How true is this or are we doing the same thing “generation killed industry/way of doing things” that the boomer media is so fond of?

AbeBooks was bought by Amazon in 2008.

I knew someone would say this, which is why I also used Spain where the houses are as expensive, the pay is worse, and the tax is higher!

It doesn’t matter where you go in the West, the dream of liberalism is dead

To add to this, the rule of thumb in the UK is your maximum loan is 4.5x your salary.

The average worker could borrow about £157,000.

It’s not just America though.

Where I’m from:

UK average income before tax) £34,963 - £27,911 after tax (assuming NO student loan and NO pension) (for context: a band 3 nurse with 3 years experience makes £24,336 before tax or £20,631.51 after with no pension)

England average house price: £375,131

Approx ratio after tax: 13:1

Minimum deposit: 5% - £18,756.55

Tax: 0% on first time buyers

Fees: about £1,000 - £5,000

Total cost to get going: Approx £21,750 - nearly a years wage.

Now let’s look where I live: Spain!

Turns out Spain really is a load of countries wearing a hat so getting unified stats is not easy. Let’s try Barcelona:

Average income before tax: €33,837 - €25,470 after tax

Average house price: €376,399

Approx ratio after tax: 15:1

Minimum deposit: 10% - €37,639.90

Purchase tax: 10% - €37,639.90 (plus 1.5% for new builds)

Fees: 2 - 5% - 7,527.98 - 18,819.95

Total cost to get going: €82,807.78 - €94,099.75

Turns out treating housing as a market to speculate on might just be the problem all along.

Removed by mod

“We invented a new kind of calculator. It usually returns the correct value for the mathematics you asked it to evaluate! But sometimes it makes up wrong answers for reasons we don’t understand. So if it’s important to you that you know the actual answer, you should always use a second, better calculator to check our work.”

Then what is the point of this new calculator?

Fantastic comment, from the article.

Lol it’s a lyric from dead prez, wouldn’t get bent out of shape about it. Literally written in 2000 - I can’t even find stats that old 🤷

Kinda like the Imperial measurement system, if you are being compared to Myanmar then perhaps stop?

There’s a reason the average black male spends 1/3 of their life in prison in America.

And then has the right to vote taken away when they get out…

Same thing that happens when other slaves are hurt or killed on the job.

Not a hell of a lot.

Fascist and populist are not mutually exclusive.

You don’t have to give either money and there is the option to give both money.

You literally sent that from a FOSS platform…

Unless there’s an emergency.

The way I read it, this is ensuring everyone has the most effective analogue radio in their car because that’s how emergency broadcasts would go out. Seems sensible to me.

Work laptops in particular suck, I find. My first one was lagging, freezing, and crashing within months. The second one is three times as expensive but the same brand and is still not happy.

I also use Windows at home and haven’t had the same experience. I think it’s really manufacturer dependent

I think this is a common misconception based on survivorship bias and the high cost to entry. Taking your hypothesis as true: you have to have a product that can be sold to ten users as easily as 1000 users (this in and of itself is not a given). That’s where the cost is: the starting up of the business where you have no customers and won’t have any for several years.

It’s a matter of scale. For co-op where we are, you can get “investor loans” but they tend to have a fixed return. Capital wants to gamble more than they want a 5% APR for 10 years.

What we’re currently exploring is an angel loan from someone sympathetic that has historically lived higher up the corporate ladder and we’re applying for some government grants, but Credit Union may be a good idea!

That’s nice and all, but only works for people that already have money. Food isn’t free. Housing isn’t free. Heck, water isn’t free

EDIT: want to go through the maths to extrapolate this privilege.

Let’s say you need one small team to deliver a novel product, say 5 people. Let’s assume they all live in Europe and just need enough to survive - say, 20,000 euros a year. A lot of ground work has been done, so it’ll only take two years to go from concept to R&D to something to show a potential buyer.

So you have about 100,000 euro per year cost to just keep everyone fed, housed, and clothed not including any equipment, software, licensing etc costs. Assuming there are no costs but just keeping everyone fed and alive the co-op needs 200,000 euros in the bank or alternative funding to get the product in a sellable (note: not finished) state.

In project management in tech (my background) a good rule of thumb is staff cost = 1/3 of costs. However, let’s say we’re being super lean and can self-source the more expensive equipment and just have to think about licenses for core software so let’s make that number 1/2 of cost.

So for the two years of operation to get the product into a position where it can be taken to potential customers, the business would need approx 400,000 euros before a product hits a shelf.

And that’s why funding is a problem.