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Comment by tims33 | Hacker News Reader

I find this statement hard to believe: "76% of those people that in 2021 purchased a new device and indicated to have noticed the index." It just doesn't jive with the real world understanding most people have of their technology devices.

I think this law is a net positive, but I can't tell from this document if it really made a measurable impact in year 1.

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I think you are misreading the sentence. It doesn't say how many people noticed the index. It says how many of the people _who noticed the index_ found it helpful. (See nonrandomstring's comment.)

I see what they are saying. I'm still not sure it is a useful data point other than to say the index isn't detrimental.

My conclusion from the report is that it is still too early to determine the impact of the program.

I could believe it if French law required it as a sticker or otherwise on the product/ads, like US food details are on each product.

I'm not sure if it's actually required by law, but usual retailers have been communicating a lot on this in the last year. Most of them display a sticker in their stores, but the score is also prominently shown on their websites[0][1]. I'm really not surprised that a lot of people willing to buy something noticed the repairability score, because it's near impossible to miss it.

[0]: Some examples on two of the biggest appliance/electronics retailers: https://www.boulanger.com/ref/1157777, https://www.darty.com/nav/achat/gros_electromenager/lavage_s...

[1]: One last example on the Orange (mobile services provider) shop: https://boutique.orange.fr/mobile/details/oneplus-9-pro-5g-n...

Yep, it is required by law to have the repairability index score posted prominently near the price tag of the product, whether online or in physical retail. It’s a super effective approach (as noted in the linked study).

> It just doesn't jive with the real world understanding most people have of their technology devices.

Obviously the French are quite a lot poorer than the US, if that's where you're coming from, so values for things like repairability are going to be different.

The French actually are not "obviously" "quite a lot poorer", actually. Income is better distributed there and there are fewer criminal enterprises accumulating vast wealth.

The median income in the US is barely higher than that of France.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...

>so values for things like repairability are going to be different

every time someone refers to these gdp statistics I want to remind them that London and Paris (not the respective countries, the capitals!) are apparently poorer than Montana or South Dakota overall. I don't know who comes up with these numbers but if you've ever been in these places and think your average Parisian is in more need of repair and self-reliance than your average resident of Montana I'd be very surprised

In fact the repair debate itself shows how silly this argument is, given that self-repair, involving no or little economic activity, renders you poorer by the accounting logic of our economic system.

Not GDP, income adjusted for purchasing power, taxes, and government benefits in kind.

No, I definitely wasn't saying that. My point is that people are generally pretty oblivious of the vast majority of facts and features of their electronics devices.

A lot less oblivious, now. In France.

That's just not true

That the French are poorer? People in the US are about 50% richer when you account for purchasing power and things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

Nothing is that simple. If you look at poverty rate, there are more poor people in the united states. And if you look at purchasing power, some numbers will give you that the cost of a basket of good in comparison with income is exactly the same: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity and some numbers will differ.

My point was that, people in France have a really similar lifestyle than in the US (removing the cultural differences) and saying that people are looking at things that can be fixed because they are poor is just not true.

> And if you look at purchasing power

But those numbers already account for purchasing power.

Most of the difference is explained by the numbers of hours worked, since the GDP in purchase parity per hours worked is within 10 % between US and countries like France or Germany: see e.g. https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm.

So those countries, implicitly or explicitly, made the choice so substitute income for more leisure. Whether that makes them richer/poorer depends on your perspective.

We're already way off topic, but it's 40%. And we're talking about two countries with significantly different tax rates and social contributions.

> but it's 40%

Eh? 42800 / 28571 = 1.498

> significantly different tax rates and social contributions

Eh? "includes all forms of income as well as taxes and transfers in kind from governments for benefits such as healthcare and education"

You might want to actually read that Wikipedia page; those figures are very very heavily massaged in multiple ways, and not everyone would necessarily agree with how they are massaged. Suffice it to say, there's a large fudge factor here, much larger than the difference you are trying to point out.

Yeah, I think when you start trying to cram that much stuff into a single number it will end up misrepresenting reality.

People like the simplicity of single numbers for comparison, but it is about as sensible as describing a personality by a single number.

I think I would rather show the median value for a variety of variables. Not everything makes sense to turn into dollars. How do you turn health care into dollars? What you pay for it is not a true reflection of the quality.

US tends to look good when things are turned into dollars and a lot worse when real world metrics and outcomes are measured such as health, happiness, safety, stress, life expectancy, leisure time etc.

> those figures are very very heavily massaged in multiple ways

One person complains they don't account for taxes and benefits, and another complains they do!

True. Fair enough. It's hard to figure out precisely what the right way to measure this is.

> Eh? 42800 / 28571 = 1.498

I calculated percent difference.

> Eh? "includes all forms of income as well as taxes and transfers in kind from governments for benefits such as healthcare and education"

You're right, thanks. I was reading off my phone and missed that.

> I calculated percent difference.

But the difference is 14229, which is 33% of US income, or 50% of France income.

(|42800 - 28571| / [(42800 + 28571) / 2]) x 100 = 39.87%

I was taught to use an average of the values in the denominator in a case like this to avoid the confusion @Rexxar pointed out.

https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/algebra/percent-d...

So 50% more in one direction, 33% less in the other. This is the eternal question of percentages misunderstandings between peoples. But this doesn't feel "quite a lot poorer" to me, just less rich that the number one.

So where's 40% from?

Ask the one who use this number. I would suggest 33% and bad rounding.

You forgot about healthcare costs.

No those are built into those numbers - did you read the page?

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