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Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

le.mu.rs

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Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#81

Post by astrange »

mkramlich wrote: post #77
petercooper wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He commands his rates because he is a household name. [..] You, however, are an iPhone app developer. App purchasers have never heard of you. They will not turn out in droves to buy an app just because you worked on it. I think his conclusion is wrong but the analogy is good. It's unnecessary to be literal with the term "household." Most of the world's top scientists, lawyers, and bankers aren't household names, yet…

Interesting comparison you made too. Because for me, I respect Carmack a hell of a lot more than Mike Lee. And I suspect he's a much better programmer as well. And human being.

Was that last part necessary? I think it's a bad idea to declare someone not a good human being based on the one blog post you read.

(Especially since he wrote a few others about saving endangered species and homeless people.)

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#83

Post by xenophanes »

mikeklaas wrote: post #74
xenophanes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this economy we need more money being spent. Economic activity is not economic productivity . Spending money doesn't make us richer. Producing does. Encouraging people to work more would help the economy; encouraging to people to spend more would only help to the extent that it stimulates people to produce stuff for sale.

> Spending money doesn't make us richer. Sure it does. If I buy good A for $X, I must value having good A a least _slightly_ more than having $X in my pocket. Similarly, the seller values $X in his pocket more than having good A in his inventory. Hence, we have completed a transaction where the wealth of both parties has increased. This is the essence of why capitalism works.

Trade makes us richer if it's motivated by both parties coming out ahead in their judgment. Spending for the sake of spending, or for the sake of "stimulating the economy", doesn't help anything.

People who say "In this economy we need more money being spent" are not capitalists advocating efficient trade, they're Keynesians or something.

If someone thought he would benefit from a purchase, he would do it without encouragement. So what meaning can the encouragement to spend have...?

Conceivably it could mean (but this guy did not mean) that there's lower hanging fruit to be found by looking for more trades that should happen but aren't than by producing more. But it's far from obvious how/why that would be true "in this economy". In economic slowdowns, you need to make more stuff, not divvy up the too-little stuff more perfectly. It's when the economy is booming and production is very high that there might more plausibly be a neglect of the efficiency of trading.

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#84

Post by mkramlich »

alanthonyc wrote: post #3

tldr: Mike Lee is the Brad Pitt of programmers. :/

Not to diss your comment, because I don't intend that, but it got me to thinking. I hereby propose we all stop using this "tldr" or "TL;DR" meme that keeps popping up on every other web posting lately because it's an unnecessarily opaque code, and not very readable, in my opinion.

Instead, how about instead we start doing something like this:

summary:

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#85

Post by ryanwaggoner »

rortian wrote: post #73
fgf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This PG essay is a good refutation of the notion that (progressive or, at least, non-regressive) taxes are a "win" for the poor in a zero sum game: "The Pie Fallacy A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed amount of money at any moment. But that's not the same thing. When wealth is talked about in this con…

>This PG essay is a good refutation of the notion that (progressive or, at least, non-regressive) taxes are a "win" for the poor in a zero sum game: This is a straw man. I cannot think of anyone (and I'd love to see you find a progressive or anyone) that would say that economics is a zero sum game. A lot of this community did form around pg's essays. However, it's a little sickening to think that anyone would take th…

However, please do not expect, or treat his writing, like he will win a nobel prize in economics.

Well, here's a somewhat relevant quote from someone who did win a Nobel Prize in economics:

"Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." ~Milton Friedman

Sounds familiar, no? And while you might not be able to find someone who says that economics is a zero sum game, you can't throw a rock in any direction without hitting someone who is pushing an agenda or ideology that acts as if it is.

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#87

Post by pingswept »

WildUtah wrote: post #72
_delirium wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also exceptionally low, currently. There are no rates above 35%, whereas they used to be above 70% back in the Eisenhower/Kennedy/Johnson/Ford/Carter/early-Reagan days. But I suppose which rates and which kinds of incentives count as too high / too low is always relative and subjective...

Actually, under Eisenhower and Kennedy the top marginal rate was always between 91% and 95%. Then it was 70% until the early 1980s when it went down to 50%. That's just federal, not including state and city income taxes.

I found this list of the historical tax rates fascinating: http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/151.html

(Why they have to use "Macromedia Flash Paper " to show a list of numbers is beyond me.)

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#89

Post by [deleted] »

rortian wrote: post #73
fgf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This PG essay is a good refutation of the notion that (progressive or, at least, non-regressive) taxes are a "win" for the poor in a zero sum game: "The Pie Fallacy A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed amount of money at any moment. But that's not the same thing. When wealth is talked about in this con…

>This PG essay is a good refutation of the notion that (progressive or, at least, non-regressive) taxes are a "win" for the poor in a zero sum game: This is a straw man. I cannot think of anyone (and I'd love to see you find a progressive or anyone) that would say that economics is a zero sum game. A lot of this community did form around pg's essays. However, it's a little sickening to think that anyone would take th…

[deleted]

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#90

Post by fgf »

rortian wrote: post #73
fgf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This PG essay is a good refutation of the notion that (progressive or, at least, non-regressive) taxes are a "win" for the poor in a zero sum game: "The Pie Fallacy A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed amount of money at any moment. But that's not the same thing. When wealth is talked about in this con…

>This PG essay is a good refutation of the notion that (progressive or, at least, non-regressive) taxes are a "win" for the poor in a zero sum game: This is a straw man. I cannot think of anyone (and I'd love to see you find a progressive or anyone) that would say that economics is a zero sum game. A lot of this community did form around pg's essays. However, it's a little sickening to think that anyone would take th…

1. Read the post I responded to again. I think we may have found one![1]

2. Good luck with the feeling-sick-because-I-agree-with-PG thing.

[1]In any case a group that still thinks of economics in zero sum terms are doctrinaire marxists. The idea that economics is destined to, at some point (sometimes claimed to be behind us), become zero sum is popular in hardcore environmentalist circles.

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