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Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

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Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#301

Post by gaius »

closeparen wrote: post #152
Domenic_S wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. This whole thread is full of cringe. TFA was about how silicon valley & Washington are The Elites -- out of touch with the working class and what are everyday problems for a huge swath of America. And the top 3 comments from the elite are: - Poor people are stupid - Poor people are bad at personal finance - More/better education (government) will help Did everyone suddenly forget all the un/underemployed college…

>Did everyone suddenly forget all the un/underemployed college graduates we've got? Are they stupid, too? I think you'll find the HN consensus is that they're stupid (or were tragically misled) for going to college in a major other than computer science or engineering.

major other than computer science or engineering

The unemployment rate for CS grads in the UK is 10%, one of the highest. It's been up as high as 13% in recent years. The skills shortage is a complete myth designed to lower wages by inflating supply.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#302

Post by gaius »

bmwe30is wrote: post #30

>Some are rooted, embedded in their communities; and some are trapped — because housing is unaffordable where the better paying jobs are. And the jobs that are high paying are not the jobs they built their lives on. There's some texture and nuance to this statement. I remember on NPR, they interviewed a lady whom mentioned similar sentiments; her and her husband had built a family, worked in the blue-collar industry…

Anecdotally I've moved nearly 6 times in the last 8 years.

You have never experienced being a part of a community, that is why you don't value it.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#303

Post by throwanem »

wutbrodo wrote: post #241
josiahpeters wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not like you're just pulling free money out of thin air by using a credit card. And it seems likely that the finance institutions behind the credit cards are offering them as a product that makes money and not as an act of goodwill. If everyone paid their credit cards off at the end of the month like they say they do, do you think credit cards would be advertised or pushed as hard as they are? The finance institu…

> i'm sure there are some people are responsible enough to never incur a finance charge from a credit card by always paying their monthly balance. I've never actually met one of those people. I used to say I was one of those people, but in reality if you had asked to look at my statement history I would have been embarrassed by how many times I ended up paying interest charges for things I probably shouldn't have pur…

> This is a really bizarre assertion: my bubble is such that I've literally never met someone (that I'm aware of, just as with your claim) who _doesn't_ pay their credit cards off in full each month.

That's one hell of a bubble. Almost no one does this. Source: worked customer service for an issuer for 18 months, ~150 calls/day, saw a broad cross-section of the customer base, and it was a rare day in which I talked to a monthly PIF.

Not so incidentally, that experience is also the reason why I so assiduously avoid revolving credit. If you're comfortably upper-middle-class or higher and assured of enough liquidity to cover whatever balance you choose to carry, it's a game you can play and win. If you're not, you're subsidizing those who are, not least because you're ineligible for the low-rate, high-credit-line points card products that monthly PIFs tend to qualify for.

And even if you're in the former category, it's still a hell of a risk to take, because if anything happens that negatively affects your liquidity in a significant way, you're suddenly a lot more screwed than you would be if you hadn't been using credit the way you were. A few times, I dealt with people who had found themselves in just that hole. There were worse kinds of calls to take, but not all that many.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#304

Post by throwanem »

josiahpeters wrote: post #269
wutbrodo wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i'm sure there are some people are responsible enough to never incur a finance charge from a credit card by always paying their monthly balance. I've never actually met one of those people. I used to say I was one of those people, but in reality if you had asked to look at my statement history I would have been embarrassed by how many times I ended up paying interest charges for things I probably shouldn't have pur…

> This is a really bizarre assertion: my bubble is such that I've literally never met someone (that I'm aware of, just as with your claim) who _doesn't_ pay their credit cards off in full each month. I'm probably halfway in between the working class and the tech bubble. In fact I grew up near the poverty line. I have a lot of lower class "technical debt" that I am still working to replace. Most recently my wife and w…

I'd love to find a time series of those proportions; my sense is that 29.7% is wildly overestimated, but it has been a very long time since I was in that business myself. Curious whether the proportions have changed, or whether my perspective at that time was skewed by the nature of my tier 1 customer service role.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#305

Post by gaius »

kuschku wrote: post #289
iagovar wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use debit cards though. I don't see credit cards often, but I do see everyone with debit cards. I pay almost everything with it since it's free, I can't screw up (debit cards have limits, or in any case the total amount of your bank account), easy, etc. I've been offered credit cards by my bank, but I do not trust them so I prefer to use a debit one. Also, Fnac or even supermarkets do offer cards, but I don't see…

Germany also heavily uses debit cards, actually. Like 90%+ of the population have an EC card (a German debit card network), in comparison to below 8% for credit cards.

It is more subtle than you think. In the UK the Consumer Credit Act means that the protections offered to the buyer are vastly better when paying by credit card vs debit card. Particularly online, you would be foolish to pay by debit rather than credit. That also drives consumer behaviour.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#306

Post by gaius »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #12

I can't take this kind of piece seriously anymore. The decrying of an out of touch elite is a cliche. This problem isn't getting any better because 1 it's a hard problem and 2 political gridlock keeps us from modernizing economic policy one way or another. Most the people in the tech bubble I know are keenly aware of their relative advantage. They want something done about income inequality. A lack of awareness is no…

They want something done about income inequality.

Something that doesn't involve them paying any (more) taxes, tho'. Just "someone" to do "something".

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#307

Post by timthorn »

gubby wrote: post #195
koonsolo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about starving on the street, I'm talking about everybody in US using credit cards for payments and repay. I'm talking about shops offering their own credit cards. You know when US people use their credit card? Every day. You know when Europeans use their credit card? When abroad. And our credit gets instantly paid by our normal bank account. For us, a credit card is the same as a debit card but with…

Actually, the UK has credit scores and credit cards, a large proportion of people use credit cards for daily spending.

Not only that, but your consumer rights are stronger when you use a credit card: http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-c...

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#308

Post by XorNot »

losteric wrote: post #96
koonsolo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole credit card system in US is made to rip off "stupid" people, extremely so. Nobody writes about that, probably because everyone from US thinks it's normal, and nobody from the rest of the world knows about it. But that system is made to screw all the people who are not good at personal finances.

The root cause of most American problems is poor public education. We're still over-emphasizing passing grades over effectively growing new American citizens... Personal finance is rarely offered and never mandatory, yet we collectively bare the burden of financial ignorance. The same applies to other subjects like statistics or civics.

No it isn't. The root cause of America's problems is a deep-seated, societal belief that you can always blame the victim and attendant governmental malfeasance and neglect in actually fixing the numerous traps which ensure that when something goes wrong, everyone piles on until that person is destitute.

American society is setup to find someone, anyone to pin a problem on, even if it would ruin that person, just to ensure that "everyone" doesn't have to think or worry about it existing. It is writ large a tragedy of the commons, where everyone thinks the specific wrong they experience is unAmerican but everything else is a failure of rugged individualism and bootstraps.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#309

Post by jpttsn »

randomdata wrote: post #276
icebraining wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say everybody got the necessary education to follow your path. Can Silicon Valley absorb the 27 million unemployed or underemployed workers in the US?

It doesn't really need to. That tremendous increase in supply would push wages to minimum wage. When devs are making minimum wage, they won't be in the bubble anymore.

Depends, of course, how fast demand grows.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#310

Post by krisroadruck »

gaius wrote: post #301
closeparen wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Did everyone suddenly forget all the un/underemployed college graduates we've got? Are they stupid, too? I think you'll find the HN consensus is that they're stupid (or were tragically misled) for going to college in a major other than computer science or engineering.

major other than computer science or engineering The unemployment rate for CS grads in the UK is 10%, one of the highest. It's been up as high as 13% in recent years. The skills shortage is a complete myth designed to lower wages by inflating supply.

Just tossing this out there, but do you think it might be marginally possible that not all CS grads are created equal and that on a bell curve, 10% is really not an insane amount to be the left-hand-side tail?
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