Working for someone vs. doing your own thing • Hacker News Board

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#161

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 7:59 AM UTC

simpss wrote: post #55

Thorentis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $530/mo Wow. Just wow. As an Australian, I cannot fathom having to include $530 into my monthly budget just to ensure I don't end up homeless (or heavily in debt) if I get really sick. I'm not a socialist (I'm quite a centrist when it comes to economic policies), but something about the US system absolutely must change.

Not sure how it works in Australia, but if i break down my salary by taxes in Eastern Europe, I'm paying 33% "social tax" which comes out to around 1900€/month. This breaks down further to 2 groups. One for pension and the other for healthcare. Pension is 20% from the total. (used to pay the current pensions) Healthchare is 13% from the total. This comes out at around 990€/month for "health insurance". There are adva…

Wow, you earn a lot for Eastern Europe. What do you do if I may ask?

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#162

Post by rahilb » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 8:05 AM UTC

wolco wrote: post #74

Thorentis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $530/mo Wow. Just wow. As an Australian, I cannot fathom having to include $530 into my monthly budget just to ensure I don't end up homeless (or heavily in debt) if I get really sick. I'm not a socialist (I'm quite a centrist when it comes to economic policies), but something about the US system absolutely must change.

Let's do the math. Someone making 100,000 On average you pay 2% of annual salary to health levy which gives you medicare 2000.00 If you are over 90k you pay 1.5 unless you have private insurance On average $2000. Plus on average $800 in extra like someone driving you to the hospital $4800 aus to usd = $3312.41 It looks like you are paying half. But the government is spending 7800 a year per person. So the additional…

I think you are missing the point of the system: you pay the difference in general income tax now so when you are unable to pay such levels the state (and those still paying income tax) take care of you. If you are always able to pay for private health insurance or are always being taxed highly on income you are very lucky and should have no problem kicking in for public health.

There is no minimum tax payable before accessing healthcare services: if you have no income, or are unlucky, you won’t die or be debt ridden for the rest of your life.

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#163

Post by keiferski » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 8:20 AM UTC

dvt wrote: post #56

iherbig wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not to be dismissive, but this post feels a bit like rambling without a clear thesis or main argument. The post opens with: >This is more of a brain dump or an internal monologue. I don’t intend to prove any point or convince you to start your own thing. Neither do I want to reassure you that working for someone else is the best option for most people. My goal here is simply to get my thoughts out so I can think cle…

Missed this, mea culpa. Speed-read through the first few paragraphs, as they seemed to be an extended introduction.

"When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.”

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#164

Post by arvinsim » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 8:34 AM UTC

JoeMayoBot wrote: post #16

Wondering how many other people are beginning to consider their future in this way. It's interesting that he linked to the a16z post on Passion Economy. As opportunities for remote work where each individual charts their own course increases, the future of work could change significantly.

I don't see this work for everyone. In the HN discussion[1] about Passion economy, someone mentioned that industries with the most creative and "passionate" people, the distribution of rewards follows the power law. Only a small percentage of the total industry will be able to capture the profits that is sustainable.

So yeah, I am skeptical that this is the "future of work".

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200795

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#165

Post by r34 » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 8:34 AM UTC

I never use term "working for someone". I can work "with someone" as a part of the team. In my native language (Polish) "employer" could be literally translated as "workgiver", which is a complete bullshit, because "work" is not a social construct, but kind of relation between living organism and nature (and only because of that it is derivately social).

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#166

Post by saberdancer » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 8:37 AM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #50

tempsy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your definition of prohibitively expensive? I've bought a gold plan off the exchange in California for Kaiser and it's $530/mo with no deductible. That's lower than I expected.

$530/month sounds insanely expensive to me as someone outside of the US. My private health insurance costs me approx $100/month. 530 is over half my rent (outside of a major city though, in the major cities rent is much higher)

Your insurance is probably heavily subsidized by government from income tax.

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#167

Post by trumbitta2 » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 8:38 AM UTC

Being alone is easily fixed by a coworking space

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#168

Post by knocte » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 9:07 AM UTC

saberdancer wrote: post #166

dkersten wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$530/month sounds insanely expensive to me as someone outside of the US. My private health insurance costs me approx $100/month. 530 is over half my rent (outside of a major city though, in the major cities rent is much higher)

Your insurance is probably heavily subsidized by government from income tax.

Yeah, and? It's not that the US has one of the lowest income tax rates in the world (in fact, it's one of the highest, especially to their citizens that work abroad).

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#169

Post by bisRepetita » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 9:17 AM UTC

davidgh wrote: post #114

daxfohl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, I just got back from the annual checkup with my 7yo, and the doctor mentioned that the strongest indicator of kids staying on a good path through adolescence is whether they regularly have dinner together as a family or not. That surprisingly exceeds any other socio-economic demographic indicator.

I’ve thought about this metric, a lot. There is no doubt that having family dinner has a lot of benefits. But I can help but ask myself - is family dinner a silver bullet, or is it that families who are holistically “doing it right” also make family dinner a priority?

I see that spending 30/45 minutes as a family is very important for communication. It helps understand daily life with its joys, issues, milestones. It helps bring peace in the family, and emotional support as well as practical planning. It helps to know each other. It's a no pressure situation, whoever wants to talk can talk, it's the best way to open up.

I've done it all my life, as a child and a parent, I have no idea why people would not want to enforce this.

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#170

Post by ss3000 » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 9:18 AM UTC

q-base wrote: post #147

kentrado wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to try that approach but I just don't have the energy after working all day to come home and start investing time chasing wildly creative projects.

I would say that this also depends a lot on how draining and intense your day job is. Some jobs require too much of you to be able to do anything once you are done - or do so in periods. You will probably have to decide what is most important to you. You cannot chase and strive for promotions, extra responsibility etc. on your day job while still wanting to do your own thing in your spare time. Perhaps you need to lo…

I would argue that _most_ full time jobs probably require too much of us than we should be willing to accept, regardless of if we have energy left over to do anything else outside of those hours.

40 hours per week is more than half of most people's waking hours. That's a terrifying amount of my life to have to spend on something I don't _absolutely love_ doing, and I sincerely hope I can find a way out of it sooner rather than later.