Hacker News: Replies to greedo

New comment by rjh29 in "The real cost of owning a home"

rjh29 — Wed, 27 May 2026 07:34:38 +0000

Staying in the same place for decades seems like hell to me too.

New comment by abalashov in "The real cost of owning a home"

abalashov — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:24:37 +0000

Moving is no fun at all (and also costs money! deposits, movers and the rest of it), but the only thing worse is staying in one place. I just can't do it.

I mean, of course I tell myself this is the last time we're ever moving, and that this is the forever spot. However, experience suggests this is never, ever the case, and there's no actual precedent for that.

New comment by AnthonyMouse in "How to convert between wealth and income tax"

AnthonyMouse — Sun, 24 May 2026 11:06:50 +0000

We already know how to solve that one though. You now have corporations and billionaires actually paying the consumption tax along with everyone else, so you take that money and use it for a UBI, which causes the effective rates on lower income people to be much lower or even negative even though everyone is still paying a uniform marginal rate.

New comment by WalterBright in "How to convert between wealth and income tax"

WalterBright — Sat, 23 May 2026 20:30:02 +0000

He didn't know about that tax rule, which was enacted that year. A lot of people were shattered by it.

New comment by AnthonyMouse in "How to convert between wealth and income tax"

AnthonyMouse — Sat, 23 May 2026 10:32:21 +0000

This is what parrots continuously say while ignoring that the original problem was that in the existing system they not only don't pay taxes on the money they don't spend, they don't even pay taxes on the money they do spend, because they can borrow what they want to spend instead of using taxable income and then defer capital gains or keep assets in shell corporations.

Getting from that to where they at least pay the same taxes as anyone else on the money they actually spend would be a marked improvement.

New comment by lenerdenator in "The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis"

lenerdenator — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:44:11 +0000

> Bollocks. We complain because jobs are being occupied by the oldsters, and now you want them to stay in their jobs even longer?

I'd just tax it at 100% unless they declare bankruptcy. The US national debt skyrocketed during their lifetimes. Mathematically speaking, they did not pay enough in tax to support the spending that their duly-elected officials enacted. They also didn't, mathematically speaking, have enough children to make up the difference in future taxpayers, either. The American birth rate never recovered after 1970. Someone's got to pay off those bills, and if the numbers comparing the Boomers to Millennials at the same age say anything, they say "the Millennials will not have the money to pay off their parents' government debt."

Is that harsh? I don't know. I do know that your children's generation is supposed to have it better than you, and by pretty much every objective measure, the Boomers did not do that for their children, at least not economically. So it's time for them to put up.

> If the couple you're pillorying is so wealthy, then most of their Social Security is being taxed, and they're paying higher Medicare premiums as well. And their house? As they get older and require nursing care, they'll end up liquidating it (or Medicaid will take it).

Why should they be receiving Social Security at all? Same with Medicare. This is the demographic that has more collected wealth than any other age cohort. If they do, in fact, need government help, they can prove their need, like you have to with unemployment insurance or Medicaid.

> The average retiree receives around $25k per year in SS benefits. That's not a ton of money.

Then those who don't really need it won't miss it. Those who do will have a more sustainable program to support them.

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Apple reports second quarter results"

JKCalhoun — Fri, 01 May 2026 02:15:48 +0000

Yes, but their hardware growth might have "ceilinged", services is likely where future growth will be.

New comment by fartfeatures in "Apple reports second quarter results"

fartfeatures — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 23:47:34 +0000

The people who designed Mach in 1985 would almost certainly design something very different if they had today’s hardware, AI agents, secure enclaves, NPUs, ubiquitous networking, cloud edges, wearables, smart home devices and generally device density per person.

HarmonyOS is interesting because it points at the right axis: one coherent OS fabric across many devices, not a set of separate device OSes glued together by continuity features. Continuity, iCloud, Handoff, AirDrop, HomeKit etc are impressive glue. They are not the same as one logical OS fabric.

New comment by bitpush in "Apple reports second quarter results"

bitpush — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 23:17:21 +0000

Do you know what they house in those? Eight seem too few for someone like Apple, who serves billions of users.

New comment by fartfeatures in "Apple reports second quarter results"

fartfeatures — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 23:06:10 +0000

Because nothing lasts forever. Take a look at what Harmony OS is capable of if you want to see what a modern take on an OS and ecoystem looks like. It sure isn't the pinnacle either.