Bloom Energy is a growing company which is just shifting towards profitability and positive free cash flow and earnings. Those stocks are expected to have silly P/E ratios. They haven't had 2 years of declining sales.
I think this is the only comment that captures the message of the article. I feel for everyone who is priced out of life, those are very serious problems, but it wasn't what the article is talking about.
If I was seeing lots of comments say something like "The cost of life is preventing me from pursuing my dreams" then the article would be relevant to that.
Maybe this post has a narrow intended audience. Not every post has to be targeting all readers. If it's not true for you then it's not, y'know? Absolutely no need to lash out and HN is not a place for venting. Besides I think they're basically writing about themselves. By the upvotes and comments, it looks like some people do relate.
* Americans will get their first taste of extended range EVs (full EV powertrain with a tiny ICE that charges the battery) and they explode in popularity. It's the perfect vehicle for the US and most investment in EV charging stations will decrease.
* Oral GLP-1s hit the market and the market shares doubles
* Both OpenAI and SpaceX IPO
* Charlie Kirk's shooter will be executed after being on death row for less than a year. 50/50 chance that it's televised.
* Luigi is also executed
* Seattle causes an international incident with Egypt and Iran when they don't reschedule the Pride Parade to not be on the same day as the world cup game. Trump sends in the troops.
> Americans will get their first taste of extended range EVs (full EV powertrain with a tiny ICE that charges the battery) and they explode in popularity.
This happened, it was called the Chevy Volt. Nobody bought it.
I totally agree that you can make the argument that people didn't buy them because they weren't sexy. Post-2008, new cars became luxury items almost exclusively. So given that, there's no reason they would catch on now unless somebody makes a sexy one.
Oh that's interesting, I didn't know that. In this case I am talking about the Ram 1500. I think this one will make a splash. A truck with almost 700 miles of range. Americans think they hate EVs but they really hate the lack of EV infrastructure.
There aren't that many UEFI shells and the ones that exist are certainly not modern. Anything new is helpful, especially if its written in a popular language like Go.
The healthcare portions of the debt seem unsolvable but I don't know why we think Social Security is that complicated to fix.
1. Define very clearly what SS is. We need to be clear that it's an agreement between the working class and the retired class that says "if you are too old to work and you can't afford to live, we will take care of you"
2. Get rid of the SS tax cap. You don't pay any SS tax above 180k ish, which seems silly. Get rid of the cap and let every earned dollar participate in the program. It doesn't feel like that hard of a sell.
3. You don't get SS payments if you already have enough income. See #1, the agreement. We are agreeing to take care of you if you need it. Many, many retired persons do not need their SS income. Even if you paid SS tax your entire life, see #1. It is not an agreement that you will receive the money you put in later in your life.
Those aren't popular ideas but they are simple and easy to understand for everyone.
Of course it is, most people like to tax others to pay for their own benefits. Almost no one in the US maxes out the cap, so for them it would make no difference.
SS tax is a flat rate. I'm not asking the rich to pay more than anyone else. I'm asking that the rich pay the SS tax on every dollar they make, just like most people do.
do that poll in fairfax or loudoun county in northern va or san jose or san francisco and and watch those numbers change… every is up for more taxes as long as someone else pays them
? the OP proposed raising the contribution limit & also hinted at some means testing "and you can't afford to live" -- which combined would absolutely be enough to close the gap depending on how aggressive you are with these changes.
I would let government decide “you cant afford to live” as much as I would let OJ Simpson date my daughter. but that would be a hoot as two parties controlling the government change. while one is in power, 99.99% of retirees would qualify, the other - 0.000065% :)
vacuous anti-government take that doesn’t really do anything to contribute to the discussion, imo. essentially “keep the government out of my social security!”
healthcare: It might be politically doable if we just keep govt catastrophic care insurance and then give like ~50% of what we were previously spending on medicare/medicaid as a UBI. Would cut spending substantially and make the politics on 'endless healthcare spending without clear benefit' more of an uphill battle.
I was interested to hear Trump mention Australia's retirement system the other day (amongst the endless stream of what he normally talks about, it really stood out).
In Australia you have a universal Age Pension which is a backstop against extreme hardship set at the equivalent of US$20.5k, but your rate of Age Pension reduces linearly with income levels between US$9k and US$44k.
Similarly, the rate of Age Pension reduces linearly with asset levels between US$213k and US$474k, but you don't count your own home in that.
The private retirement savings system is similar to the 401(k) and Roth 401(k) except the employer doesn't typically do a match, they are just legally obligated to pay 12% of your salary. You can then contribute an extra US$20k as an income tax reduction or pretty much however much you want after-tax.
Inside the superannuation system, the gains are only taxed at 15%.
In general, it's a pretty perfect system that just leans a little too far towards being a rich person's wealth preservation tool, but overall it enables self-sufficiency while also preventing real poverty in old age.
> Get rid of the SS tax cap. You don't pay any SS tax above 180k ish, which seems silly. Get rid of the cap and let every earned dollar participate in the program. It doesn't feel like that hard of a sell.
No. Frankly getting a bit of a boost to my income at the end of the year is one of the few things I have left to look forward to. The program at best will pay out $0.75 on the dollar of benefits. How much is enough? Do more with less.
That is exactly what booing is, but citizens are allowed to boo. I can boo you, you can boo me. If you are booing me then I can walk away, and likewise you can walk away from me. If I'm booing you during a public performance that is indeed rude but then I need to be thrown out by security, which is perfectly allowed and expected.
Citizens, i.e each other, are not the problem when it comes to free speech, ever. The only entity which needs to be defended against is the entity that has a monopoly on violence, which is of course the government.
I like this idea but I fear the population, in the US at least, is not able to process something like a debate effectively. Any given debate, if won decisively enough, could shutdown any discussion on the topic for a long time. Imagine if you got Jordan Peterson and he absolutely shut-down someone else. I don't think the audience will accept the idea that the other person may have just been a bad debater, or that the ideas that they debated still have merit. It would effectively end the discussion.
People love winners, not ideas. It's just more us-vs-them. Especially because the US population only ever sees the word "debate" when it comes to a political debate on a stage, and those are not debates.
Again, I love this idea in theory but I fear it's time has come and gone already.
Thanks so much for your support and perspective. I’ve seen some debates where one debater dominates, but so far it hasn’t ended discussion of the given topic but has rather led to more questions raised for discussion in future debates. But I could see an outcome where it does end the discussion for some amount of time.
I’ve also seen a surge of interest in debate outside just political debate, especially on platforms like Jubilee, podcasts, and X spaces.
I could be wrong. I hold BE shares.
reply