finally start to force housing into cities.
I still recommend getting involved locally, whether or not it has a big effect. It is rewarding in its own way, and has lots of benefits in areas other than housing too.
It's not no will, it's no incentive, and usually incentivized to not fix them. The same people keep getting voted in. What other message should they hear than their constituents are happy with the job they're doing? Over half of the American people just voted for someone who lied to our faces and promised they'd make things better when they posses a track record that proved otherwise the last time (and also now a felony record, but I digress). If I decided my career was going to be politics, and I kept getting elected, why on Earth would I ever change what was working?
There are several key differences.
In the US, everything is spread out so you absolutely need to own a car in many low cost of living (COL) places; there's no option for transportation. In the US, healthcare can absolutely destroy you and you cannot get quality healthcare at a decent rate without a job that provides it as a benefit. Access to transportation networks is also poor compared to Europe and Asia where trains are abundant, fast, cheap, and accessible by wide networks of public transport. The way the US has been built out is not amenable to that in low COL areas.
So I acknowledge that there are lots of problems world wide in different countries and wages are lower and taxes are higher in general in the EU, but there are more social safety nets compared to the US. The baseline "cost of existing" in the US is simply higher.
Whether you're talking about UK, Norway, France, Poland, Switzerland, Italy, etc. that's a completely different story for each.
If you have enough, buy another property. Your kids can live in it or manage it later.
Put stuff in trusts or be sure they can manage it effectively. The thing you most want (probably) is for them to be secure into their old age, long after you are gone. But they will start feeling secure by middle age, and you will all be happier.
My young children earn $0 annually. I wish I could do this. 3 IRAs is cheaper than daycare by about half.
> I'm not sure how I can survive in the US once I can no longer find companies willing to hire me
My plan is simple: Retire. Avoid that 1m house when possible.
> I have no idea how my kids are going to make it
Same boat here, but I'm less concerned insofaras I'm doing everything I can to keep as many options/opportunities open to my kids as possible. This honestly significantly dampens the 'retire' plan; but what can you do? My parents would have no idea what I do if I tried to explain it; I expect the world to shift similarly by the time my kids are working. The goal is simply to give every advantage I can and keep as many doors open as possible.
> e hostile policy positions towards social safety nets and foundational services (e.g. education, healthcare, childcare??).
Except the USA spends more on education than most other countries.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
That would argue the issue is not about spending, at least for education, it's something else (not sure what)
I agree though on the general idea that something has to change. Housing in unaffordable.
Policy and spend have to align to make progress. Spend alone is useless as is policy without spend.
It might not be too late to change this. I also lucked into being in the right place at the right time (interested in computers and programming when graduating in the 2000s). But from the start my goal has been to take advantage of this extraordinary luck and become independently wealthy. My wife (who's not in tech but has a solid $80k - $100k job) and I have lived very cheaply saving more than half of our takehome pay for more than a decade now, investing it in simple index funds.
I, too, don't know what the future will hold for my kids or my career, but I'm relatively confident I've got 10 more high-earning years in me. And my spreadsheet tells me that will be enough to generate generational wealth such that my kids won't have to work if they don't want to.
This obviously isn't a solution for everyone, and I realize much of your post is about US policy. But I just wanted to point out the potential blindspot that you may have from your upbringing where "independently wealthy" people are those people over there, and not me. But with a high income and the magic of compound growth, it's not so unattainable.
It sounds like you're fearful of losing your luxurious lifestyle if your income changes. Most Americans are fearful of affording clothing, food and shelter if their income changes.
Like Atwood, I understand my good fortune in life and I am ever grateful and humbled that I have achieved what I have starting from a 1 bedroom apartment where my entire family slept in one room.
Like Atwood, I want an America where the path of upward mobility and opportunity is available to all and not so blatantly biased towards the privileged and those that are already well-off.
I'm not concerned so much for myself, but for the two lives I've brought into this world and for the lives of the millions of Americans and immigrants that did not have my good fortune (and I'd say much of my own current status is a result of luck and opportune moments in life).
Like Atwood, I worry that we no longer have the will to create and pass legislation that benefits the masses at the expense of the few because those few now control so much of the channels over which our discourse flows (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Fox News, et al).
Atwood's solution and approach is to use his accumulated fortune to donate to organizations that seek to help other fellow Americans. Ostensibly, that's what good policy and taxation should solve instead.
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luckily we have more diverse job in the future
The more I sit with it's long-term policy implications, the more I think it would solve the lack of productivity, progress, and prosperity with modern society. It also has supporters from across the political spectrum because it represents a tax shift rather than a tax increase(even Nobel prize winning economists Milton Friedman(libertarian) and Paul Krugman(modern keynesian) are both fans - and they're pretty far apart when it comes to most policies!)
Short version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smi_iIoKybg
Long version: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-progress-a...
Thankfull, Trump's new EO regarding housing has it covered. The cavalry has arrived.
I'm your fan since the beginning of Coding Horror. Shared dozens of your blog posts. Stack Overflow changed how everybody programmed. I started coding in a pre-Internet time, when you got stuck, you just got stuck. I'm from Brazil and never went to USA, but I hope someday I can buy you a beer or a coffee.
They used to have it in some form with 'new deal' and 'great society' until ~1970, but now they can't because of the very same reasons that are making them extremely rich.
Plus there's some fetisishation of efficiency of the private sector vs public one and distrust in public institutions, while in some areas I don't think it's warranted, it's just that public insititutions are more transparent than the private sector imo.
"Like, the same font, right? And she points this out to the HR manager, and they’re like, Yeah, that means that this person’s the most qualified, because it’s the exact same language. And she’s like, This person is clearly unqualified because they didn’t even know to reformat. And this is not an outlier. Like, this happens a lot.
So first they’re looking for these exact matches. And then they take everybody who was really close in language—and also, by the way, who has something called a government resume, which is different from a private-sector resume, and you have to know that somehow, magically, before you apply. Then from that pool, they send everyone a self-assessment questionnaire, and everybody who marks themselves as master, and I literally mean master—I think that’s the top rating in a lot of these—they make the next down select, so they move on to the next pool."
This is not necessarily what I would consider transparent or fair. FWIW I do think government can provide value, but I think folks who don't live in America don't understand how dramatically different and worse the implementation of government is in America from many other countries who sometimes do get value from some aspects of government even if the goals are similar.
I mean, we don't have to go far to see this. Nepotism is illegal in many countries for public institutions, and rampant on private ones.
This narrative that private corporations are better "just because" is so silly. We simply see the inefficiencies of the government and can't see the same ones on private entities. Especially the big ones.
I've never worked at a company that didn't have many absurd processes, incompetent people, useless bureaucracy and so on.
Then that was forced away by the reaction (class struggle) of the most right-wing capitalists and ideologues which ultimately lead to neoliberalism.
So sure, there are some set of relatively enlightened capitalists that want more of a social democratic status quo for the stability it brings. But the material conditions are not there.[1] So people like Jeff Atwood will write opinion pieces and give what is the grand of scheme of things token material support. But it can’t realistically happen right now in the US.
Of course the same principles apply to Scandinavian countries. They’re (our) false ideology is called the Nordic Model.
[1] Look at Bernie Sanders. The Independent senator who ran for the ostensibly left-wing Democratic Party as a mere social democrat and was shot down by the Establishment. Now that he is too old to run again and the presidential election is done for you see people in the Establishment say things like, huh I think that guy had a point!
Actual change will not come easily and it is opposed mightily by the ruling class
If Europe tried to do what America does for Europe it should dump military equipment onto various central and South American countries so they can fight among themselves and create droves of refugees traveling North.
The US has benefited from this situation since WW2. It’s one reason why the US economy has been so successful.
It’s also only now that the US has exploited these markets that they can question the purpose to continue their military imperialism.
TLDR: the US military across the globe wasn’t done out of altruism. It was to expand US economic power.
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Look at how badly run are the high tax cities and states in the US. Talk of taxing more without discussion of bad governance is a non starter.
Turns out those taxes actually build nice places to live.
And this is not a statement for or against immigration, but in response to what some people have said (not PKop, to whom I am replying): non-citizen immigrants do pay at least some taxes, in the form of sales tax. And, depending on how they are paid (cash or paycheck) they will also be paying taxes on their own pay. If they are getting cash it is easier to avoid taxes. It is harder if they're receiving a salary.
https://blog.codinghorror.com/stay-gold-america/
In the article:
> 34% of adults in America did not exercise their right to vote. Why?
In the referenced news:
> ... “Currently my biggest issue with U.S. politics is the response to the Palestinian genocide," Rojas said. ...
Back to the article:
> I think many of the Americans who did vote are telling us they no longer believe our government is effectively keeping America fair for everyone. Our status as the world's leading democracy is in question.
> We should make it easier for more eligible Americans to vote, such as making election day a national holiday, universal mail in voting, and adopting ranked choice voting so all votes carry more weight.
Is there any serious polls show how many Americans choose not to vote for the same reason? is it a number so small that it can be ignored?
Here's a quote from the poll:
[1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...
Yep, it's dead. Someone please make it official already. Don't worry about the autopsy or time/date of death - just get the death certificate already and let's move on.
Whether they want to replace it with something equivalent is frankly up to the rich people, college institutions, and home owners/sellers. Just guessing based on the trend, but that will also be a No.
Right now, it's really called "The American Survival Games". This isn't just fear mongering, you have to change your mindset. The American Dream meant you were assured some level of survival in exchange for work. Now that is not the case and you constantly have to reassess what your work trajectory is going to get you and if it will be enough to survive the next day, but also survive the volatility of a very polarized nation changing its policies on a whim. You also need a backup plan for your job in case you just get laid off due to no fault of your own. And a backup plan for the backup plan because the hiring landscape might change.
I've never thought that was a common interpretation of the American Dream.
No seriously, this reminds me of another "Golden Age" which according to the propaganda happened under Ceausescu in Romania when I was growing up (https://princetonbuffer.princeton.edu/2014/01/30/tales-from-...), while in reality everything was falling to pieces. I just hope Trump's age won't last as long as Ceausescu's (24 years).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27370026 | 2330 points | June 2, 2021 | 852 comments
Stack Overflow helped it to scale really well, too. You could answer a question, just once, and over time it could help dozens then hundreds then thousands of people.
It’s easy to be cynical, but actually that was really awesome.
But then again, I think that I've profited quite a bit from having Google maps as a resource, far more than the contribution I've made.
It feels much better to look at the fact that it's a place that people help share information useful to each other, which happens to profit a large company, than to only focus jealously on the fact that said large company has hit upon a way to monetize the sharing of this information.
Both things are true, and whether you think it's great or horrid really is a matter of perspective.
So Jeff took that money instead.
This is what made StackOverflow in my opinion. The excellent moderation in the beginning resulted in excellent quality.
Now, not taking away from the other early moderators, Jeff was definitely a huge part of it and one thing is for sure: He busted his ass off for this site and he deserves the reward.
https://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet
Also his backup strategies around 2008 were quite interesting.
If he wanted to give back he could have started with John Skeet.
Dead Comment
Is this how you'd characterise open source software contributions as well (minus the points, of course)?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
The median house price is 357k.
https://www.zillow.com/home-values/102001/united-states/
So, on aggregate, for a couple who both work, a house is affordable.
And things aint gonna get any better..... The USA has the best economy in the world, and wealth redistribution is not on the agenda.
Also - around 50 is when earning power peaks. People in their 20s and 30s make less on average. So this median couple might eventually be able to afford a house, but they may be 50 when that happens.
$357000 house for a couple in their 30s. Both put $35k down - or have to pay PMI on top of principal, ~7% interest (if their credit is good!), taxes, home insurance, and in many places an HOA.
Also this is onerous even with two parents working full-time who may have to figure out how to manage raising 2.1 kids. Decades ago in the US, plenty of people were doing this on one income.