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Comment by taiwanboy | Hacker News Reader

I think it’s quite telling about the bias of hacker news users that this posting is alive and well on top of the first page, whereas a posting about US having the longest economic expansion in history, that was on the front page a few hours ago, was flagged and now gone within minutes of reaching top 10

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If you think a single example is "quite telling", you're falling prey to the bias that makes everyone thinks HN is against their favored position. This is a common perception, but a mechanical one. That makes it predictable and that makes it off topic—just look at the lame subthread this provoked.

People with opposite convictions see opposite biases in exactly the same data. It would be no different with a random ranking.

It's a pretty well known and indisputable phenomena at this point that negative news and articles and stories drives engagement and is what gets the clicks and upvotes. While it is true that those with different biases will make different observations, you can be pretty certain that it's very likely that regardless of your bias, you're likely to observe that stories about some crisis or bad news will win out over stories that report good, hopeful news.

What does that tell us? That HN trends pessimistic? That the HN audience is under-employed? Or something else?

I may be reading in between the lines but I believe OP's point is that HN leans more liberal which in today's political climate means more receptive of negative economic news (thus necessitating more intervention / change of government control) rather than positive economic news.

But again this could be way off base.

HN may lean liberal, but that would be primarily because half the commenters here are from western Europe, where even the conservative politics are frequently liberal by US standards.

Partially. Also partially because HN users are younger, and younger people tend to hate Republican ideas.

Younger and on the coast. West of I95 and East of I5 you'll find plenty of young people who may find certain social policy points dated but generally agree with republican ideas.

Actually, there was an article on the front page earlier today talking about this phenomenon (social filter bubbles) but it's long gone because everyone was complaining it was a dupe. Go figure.

Interesting. Thanks, I didn't go there at all and I believe ambiguous statements like these create a lot of the misunderstanding that we see in today's political climate.

You don't need economic pessimism to make the case for change in government. The malice and corruption in the executive branch makes the case on its own.

Or just that one contains more information than the other. That the US economy is doing fine is not exactly news.

Perhaps underemployment and the associated modern issues of affordable housing, working hours, inequality, and distinct lack of wage growth outside tech makes the labour market feel decidedly unhealthy. Even compared to the jobs market of the more turbulent 80s.

Compare that with the post-war boom when there was markedly less inequality, housing was affordable for a couple, and high employment brought wage rises. A boom that brought benefit for a far wider proportion of the population.

What's the point of an economic expansion if most are not a part of it? It's not unique to the US either, most or all of the issues the article raises are replicated across all the developed economies.

Post war boom had the European and Japanese economy offline, and Chinese economy nonexistent. So no globalization threat. It is very unrealistic to compare to it or expect that condition again (unless we are talking about 100% tariffs coming back)

Well that's not true. Europe and Japan powered through the late 40s through 60s with emphasis on rebuilding and exports. In good part that's how Japan built the place they had in the 80s with electronics and cars - through post war restructuring and Deming et al, sustained boom, and exporting. 1960s and 1970s globalisation was the four Asian tigers: Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan producing the cheap goods we now associate with China.

Even the UK, in the seventies often referred to as "sick man of Europe", had built an unprecedented period of growth, falling inequality, and extreme exporting. The immediate post-war saw "export or die" as the political catchphrase.

The marked difference is, unlike the US who had profited hugely from WW2, those economies started from near bankruptcy in 1945 so took a little longer to reach boom.

Could we reproduce similar conditions? No. Could we have an economy that benefits a far wider proportion of citizens and makes it feel like a boom or expansion for them? Most certainly.

It is true. US inequality rose around 1980. almost specifically around the time of japan (and Asia) and Europe’s rise from ashes and US losing jobs to globalization. They were a mere fraction of their former self before then. Japan’s gdp spikes around 1985. Same with Germany.

That was after post-war boom ended. Mainly as a result of the 73 oil crisis and the follow-on chaos of the rest of the seventies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-World_War_II_economic_exp...

The fact that it’s the longest economic expansion in history is obvious to anyone who knows how to read a calendar. I don’t see why that would be expected to get any traction.

What does that tell?

Bias of the users or bias of the website itself?

Do you think it's important for stories on either side of an issue to get exactly equal coverage here? If so, why?

If you've been on HN for any period of time, the anti-US bias is pretty strong here.

I dont perceive it as anti US bias. Engineers tend to look for what's wrong and try to fix it.

Engineers also tend to identify and describe what's wrong with precision and accuracy in order to identify the proper solutions. The tendency here is to exaggerate or mischaracterize the problems in the US. That often comes along with rose-tinted views of how much better places other than the US are.

None of this is conducive to actually solving the problems the US has. In fact, it's polarizingly counterproductive. I also think it's fair to classify that as a form of anti-US bias.

Look at the number of posts criticizing non-US issues.

There are hardly any.

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