Your error here, or the missing piece if we're generous, is what people are spending money on. Health care is astronomically more expensive here. Schooling isn't free after high school. Day care isn't free. Hell, even property taxes are simply 'not a thing' in France or the UK, where the taxes and Council Tax, respectively, are a tiny fraction of what Americans pay in property taxes ---- which, of course, pay for the 'free public schools.'
Now, let's talk about insurance, that's also much higher. In states like California and Florida, home insurance is through the roof, in some states like NJ and NY, car insurance is through the roof. Both going up way above inflation (like the items in my first paragraph).
You might counter with energy costs are much higher in these European countries (and similar ones like Germany, Benelux, etc), and the purchasing power might be higher, but the wages are so so much lower.
That said, this trope of people misspending their money needs to consider this outrageous costs of things that many people around the world never need to think about. The shitty wages in France are overshadowed by so many essentials being available without a high cost or any cost in some cases.
That makes sense, and it probably should be said more. It's probably just because we invest in what we know. If you're a real estate broker, you have an interest in properties, you think about it all the time, so you'll buy your own properties, or invest perhaps in builder stocks. If you're in tech, well, I don't need to say it because that's most of us. If you work in the energy sector, I imagine you know a thing or two about transport and esoterica of speculative miners or drillers, etc.
I hate Google, but whenever I tried (for months at a time) to use Duckduckgo or Brave search I had a terrible experience. In one case buying shoes brought me to a scam copycat website that Google never would have done. More importantly the searches just feel fuzzier than Google. Which is the opposite of what I want! How come no one trusts me to use literal strings.
Or is the indexing just worse and Google wins?
That's why I'm wary of Kagi. Love privacy and customization. But functionality kind of matters, too. I don't want to buy a smart phone that sucks at making basic phone calls.
Some have long splash screens and nag screens to punish those not on Wifi. TCL I believe was doing this, and I've read scattered reports of that behavior. Do research beforehand just in case.
After some research I went with a Sony Bravia. The screen is ridiculously reflective which is unusable next to any window at certain angles, and it wasn't the cheapest, but after some research since it uses that Google TV crap and has no splash screens, I could keep WiFi off on it and use my Apple TV.
TCL and now LG are to be fully avoided, Samsung isn't to be trusted (a future update if you allow it can lead to what happened here with LG). Samsung probably has the best hardware, but too bad.
If we don't vote with our wallets the enshittification of everything tech will march over and trample us that much faster.
Was Global Entry in the US a tactic to trick us into giving up our biometric data for speedy re-entry? I can say it's now barely faster than waiting behind the line for the stamper officials in their booths.
And then there is the question of how much net worth of these EU elites is tied to U.S. stock market wealth, itself hugely big tech. We know they are EU elites because there is a culture of going to the best schools where you learn culture and start in big business circles right away like your parents did. These aren't freedom-fighters looking for independence. I remember fondly Gerhard Shroeder, the leader of the SPD, later becoming a Putin ally and making millions sitting on boards of Russian energy companies. Is it any wonder that the country which moved away from nuclear and is a big environmentalist haven is one of the most dependent on Russian gas?
My fear is with these types of issues of sovereignty (or corruption), the reaction is often right-wing or left-wing populism. The type of thing that got Trump there in the first place.
One of the biggest flaws of the site was the ability to close questions as 'Duplicate' or similar. Multiple times I would google a problem, the SO question was exactly as asked the first result, half-answers or 'Closed as Duplicate', then you click on the supposed "duplicate" and the nuance was totally missed.
The other was the 'ability to read the room.' Even late-stage SO had the 'mods' not understand that they were the first google results, and their mean-spirited dismissals were being seen by thousands of hits.
Ketamine with psychotherapy has become mainstream and legal I think in a wider context, and there are different ways they do it - one is to give that heroic dose under supervision with a drip which can be a controlled administration.
Psychedelic therapy with mdma or mushrooms is only legal in very few places. Personally I find mdma is more promising for what you (we) experienced there. There's a sort of ancient wiring due to childhood threats. MDMA has been proven to help soldiers with PTSD, which I think is a big adjacent to this (the vigilance being the common facor)?
Mushrooms are not quite the same, but give you more intensity control (and are much shorter duration). And legally there is ketamine therapy.
I'm not sure if it'll completely remove the cortisol issues I have. This feels biological, maybe due to early traumas. Are psychedelics supposed to fix these? I thought it was more for depression than always-on vigilance.
Removing all real dangerous stressors (like work and house woes) would really help. I tend to be a lot more tolerant of less sleep while on vacation. That said, I spend a lot of money and time finding quieter hotel rooms or airbnbs.
The only point I was trying to make is, "it's more complicated than <the parent comment I was replying to>." The household affordability problem is extremely complicated. In some cases it's indeed NIMBYism - some law that limits to single-family housing, or complicated HOA rules, etc. Local board approvals required.
Sometimes it's just plain-old high-demand. Who doesn't want to live in a big fancy metropolis as a 25 yr-old with money? More people move in than it's physically possible to build (we're not China).
Sometimes it's regulations - you need to pay construction workers a min wage of $50/hr if you build a unit more than 99, or no tax breaks for you. Sometimes land is expensive. But so is the architect, the materials, the permits. Then you have environmental regulations, sometimes that make sense, some that are too difficult. Then you have regulations to protect the consumer so the place doesn't burn up or fall on our heads, sometimes that make sense, some that are too difficult.
You have interest rates that are high.
We have the private equity investors buying up bulk new construction.
We have wage growth that didn't match the growth of housing costs.
Hopefully I've made my case that housing affordability has many factors.
I'll need to save this message so I can cut and paste it elsewhere because about once a month on HN someone posts that the problem with housing affordability is not enough building and NIMBYism, which is only one of the factors here.
California problem. There's no constrained supply in Houston or Austin or a few other cities in the US that are now crashing from over supply.
Another one is Manhattan. There's no space to build so things get retrofitted (office conversions) and new zoning (Hudson Yards) but it's expensive - high hourly rates to pay people on buildings with more 99 units, many many permits required, land is expensive, etc
So it's luxury only in NYC
None of this is NIMBYism.
Part of it is return to office. Why move there if it's too expensive - the answer is you're unemployed otherwise
Part of it is demand. NYC is the closest thing to Europe, where you don't drive around in an SUV to do simple things. The GDP is enormous, so you find jobs. Young people. Etc
Housing costs are a lot more complicated than NIMBYism. There's a strong California bias for obvious reasons, here on HN.
What's missing is how much ability you have to sleep, rather than some sort of sometimes controllable factor like schedule. In my case, my brain wakes me up with anxiety one hour or more before the alarm rings (I never check time, I'm guessing). My room is always cold and relatively dark - not photo development dark, but not far.
The cortisol spikes are what get me. I can drink or not drink, exercise or not exercise, take magnesium or not take magnesium. The brain wants to tell me at 630 or 7 all the things that can go wrong or todos, instead of letting me sleep til 8. Sometimes it's much earlier than that.
I also wake up at the slightest sound or movement. It's been like this since I was a child. I'm defective, and all the bro science Youtube videos with top 10 science -based 'hacks' don't solve the problem. Know what does? Anti anxiety medication, but doctors don't prescribe benzos anymore.
The S&P is through the roof because of the AI boom - it's bound to crash if the big players do. What's a better index?
It's hard to imagine a world in which these broad indexes don't crash too. It's the sector indexes I'd love to understand better from a cyclical point of view, so I can buy something that won't also crash.
Right. Your suggestion seemed to be that's the path we should go down - the restaurant industry, which has a very high failure rate. Or do we become master electricians?
This isn't the 1950s - spending is down everywhere, costs are up, interests rates are high.
I like it but how much context does it need for a complex program? If you're giving instructions and using its code, I imagine context is being passed back up in an exponential way. If not, and you give it a very thin context every time, how do you manage to prompt it enough?
Now, let's talk about insurance, that's also much higher. In states like California and Florida, home insurance is through the roof, in some states like NJ and NY, car insurance is through the roof. Both going up way above inflation (like the items in my first paragraph).
You might counter with energy costs are much higher in these European countries (and similar ones like Germany, Benelux, etc), and the purchasing power might be higher, but the wages are so so much lower.
That said, this trope of people misspending their money needs to consider this outrageous costs of things that many people around the world never need to think about. The shitty wages in France are overshadowed by so many essentials being available without a high cost or any cost in some cases.