The Busy Person’s Lies • Hacker News Board

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#171

Post by brazzledazzle » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 7:41 AM UTC

cmdrfred wrote: post #24

apsec112 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends a lot on the specifics. Of course, there are certainly lots of Americans who are both poorer than the author and work harder. But in the US, the very poorest people tend to be those who don't work at all, or only work part-time. People who live their whole life in a small town with one or two big employers, which move away when the economy crashes; people whose skills go out-of-date, and can't affo…

I come from poverty. There is a big difference between poor and working poor. The poor get handouts, the working poor get fines because they can't afford Obamacare. Then people wonder why the poor don't struggle their way to working poor.

I also come from poverty and in my experience there can be a dangerous area making just enough money to be disqualified from receiving assistance where you're just a few mistakes or irresponsible decisions away from having serious money issues. But there are also a whole lot of people that qualify for all kinds of assistance and don't ever even bother to check because they are hard working people and take pride in that.

I think the solution is pretty simple: raise that income maximum well past where you would normally put it and make it trivial (like sign up on the internet trivial) for anyone who qualifies to receive assistance and make it just as simple to stop receiving it. Someone should be able to sign up and receive assistance on the next distribution cycle. This makes it easy for people in that dangerous spot to get assistance because you remove it and those with pride can get it quickly, easily and as temporarily as they want with no humiliation.

Here's why: Today you must commit a lot of time and effort as well suffer humiliation to get assistance. You have to stand in line, wait in a waiting area, fill out forms and finally talk to a worker about what a fuck up you are. If you have kids and can't get/afford a babysitter your kids are right there with you losing their minds. If you can't take time off work you don't get assistance because this government office is closed in the evening and on weekends. It may be hard to imagine something worse than the DMV but that's exactly what this is. And then you have to deal with doing it all over again because they are looking for the tiniest possible reason to turn off your assistance and force you to appeal.

Why is it so painful? Because welfare queens, drug dealers, drug users, lifers and frauds can't be allowed to get assistance even if the cost in terms of dollars and opportunity are much greater to prevent them from doing so. We've let it become about who we deem "deserves" it rather than a simple monetary calculation.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#172

Post by Retra » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 7:53 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #6

dijit wrote: post #2

The article seems to assume that context switching takes no time. If that were true I have a lot of free time.. it's just never contiguous.

Funny thing I noticed: when you start a family and have kids, you are forced to get better and better at the _skill_ of context switching quickly. You learn how to be productive with twelve 15-minute slots divided by interruptions instead of a contiguous 3 hours. Being able to do this is a skill like any other. I no longer buy the whole "in/out of the zone" thing as if it is some fundamental law of nature.

But what are you actually doing in those 15-minute slots? What is your standard of productivity? I've never met someone with kids who was able to work as effectively as I am at the subjects I work on in the presence of their kids.

I mean, I have a girlfriend I only see on weekends, and that's already a huge drain on my productive time. It's made me noticeably dumber.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#173

Post by xorxornop » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 8:17 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #63

lacampbell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) I must admit I am always a bit jealous of people like you who can function on 6 hours sleep every day. After 3 days of that I am wreck.

You should start measuring the quality of your sleep using apps like Sleep Cycle. I used to be exactly the same way. Then I realized that the reason I was sleeping for 9-10 hours was because my sleep was "shallow" and kept getting interrupted. It all changed drastically after I optimized my sleeping environment: totally dark, 68 degrees year around, appropriate mattress type for my sleeping position, etc. Now I can g…

As an alternative to ear plugs, perhaps also consider noise _replacement_ instead (eg. vs. noise _elimination).

I use an app that plays various rain sounds. I have it linked to speakers via Bluetooth (and I have a 3.5mm headphone-jack-type extension audio cable that I've run to my bedside table as an option, if I'm feeling picky about the sound quality of my rain ).

It's very relaxing, and blocks most outdoor sounds. I live in NZ, and the houses here are usually pretty thin-walled and consequently offer almost no sound deadening. This mostly-fixes/avoids that.

Perhaps you don't like rain, and so different sounds might be appropriate... I don't like anything else really apart from maybe low volume white noise, but that's me... but yeah, regardless of which sounds you pick, the general approach is worth trying!

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#174

Post by bzbarsky » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 8:33 AM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #94

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever downvoted this comment doesn't understand it at all. The working poor are a revenue source. By keeping people indebted, they remain predictable consumers and fixed-income assets, like a human bond. The impoverished are effectively trapped by the welfare system itself, because it reduces benefits as incomes rise at a faster rate than can be made up by the equivalent amount of work. If the minimum wage was a li…

The impoverished are effectively trapped by the welfare system itself, because it reduces benefits as incomes rise at a faster rate than can be made up by the equivalent amount of work This isn't true. The CBO extensivesly evaluates changes in benefits and taxes to calculate effectice marginal tax rates across the income distribution to make sure that you never make less money from working more. There are a couple of…

The document you link to says:

  The marginal tax rates include the combined effects
  of federal and state individual income taxes, federal
  payroll taxes, and benefits from the Supplemental
  Nutrition Assistance Program and cost-sharing subsidies
  for health insurance, generally on the basis of 2016 law.

Unfortunately, SNAP and ACA health insurance subsidies are not the only means-tested welfare bits, and the other ones are _not_ being included here. Most prominently missing are Medicaid, TANF, and Section 8 housing, but there are a _lot_ of means-tested programs (e.g. Pell Grants) that only apply to certain households.

Now I do think it's true that the income ranges where the effective marginal "tax" rate is over 100% are fairly narrow for most households. But the ranges where the rates are less than 100% but not much less are far wider. And that gives you an effective take-home hourly wage that is tiny. If you happen to have kids, it almost certainly doesn't cover daycare costs, for example...

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#175

Post by xorxornop » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 8:43 AM UTC

icantdrive55 wrote: post #66

apsec112 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends a lot on the specifics. Of course, there are certainly lots of Americans who are both poorer than the author and work harder. But in the US, the very poorest people tend to be those who don't work at all, or only work part-time. People who live their whole life in a small town with one or two big employers, which move away when the economy crashes; people whose skills go out-of-date, and can't affo…

"to not know if you can do anything other people see as valuable" 1. I have never met a rich person that could offer me anything other than a loan. Someting they don't like to do. (I live in Marin County. The place your founder will end up if successful. These people can't change a tire. They are as useful as the proverbial wart on a toad. They have one ability most poor don't have; they are masters at taking money f…

Oh boy, I couldn't agree more... I, too, feel rage at this state of things. What makes it particularly awful is I just don't see any way out of it.

People are pathetically easy to manipulate for the most part. The poor are the demographic that most frequently votes against their interests. The fascinating part is, it would be easy to conclude that perhaps these people are simply not very clever. Well, that's certainly true for some fraction of them, to some extent... but I really don't think that this is the main factor (or even in the top 3), no - rather, I just think that it's a combination of their being credulous, and not particularly predisposed toward a special type of socially-strategic thinking. Like, the sort of thinking that manipulating psychopaths use to bend people to their will. Like you said, the poor are often plenty clever and useful, they often just get manipulated and used.

What I don't know is whether this is just a matter of education (and so long-term improvement is viable) or whether it's more of a societal-cultural values thing... or even, I guess, a biological thing (there is probably at least _some_ component of this but probably very minor relative to the others).

I'd want education to include a kind of mental self-defence component, so people can protect themselves against mental infiltration by virulent memes (eg, religions and other ideas which abhor and resist attempts of inspection and eradication) and demagoguery... as well as a heavy focus on critical thinking in general. Learning _how_ to think - not_what_ to think.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#176

Post by xorxornop » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 8:50 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #167

faceyspacey wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That view that it it's "terribly depressing to be broke" and all the despair the poor in America feel because they can create no value could only be thought up by us smug hacker news software creators. I know first hand that much of the poor are content to live off the government, never had any aspirations and ultimately don't need much to survive and be content enough. They don't know what they don't know and theref…

> I know first hand that much of the poor are content to live off the government, never had any aspirations and ultimately don't need much to survive and be content enough. Well, I know the opposite first hand. The idea that poor are content being poor is totally out of this world, especially in the US where the welfare and "handouts" for poor people are a joke (compared to Western Europe, nordic countries, etc). > T…

Yup - it's hard to imagine a more out of touch viewpoint. Straight out of "talking heads present one type of franchise blockbuster reality fiction that manipulates you into betraying your fellow humans and yourself" land.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#177

Post by xorxornop » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 8:55 AM UTC

imh wrote: post #129

cmurf wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the difference between working class $50K per year, and professional $500K per year, is tiny in comparison to the difference between millionaire and billionaire. A billionaire can buy a new Mercedes Benz every day, and burn it to the ground in a pile of $100 bills at the end of that day, and not run out of money their entire life. So...

Is it really? At $50k/year, planning to save for things most people have to deal with is hard. You have to actively plan for it, and still might not be able to. At $500k/year, it's easy. At a million or a billion, it's still easy. Yeah there are large differences, but not in terms of day to day life relative to a normal person.

Yes, exactly. If we're going to talk proportions, then both "sides" need surfacing. If you're on lower income, otherwise "minor" fines, fees, surcharges etc can become life threatening or at least highly disruptive. The cost of failure is so high that it becomes very difficult to take the sort of risks that are sometimes needed to get ahead.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#178

Post by croon » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 9:33 AM UTC

comboy wrote: post #155

tboyd47 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you're a programmer too. I wonder if any other professions have this problem. Believe it or not, I have the opposite perspective. I'd rather spend a whole week debugging something in a gnarly legacy system than architect/build one from scratch. I like being able to say, "it wasn't working before; now it works," and then get on with my life, rather than live with the consequences of a hundred wrong turns.…

If you have a clear bug and you nail it that's a great feeling. But what's annoying for me is when you have a simple task of doing X, but you then realize that you need to replace Y for this, but A replacement doesn't work with B part and so on.. and when it's all done, few days later, all you've done is you just finished that simple 1 hour task.

I definitely recognize this feeling. Some days everything fit and it's a clean implementation, but a lot of times there are tangential tasks that are never "seen" in the implementation. This can of course be reflected in scrum points or whatever, but is this an issue with our own psychology, with feature rewards or something else?

I don't know, and would like to know so I could work on it.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#179

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 11:04 AM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #19

I did an analysis on my own time once, ignoring the breakdown of my work day and just focusing on overall time available: 1130-0000 - prepare for bed, relax 0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) 0600-0700 - stuff (shower, shave, personal email) 0700-1630 - work + lunch + commutes So I had 7 hours each day I was "leaving on the table". Most of it was spent on TV or video games, possibly socializing. I felt exhausted from work s…

[deleted]

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#180

Post by a-saleh » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 11:04 AM UTC

garrickvanburen wrote: post #52

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to make it on 6 hours a night, easily. Then I started college and it went up to 8, for some reason. Recently I stopped drinking. I'm back to 6.

In my experience, every beer adds 1 hour of sleep.

In my experience, this only happens to me is it is more than 2 beers, later than 10pm in the evening :)