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

The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 324 posts

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#311

Post by eru »

elif wrote: post #226
eru wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you HAVE to do a mortgage, then its likely that renting will be a better deal for you for over 10 years straight, before the mortgage pays dividends. How do mortgages pay dividends? In any case, it's all about opportunity costs, and yields. To give an extreme example: if the house costs 100x the yearly rent, you are probably better off putting your money in the stock market instead of buying the property, and pa…

When i paid off my house and calculated my total payments, it came out to 6.8 years of the rent we had been paying when we bought it, (which was of course going up annually so it's probably better than 6x) 100x is just bad decision making

100x was a bit extreme for the sake of a simple example, but rental yields in eg Singapore are around 2-4% apparently. And they don't have capital gains tax. So investing in stocks or bonds and using the returns to pay rent really does look more realistic in that part of the world.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#312

Post by DontchaKnowit »

vladms wrote: post #175
kelnos wrote: post #161

> ordered breakfast: scrambled eggs back in the days when people ate eggs, and, more recently, banana and granola with skim milk. It's funny how much life cycles. I do kinda remember a phase where people were eating a "healthier" breakfast of some kind of fruit, and when granola became popular, and when milk fat was considered the worst thing you could do to your body. But now eggs are fine, again. Great, even.

I always find fun these "generalizations". Like: "Eggs are fine". If you are a 50kg person that eats 20 eggs for breakfast each day I doubt it would be fine. We would need something like LD50, or even better a range over a period (eggs are mostly fine if you eat between 2 and 5 per week)

Idk my grandma was like 5'6" and tiny, probably like 120lbs. She ate a dozen eggs for breakfast often and lived a very long healthy life before passing of lung cancer at an old age.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#313

Post by somenameforme »

eru wrote: post #309
somenameforme wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germ theory didn't exist, or at least wasn't accepted, until the late 19th century. In fact even things like handwashing before surgery weren't accepted until a similar timeline. Prior to that it would have been insulting to insinuate that a surgeons hand's might be 'unclean.' All the money in the world couldn't change this lack of knowledge. And indeed one of the Founding Fathers, George Washington, was likely kille…

> And most importantly of all - this isn't an option. Societies that fail to maintain themselves will simply die off and end up being replaced. Much of what I'm saying here runs face first into contemporary ideological ideals, but the reality of what I'm saying will win simply because contemporary ideals are not self sustaining. You are right to an extent. First, if the inclination to have more or fewer children is a…

The Catholic Church persists because of followers of the religion, not Priests. That those followers have healthy fertility rates is the main reason it, and quite a number of other religions, are growing to rapidly growing - in spite of the perception many in the West would have about the global increase of secularism. In fact we're likely to become a far more religious species in the future thanks to secular individuals removing themselves from the gene pool with a disproportionately high frequency.

And replacement is not about genes, but about culture. Europe experimented with mass migration with peoples of very different cultures. The idea is that they would nonetheless be assimilated, integrated into the culture, and everybody would grow all the richer for it. It instead just led to the emergence of countries within countries, increasing violence, extreme social divides and extremism, and is arguably playing a significant role in the ongoing decline of Europe. Migration is, in general, a good thing - but if it ever goes beyond a rather small scale, you're just setting the stage for your own downfall. Migration was even one of the major causes of the fall of the Roman Empire!

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#314

Post by Michelangelo11 »

motohagiography wrote: post #230

what stands out of me is a sense of place the hotel represented that isn't present anywhere today. if you were at the hotel when something occurred, the hotel was a part of america and by being there, you were there , a small part of the story. the starkness in the story to me is that the culture today lacks belonging. no matter how many followers you have, you will never belong anywhere the way this Irving character…

Wonderful comment. Thank you. I think the "theme park to its former meaning" line is very right.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#315

Post by Snoozus »

Reefersleep wrote: post #283
mikepurvis wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, there is also a faction that appears to argue against overly studying or obsessing about nutrition science, saying that if you really just prioritize variety, moderation, and made-at-home, then you're already 90% of the way there.

I wonder what the value is of that advice, it's so incredibly vague. What's "varied"? What's "moderated"? Feels a bit like an excuse to stay ignorant.

In a situation where one does not know a lot it also mitigates the risk that the thing you ate a lot of turns out to be really unhealthy.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#316

Post by eru »

somenameforme wrote: post #313
eru wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And most importantly of all - this isn't an option. Societies that fail to maintain themselves will simply die off and end up being replaced. Much of what I'm saying here runs face first into contemporary ideological ideals, but the reality of what I'm saying will win simply because contemporary ideals are not self sustaining. You are right to an extent. First, if the inclination to have more or fewer children is a…

The Catholic Church persists because of followers of the religion, not Priests. That those followers have healthy fertility rates is the main reason it, and quite a number of other religions, are growing to rapidly growing - in spite of the perception many in the West would have about the global increase of secularism. In fact we're likely to become a far more religious species in the future thanks to secular individ…

The US (and even the UK) are a lot better at integrating immigrants than most of Europe.

> Migration was even one of the major causes of the fall of the Roman Empire!

You might like https://acoup.blog/ for a few more nuanced takes.

> The Catholic Church persists because of followers of the religion, not Priests. That those followers have healthy fertility rates is the main reason it, and quite a number of other religions, are growing to rapidly growing [...]

The same logic can apply to western culture. People already living in the west are the 'priests'.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#317

Post by DanielHB »

eru wrote: post #308
DanielHB wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes for first-hand contracts, which are impossible to get. So your options if you are not born into the first-hand contract queue (people put their 5 year old children on the queue) is to rent second-hand which was what I was doing. The HOAs don't let you be a landlord and rent out your apartment for more than 2 years at a time, and you need to have a reason like you are moving to another country for studies. Technic…

Renting second-hand means 'subletting'? Or something else? > It is all very complicated and specific to Sweden, but this HOA corporation thing avoids a lot of fees/taxes when selling/buying the apartment (which is a BIG deal, stamp tax alone is 4% of the asset last I heard). But you get these downsides as well. Yes, routing around regulation and taxes often gets pretty complicated. Here in Singapore we don't have ren…

> Renting second-hand means 'subletting'? Or something else?

Renting second-hand means renting outside of the rent-controlled system. Either from someone who owns the apartment (or rather a stake in the HOA corporation) or someone who has a first-hand (rent-controlled) contract.

The HOA corporation thing is actually really nice most of the time, the two big downsides is that you can't do major renovations or renting your apartment without asking permission.

The paperwork to buy/sell real estate is really minimal if you buy through a HOA, also makes mortgages paperwork a lot easier. HOAs are regulated by the government so banks only need minimal information to authorize loans for HOA-property. Also the banks won't loan to buy property in mismanaged HOAs (HOAs with too much loans) so you don't need to do a lot of due diligence yourself.

So for real state ownership the government kinda handed over control to HOAs and decided to regulate the HOAs instead of doing it all themselves.

Note that HOA is the equivalent term in english, in Sweden the name is BRF (bostadsrättsförening) which means the same thing.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#318

Post by forgetfreeman »

bigbacaloa wrote: post #265
forgetfreeman wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that even apply here? Assuming you aren't living with family it's fair to assume you have to spend money on housing. So the question is, do you want to keep some of that money in the form of equity or give all of it to your landlord?

You're ignoring the costs of buying and selling and supposing incorrectly that property always appreciates on a relevant time scale.

I am doing no such thing. Down payment goes straight to principal, so that's equity banked from day one. And you're going to have to define "relevant time scale" because property demonstrably appreciates over time.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#319

Post by forgetfreeman »

cratermoon wrote: post #307
forgetfreeman wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For someone who doesn't do upkeep, or can't afford competent contractors to do it, major repairs can happen any time, without warning. We're in violent agreement here. Home ownership is unforgiving if you lack all ability and the willingness to learn. I'd like to believe that this level of learned helplessness is rare enough in the adult population that it shouldn't factor meaningfully into a discussion of major in…

> I'd like to believe You'd like to believe in a fantasy that doesn't exist? There are netflix shows for that.

So you're saying there's a mass of helpless financial illiterates walking around unsure of which end of a screwdriver does the work? Depressing if true.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#320

Post by ralferoo »

gnarlynarwhal42 wrote: post #299
fsckboy wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not poorly explained, it's poorly understood (to paraphrase Mr Miyagi, "no bad teacher, only bad students") This is like the Monty Hall problem and I am Vos Savant. Just listen and learn. Part of the value of a house is the value of living in it, the rent. It costs to live in a house, and the amount it costs is the rent. And this is true whether you own the house or if somebody else owns the house. Living in a h…

You are completely ignoring equity

Equity isn't relevant to the argument, that's why.

The argument is simply that by living in a house yourself, you are effectively paying rent on that property at the same rate that the house could be rented out if you were not living on it.

Any equity gain in the property itself isn't relevant to the rental value discussion, rather the separate transaction between you and the bank, whereby they lend you money up front to buy an asset and the terms by which you repay that money and the capital gains on that asset in the mean time.

The potential rental income of a property may be similar to the value of the mortgage payments, but generally won't be over the lifetime of the mortgage. As I stated 2 posts up, the cost of a mortgage is front loaded, so the price you pay on a mortgage at the start is generally more than the equivalent rental price would be for the same house, and towards the latter stages of the mortgage it will be much lower, because the monthly mortgage payments are still the same but the real-world cost of those payments has decreased due to inflation.

The simple point is that any time you choose to live in a property, you are either paying rent for the privilege of doing so, or you are missing out on the rental income from someone else who could be paying you to live there instead.

Post reply on HN