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ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

news.cornell.edu

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Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#151
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, inflation has happened, and taxes, medical bills, and real estate are insane these days. So much so that you can't live a "normal" life of the standards of 20 years ago with less than $500K+ in salary. (At normal "middle class" modest levels of life hat's $250K after taxes, $200K after medical expenses, $150K after rent, $100K after food, $50K after transportation, $25K after food ...) Sounds outrageous but most…

I found it truly incredulous that you are trying to defend the position that $500k a year salary is middle class.

You do realize that's $250K after taxes, here in California?

Which is $140K in year 2000 dollars.

Houses here cost $1M for a dump, or $2M for something decent. 20-30 years ago, being able to afford a home was a pretty standard thing for anyone in the middle class.

A 1-bedroom rental apartment costs $2500/month for something moldy and not wired to modern electrical code, or $3000/month for something clean, safe, and sanitary (you pick). Plus $500 for basic utilities (water+gas+electric+internet+phone).

Seems pretty squarely middle class to me.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#152
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering: - health insurance rarely pays for what they do, balance bill you several thousands of dollars every time you have a regular check up for an incurable health issue, and it often requires legal notices and lots of lost work hours on the phone with debt collectors, insurance, hospitals - rent figures don't include my $200 electric bill, $200 water bill, $70 internet bill that comcast decided to charge me $…

Arxiv is run by Cornell, which is in Ithaca NY. Upstate NY a $500k a year salary would literally buy you a mansion. Ithaca right by the college is pretty expensive by upstate standards because of houses being converted to multi-family units to rent. But Ithaca for $500k is buying you a big house walking distance to downtown, if you go out of the city $500k is buying you a big house with a large amount of land.

If only you had that $500K ...

But the government will steal $250K of it right off the bat. And then probably another $50K because at least in CA you get double-taxed both when earning and when spending.

You're left with only $200K real dollars.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#153
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish more self-published books would find a way to hire a copyeditor.

gpt to the rescue?

Actually, yeah. I think it could make a difference. Usually there is some basic spell-check, grammar check stuff already going on, but the kinds of things that would be easily fixed/identified by LLMs could be:

- continuity checking - often moving sections of text around introduces temporal errors - style cleanup - quasi-duplicated text that came from multiple edits or start/stops being merged - fixing vague and unclear passages

But probably what they won't do well in a near terms is provide more critical feedback, such as when to throw away large sections of book, or remove subplots, or where to dive deeper on other topics. I'm sure they can generate general suggestions for this kind of thing though.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#154
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arxiv is run by Cornell, which is in Ithaca NY. Upstate NY a $500k a year salary would literally buy you a mansion. Ithaca right by the college is pretty expensive by upstate standards because of houses being converted to multi-family units to rent. But Ithaca for $500k is buying you a big house walking distance to downtown, if you go out of the city $500k is buying you a big house with a large amount of land.

If only you had that $500K ... But the government will steal $250K of it right off the bat. And then probably another $50K because at least in CA you get double-taxed both when earning and when spending. You're left with only $200K real dollars.

10.25 percent (highest sales tax rate in CA - 1) of 250k is closer to 31.25k. State and fed taxes income taxes are around 45% but I'll grant you there's other hidden fees (social security and others)... luckily hidden fees are now illegal in CA.

[1]: https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates/california.h...

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if someone changes their name, they start from scratch? That seems a bit unfair.

If I change my phone number or email, that's on me to notify anyone. I [voluntary] broke the world's consistency, I must repair it. Same with names.

I'm not opposed to requiring notifying people of a name change. But they should change my name in their records when I notify them.

(I'm currently going through this process.)

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#156
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arxiv is run by Cornell, which is in Ithaca NY. Upstate NY a $500k a year salary would literally buy you a mansion. Ithaca right by the college is pretty expensive by upstate standards because of houses being converted to multi-family units to rent. But Ithaca for $500k is buying you a big house walking distance to downtown, if you go out of the city $500k is buying you a big house with a large amount of land.

If only you had that $500K ... But the government will steal $250K of it right off the bat. And then probably another $50K because at least in CA you get double-taxed both when earning and when spending. You're left with only $200K real dollars.

You can easily get a mortgage for 3x income and 4x isn't that hard. So $500k can buy a $1.5m house with no problem. $500k income is easy to buy a house forth $500k cash after a couple years.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#158
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it truly incredulous that you are trying to defend the position that $500k a year salary is middle class.

You do realize that's $250K after taxes, here in California? Which is $140K in year 2000 dollars. Houses here cost $1M for a dump, or $2M for something decent. 20-30 years ago, being able to afford a home was a pretty standard thing for anyone in the middle class. A 1-bedroom rental apartment costs $2500/month for something moldy and not wired to modern electrical code, or $3000/month for something clean, safe, and s…

No, seriously, it's insane that you're trying to defend this claim.

Median US household income after taxes in 2022 was $64,240. If you make *quadruple* median household income after taxes, you are not middle class.

Median post-tax household income was $34,123 in 2000, so $140k was quadruple that too.

Median pre-tax household income in San Francisco is $126k.

The standard guideline for an apartment being affordable is "30% of your pre-tax income or less"; a $3k apartment would be affordable by that metric for someone making $120k before taxes.

In San Francisco itself, single-family houses do start at around $1M, but it is not remotely true that you need to spend $2M for "something decent" - there are tons for like $1.2M, I'm looking at Zillow right now. You can get a two-bedroom condo in a pretty good neighborhood for like $750k.

House price affordability guidelines are "3-5x pre-tax annual income", so even in SF, the paradigmatic housing-crisis city, you could afford a $1.2M house on $250k or a $750k condo on $150k.

All of this is just setting aside the question of "if you can just afford to buy a house in one of the most expensive places in the country, does that make you middle class", for which the actual answer is no.

But by absolutely no sane metric is $500k/yr "squarely middle class".

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#159
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that's $250K after taxes, here in California? Which is $140K in year 2000 dollars. Houses here cost $1M for a dump, or $2M for something decent. 20-30 years ago, being able to afford a home was a pretty standard thing for anyone in the middle class. A 1-bedroom rental apartment costs $2500/month for something moldy and not wired to modern electrical code, or $3000/month for something clean, safe, and s…

No, seriously, it's insane that you're trying to defend this claim. Median US household income after taxes in 2022 was $64,240. If you make *quadruple* median household income after taxes , you are not middle class. Median post-tax household income was $34,123 in 2000, so $140k was quadruple that too. Median pre-tax household income in San Francisco is $126k. The standard guideline for an apartment being affordable i…

> "30% of your pre-tax income or less"

That makes sense in a world where taxes are 15%. But in a world where taxes are close to 50%, you probably want to be thinking about 30% of POST-tax income, not pre-tax.

If you rented at 30% of pre-tax, take away 45% for taxes, you have only 25% left. There's no way you'll live on 25% AND have room for savings for purchasing housing.

> House price affordability guidelines are "3-5x pre-tax annual income"

Uh, no, I'd say 3-5X post-tax post-food post-rent post-everything-else. That would mean you could afford a house in 3-5 years.

Seriously, I live here and almost nobody with a total household income of less than 600-800K actually owns a home here.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#160
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At normal "middle class" modest levels of life hat's $250K after taxes, $200K after medical expenses, $150K after rent, $100K after food, $50K after transportation, $25K after food ...) 99% of the country doesn't pay $50K per year in rent. Nor $50K per year in food. Nor $50K per year in transportation. Nor an additional $25K per year in food.

OP mildly exaggerated, but nothing he described is crazy for the expensive parts of California.

"mildly"
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