I think it's not about own versus someone else's money.
Hardware is usually a small piece of the financial puzzle (unless you're building a billion dollar AI datacenter I guess) and even when the hardware price quadruples, it's still a small piece and delivery time is much more important than optimizing hardware costs.
The price of the hardware, even with inflated prices, is probably equal or less than the combined price of all the software licenses that go on that machine.
Hey buddy, congratulations on your family. It's the most important thing. And remember... in a few years you can play Unreal Tournament with your kids!
I’m also in the camp of paying government officials more. In my town, the mayor and council make about $30k each while the median income in the city is well over $100k and houses cost over $1M. That self-selects out the majority of qualified candidates who must work for a living.
We have several high tech companies as well as a pro sports team that perpetually influence politics to the city’s detriment, and the stooges that get put on our ballot each election are simply under-equipped to combat them.
"Mayor" where I live is effectively a volunteer position. Raising the salary would require the village fully fund the position for the extent of a mayoral term which is too expensive.
So instead they hire a city manager who basically runs everything, at a much higher salary, which meets budget rules since they could in theory fire him if they run out of money. Hence the city manager is an unelected strong executive, which is not good for democracy.
Here in NJ, I live in a small town of around 7,000 or so. We have a Township Committee form of government, five committee people with one nominally as Mayor (but really the same as everyone else). They get a yearly stipend of around $5,000 a year or a little less.
It sounds crazy but our whole muni budget is under $5 million. We have almost no infrastructure other than roads (98% of housing is on well water and septic systems, there are no street lights or sewers or the like).
A lot of municipal government in the US is like this. Very small with near-volunteers running everything.
You are right that this rules out a lot of people who can't afford to effectively volunteer for local government. I think mostly this is a good thing.
> That self-selects out the majority of qualified candidates who must work for a living.
Occupations like "landlord" and "car dealership owner" are wildly overrepresented in local government because they have high incomes with virtually no time commitment.
These people aren't necessarily unqualified, but their motivation for holding office isn't usually aligned with the needs of the average member of the public.
This article was about members of the US congress so their salaries are $174k for your run-of-the-mill congressperson and higher for leadership roles. $174k is a very comfortable salary.
It's low for people who control trillions of dollars in yearly government spending, and who indirectly decide the fate of trillions more in private spending. $174k being "comfortable" is a misdirection: it should be, "what is the market rate to get someone who can reasonably handle trillions of dollars without corruption and for the benefit of their constituents?" And the answer is apparently higher than $174k per year, because many of these people go on to million dollar appointments in the private sector afterward.
See also, for example, Singapore, known for fairly low corruption, who pays government heads over $1M per year.
> In my town, the mayor and council make about $30k each while the median income in the city is well over $100k and houses cost over $1M.
The chief of police summons a recently enrolled policeman in his office: "The accounting called, and apparently you never picked your pay cheques in the last 6 months? What's up with that?" ― "Wait, we get paid? I thought it was, you get the badge and then gun, and then you're on your own!"
The things with jokes, however, is that they probably should not become reality.
Anecdotally, in my corner of the Silicon Valley, I've been looking to trade up homes from my 7/10 district to a nearby 10/10. Over the last year, I've seen the comparable properties in 10/10's rise about 10%, while my 7/10 has gone down about 5%. Both areas are very short commutes to high tech.
K shaped economy I guess? More and more spending is driven by the top, so maybe housing that aims to capture that still sells fast but more normal housing struggles
Things are visibly cooling up here in Marin, houses are actually sitting on the market (even just at the end of last year houses were generally scheduling offer dates and picking the best one). Some of this is just seasonal cooling, so I'm wary to draw any larger conclusions... but I'm seeing a lot lot more `for sale` signs than I'm used to.
FastAPI is the best combination of an easy and a flexible Python library for web servers, from my experience. If I need performance, I will rewrite it in Go.
Ham-fisted reactionary policy versus attacking the root cause, which is 1) cost of living has now increased to require two working parents 2) The government values housewives at about $2k per year in tax credits. Let women stay at home and raise their children as they know best, and pay them for the cost of the service they provide.
You have a point but I live in New Mexico. It's not like many of these moms are suddenly going to become stellar parents with a $2K tax credit. The state has real issues with poverty, education and work ethic and it's often generational.
Giving children some stability, role models and nutrition early in life seems like a pretty good investment from my perspective.
If the state pulls it off without the usual mismanagement and graft remains to be seen but I applaud the effort.
In Canada, you cannot file taxes jointly, so income tax brackets are on an individual basis instead of on a couple basis. It really makes it expensive for a single parent to stay home as one person making 100k pays about 30% more income tax than two people making 50k.
Don’t give me free daycare, just make it so much less punishing to stay at home and take care of my kids.
All of it is kindof dumb, I pay a higher tax because joint filing is not a thing, and my increased tax pays for subsidized daycare…
If governments aren’t willing to value women at what their work at home is worth, they’re not serious about tackling the birthrate problem. Show me a country with universal childcare with a TFR above 2.1. It’s a cheap substitute for the love and attention only a mother can provide young children
I suppose in the context of human history, you might argue to enslave a population based on racial characteristics in order to provide childcare.
For many families, both parents have to work. Most time spent not working or sleeping is spent doing a task simultaneously with childcare. Cleaning, preparing meals, repairing things, laundry, etc. Even for families where one individual shoulders the bulk of the burden this is largely the case.
Look, if you want to justify your position by just pointing out that it's the way things have historically been done, expect to have it pointed out how ridiculous you are being. Anyway, Equating child care with the inherent biological sexual dimorphism of childbirth is certainly a take.
You conveniently left off “infant care”. Only one gender lactates, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
If you want to talk about “ridiculous”, ignoring reality doesn’t make it any less real, no matter how much you might find it ideologically inconvenient.
You're the one moving the phrase from "child care" to "infant care". And by 6 months the majority of parents are using formula anyway. And there's a percentage of women that for whatever reason can't properly breastfeed. You're really grasping at straws here.
The person most biologically suited to care for an infant is the person who birthed the infant in the first place, and there is a path dependence inherent in ongoing childcare.
Once you have spent six months or a year raising an infant, it is personally psychologically difficult (and developmentally questionable) to cut that tie.
I get that it’s ideologically convenient to pretend that men and women are interchangeable economic cogs, but the sexes are fundamentally different in very pertinent ways.
We all lose under this model, but ultimately the people who lose the most when economic and social policy rejects our inconvenient biological differences are the children themselves.
Family should be able to support themselves on a single earner’s salary. That’s what we should prioritize. They can decide themselves who should stay home, if anyone; gender doesn’t need to factor into our policy if we simply make it our goal for families to not require dual incomes.
Exactly. I was raised by two working parents who were very involved in my life, and I wasn't a "latchkey" kid by any means. While the "traditional" spouse at home does work out pretty well if the single wage earner can do well, to be sure. That doesn't mean other situations can't prosper. It's not a magically set up that is the solution for everyone.
You seem to have a pretty narrow view of the world, especially about “privilege education.” FWIW I’ve never once heard anything about “white people bad” from my kiddo, about 10.
It’s also impossible to to talk about idk Columbus, slavery, Great Britain, or the founding of America (and like ya know, the treatment of native Americans) without ascribing some blame to the people responsible…who were by and large “white”. We also talk about how any judgement based on skin, appearance, gender, ethnicity, or religion, is flat out wrong.
It’s not really the same scope but Stanford had (has?) a course where you literally fab a simple computer chip yourself from bare silicon to rudimentary packaging. It takes a team on 4 one quarter working pretty much around the clock
