Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

alexdanco.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 160 posts

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#101

Post by njepa »

paulddraper wrote: post #86
coldtea wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USSR was run by a party elite, devastated with millions dead/imprisoned in their purges, devastated with millions of dead in WWII, and starting from an agrarian economic base much behind the US of the time (1917) to begin with. Without those aspects (but keeping equality more or less same, e.g. like Swedish style democratic socialism) it could be a very different story. It's not like inequality produced them. If anyt…

Alright s/USSR/Sweden/ and same comment

Sweden had a very good run during the USSR time period. Especially post war until the ~90s. Somewhat ironically partly because we wanted to be more [0], and less [1], like the US.

[0] “In the end, all such authoritarian measures were dismissed by the Commission, which instead went with Sundbärg's goal of bringing the best sides of America to Sweden (unsurprisingly, as Sundbärg himself wrote the conclusions). First on his list of urgent reforms were universal male suffrage, better housing, general economic development, and a broader popular education which could counteract ‘class and caste differences.’” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Emigration_Commissio...

[1] “Always a dedicated traveler, Mr. Palme after graduation hitch-hiked around the United States for four months, visiting 34 states on a $300 shoestring budget that took him into pockets of poverty in a land of plenty. It was a shocking experience for the young aristocrat. He recalled having seen 'how poor some people were in the world's richest land.' The advanture marked a turning point in his life, and the comment was virtually a theme for what was to become the socialist ideology of his political life.” https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/01/obituaries/olof-palme-ari...

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#103

Post by throwawayjava »

paulddraper wrote: post #81
m1sta_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still a lot of cheap housing in the USA. It's just not in the bay area anymore.

I bought my first house in 2015 in Utah, about 20 min from downtown Salt Lake City. Was not anything special. 1976 construction, 2000 sqft, 0.2 acre, 5 bed, 3 bath, 2 car garage, average condition, just under $200k. Glassdoor average salary for "Software Engineer" (not Senior, etc.) in Salt Lake is currently $89k, 14% less than national average. [1] Single-income house ownership is extremely common here. [1] https://…

Mid-tier cities give a lot of bang for your buck -- Salt Lake, Phoenix, the midwestern midsized cities (Cleveland, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Pittsburgh), Atlanta, etc. Even Portland compared to other coastal options.

And even in some of the "very expensive" housing markets, you can still find homes that are affordable relative to income within 40 minutes of downtown areas. Chicago and Boston both come to mind.

The primary differences, as far as I can tell, are that:

1) Niche senior positions are harder to find in cheaper cities (think "deep hard tech expertise"). For example, nearly all of the major corporate research labs in CS (MSR, Google Brain, Google Research, IBM Research, Oracle Labs, ...) are in or around expensive CoL areas. On the startup side, "hard tech" startups are very often more capital-intensive so are even more attracted to geographic VC bubbles.

2) Moving up within BigCos is sometimes more difficult if you're in a satellite office.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#104

Post by jdhn »

unreal37 wrote: post #64
jdhn wrote: post #3

His paragraph about jobs is spot on. I've seen this in my own workplace on a team that is 75% contractors and 25% full time employees. Contractors are seen as completely replaceable, and if one leaves they'll be replaced with another one after a quick round of interviews. However, if a full time employee leaves, the process to replace them seems to take much longer as it appears that those doing the hiring are lookin…

The fix is to always hire contractors, let the bad ones go, and convert the good ones to full time if you can.

This is what should happen, but doesn't. It could be that this is specific to my company, but it's quite rare that this actually happens. There are people who have been contractors for 10+ years.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#105

Post by roenxi »

coldtea wrote: post #26

> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…

> To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality.

> Back in the 50s and up to the 80s a single-income middle class household could still send a kid to college, buy a house, and so on.

Is the right word inequality? There aren't less college places, houses in NY/the Bay, etc in the world than there were in the 80s. By extension, the problem is not enough new wealth creation rather than inequality.

I'm open to being wrong, but at a guess there aren't all that many rich people who consume more than 2 degrees, live in 2 houses, etc. There are those that do, but they are relatively rare. Mostly they just get first pick from the existing stock, except in housing where they buy but then rent out in my experience, so it isn't exactly removing stock from general availability. If the rich disappeared tomorrow, would that free up enough resources that the poor could all have "whatever"?

I've no answer, but rhetorically I doubt it. The rich physically can't consume that many resources in absolute terms.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#106

Post by throwawayjava »

jgalt212 wrote: post #72
coldtea wrote: post #26

> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…

> It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree not so sure about that line. Many of the whatevs are scraping by. https://www.financialsamurai.com/scraping-by-on-500000-a-yea...

Nearly every line of that budget screams "luxury", with the exception of two things:

1. The skyrocketing cost of college really does create enormous problems. I'm assuming the family profiled are either doctors or lawyers, because otherwise those $32K/yr payments would only last for a few years at most. (I paid $40K/yr in loans for both my wife and I when I got my first real job, but that happened exactly once... and we weren't buying BMWs or Land Rovers while we were doing it.)

2. Pensions, which have largely eroded away in the private sector, were enormously valuable. The switch from pensions to 401(K)s without a significant corresponding increase in pay is one of the most significant ways in which the real value of take-home pay has declined in the past 30 years.

But everything else could be cut in half, probably without even noticing:

1. $42K/yr on childcare is au pair/"elite" preschool money.

2. $5,000/mo mortgage is pretty high, even for a family of four in a high CoL area.

3. Three vacations a year @ $6,000 a pop. I take more than three vacations a year, but most of them are closer to $500 for a family of 4 (camping/backpacking). The expensive ones never get higher than $3,000. There's "getting away from work for a while" and then there's "flying a family of 4 to Paris a few times a year". The former is not a "luxury" especially for a high stress job, but the latter definitely is.

4. Luxury cars. For $10K they could buy a perfectly functional new car (which would last 10 years) every year. The only way that these are not "luxuries" is if they're required for work.

5. $3K on clothing per year, every year. That's high even for someone who has to dress nicely for work. Yes, nice suits are expensive, but they also last a long time. And your kids definitely don't need "meetings with high value clients" clothing.

6. $1K/mo on "children's lessons". I know how this happens, because I charged up to $100/hr for private tutoring while in grad school. But it's entirely unnecessary. It really is OK for your kid to get a B in an AP course. And if they need $100/hr quality tutoring for every course they're taking, the real world is going to be a rude experience. Also, $1K/mo on "children's lessons" while the kids are also young enough to need childcare is absolutely insane.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#107

Post by ErikVandeWater »

JackFr wrote: post #15

This is pretty muddled thinking. He talks about categorical variables and then points out that they are not normally distributed. Which doesn’t make sense. (It almost could, but he skips an important step.) Apart from that it's mostly handwaving and opinion with no actual data. When you don't use data it's unsurprising that your personal experience matches your hypothesis.

Yes, he just chose a satisfactory cutoff for whatever counts as a "true" flagship. Some people would say only this generation iPhone. Some would say only this generation iPhone + Pixel + Galaxy. Some would say this generation, and the previous generation of iPhone + Pixel + Galaxy.

And even then, we're ignoring features like internal storage capacity for each phone.

Even if you are making $10 million a year, you split that between your yacht, your car, your mansion, and jewelry for the wifey.

You aren't going to have the biggest mega-yacht and no jewelry for the wifey, so there will be a tapering at the higher end of the demand curve for yachts for people making $10 million a year.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#108

Post by pryelluw »

roenxi wrote: post #105
coldtea wrote: post #26

> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…

> To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. > Back in the 50s and up to the 80s a single-income middle class household could still send a kid to college, buy a house, and so on. Is the right word inequality? There aren't less college places, houses in NY/the Bay, etc in the worl…

Yes, I think the word inequality is correct. It comes as a result of hoarding wealth.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#109

Post by Zarath »

coldtea wrote: post #26

> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…

> Back in the 50s and up to the 80s a signle-income middle class household could still send a kid to college, buy a house, and so on. And living in NY or the Bay are was still very affordable (to the point that both areas had large artistic / bohemian communities living there, and not of the latte sipping urban wealth variety, but the penny pinching / stick it to the man / junky variety).

Houses are very affordable in almost every part of the country. Buying a home is really not that difficult.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#110

Post by throwawayjava »

scarejunba wrote: post #98
pjc50 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few markets have a market for "bad" employees, surely? What matters in the tournament situation is that the number #2 employee isn't as good as the #1 employee, regardless of what absolute quality level we're talking about.

There are things with low differentiation. Average day care is fine. Average janitorial services are okay. Average checkout operator is okay. No one needs the exceptional janitor. Fwiw though, I think there's lots of room for the mediocre software engineer. Enough work requires little to no skill. I've done some of it myself b

> Fwiw though, I think there's lots of room for the mediocre software engineer. Enough work requires little to no skill. I've done some of it myself b

Unlike janitors or checkout operators, software work can be outsourced. Outsourcing doesn't make sense for high-skill software engineering for two reasons. First, actually writing the code is only a small part of the job. And second, even when it comes to writing the code, there's still a real quality difference between top US candidates and top international candidates [1].

But software work that requires "little to no skill" is exactly the sort of thing you can successfully outsource.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/us-computer-science-...

Post reply on HN