> With the two examples you chose, I‘d say there is not much of a skill gap.
Unless we're talking about really high end burgers, you can take almost anyone off the street and train them to flip burger patties within a day. They might not willingly do it on account of it being boring/tiring/poorly paid work, but it's not exactly hard to learn either. I doubt you can do the same for an accountant, unless your idea of an accountant is something like "manually copying entries into a ledger". Even teaching excel to someone who hasn't used excel ever, to a capacity where they can do meaningful financial reporting probably can't be done within a day.
On a relative scale, I agree with you that the amount of training involved differs for accountants and burger flippers, thus this is a good example.
On an absolute scale, comparing skills of burger flippers, accountants, aeronautical engineers and surgeons, the first two basically lump together.
I look at skill gap more in terms of „how hard is it to completely automate/autonomize this job“. Which is fiercely easy both for the burger flipper and the accountant, yet a bit harder (though not impossible) for the other two.
More seriously: Almost all cars in Germany are limited to 250km/h (155 mph). Higher limits for more powerful cars are also found in the 280-290 km/h (173-180 mph) range.
So, de facto, even in Germany speed limiters have been a thing for decades. The discussion should thus be more about the limit, rather than the device itself.
Obviously this is different than imposing a „+10 mph“ limit, since the car would have to know the speed limit of the current road.
As a German, I have to fiercely object to people fiercely objecting here. I would enjoy German highways way more, if there was a sensible speed limit just like there is in the rest of the world. Also, I think the police should start going after people who don't keep safe distances (as a function of the speed they're going) and pressing criminal charges for intimidation.
Agreeing on this one. State should sell any kind of addictive substance, which would immediately yield benefits:
1. (Large parts of) Funding of organized crime would dry up and the state would get extra income via tax
2. Addicts know they can get their fix and hence can take up regular work
3. Substances would be cleaner and thus safer for consumption (easing the burden of the health care system)
Not saying that there are no downsides to this, but the downsides have to be weighed against the upsides and in my book the upsides outweigh the downsides.
That’s a very fine line to walk. The same reasoning could be applied to speeding (actively endangering others), overeating (actively endangering yourself), hunting, snowboarding, skydiving (or any other activity which increases your likelihood of having and accident and hence burdening the health care system beyond the national average).
I agree, but we should start having this discussion nonetheless. As is now, the state is encouraging dangerous and reckless behaviours, which is contrary of its intentions.
Curious as to why you are interested in 100%+ Keebs.
I know that everyone has a different comfort zone, especially for their daily driver (which is a 60% split for me) and the only reason I can think of (besides aesthetics, of course) is a „feeling of power“ when handling a larger battlestation.
I’m not shaming or judging in the slightest yet am genuinely curious.
For software that uses F-keys extensively - especially with shift/control/alt combinations - having f-keys on the left is hugely easier than awkward top-row-reaching. Plus having a 24 programmable F-keys along the top (MCK-142 Pro mentioned above) is great for long sequences that are only used occasionally (mine are a mix of long 'cd's, mail checks, ssh to various hosts and one to paste links to HN stories into the local wiki).
Definitely the feeling of power is one of the appeals, but I think it's backed up by the presence of actual power.
To summarise without writing a small essay on my opinions on where modern computing is going wrong, I think that modern computing comes with a lot of impedance nowadays, and one of the things that makes people nostalgic for retro computing is that feeling of less impedence. Think of all the articles we've seen on the front page about using old IDEs and word processors like WordStar.
Ironically (given I just targeted "modern" computing in that critique) one of the things I want to remove impedence from is Emacs. I absolutely love Emacs, but after using it for so long, I'm convinced that modifier keys are a terrible way to do computing. They should be a last resort way of cramming in rarely used functionality, not your main interface to commands. I'd really love to have loads of keys for binding mode-aware macros and such for Emacs. One issue with Emacs is that the only safe "namespace" for keys is extremely limited and behind a keychord requiring modifier keys, making it clunky as hell. Big keyboards like this mitigate these issues.
This also becomes an issue navigating between different layers of the desktop experience. Virtual machines, embedded X sessions, key conflicts between your window manager and a program, etc.
I probably have ADHD (psychiatrist was a bit on the fence about it) and this kind of impedance drive me nuts and can really kill my focus sometimes. The less impedance I face in getting to a command or action, the smoother my thinking is and the less frustrated and distracted I become.
So yeah, I want lots of buttons so I can get to things as quickly as possible. Even holding shift to type symbols (on top-row numbers) annoys me. I have a numpad for numbers, just give me the symbols up top.
Also, stuff like this just tickles something pleasant in my brain aesthetically.
Firstly, while total debt might have quadrupled, in that time the size of the economy has also grown, and that means the debt has become easier to finance.
Debt sits at about 130% of GDP, and was about 68% of GDP back in 2008, meaning when measured against the size of the economy it has not yet doubled.
Also, by comparison debt to GDP hit 116% in 1946 and managed to return to 31% of GDP in 1974, showing that given the political will, the USA has no trouble paying down its debts.
The US economy had a huge boom from 1946 to 1974, powered by amazing demographics and advances in technology that we don't have today. I don't think political will is what made that possible, just good timing.
I’m curious if they defaulted how would the creditors get their cash? USA has the largest army, is the largest economy (?) and USD is the trade currency so I’m wondering what would happen in a default. Would things continue business as usual?
When a country defaults nothing violent happens internationally.. Their payments or lack of payments deteriorate their currency from hard to soft and they have trade that's mostly limited to hard currency they get from exports.
I think this would be particularly brutal if unrelated international trade were still in dollars and everyone wanted to cash out.
It is revolving system. Old debt is paid with new debt and then even more debt is taken for consumption. If this stops, it means no one would loan again. They would trade in alternative ways. Or then the rates must go up to match the risk premium of not getting principal back.
End result is probably starting to print money. Which then will just lead to even higher rates to get the return.
This is a mistake that people often make, and politicians usually encourage when they want to score points and raise scares about the other team's polices. Take note of if they change their tune when in power; or just stop scaring people, while running up more debts via different expenditures or other tax breaks.
But it's not the same kind of thing at all. It's not "like that, only on a larger scale", it is fundamentally unlike that. And the faulty assumption will lead you to faulty conclusions.
NB with the other commenter said: "most of the debt is held within the US borders". How would household debt look if most of the debt is owed to other members of the household and not to banks? How would it look if the household could control the money supply, like a bank.
Of course it's possible to get public debt wrong, but don't assume that getting it wrong looks anything like getting personal debt wrong. With personal debt "smaller is better, larger is worse, simple". But e.g. Eliminating public debt entirely would itself be a mistake, given that it is debt to people or companies in the same country, often in exchange for services. It can fuel growth if used with intent.
The debt clock [0] shows each citizen is owed $100,000 (each tax payer $260,000), so a few years of work owed. The treasury [1] confirms this and is not where we want to be.
Still, the economy is not dead and an average US citizen works 42 years, so a few years of wages lost is not the end of the world. Also, most of the debt is held within the US borders, so foreign debt is big but only 30% [2]
> The debt clock [0] shows each citizen is owed $100,000
Nitpick: “owes” (not owed)
> so a few years of wages lost is not the end of the world.
How would anyone pay off a few years wages, while using their wages to live, and paying interest on the balance until it is zero?
Essentially, every tax payer has a small mortgage on the past to pay off.
And the debt is growing!
Sooner or later, the debt will have to be paid down with printed money. Which both reduces the balance, and devalues the balance (due to the increased money supply).
The ability to do that at any time is the primary reason a government can run otherwise unsustainable debt without going bankrupt.
> a quadrupling in public debt since the financial crisis of 2008
It’s up less than double, relative to the economy. Given there is public and political attention on the issue, it’s not critical. (Your figure doesn’t account for intergovernmental holdings, which are closer to an accounting manoeuvre than actual debt.)
TL; DR America’s public debt is sustainable. It’s trending in a dangerous direction and will require minor (as in single-digit percentage ppint) course corrections to remain so.
If we do nothing, “the deficit amounts to 5.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023, swells to 6.1 percent of GDP in 2024 and 2025, and then declines in the two years that follow. After 2027, deficits increase again, reaching 6.9 percent of GDP in 2033.” It becomes problematic around 2050, when net interest starts approaching 8% of GDP, but that is again if we do nothing (or blow the purse).
I'm often told we can afford all this debt and war but then I take note of homeless veterans and I am told we can't afford to house them.
We have different priorities.
It's Christmas, instead of consuming 5 plus percent of a single mothers efforts over the year that instead couldve went under the tree, did we ask her what she could afford?
We had an active “conservative” president refer to wounded veterans as losers and it hasn’t really mattered. So it’s clearly not on top of the political mindset of either side.
The debt that is incurring interest was an enormous factor in growing americas wealth in the past, and continues to be going forward. Your anecdote about a single mom conveniently ignores that.
> The debt that is incurring interest was an enormous factor in growing americas wealth in the past
Most of the debt is very recent. Nothing to do with decades of growth.
Paying interest on 5% of gross product is very anti-growth.
Borrowing to grow is legitimate. But the idea that spending decisions by the US government over the last couple decades were sober financial bets on returns is fantastical.
If that were the case the debt would be getting paid down, with a trajectory to surpluses being the return, not growing.
There is no reason to assert the debt should be getting paid down if it’s still more logical to borrow and grow.
Especially when it’s USD denominated debts and the dollar is the most desired currency.
The US is in a ridiculously privileged position. We’re riding the gravy train of natural resources and no bad neighbors for the foreseeable future. Quibbling about our debt is dumb.
There just isn't a pattern of the US carefully spending its money in a virtuous borrow and grow cycle. Recently, anyway.
But you are right, the US is like a partner in a common enterprise (the global economy demarcated in dollars), which has the special right to keep giving itself more shares (dollars).
If they were also spending frugally, and wisely, they could flip to a government funds surplus "problem" pretty quickly.
Since this is HN, you might enjoy this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2815 originating from a project called Cardano, which has published dozens of peer reviewed papers (not only on arxiv), presented continuously at EuroCRYPT and works with great academics from “boring” fields (at least to most CS students) such as formal verification.
The main gist in pos (to which Cardano showed the first viable solution that does not have extensive unbonding periods or requires centralized coordination) is that stake pool operators (similar but different to miners in Bitcoin) are chosen randomly to validate the next block based on how much tokens are staked with them. The incentive system to keep these SPOs truthful is outlined in detail in the above mentioned paper.
You basically do not let everyone hunt one complex problem (where all but one miner waste their energy to secure the network) but build a system to chose one to then perform a validation. This decreases energy consumption of the overall network substantially.
Having my fingers leave home row as little as possible is vastly superior to reaching for arrow keys and having to reposition my fingers on home row.
With vi that made immediate sense to me. Switching to HHKB layout made even more sense, because I now can reach both CTRL and backspace easily without lifting my fingers from home row.
I did change my keymap even further, so that arrow keys are mapped to fn+hjkl. This way, I can navigate everything just with hjkl (:
If you‘d have chosen a burger flipper and an aeronautical engineer or a surgeon, I‘d have agreed with you.