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

Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

drurywriting.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 66 posts

Re: Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

#51

Post by izendejas »

stretchwithme wrote: post #32
jballanc wrote: post #17

There is a word for this sort of viewpoint: Luddite fallacy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite_fallacy ) It amazes me how people fail to see their own Luddite-ism. Look, here's the deal: The Luddites protested the mechanization of the textile industry during the industrial revolution. Their reasoning was that if one person maintaining one machine could do the same work as 100 individual laborers, then that would…

I don't think public spending on research is the ultimate determinant of a nation's technological edge. After all, it was not government research that gave us the ability to manufacture Germany into submission. That came from people like Henry Ford. Even the airplane came from a private endeavor, while a government effort failed to get off the ground. And if you look to the decline of the last great empire, Great Bri…

Does ARPANET mean anything to you? Without ARPANET, it's quite possible we wouldn't have the massive growth that has resulted from an open internet that doesn't discriminate packets. Would you have preferred Telcos (or other "private endeavors") designing the internet protocols with proprietary standards and full control over every packet (or lack thereof if they had had their way)? Yes, entrepreneurs have redefined the internet, but both complement each other very well and without one, you can't have the other.

Re: Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

#52

Post by Experimentalist »

ataggart wrote: post #31
jballanc wrote: post #17

There is a word for this sort of viewpoint: Luddite fallacy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite_fallacy ) It amazes me how people fail to see their own Luddite-ism. Look, here's the deal: The Luddites protested the mechanization of the textile industry during the industrial revolution. Their reasoning was that if one person maintaining one machine could do the same work as 100 individual laborers, then that would…

"This sort of viewpoint" is fundamentally different from the luddite fallacy. The crux of the fallacy is misapprehending the results of productive increase, thus mistaking a Good Thing for a Bad Thing. That's not what's going on in the article (unless you have a very different perspective on intergenerational debt). Now it is certainly true that we'll be in less trouble if the economy grows faster than the hole being…

I think "Ludic fallacy" might be a more accurate fallacy to cite.

The Ludic fallacy refers to making predictions based on past events, even though the probability of future outcomes includes variables not contained in the past dataset.

Re: Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

#53

Post by dustyreagan »

dustyreagan wrote: post #28
SlyShy wrote: post #3

As an 18 year old reading this sort of writing makes me want to leave the country. Except that I'd be taxed for ten years after expatriating, and there isn't any country that I know of as being similarly entrepreneurial. If anyone has suggestions, though, I would love to hear them.

Alternatively you could take some initiative and help make your current community and ultimately your country better.

The down votes on this make me sad, so I'm compeled to elaborate despite my better judgement.

Say you move to France because US taxes increase. It's great in France. Then they up taxes, so you move to Australia. Then Australia goes to war and you disapprove, so you move again. At what point do you stick it out?

I'm not saying your country or city of origin is by default the best region for you to live. But the only reason there are great places to live is because intelligent, creative, passionate people found a community they cared about and they stayed to work through the difficult problems. You could be one of these people... or you could move to a country with currently lower taxes.

Re: Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

#55

Post by jballanc »

ataggart wrote: post #31
jballanc wrote: post #17

There is a word for this sort of viewpoint: Luddite fallacy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite_fallacy ) It amazes me how people fail to see their own Luddite-ism. Look, here's the deal: The Luddites protested the mechanization of the textile industry during the industrial revolution. Their reasoning was that if one person maintaining one machine could do the same work as 100 individual laborers, then that would…

"This sort of viewpoint" is fundamentally different from the luddite fallacy. The crux of the fallacy is misapprehending the results of productive increase, thus mistaking a Good Thing for a Bad Thing. That's not what's going on in the article (unless you have a very different perspective on intergenerational debt). Now it is certainly true that we'll be in less trouble if the economy grows faster than the hole being…

I specifically mentioned the Luddite Fallacy with respect to the expressed concerns about healthcare. The notion that the cost to provide healthcare will not change relative to the ability of people to pay for healthcare is a fallacy of not understanding that technology can and does improve, become more efficient, and come down in price. This is, in a sense, the modern form of the Luddite Fallacy (since we've mostly gotten over the fear of having our jobs replaced by machines...the machines have already won).

I think this attitude of "healthcare is expensive, deal" is particularly dangerous because of how insidiously defeatist it is. You start thinking nothing can ever improve healthcare, so why bother paying for research into improving healthcare, so healthcare doesn't improve. Universal healthcare is socialist and evil and doesn't work, and nobody ever solved problems by increasing the size of the public sector and funding research through the public sector...

To which I say: BULLSHIT! This is the very fundamental problem that we face. The private sector has no reason to decrease the cost of healthcare when they can just pump up their profits instead. Or, at least, they'll have no incentive to do so until healthcare is rationed. Or they'll start to have an incentive to be cheaper when people can no longer afford insurance. Either of those scenarios is not pretty, and will have a nasty transition period where people cannot get the care they need while the private sector figures out how to do things cheaper.

The public funds fire departments because structures burning, even private homes, is bad for society. If your house burns you become a burden on your neighbors or on the community, you can't be productive in the economy, etc. Why is it so hard, then, to see the parallels with healthcare? Healthy people are as or more beneficial to society as people with homes! If we can protect people's homes, why can't we protect their health?!?

Re: Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

#56

Post by hga »

jsz0 wrote: post #26
ianisborn wrote: post #4

Being a 22 year old myself, I'm grateful that nothing in here is surprising to me and that my parents made me start a savings account when I was young (like 10 or something). To be honest, I don't think I've met anyone from my generation who expects to see money from social security when they retire.

Social Security is good till 2040 at minimum. Some modest adjustments can extend it even further and more radical changes gets it to the 22nd century. All of this is possible without even touching the ~50% of the budget that goes towards military spending or raising payroll taxes significantly. My personal opinion is we shouldn't even consider cutting a single social safety net until military spending has been slashe…

Social Security isn't "good" for last year (FY2010) and so on, let alone 2040. Those funds in the "lockbox"? Spent on the general budget as soon as they were received, and right now SS expenditures are exceeding their dedicated taxes, requiring money from the general budget.

(According to this source http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html the projected deficit was going to be $41 billion as of the beginning of August, a couple of months before the end of FY 2010).

According to Wikiepedia FY 2010's DoD budget, all categories except the black budget was $663.8 billion; that's a bit less than the year's Social Security expenditures. As for it's relationship to the whole budget (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_defense_budget#Military_budg...):

"The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues. Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 25–29% of budgeted expenditures and 38–44% of estimated tax revenues."

The "including non-DOD" apparently includes:

"This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which is in the Department of Energy budget, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that is not military in nature, such as the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by NASA."

A substantial fraction of which can't be reasonably scored as "military spending".

Re: Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

#57

Post by crpatino »

tapp wrote: post #49

"You shouldn't expect (student loans) for your own kids... You might have to be your own kids’ bank when they need $40,000 for college like you did (they’ll need more)" I believe that's exactly backwards - they should need less total money if that happens. If student loans immediately ceased to be available, couldn't we expect the price of college education to drop in response?

Yes, and no...

If no student loans are available, affordability goes down followed by demand. The bottom feeder Universities get wiped out of the map first, but enrollment will fall across the board.

If a critical mass of applicants exist to support a reduced University System, a new equilibrium point will be found, and education cost will be cheaper. However, if this is not the case, the only survivors will probably be a handful of Ivy League schools, who will actually raise tuition and cater to the children of the wealthy.

Re: Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

#58

Post by dionidium »

rflrob wrote: post #36
thomas11 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how does digging up dinosaur bones in China contribute to technological advancement or productivity increases? Mind you, I'm all for science, but there are certain kinds of science that could be put on the back burner for a while in a financially tight situation.

Nobody knows whether it will or not---the most revolutionary discoveries tend to come from unexpected places. As far as I'm concerned, an atmosphere where science has to justify itself as practical is just asking for all the really revolutionary discoveries to be made elsewhere. Conflict of interest statement: I am a pure science graduate student, so take my opinions on science funding with an aliquot of NaCl.

It's also possible that the general acceptance and promotion of intellectual curiosity results in a culture in which more scientific discoveries are made.

Re: Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

#59

Post by _delirium »

loewenskind wrote: post #46
stretchwithme wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think public spending on research is the ultimate determinant of a nation's technological edge. After all, it was not government research that gave us the ability to manufacture Germany into submission. That came from people like Henry Ford. Even the airplane came from a private endeavor, while a government effort failed to get off the ground. And if you look to the decline of the last great empire, Great Bri…

>And if you look to the decline of the last great empire, Great Britain, in came in the wake of an expansion of the public sector Talk about oversimplifications that fit ones own viewpoint! A lot of things changed in the UK since they were at their peak. Correlation, Causation and all that jazz.

Also, it's not even correct: there's been a massive decline in the public sector in the UK since its peak as an empire. It was a state-centered monarchy with strong mercantilist policies, not some kind of libertarian paradise.

Re: Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

#60

Post by jojopotato »

ataggart wrote: post #38
jojopotato wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite get why people keep calling Social Security a ponzi scheme. A ponzi scheme is defrauding investors by saying that there has been growth in the assets and it's paying out dividends, SS doesn't make any claim like that. The real problem people are complaining about is the burden that was shared by many (by having lots of kids) is going to be shared by fewer and fewer people.

You're being overly narrow in your definition of a ponzi scheme. It's simply a scheme whereby, for an individual, the amount of money they receive will exceed the money they spend only so long as the ratio of new members to old members exceeds one. It's not a real investment as there is no productivity increase occurring; it's just an accounting game. And that's precisely how Social Security operates, and precisely w…

You're right, I am probably being to literal in my definition of a ponzi scheme.

I definitely agree that Social Security is going to go through growing pains as the population demographics change and benefits won't be the exact same as the previous generation, but I feel like people use the term "ponzi scheme" to smear the whole idea of Social Security rather than articulating why we shouldn't have it.

Post reply on HN