IkmoIkmo

17 ms·

121.
by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Ah, interesting. In the Netherlands it was different and there was an opposite effect, actually I moved out to support my parents. Because my dad was dependent on the state (disability) he received a supplemental income to get his living st
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Even so, the safety net can be useful. I have a friend who knows his parents have >1m available, and he knows that given their spending patterns, the returns on investments and actuarial tables, it's likely a $2m windfall will come
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
> sounds like How so? I don't see the link between not moving out as soon as expected, meaning my parents must've not been financially dependent on me in any way. Would you for example suppose that parents who're in need o
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Not sure I really agree, to me it just seemed as if she's speaking to a wider trend of people mismanaging their finances and speaks to the reasons (culture, literacy, short-term bias etc). It's quite common for journalists to try
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
I agree that that's a major point. Still, I'm consistently utterly surprised by friends/family/colleagues with similar income but a very different predicament. I was raised on welfare myself and started out my early twen
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
I also don't really get how this works, it's a lease. In my country a lease includes all payments except fuel. That means the car, the insurance, the taxes. If anything happens (outside of you wilfully ramming the car into somethi
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
> I have trouble understanding[...] What do they do all day? Sedentary activities? Look at your chair or couch or bed, and consider all the things you can do there. Ever had a lazy sunday? Got out of bed late, watched some tv on the couc
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
> the consensus is generally that the US doesn't give much holiday to staff and that Europe is more generous. That's correct, the US has 0 legal holidays, everything is contractual. That typically means around 7-8 days and buil
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
I know it's just an anecdote but, a good friend of mine went to SF about a year ago with four other friends. Much of their stuff (macbooks etc) got stolen from their car on their first day. Of course silly to leave things in the car. S
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
The final bit of my post wasn't talking about software developers, but simply about the differences in income between the US and EU in general, and how they don't translate into as large differences in quality of life. It's q
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
A few thoughts: 1) SMBs don't necessarily hire that many software engineers. Hell, even tons of large companies barely do. I work at a multinational (100 countries) which mostly buys off the shelf software, and uses basic tools like Ex
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
I mean, it's not incorrect. In the developed world the percentage was reaching around 75-80%, but worldwide it was still <50% in 2015.
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
What ticketing sites do you guys use? Whenever I want to try (night) trains around Europe I run into a myriad of national websites with poor information on non-national trips, a lack of decent information on what to expect, annoying pricing
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
> Who buys a house before it's finished? I'd say this is the norm for most property development around the world. A developer creates a plan, people apply for it and get individual mortgages, the developer takes that money (in-
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Not a series of insignificant losses that, due to the low win-probability is such a long series, amounts to more money than the lottery win, and thereby cannot be called insignificant anymore, which is by definition how lotteries are set-up
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Well, the maximum mandatory deductible is about 30 euros a month. It's not nothing, but it's also hard to find many situations where it's completely unaffordable, I'd guess this would amount to a small number of people.
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
> It was around $900 and had a lead time of a few weeks, so I said I couldn't afford to wait that long. Even though my Apple Care was out of date, they gave me around a 25% discount on a brand new MacBook Pro 15". I was shocked
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
I wouldn't say so. In gambling you bet $10 in the hope you'd win $100, if you don't, you'll be very unhappy. In insurance you pay $10 understanding you may otherwise lose $100, but whether it happens or not you're n
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
The crazy part is that they don't attempt to repair, nor have any deductible, nor use residual values. That's usually how they prevent people from executing on their insurance rights. You got a really nice package, or the company
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Indeed, same with healthcare. For example here in the Netherlands there's universal (mandatory) healthcare. The basic premium for full standard coverage (which is pretty much anything you'd want that affects health) is about $150
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Not sure I fully follow. Indeed in a way it's a gift to the industry to make insurance mandatory as it creates a bigger market. But there's no 'mandatory profit'. At the end of the day the world of finance is highly comp
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
> The article assumes that everyone has a lot of savings No it didn't. The article just gave an example of one financial situation (income + savings) and examples of potential loss events, and showed how to reason through that. It d
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Because of the 80% preventing financial ruin?
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
I personally find Amsterdam to be a bit lacking on that front. It often touts itself as being extremely multicultural, being >50% non-native (white) Dutch and having the most nationalities in one city. And it's to an extent true, bu
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Sure, just like there's girls flocking to become prostitutes in parts of Thailand, and Bangladeshi to become construction workers in Qatar. Not because of desperation, no, out of free will in search for great jobs, they're not sla
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
It's quite interesting how you're completely unwilling to argue the original point (which is that a 1860s construction project is no model for today as it came at a great cost we're not willing to accept, besides being comple
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
> Bollocks. Lots of people are saying that, or at the very least saying things that directly imply this with arguments to historical injustices which, though real and serious, have no causal bearing on the specific case being discussed.
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
That's not the point, the point is people weren't flocking to these jobs as you claimed. > The Central Pacific hired some Canadian and European civil engineers and surveyors with extensive experience building railroads, but it
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
> Nobody gave up any rights to work on the railroad. Because they didn't have any. Like the right for equal pay. The right to a safe working environment. The right to adequate breaks. The right to insurance etc. You think they had t
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by IkmoIkmo 5y ago
You're being pedantic, Europe and EU are colloquially used interchangeably sometimes, but clearly it was obvious the EU was meant here. In the same way that when you say 'America invaded Iraq' I'm not expecting you'

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