It is about class, and old-boy network, not skin color.
1,989 karma · joined September 1, 2013
This is not about race, this is about belonging to a small network of Brahmin aristocracy in the US. For example, some people in New England will never invest in your startup (no matter how good it is), if your name does not look like "Landon Jefferson Bayard, III", or some such.
Even if you are white.
If a single person's net worth is more than a medium sized country's GDP, we DO have a problem.
If you have $70B you can buy votes/governments (through "lobbying").
It is no longer a democracy, because a very rich person has many many votes, rather than one.
2. The US would move further up the suicide table if you classify deaths from overdosing as suicides.
3. If the US population had not had such an easy access to "happy pills" (mood enhancers), the suicide rate would have been higher.
>A new job should be across the street for such a person
There are a lot of people coming and leaving S.V. on any single day. This has been discussed many times on HN.
If you are happy in S.V., good for you, but don't project the mini-bubble you live onto the whole country.
Please change to: your purchasing power is better than most places in the world.
Do not confuse purchasing power with better life. 13% of Americans are on anti-depressants. I know many "successful" people in my very affluent suburb of a major US city, who have an addiction problem ( prescription drugs, mostly).
Add growing social isolation, caused by constant uprooting (moving from place to place to advance one's career).
As they say, "all that glitters is not gold"
The number of deaths in envelope-pushing, new tech, accidents, compared to regular traffic deaths, is minuscule.
1. Neutrality - not being ruined by 2 consecutive world wars
2. Profiting from wars - in Sweden's case, by selling arms and minerals (Bofors, iron ore, etc.) to both warring sides.
"Peace-loving" and "neutral" Sweden continues to be a major exporter of arms, all the while relying on protection of its allies (spending a mere 1% of its GDP in 2015 on its own defense)
3. Until the influx of immigrants (started slowly 30 years ago), a homogeneous, protestant, population.
https://www.politico.eu/article/neutral-sweden-arms-pedlar-e...
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat...
They don;t offer EUR accounts, though? So, there is always currency exchange risk, when you travel in Europe?
EDIT: Nevermind, they do offer EUR, USD, CHF and GBP accounts.
You call house prices 6-10 times [1] the family annual income reasonable? What planet are you from?
[1] In areas where people actually want to live in Canada, like B.C. or Ontario
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-fina...
- IL Senator 1997–2004
- US Senator 2005-2008
Wasn't Obama a "blustering populist without a shred of actual policy experience", either? And, no business experience.
Also, Trump's message (however controversial) was more concrete than "hope and change".
His net worth is about 800M, increasing by about 100M every year, so he will be a billionaire in a couple of years.
He did not invent anything, he did not start a world-changing company (like Gates). He is a competent manager, but nothing more than that.
Not so fast, comrade :-)
You just showed his salary, but forgot the stock ownership which is part of the total compensation package.
In 2017, he cashed in at least 43 million from this sale.
https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-08-30/tim-coo...
I know exactly two people who deserve that kind of money: Jobs and Musk (there may be a couple more) with a track of repeat success and world-changing impact.
Most big-corp CEOs don't deserve the money they get. People who got lucky and complete failures in particular (like Gil Amelio, or Carly Fiorina).
If money is not a factor, I want to feel important, have people suck up to me, travel on corporate jet, etc.
:-)
1. search results
2. sponsored ads/links and Google shopping marketplace, which appear separately.
If Google chooses to not accept money from selling X, there will not be X items appearing in the sponsored links (2) section.
But the search itself (1) has always been intended to return the most relevant information, based on the key words.
Without any moral/political judgement, as long as it is legal.
1. Recently reported white-out on "gun purchase" related searches. Gun laws (and enforcement) certainly need to be improved, but Google is not the elected body to decide what is good and bad for the society.
2. Banning (or preventing from making money) conservative channels/pundits on YouTube. It does not matter if some of them are lunatics, they are no better or worse than someone pushing "herbal remedies" or some such.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
- Noam Chomsky
If you are in a high-tax state, your employees will pay a lot in taxes, and the cost is passed on to you, their employer. You will need to pay them enough to pay 40% in taxes and have some money left for living expenses.
Which may make your startup (or any business, really) uncompetitive, or even infeasible compared to low-tax countries/states.
There needs to be a cautious balance between providing social support (which I am all for) and overtaxing. For me, the most important part is the amount of tax money that actually goes to benefit the people who need it, rather than the bureaucracy.
In the US, the value we get for our taxes is VERY low.
For example, Keynes advocated that governments spend the money that they HAVE (saved from budget surpluses when the times are good) to help the economy recover from a recession - and it is not a bad idea, per se.
The problem is that the US government has never had a surplus in recent history (save for one year 20 years ago).
Hence money printing.
Also, the "US has low taxes" mantra is a bit of a myth.
Please add:
- State taxes (usually 6-8%) on top of federal taxes.
- Real estate taxes - in a major metropolitan area in NE US, you pay $12K/year for an average house in a decent (but not top) neighborhood.
- Excise taxes - for every car/boat you own.
- Taxes on every almost every service - cable/Internet, land/cell phone (FCC), airline tickets (FAA), etc.
We also get very low return on our money, paying twice as much for everything (education and healthcare in particular) and getting lower quality in return, compared to Europe.
Neither party ever even tried to do anything about:
- term limits, limits on money in politics
- getting rid of lobbyists (their own sponsors)
- punishing Wall Street criminals
- reforming business law to give shareholders more control over executive compensation
- stopping the runaway train of national debt - etc.
Both parties were/are mostly:
- anti-privacy (anti-Snowden, anti-Wikileaks, etc)
- pro-war, the military budget is untouchable, whether it is McCain or Hillary
- ever-increasing spending (despite Reps rhetoric)
- happy (Dems) or uninterested (Reps) in lowering healthcare costs
- corrupt, with "foundations" and "speaking fees" flowing freely
There is much more, but this thread is off-topic, so I will stop here.