True Rate of Unemployment • Hacker News Board

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#381

Post by milkytron » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 10:08 PM UTC

NamlchakKhandro wrote: post #165

yanjunnf wrote: post #158

I am a software engineer and lost my job a week ago.

but are you a good software engineer?

From what I've observed, it likely doesn't matter.

I worked at a company that laid off all senior engineers in a single layoff. I was let go and found another job within a month.

I've heard of entire departments being let go because of shifting company priorities.

I imagine decision makers aren't usually evaluating each person based on performance, they're looking at organizational priorities and budgets.

I have some friends at the company I got let go of, and they are in shambles. Managers have reached out to me asking for me to rejoin. I'd be willing to bet they thought the juniors and mid levels would be able to take the place of seniors with the help of AI, without management fully understanding how AI should be utilized most effectively.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#382

Post by jaredklewis » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 11:35 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #321

jaredklewis wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole economy. If your cost of living is higher (due to LVT), the minimum wage you will work for is higher. The amount of discretionary spending (someone else's income) or investment you can make is lower. Obviously these effects on an individual level are small, but when aggregated across the entire economy are very large. In a world of LVT, everyone pays LVT because everyone lives somewhere. You either pay it a…

What prevents this system from resource exploitation for more taxable profits? I want to have systems in place that encourage nature and long term sustainability.

Does LVT create a moral hazard? I don't think so. Have we seen municipal governments with liquor taxes rush to run pro-alcohol ad campaigns and relax night life restrictions in order to maximize tax revenues? No. Have carbon taxes motivated governments to promote carbon use? Again, we have no evidence of that. Indeed, for pretty much ever tax ever studied, we find the relationship you would imagine: increasing taxes on X, reduces X.

So in that way, since LVT just adds to the cost to exploit any resource, it will reduce exploitation of nature.

But more importantly, LVT is in no way incompatible with other regulations or restrictions on land use. i.e. you can have LVT and a law against strip mining.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#383

Post by jaredklewis » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 11:42 PM UTC

chermi wrote: post #331

jaredklewis wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your analysis, but putting that aside, you are ignoring the fact that LVT has been applied in the real world. Denmark, Estonia, Singapore, Taiwan... Obviously disentangling effects is hard, but there is no evidence that suggests it has the deleterious effects you mention.

I thought in Singapore it was all termed leases? That the government always owns the land?

It's not exactly the same, but pretty close.

LVT: You own the land, you just have to pay these taxes on it every year or we will force you to sell it so we can collect our taxes.

Leaseshold: We own the land, but you can buy a 99-year leasehold, and you can use the land (or sell your leasehold on the open market) as long as you continue to pay the rent. You might also be able to extend your leasehold when it expires, but that is up to the government.

So the expiration part is different, but "taxes" vs "lease rent" is just semantics.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#384

Post by brailsafe » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

achenet wrote: post #169

brailsafe wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see both an automatically adjusting dynamic tax on owning more than one property in the same municipal or arbitrarily useful region, as well as dynamically banning the ownership of more than one. Everytime I mention this, I get "blah blah we have a democracy blah blah freedom" etc.. but it's no such a democracy if one particular age-range dor demographic of people owns all the assets and politically prote…

If I'm not mistaken there is a tax on secondary residences in France. I am not an accountant, but my understanding is there is a "taxe d'habitation" from which primary residences are exempt, but which must be paid on secondary residences. Of course, this can be gamed via starting a real estate company which buys the secondary residence, claiming that it is for "business purposes", but the basic idea of using taxation…

Right, but it's still kind of a joke because that's just what you would pay on any normal investment's appreciation. Land is treated as a commodity that can't go down in price.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#385

Post by foxglacier » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

ElProlactin wrote: post #356

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you think the racism and sexism is a key part of what enabled economic mobility and prosperity for others bitching about beliefs people held in the past that are now considered unfashionable/wrong/a drag on society is whattaboutism at best.

> Unless you think the racism and sexism is a key part of what enabled economic mobility and prosperity for others... It is an historical fact that women and minorities were excluded and discriminated against in the 1800s, and that this was to the benefit of white men. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canad... https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-chinese-exclusi... https://www.wyohistory…

It's easy to criticize other cultures through the lens of your own. If you're not a moral relativist, then find the best culture as your benchmark, not your own - you're not going to be magically lucky enough to live in the one morally right culture in history. Some of your own beliefs about right and wrong are going to be backwards - if you can't face up to that, stop being a cultural supremacist.

Or accept that every culture does things that look bad to outsiders and that doesn't change the fact that they may have gilded ages - no matter how good social mobility is for black people today, it's still crap for chickens.