461–470 of 600 posts
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>The construction of minarets is prohibited. Hardly surprising. Nobody wants to be awoken at ungodly hours by that howling.
It's not funny or considerate to assume that there are no Muslims in the HN community...
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I have done hour each way commutes for many years, and while I don't miss it, it's not nearly that much of a waste. It's not "sit around doing nothing" (though, I wish I had two hours a day to sit around doing nothing - it'd be fantastic). It's time people spend listening to music, reading, napping, catching up on e-mail, playing games. As much as I like currently not having a commute, it was certainly not time that…
You obviously didn't drive if you were reading, napping, catching up on email, playing games (at least I certainly hope not). At least within the US, a typical commute (with the exception of very large cities such as NYC, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, which have large public transportation systems) involves spending time driving their own car, which essentially prohibits any activity other than listening to music,…
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The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum. Now we have the sentence «The construction of minarets is prohibited.» in the constitution. ( https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/... ) I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.
As a Swiss let me give you my opinion of this. First I will say that I voted against this. Lets be honest here, the 'minaret' issue is extremely minor one. I does not effect large numbers of people and it does not effecte them in a particularly strong way. Based on first principle I voted against it, but was not the most important issue for me or for Switzerland. Most of the time the results Switzerland gets to usual…
Not at all. It violates the very idea of freedom of religion. I doubt a ban on building of churches would be approved and this shows that a more popular group can (and does) trample on fundamental human rights of other smaller groups.
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I don't understand what you mean. Raise a family of four on a mutual fund? Why do you feel that you need a mortgage in order to raise a family of four? Why not rent?
Because moving a family of four is extremely disruptive for everyone, and it's very rare to have more than a year's security with a lease, even with a good relationship with the landlord. Not only that, but if your kids are school age, there's serious pressure to find a new rental in the same school area, which makes shopping for a new home that much harder.
Huh? Landlords prefer stability as much as tenants. Very rarely will they say no to a multi-year lease. They may want to add the option of rent re-evaluation after the first year, but from a landlord's perspective it is very difficult to find good tenants, therefore the longer those tenants stay the better.
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Assuming you can rent or buy an equivalent property, in most markets, the monthly outlay is approximately the same. There's very few circumstances where a renter has such an excess of money that they could make any meaningful gains off of alternative investments. Over time this changes, assuming the renter and the owner have incomes that increase, rent also increases on the same property over time (usually on about p…
You are forgetting that your down payment ( and equity )is tied up in the house, when it could be invested elsewhere.
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It's very simple, even outside of equity earning and the ups and downs of the housing market, once you pay off your mortgage, you now have a place to live that's fairly close to free (other than maintenance, utilities and taxes). If your home is large enough, you can even turn it into a revenue generating asset by renting out portions or all of it. Rents also tend to go up with inflation, once you enter into a mortga…
See my post above. Once you pay off the mortgage it is equivalent to paying yourself out a percentage of cash investment. In NYC that number is approximately 4.5%. That is pretty good but not great considering the risks of ownership.
To compare correctly you must assume both people are starting the same
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Welfare without limits is incompatible with Open Borders Remains to be seen who will want to actually do the (needed) jobs when staying at home is enough I am in favour of Basic Income, but it's not such clear cut
Given that open borders will help hundreds of millions escape dire poverty, whereas basic income will (at best) reduce some administrative costs and allow some people to live a life of leisure, how do you justify this preference? Do the prospective brown people who might want to escape dire poverty (i.e., gain access to clean running water, flush toilets, and adequate food) just not count? Even if they counted only a…
Or more pithily: Maybe we need gardens to cultivate civilisation.
That said, I am very aware that this is probably a post-rationalisation for my tribal intuition that nearby people are more important than distant ones.
Why is Basic Income such a popular topic on Hacker News?
Because hackers tend to believe in the idea that automation and advanced AI causes a reduction of jobs and the destruction of middle class. This leads to a lot of rich people who control the AI and robots and a lot of poor who can't find jobs. To counteract this, Basic income is a good idea because it allows for low risk job switching, furthering education and a small bureaucracy but extensive social safety net.
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Who's going to lend me $1m so I can play the stockmarket?
You could absolutely borrow on margin to play the stock, although you would probably need to have more than the typical home mortgage 20% to get the loan.
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Or that a Doner Kebab in Zurich is 20 dollars and up. That's US salary alright bit US price of living? Hell no
As a regular Zürich Döner eater, I'd be curious to see these fabled 20$ equivalent Döners. Mine are always in the 10/11CHF range (~$11).
most common things expat complain here about - 1) going out becomes a rare experience if you are not single - just too expensive compared to anywhere else in the world; 2) the need for adjustment to swiss ways of doing everything (ie strict rules of living in apartments, massive bureaucracy and so on) - you need to change, they won't; 3) finding accommodation is often as hard as landing a job (which is often super hard, too much global competition) - they just don't build new housing, so prices went through roof and your resume and salary and skin color and nationality and no-pets-no-small-kids and everything needs to be perfect, otherwise goodbye. since there are 100-200 other people applying for same place; 4) having kids is prohibitively expensive, international schools are either paid by your employer or you put your kid to (good) public ones. You need to be seriously well-off for kids, or compromise on couple of things.
I live in Geneva, I love it here, but I am not here for salary. You can get much more value for your salary elsewhere in Europe for doing same job as here. Munich, London and couple of other places would work better. But I am a mountain freak, having Chamonix as 45 minute drive from apartment is priceless for weekends and having France 2 kms away makes spending a bit more bearable.