I remember being outraged at her tearing up John Paul II’s picture. The media in the U.S. did a great job of hiding why she did it. I was not outraged at her when I found out her justified reasons for doing so. That was the first time I became consciously aware that news is a business and that that business thrives when it generates outrage. I no longer fall victim to this.
She’s far more the saint than that bastard John Paul II.
EDIT: Ironic this is flagged. I’m proud of this actually. I feel a slight kinship with Sinead now. In honor of her death would that we all, in our own way, tear to shreds the image of John Paul II!
You started a religious flamewar and then poured fuel into it in multiple places. That's why your comment is flagged. Please don't post like that here.
Your comment was just fine in the first paragraph and broke the site guidelines with the second paragraph—not because we care what you think about popes, but because such swipes predictably lead to internet dreckfests and we're simply trying to have a forum that doesn't suck. At least to the extent possible.
I’ve been on this site since the beginning. I change usernames periodically. I understand the desire to avoid flame wars.
Here’s a sincere question. If I called Charles Manson a bastard would that be flamebait? Are we at the point that calling out the objectively verified despicable acts of a person is flamebait?
It wasn’t a swipe at the man. Sinead suffered a lot for ripping his image apart. She has died now. It is appropriate to point out she did not deserve the reaction and that the protector of her abusers did deserve to have his image shredded.
It’s always ok to call out those who abuse or protect abusers. I care not that my post got flagged. I’m glad of it. I feel a tiny bit like Sinead. Even after all that is known about John Paul 2 people still can’t face reality about the man.
We obviously don’t agree. I’ll stop posting about this and just read all responses.
"That bastard John Paul II" was obvious flamebait—of course it was a swipe. You're broadcasting to thousands of people when you post here. Did you really think some people wouldn't react? Is it a high-quality conversation about Sinead O'Connor to have people yell at each other about popes?
> It’s always ok to call out those who abuse or protect abusers. I care not that my post got flagged. I’m glad of it. I feel a tiny bit like Sinead
We're trying to avoid online callout/shaming culture on this site. It reliably leads to poor-quality discussion. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a... Generally, the state of high indignation (and its correlate, high moral justification) isn't congruent with the intended spirit of conversation here.
It's one thing I hate about this site. You can't tell "the truth as you know it," and instead have to pretend to be "curious." I'm generally curious, so it's not a difficult requirement most days.
Well, guess what? Some things are actually bad-and it's obvious—and we are experienced enough to know it. Child abuse would fall into that category. After confirmation, no "curiosity" is needed in that instance.
(I understand the angle about conversation deteriorating quickly, and am still here, right? But damn I hate it when we can't state obvious truth because it is not "polite." )
This type of trolley-problem questioning doesn't work for getting a clearer picture of HN moderation. HN is not a letter-of-the-law kind of place. There's no comprehensive doctrine covering all cases, and it would be foolish of us to try to make one.
Calling Hitler a bastard here is online callout/shaming culture. It's a swipe against Hitler's character. It's not curious discussion to discuss Hitler that way.
Not to mention that only a few short decades ago homosexuals had to meticulously hide their sexuality and any of their relationships for fear of getting fired simply because of who they were (and, before that, imprisoned!). And countless other examples. Anyone who believes "cancel culture" is a recent development is breathtakingly ignorant.
That's a fair point. There's arguably an inflection point where media became "mass" media that's hard to pin down but somewhere in the late 1980's-early 1990's where 24 hour news and the internet were in their infancy. I'm sure there's a smart thesis here that a media expert could make ;)
As a child, I thought the Pope and the church helped poor people and practiced showing people how to be good to each other by following the ten commandments. When Sinead O Connor ripped up the picture of the Pope on SNL I remember asking why.
Someone said the reason was because she was crazy. They were lying to me.
Sinead O'Connor was drawing attention to child sexual abuse when nobody else was.
> She’s far more the saint than that bastard John Paul II.
I don't know about JP2's involvement in child sexual abuse (not doubting you, just saying I don't know *) but Ratzinger / Benedict absolutely deliberately prevented investigation into, and facilitated (by moving rapist priests into new parishes), child sexual abuse.
Years later I apologized to O'Connor on Twitter and she took it with grace.
* Update: some research showed the Vatican, under JP2, opposed extensions of the statutes of limitations in sex abuse cases.
Ratzinger / Benedict absolutely deliberately prevented investigation into, and facilitated (by moving rapist priests into new parishes), child sexual abuse.
Dan I don't think that comment was designed to be religious flamebait. It may seem like sectarianism if you're not Catholic so I understand feeling this way, but the people who are the most angry about Catholic priests raping children are people that grew up Catholic like myself.
Ie, this isn't attacking anyone on the basis of their religion.
I'd probably say the comment could be improved by adding a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Pope_John_Paul_II instead of 'that bastard' but criticism of people that facilitate child abuse is quite reasonable and very separate from attacking members of a particular religion.
That’s the reason I called it out as respectfully as I could. I was hoping OP would edit the comment given the rest of it is valid and gets the same point across.
"Vibes" is not a concept that enters my mind while moderating this place. If you want to understand the real principle by which we moderate HN, something like "prioritize curiosity over indignation" would be closer to the mark.
> actual real child sexual abuse is a much bigger problem
Of course. It's far more important than anything that goes on on an internet message board like HN. But you might be under a misconception of what HN is for, if you think we should let it be inundated by high-indignation, high-repetition threads about the most important things in the world. That would make it something like a current affairs or general news site, which is not the game we're trying to play here. In fact it's the main game we're trying not to play, as the guidelines try to make clear: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Those comments are from 12 days ago and there's a simple reason why they weren't moderated at the time: we didn't see them. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here.
In honor of Sinead’s death it seems appropriate to tear to shreds the image of John Paul II. You are on the wrong side, morally speaking, in this Dang.
It's simply the practical question of what type of site HN is trying to be. We want curious conversation, not people bashing each other, which is what flamebait leads to.
Commenters who get too sure of their moral positions tend to do a lot of this. I'm not saying the moral positions are wrong (I probably agree a lot of the time, certainly Sinead did a courageous thing, etc. etc.). But the quality of discussion this leads to is predictably poor, evokes worse from others, and tends to go straight to the bottom of the internet barrel. We're trying to not get sucked completely into that muck here—a difficult task to even partly achieve, so we need everyone's help.
I mostly like the moderation on this site, but I think you're missing the mark on this one.
The man - and the institution - facilitated and covered up the abuse and rape of countless children. Calling him a bastard seems pretty small potatoes for you to start clutching your pearls over.
One has to distinguish the importance of a topic from the quality of internet conversation about it. We moderate for the latter, not the former. Most important topics, including most atrocities, don't make HN's front page, and most things that do make the front page are neither important nor an atrocity.
People tend to respond to activating topics with intense pre-existing feelings. That's understandable—I'm not criticizing it and it would be futile to try to change it. But it does not make for curious conversation, which is what HN is for: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Curious conversation is about learning new things, changing one's orientation, and so on. That's one reason why the best HN threads tend to have a whimsical aspect—when a topic isn't high-stakes and one doesn't have a pre-existing position about it, curiosity is the natural state. Not so much otherwise.
I think his last sentence doesn't go far enough - I'm not sure how far I'd need to go to describe someone who covered up systemic child abuse on a global scale
Same in Ireland, some high profile cases were prosecuted- but not the majority, and nothing happened the nuns - especially the evil that ran the mother and baby homes. 300+ babies discarded in a septic tank.
Thank you. No mention of prosecutions in that article. Perhaps many of the people who were in charge are no longer alive, but perhaps some still there. There's no mention of it that I see.
Sugar is the worst substance for public health ever. It's literally poison.
Its hyperbole meant to convey a sense of how bad sugar (particularly added sugars) is to the health of the population. Sugar is in everything (more hyperbole!) in the U.S. America by and large is addicted to sugar and it’s very bad for us. Everything is over sweetened. Can’t even buy bacon without sugar added in some form or other.
Hyperbole usually leads to a lot of unnecessary discussion where people tell you that it's an exaggeration and so on. A good old meta-discussion to eventually conclude that their stance on a topic was pretty similar after all.
Charitable interpretation by listener is indeed an important part of productive conversation. But charitable, I.e. Not intentionally or accidentally disingenuous statement by the speaker is also an important part. "You should know what I meant" rarely leads to good outcomes, not the least because typically any 4 people will have 5 Completely different but equally confident interpretations on what was so obviously meant :-)
Anyhoo. Yes sugar can be good and sugar can be bad. "It's literally poison and worst thing ever" does not productively move the needle of the conversation, almost regardless of interpretation.
Leaving aside the hyperbole and going back to the question from before, when is dietary sugar advantageous, and is adding extra refined sugar ever beneficial? To my understanding sugar is present in foods that are good for other reasons, but the sugar itself is only useful in niche situations when you need blood glucose fast, and there's almost never a health reason to add more.
This is in contrast to carbs in general, and to protein and fat, where some level of each is useful in the diet and provides a reduction in mortality and CVD risk.
> Leaving aside the hyperbole and going back to the question from before, when is dietary sugar advantageous, and is adding extra refined sugar ever beneficial?
As far as I know, it could be useful in case of huge need for calories.
Which basically never happens with modern lifestyle. But I guess may apply to firefighters working for several days or soldier lugging around piles of equipment.
But unlikely to apply to anyone reading HN. Unless they climb Mount Everest for fun, or volunteer as firefighters or are unlike enough to end in a war zone.
I know people who believe precisely that "sugar is a poison". The poster who wrote this could have been agreeing with them, or could have been using hyperbole. Who knows?
Everyone speaks in hyperbole occasionally. One doesn’t need to rely on it but has its uses. It’s sometimes used to convey the strength of a belief. For instance, “I’m so mad at you I could kill you.”. It has other uses. That you appear to be unaware of how hyperbole is often times used and that it is a normal part of communication suggests that you are not really ready to participate in discussions.
I disagree. What would make it fair is that they put air conditioning in vehicles that service areas that have a high probability of being very hot during the summer. UPS should pay a price for neglecting the welfare of its workers for so many years and pay up to put air conditioning in its vehicles.
Give and take does not always mean a fair deal. Some negotiating positions are just plain wrong. If it is infeasible to retrofit vehicles then one has to accept that but this doesn't make it fair.
> What would make it fair is that they put air conditioning in vehicles that service areas that have a high probability of being very hot during the summer
Or pause delivery by ambient-temperature vehicles during the hottest parts of the day. There are a number of solutions which, while not suited to Twitter, can be worked out between adults not drawing red lines for the public's consumption.
Note that we don't have the NMA. We're going off highlights, one bullet point among which reads "safety and health protections, including..."
This entire thread is a brilliant illustration of why compromise cannot be made in public anymore.
I think you didn't read carefully what I wrote. I will state the last sentence again. If it is infeasible to add air conditioning then that is a reality but the compromise is not fair.
My overall point though was that the act of compromising does not make a deal fair. Some compromises are still unfair.
It is not fair in this day and age to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather. There may be no other feasible alternative but let's not declare this part of the outcome fair.
> It is not fair in this day and age to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather
Why? (Honestly.)
This reminds me of the windowless-apartment debate in New York. Community board members in rent-controlled units complain it's not fair for the poor to have no windows. As a result, the cheapest (legal) apartment was a bells-and-whistles deal. Meanwhile, I (illegally) subletted a windowless room in a full-floor loft for $900/month; even when (years later) I had a window, I put blackout curtains over it. The loft was a fair deal for me. Even if it offended another's sensibilities.
Give and take doesn't make a deal fair. But it indicates both sides have bargaining power. Given a trade-off between more hours, higher pay, a faster roll-out of electric vehicles, and/or more hires, on one hand, and A/C retrofitting, on the other hand, there are valid--even fair--tradeoffs the parties could have made that differ from yours or mine.
> It is not fair in this day and age to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather
Why?
Because my sense of what was is fair tells me this is not fair. To you it is fair. So be it.
But it indicates both sides had bargaining power.
It does not indicate this. Consider an extreme example.
Labor: We need a $5 an hour raise.
Management: We will give you $0.01 raise.
Labor takes deal because they, in reality, had very little relative bargaining power. But a compromise was made! The act of compromising does not, in and of itself, indicate anything other than that a compromise was agreed upon. It does not indicate fairness, relative bargaining power, or anything else without further information.
My point was to object to original characterization of this being fair since it was a compromise.
I don't know what the tradeoffs were in the UPS bargaining. I do know that requiring someone to drive in an airconditionless vehicle in hot weather is not fair.
> Labor: We need a $5 an hour raise. Management: We will give you $0.01 raise.
Labor takes deal because they, in reality, had very little relative bargaining power. But a compromise was made!
Except this doesn't reflect the reality of the deal. Real pay bumps, hiring commitments, a new paid holiday--these aren't minor concessions. There was palpable uncertainty around whether there would be a strike. Teamsters estimates the value of concessions around $30bn; that's 20% of UPS's market cap, delivered to drivers over five years.
Clearly you are not reading what is being written. As stated several times. My objection is your original characterization that the issue of air conditioning was fair because it was a compromise.
Not all compromises are fair. Not all compromises indicate relatively equal bargaining power. Not all compromises....
The point is, you don't know whether it was fair either and you have no idea about the relative negotiating powers of the parties.
Maybe the AC portion of the deal translated directly into wage dollars on the negotiating table. Maybe it was a "pick 3 out of 4 deal".
Your posts are just pointless pedantry about an article where we (as the public) have very incomplete information about the preferences and the negotiating powers of the involved parties.
My complaint is that people often times think something is fair because both sides compromised. That thinking is sloppy and incorrect. A deal isn’t fair because it involved compromise. It’s like when people say, “both sides are unhappy with the deal so it means it’s a fair one”. That’s dumb thinking and inaccurate. It might be correct most of the time but not all of the time.
That a compromise was made does not make it fair. The act of compromising in and of itself does not necessarily imply fairness.
I’m not being a pedant. I’m claiming the original reasoning for believing this part of the deal is fair because it involved compromises. I also claim that requiring people to drive all day in hot weather in an air conditionless vehicle is inherently unfair.
>But it indicates both sides had bargaining power.
>It does not indicate this. Consider an extreme example.
>Labor: We need a $5 an hour raise. Management: We will give you $0.01 raise.
Well, no because if they had no bargaining power management could have told them to fuck off, or pay them even less. "Had bargaining power" =/= "had the upper hand"
Pick a dollar amount greater than $0.01 then in my example. Pick the smallest value such that you believe it provides an example of where a compromise is reached but the compromise does not indicate relatively equal bargaining power.
In the original example I gave a compromise was made. Namely the $0.01 increase in pay. I claim one side didn’t really have bargaining power. Do you believe all instances of compromise indicate bargaining power on both sides? I don’t. Sometimes one side budges very little and has way more power than the other. So much so that it’s not accurate to say both sides had bargaining power.
Sometimes labor has very little pricing power for their labor. There are many instances of this being true. If you don’t agree with this then please read up on labor history.
Then what was the point of the comment you originally made that I responded to? It appeared to be sarcasm and saying that if management only offer $0.01 raise then get a job elsewhere. That sort of simplistic reasoning doesn’t work in all situations. Namely it doesn’t work if labor overall has very little pricing power for the cost of their services.
The sky isn’t always blue. Which is ironic given your response.
> "We’ve hit every goal that UPS Teamster members wanted and asked for with this agreement. It’s a ‘yes’ vote for the most historic contract we’ve ever had.”
While the issue of fairness is subjective, it seems objectively good that the union was able to get what they wanted and asked for. Seems fair to me.
Given that quote, it does indeed seem like a fair deal overall. I was objecting to the characterization that the part of air conditioning had to be fair because there was an agreed upon compromise.
Also, I think its unfair to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather.
When it uses computers, networking protocols, the internet, etc. then it is a technology. The scale by which these virtual town squares can grow is something that sets them apart from real town squares. In a real town square people have to contend with societal views of what is socially acceptable. This provides a needed moderating influence. In a real town square one can’t be too inflammatory without fear of being attacked.
A social network has a duty to take reasonable steps to ensure that bad people can’t easily conspire together to do their bad deeds. Society has a problem in that people engage in shitty behavior. One way societies combat this is by limiting the ability of like minded people from openly sharing the effects of their misdeeds.
Do you think it’s OK for a convention center to host a meeting where attendees are passing around photographs of CSAM to each other? Why treat the online world differently than the offline world in this regard?
Mastodon is both a social network, and a mere server software.
The social network side of Mastodon, connected around mastodon.social, has quite strong moderation, and they block other Mastodon instances for even lesser transgressions.
But anyone can run a Mastodon server disconnected from the trunk of the social network, and make their own fringe network. These instances are a problem, but it's Mastodon's fault as much as Apache and Nginx are responsible for serving CSAM.
It’s been a long time since I programmed and was up to date about these things. In my eyes Mastodon means “Twitter” without moderation. The lack of moderation would be a problem. I have an extreme view in the sense that I think humanity is not yet developed enough to have easy, cheap, anonymous community building at scale be a thing.
Thanks for the clarification. I’ll have think more about what I consider appropriate as far as it concerns Mastodon.
I believe your analysis is flawed. Children of rich people often times aren’t motivated to be creators or be hard working. It’s not easy succeeding since luck plays a huge role but what is true is the following:
Smart people, who are cutthroat, and who are driven/motivated have a much higher chance of success if they start out rich than those who don’t.
I get the argument and it has certain logic in it, but surely they all cannot be 100 per cent lazy. And if the non-lazy ones have it relatively easy to succeed, we should see a lot of successes from that cohort, even if they are in a minority compared to their lazy peers.
> Justice Thomas said (in 2001) that for the pay they receive no one would take the job if not for the gifts^H^H^H^H^H bribes.
FTFY.
As of 2022, the salary of a US Supreme Court Justice is $274,200 per year. The Chief Justice of the United States, who is the head of the Supreme Court, receives a slightly higher salary of $286,700 per year.
Of course no one will take that job. How much does a banana cost again? $10?
Yeah, how many millions of government employees and contractors who have to be under very strict gift policies and much lower salaries. Somehow they stay in their jobs without taking bribes.
I agree it’s unreasonable that avowed socialists should maintain multiple homes as well, but here we are. How do freshman Congress people suddenly have millions in assets to their names?
I know, right? It's like, I don't even want to HEAR about your ideas on how to fix a broken system unless you've taken the personal responsibility to try and reorient your personal life to adhere to your proposed ideas while continuing to try living in the still-broken system even if that personal transition, without any systemic changes to the surrounding culture and community, make your new life impossible to live.
That's the way we _always_ implement change in America!
*Also, do you not like that the socialist merely _has_ two homes, or do you not agree with the reasoning behind _why_ they have two homes?
This is a bad joke, right? Would you hold the politicians that you support to the same standards? Of course not, and none of Bernie’s supporters could possibly care less if he has a home in Vermont and a home in DC just like literally every single senator.
You can't possibly even know what socialism is if making such an airheaded comment.
It's because it's a tu quoque. Normally when confronted with an argument that ties ones argument with ones behavior, we would say that the argument stands independent from the person saying it. But for what ever season, that seems not to be an assumption with this topic - which is itself a case of special pleading. I'm curious, why though? Isn't it just a case of letting emotions control logic?
I don't know what you think you're onto but it's giving far too much credit to what is nothing more than another toothless, idiotic utterance of the absolutely depraved American bourgeoise mind mush.
How much could a good lawyer with a long and distinguished career make in the private market? That's how much we should be paying our judges. If you want the best you have to at least be moderately competitive with what's on offer. I have a similar opinion about legislators -- we probably want top tier doctors and executives and lawyers as our legislators. Being elected to office should not be a step down in their lifestyle.
I see private compensation for elite talent being completely out of whack -- the prices the public service must compete with -- as basically a separate issue.
Historically, a generous salary for legislators and various other high offices was part of the progressive/left platform in both the UK and France. They weren't paid before the 19th century, ensuring only the independently wealthy could hold those offices.
It may be idealistic, but I think that those elected to office or appointed to influential positions such as judges should do so largely out of a sense of public service instead of personal enrichment. For people who are motivated by greed or power, no amount of compensation will be enough, they will always be tempted to to increase their power and wealth by taking bribes or political favors.
Pay them a respectable salary but you do not and should not try to match what the private sector pays. It not the same playing field and should not attempt to be.
I don’t understand this position. It feels to me like you’re proposing we financially exploit those who are magnanimous and duty-driven enough to tolerate public service. Do you have the same opinion regarding other organizations operating for public good, rather than financial self interest?
For instance, what you’re saying feels logically equivalent to me to saying we should tax charities more heavily since they aren’t driven by greed, or that we should underpay active duty military personnel since they’re driven more by love for their country than by self interest. It seems to me that it should be the exact opposite, and we should incentivize people to make sacrifices for the greater good.
Underpaying people who choose to enter a certain sector because of a personally held belief that they ought to be financially unmotivated, then ceding massive power to those people and allowing them to take bribes, seems to miss the forest for the trees.
EDIT: I’m also curious how you rectify your position with the empirical evidence that our current system, wherein public service is financially discouraged, has led to direct and indirect bribery and corruption in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. It seems to me that the current system isn’t working, and leaning further into the aspect that makes it not work is not a good idea. Maybe a more fruitful route would be reducing the power of individual representatives so that there is less incentive to bribe them, or outright banning the quid-pro-quo agreements that run rampant in our country currently, like prohibiting regulators from working for companies in the industry they regulated after their time in office.
I guess the OP thinks anyone sufficiently motivated by financial self-interest such that they won’t want the job unless it pays ‘enough’ is also someone who is going to be more open to bribery because they value personal wealth too much. I can see both sides on this but I don’t think it’s unreasonable.
People who are drawn to positions of power and also highly motivated by personal wealth seem like particularly bad choices if you want to avoid corruption, so keeping the salary low may sufficiently disincentivise this sort of person from entering the public sector.
On the other hand, public sector work is harder in many ways, so not providing equal or superior compensation may discourage many people who are entirely scrupulous but not foolish enough to both take on the extra burden of public sector work and make less money at the same time.
> It feels to me like you’re proposing we financially exploit those who are magnanimous and duty-driven enough to tolerate public service.
I understand that it may seem foolish or unjust, but it feels unreasonable to me to suggest it’s exploitative to pay someone a 97th-percentile salary[0] just because it’s not commensurate with private sector peers in a highly compensated industry.
> For instance, what you’re saying feels logically equivalent to me to saying we should tax charities more heavily since they aren’t driven by greed, or that we should underpay active duty military personnel since they’re driven more by love for their country than by self interest.
The problem as it applies to judges and legislators is that they represent a very small group of people with the ability to make high-stakes decisions that impact a large number of people, and their decisions are enforced by the power of the state.
Charities don’t have the power of the state behind their decisions, and personnel within the military apparatus tend not to have much individual power, so the incentives for corruption are much more limited (and if it does happen, much less impactful).
> It seems to me that the current system isn’t working, and leaning further into the aspect that makes it not work is not a good idea.
Is there some proof that under-compensation is the main source of the corruption in the current system? I have no evidence either way, but my sense is that it is not.
This. You cannot simply normalize graft on the grounds that somebody might exist who can out-bribe a government. Any more than you normalize murder because everybody eventually dies some way or other.
Having it act like the same playing field got us in this mess. I'll note there are some supreme court justices who apparently don't take bribes or suggest their power should be supplemented by enough bribery to equal that of the best private sector lawyers and/or the best mob bosses…
1. Supreme Court justices historically haven’t been the best, just the most cozy with politicians
2. Even if Justices were paid $10M, the corruption wouldn’t go away, because greed never goes away
Instead of focusing on the fact that justices are taking bribes because their salary is modest, therefore we need to pay them more, we should focus on nominating justices who don’t have such weak morals and ethics.
> How much could a good lawyer with a long and distinguished career make in the private market? That's how much we should be paying our judges.
That would maybe make sense if we were able to reign in their conflicts of interest. The private market would set a fiduciary duty on many lawyers in a number of capacities, but nothing like that exists for the SCOTUS.
As it stands now, there is no way to hold the justices (or really any elected or appointed official) accountable.
I don't disagree with you, but at some point the number stops mattering. What's the difference in lifestyle between 300K and 500K? 500K and 1M?
And even if there is a difference, is that worth the opportunity cost of paying everyone else a little bit better?
It's not a very popular opinion, but there should be a maximum salary imo. Beyond a certain number money is a means of acquiring power and influence, and it feels wrong to reward people with that. Set a maximum to give people something to work harder for, but without inadvertently giving individuals the power to subvert democracy through money.
$300k - after taxes - is not buying you a lavish lifestyle of in most major cities.
It's probably not even getting you comfortably into one of the better neighborhoods, unless your partner is the bread winner.
Chicago is one of the most affordable major cities in the US - and $300k isn't gonna do more than have you comfortably living in a small condo in the better neighborhoods.
Huh? $300k/yr will get you pretty much anything you want in Chicagoland. By standard consumption patterns, that's an $800k house. An $800k Chicago house is quite large. It's also a 4-bdr condo even in some parts of the Loop.
In fact - there's not one listed above $800k either...
There are only 3 3bedroom condos for less than $800k - and the average HOA would adjust the price to well over $1M - making them not affordable...
I would not say if you can find 1 condo in a decent neighborhood that's semi-affordable at $300k that somehow my point is refuted that $300k - after taxes - is really not that much money...
I encourage anyone who's interested in this weird claim to just go to Redfin and punch 750k-850k condo into the search, and shop around. If you're not from around here, do take note that living in the actual Loop is not something people generally do! It's the Chicago equivalent of owning a 4 bedroom condo in Nolita.
Where you'd probably actually buy, with $800k burning a hole in your pocket, is Wicker/Bucktown, Lakeview, Hyde Park or Roscoe Village. If you were price conscious, you'd buy in Lincoln Square or Jeff Park.
$800k will also buy you a pretty fantastic house in Chicago. Of course, it won't buy you a house in the Loop, because houses don't go in the Loop. When people in the HN demographic think about the parts of Chicago they think are high-status, they're not thinking like a typical house buyer, who has kids, cares about the local schools, and wants a yard. Those people are buying in Beverly, Portage Park, and Jeff Park. Houses there top out at $800k; I had a sinking feeling looking at Redfin listings there (oh shit, am I wrong about this?) untiL I realized I had to drop the lower limit way below $750k to see all the available houses.
I assume this thread is about how hard it is to survive in major American cities on $300k/yr. I think you're generally doing OK just about anywhere in the US at $300k/yr, but I assure you you're doing well in Chicago making that.
imo, 1/3rd of that is more than enough to be 'comfortable'. Certainly enough for a small apartment or roommate situation, yearly international vacation and multiple domestic, mix of eating out (3-4 times per month) and cooking at home (packing lunches is required imo), going to a few concerts/museums/plays per month, cheap gym membership, etc. Add a spouse w/ shit income into the mix + children, okay, not good ... but those are choices ;)
Sure. For upper-middle class professionals, 300k-400k feels roughly like the modal home price here. Whatever the actual mode is, an 800k house in Chicago is a very expensive place!
$300k (household) isn't upper-middle, before the term became diluted to mean "middle, but with a little left over every month"—the upper-middle of Fussell's Class and The Official Preppy Handbook
- Good private school for a kid or two (guess what one of the bribes to Thomas was...). Not gonna get away with much less than $25k/yr/kid, there, and it goes up from there.
- Long vacations expensive places a couple times a year (again...)
- House somewhere nice (notably, however, the public schools can be shit, which saves a little money here)
- Country club membership, or similar
- Don't have to do, at least, the ~50% of chores you hate the most (you pay to have them done). Ditto the worst parts of childcare.
- (optional, but recommended) Attendance of fancy functions (esp. e.g. charity events–what's the point of it all if you don't feel fancy?)
- Second property with housing on it (doesn't have to be lavish, but can't be quite as shit as a hillbilly fishing shack, which even poor country folk sometimes have)
- (optional, but recommended) Any money left over after that.
That's gonna be $400k+, household, in a cheap but not crazy cheap market (who wants to be fancy in truly bum-fuck nowhere? Though your vacation property might be there...) in 2023. Bare minimum ([EDIT] that won't get you much of the "optionals", I mean, and the rest is gonna be teetering right on the edge of having to start cutting items—and then, only if you're somewhere relatively low COL).
You aren't living, to a certain social class, if you start having to sacrifice much of that. That's how you're supposed to live.
I don't know anything about the broader argument here. I responded to a comment that said that $300k/yr would only get you a small place in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Chicago. That's categorically false. Mortgage calculators are premised on other expenses scaling with your housing cost, and capture the other bulletpoints ("country club membership", really?).
Someone with a $300k/yr income will end up with an extraordinarily nice home, by any standards, in Chicago.
You can just look at Redfin to see that this isn't true. You can get a 4bdr in the Loop for ~$800k. I've spent most of my life here, including the last 19 years, and I just bought a new house here; I think you're going to have a hard time talking me down from my own lived experience.
The standard message board tactic for wriggling out of this position is to define "the nice neighborhoods" in Chicago ludicrously narrowly, like the only nice places to live here are Lincoln Park and... well that's it. But even Lincoln Park is doable at $800k.
> What's the difference in lifestyle between 300K and 500K? 500K and 1M?
Pretty massive, particularly when it comes to taking vacations and bringing friends who can’t afford them with you. $300k barely permits that domestically. $1 or 2mm lets you do that comfortably all over the world. Or, alternatively, single handedly saving restaurants you love or a buddy’s small business.
"Saving" a business isn't really a lifestyle thing, that's more of an investment really. Realistically, your life isn't meaningfully worse if you find a new restaurant to go to.
Paying for friends to vacation with you is a very good one though. But idk, I feel like you can extend that so far that it feels like a copout. For example, maybe you can afford a nice home on 300K, but you can't buy your mom a nice home as well. And you can't pay your brothers student loans. And you can't gift them a car every couple years.
That's not your quality of life, that's paying for someone else to live the same lifestyle as you. At that point I'd just argue for raising wages across the board so that you don't feel the need to pay your friends, they just want to go on vacation with you.
> Why do you have to have ultimate power and oversight of an entire branch of government AND flit comfortably all over the world?
I don't think SCOTUS judges need a multimillion-dollar salary. Just pointing out that low single-digit millions is well below the threshold past which spending becomes performative.
I used to that for the most part already on a third of the income (for a 2 bedroom apartment and no kids to be fair).
Biweekly maid service where they clean the dishes, the house, and do laundry. It wouldn't be much more expensive to change that to weekly and include cooking too if you wanted.
If you wanted to get a full time nanny though that's probably out of reach, but I don't understand why you even had children if you're just gonna pay someone else to raise them for you.
I imagine by the time a lawyer is experienced enough to be given a seat at the Supreme Court that they’re well past the point of needing an income.
With that being said, I’m not surprised in the slightest someone as corrupt as Thomas would have this opinion. Ginni Thomas and Clarence’s defense of her has forever tarnished the reputation of the Supreme Court and I don’t want to hear another word from his office. His replacement honestly cannot come soon enough.
A local place near where I live have a 15% employee wellness fee added to the cost of the purchase. This money goes to the employee and is, in essence, a tip. There was no sign stating this fact. I found out after looking at the receipt. I’ll never go back to that place.
I’ve seen that at some restaurants in the US too. There’s usually a CYA clause like “you can ask for this fee to be taken off,” but it’s deliberately a policy designed to make customers uncomfortable and accept the surcharge.
I normally tip 20% or so, but if there’s a mandatory surcharge, I just subtract it from the tip.
I think the writer means that the sweat evaporates so rapidly that it does not feel like you are sweating. That is, you don’t get drenched in sweat. I think during heat exhaustion the body stops sweating. Perhaps it’s easier to miss the signs of impending heat exhaustion in such conditions.
Needing to hydrate isn’t an indicator of impending heat exhaustion. I mean, people need to hydrate sometimes in cool weather. The Mayo Clinic doesn’t list needing to hydrate as one of the symptoms to be on the lookout for.
I’m not a doctor. I’m just surmising that if you aren’t drenched in sweat because it has evaporated so fast that one might not be aware of impending heat exhaustion. Obviously I might be wrong. Heavy sweating is a possible symptom of heat exhaustion.
Edit: At the end it does list dehydration as something to look out for. I have no idea what it is like in 110 degree weather with virtually no humidity. I’d guess even being well hydrated still makes it easy to get heat exhaustion.
Desegregation occurring when the push to dismantle government run services was gaining traction caused the loss of public pools. Americans acquired an irrational fear of government in the 70s and 80s. We lost public pools, publicly run ambulance service, publicly run garbage collection. Police departments no longer service their own vehicles.
I think it's important to remember how linked these are. In many places the response to desegregation was to dismantle as much public infrastructure as possible and replace it with private infrastructure that was legally integrated but functionalaly segregated.
What is the benefit of outsourcing that to a private company that pays its workers much less in salary and a benefits? The money spent on maintenance is roughy the same but now the jobs for the workers are less desirable less well paid. The money now goes to the business owner. All the business owner is doing to squeezing money out of the workers to enrich themselves. There is no benefit to society in doing this. Indeed it is a loss for the community.
Are you under the impression that government contracts for vehicle maintenance are immune to becoming sinecures for the politically connected? Only mechanics are subject to this possibility?
Obviously some outsourcing is good and some bad. You seem not to understand that this could be true. Only a fool thinks all instances of outsourcing are good (or bad).
Typically people don’t live in a world of extreme positions whereby one occurrence of outsourcing being good (or bad) means all of them are. It is obvious the position that I have. Government has outsourced too many jobs to the private sector and the effect has been to enrich the business class at the expense of the working class.
I question whether these positions would be better paying if they were filled by government employees. In every case I can think of, government employees earn less than their private sector counterparts.
Can you name a few people positions as an example? Particularly in lifetime earnings and total comp government work in teaching, chemistry, and administrative work is 1.5x or more that of theprivate sector median with much stronger protections. In particular pensiins, health care, and early retirement make up for a lot in terms of starting hourly wage.
I think you may be right as it stands now but I don’t think this was right in 1980. When factoring in benefits, pension, working conditions, and employment stability I think even today it may not be clear who is better off.
> Why should police departments do automobile maintenance?
Because, as we have seen, outsourcing these kinds of services is rarely cheaper and never actually better.
By keeping it in house, you can hire people correctly for the volume of maintenance you do. Your people become very good at the specific needs and faults of your system (see: Why SF firefighters make and repair their own ladders). And when you genuinely need something, you can redeploy your labor.
All outsourcing does is create an extra middleman whose mouth you must feed and whose workers you have no control over.
Executives, of course, loved outsourcing as it let them crack up the unions.
Government agencies that serviced their own vehicles just ended up with a fleet of non-working vehicles. At least that was true for those for which the vehicle fleet was of secondary concern.
And for something like a police department, the efficiencies disappear with modern vehicles which need less maintenance.
Yes it was irrational of Americans to fear government run ambulance services and whatnot. All governments are capable of doing bad things. The reaction to this fact ought not be the dismantling of those government services that worked and provided tangible benefits to the people. Certain politicians decried government inefficiency and said that government can’t work. Once elected they did everything they could to prove themselves correct.
She’s far more the saint than that bastard John Paul II.
EDIT: Ironic this is flagged. I’m proud of this actually. I feel a slight kinship with Sinead now. In honor of her death would that we all, in our own way, tear to shreds the image of John Paul II!