ageek123

16 ms·

121.
by ageek123 11y ago
> Perhaps "for profit" is just never going to work in education? Well, government-run certainly isn't working, at least in the US. Charter schools (like Kipp) seem to be doing a lot better.
122.
by ageek123 11y ago
What austerity are you talking about? There was no austerity in the US. The US government has spent more money every year throughout the financial crisis. Also I assume by "outsourcing" you actually meant "offshoring." B
123.
by ageek123 11y ago
Actually Tim O'Reilly is a proponent of Guaranteed Basic Income.
124.
by ageek123 11y ago
(1) has never happened to me in a US city, and very rarely in non-US cities. (2) has never bothered me because Uber keeps a log of every ride I take, the rating system gives me a much more confidence in the driver than a random government l
125.
by ageek123 11y ago
This article is a classic case of "Oppression Olympics" -- http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Oppression_Olympics
126.
by ageek123 11y ago
Because I'm sure these governments will spend the extra $250 billion/year so much more productively than the companies they're taking it from... (not.)
127.
by ageek123 11y ago
What does this have to do with Hacker News?
128.
by ageek123 11y ago
Not "majority mob" -- more like "vocab minority mob"
129.
by ageek123 11y ago
You don't think a lot of people who volunteer for campaigns are just trying to "make more money" by protecting or expanding entitlement programs (or regulations about unions, or ...) that benefit themselves?
130.
by ageek123 11y ago
This was already posted to HN about a month ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9917339
131.
by ageek123 11y ago
A related thing that disturbs me is that whenever the Republicans throw around the idea of impeachment (which they do with absurd regularity), the news analysis is always about what the poll numbers say and whether it will help or hurt the
132.
by ageek123 11y ago
If you read his book ("Zero to One") you'll see that he levels this same criticism against most SV companies, too. He's not just picking on China.
133.
by ageek123 11y ago
The funny/sad thing is that the NY Times basically admitted that's what they've become. In the Ellen Pao "Public Editor" column I linked to, the NY Times Public Editor herself said "I often hear from readers th
134.
by ageek123 11y ago
The NY Times seems to have a serious ongoing credibility problem. Just a couple of days ago they seriously mis-reported the investigation into the Clinton emails[1], and a couple of weeks ago they all but admitted that their Ellen Pao cover
135.
by ageek123 11y ago
Actually, your opinion is unfortunately very popular on HN.
136.
by ageek123 11y ago
> The way forward is ton get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. This. Among other things, it would go a long way towards fi
137.
by ageek123 11y ago
Labor market flexibility is one of the great strengths of the US economy. It's one of the reasons why unemployment is back to reasonable levels even after the Great Recession. The freelancer economy has some downsides but in aggregate
138.
by ageek123 11y ago
But natural ecosystems have a very stringent natural selection operating, so you always end up with diversity that represents an objective improvement, something that isn't guaranteed when diversity is driven by a company's philos
139.
by ageek123 11y ago
Not quite. Check out the quotes from the Greek labor minister in the following article. The situation is much worse than it seems. http://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/12/04/75-of-greek-pensi...
140.
by ageek123 11y ago
Same as it ever was: articles with the PoV expressed in this headline inevitably have the following sentence, or one nearly identical to it: "Fourth, we may need to redistribute income and wealth on a large scale" Only problem wit
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by ageek123 11y ago
They'll probably leave their homes to their children.
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by ageek123 11y ago
It's hard not to sympathize with the folks who have been saying all along that Sotomayor is an extremist, in light of her views in this case, which was an 8-1 decision.
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by ageek123 11y ago
If you read the article, you'll see that the author actually agrees with you. They just picked a clickbait-y headline because that's What People Do These Days.
144.
by ageek123 11y ago
More generally, the entire field of "behavior economics" has a very strong paternalistic, authoritarian subcurrent to it. The message is: people can't be allowed to make decisions for themselves because they aren't capab
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by ageek123 12y ago
About 2/3 of the federal budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, military, and interest on the debt.
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by ageek123 12y ago
That argument is absurd. It's like saying that an employee has some kind of moral obligation to their employer because without the employer, they wouldn't have a job. The reality is that in a market economy, people voluntarily exc
147.
by ageek123 12y ago
You do realize that both sides play that game, right? One side tells people the government is taking their money and the other side tells people that rich people are taking their money. The reality is that both are wrong because this stuff
148.
by ageek123 12y ago
This isn't surprising. The income tax is currently the most progressive it has been since the 1970s. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/business/after-fiscal-deal...
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by ageek123 12y ago
The article does address this. It says "The share of tax paid by the top 20% of Americans also changes when such social-insurance levies are included: It drops from more than 80% of income taxes to about 67% of all federal taxes."
150.
by ageek123 12y ago
Except that this article gives both of the relevant numbers -- the top 20% earn 51.3% of the income, but pay more than 80% of the income tax.

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