I made a fifth of what he did and literally did exactly that: quit my job to spend time with my kid.

I’ll never be a billionaire, but I’m feeling on excellent terms with myself and with the universe.

I lived in central SF for many years. I prefer a cool house (some visitors might say “cold”). I was able to go months at a time, winter and summer, without using gas heat at all.

Of all the areas that could manage this, SFBA seems up there in terms of feasibility at least.

I go all year (since July is the coldest) with just a 750w space heater, but I also prefer cold.

> For additional clarity, the world will be at about 5 billion at 2040, without war or plague.

I can find no immediate evidence that any demographers actually claim this.

Internet people are garbage, and HN is not special in this regard. This is because people are garbage.

People love tearing others down. This is the rule.

This comment is amusingly self-referential. (As is this one, I guess.)

Given that it’s literally as simple and inconvenient as using various financial tools to avail oneself of FDIC insurance for one’s entire portfolio, what even is the difference?

Yep. For all cafe-like spaces I’ve been involved with, drip coffee == free money.

From the places I've worked, drip coffee is essentially free, but the cup it's served in .. less so.

Even for "speciality coffee" it went lid, cup, sleeve, milk, (syrup,) coffee.

This is a non-answer. None of what you’ve described will help a parent with a kid today / for the time in which the kid will be in school. It’s pandering.

This constantly comes up because people have different understandings of what “middle class” means, or perhaps more importantly, should mean.

I think a reasonable meaning (that the author might accept given the quoted statement) might go like “I live in a neighborhood with a bunch of other successful business owners or highly paid professionals, I must be pretty middle class”. As you rightly point out, that makes you pretty dang successful — more than “middle” seems to imply.

Of course, historically, that is the middle class. But no one cares about history.

From what I can tell, anyone richer than me is clearly not middle class; those bastards are rich. I’m clearly middle class, and hardworking, too. And damn it would suck to be poor in the US.

I didnt know that, based on use I had assumed it meant "homeowner or highly paid professional", and now that I think on it it seems clearly incongruous that middle class shouldnt include successful business owner. Neat.

If you are successful enough of business owner, you become upper class.

Middle class definition has nothing to do with history. It is sociological term used to describe groups inside human societies. It is about where you are at relative to other people.

I think indeed it’s not a conspiracy theory but just an observation of what might be happening that requires no collusion, just individual greed.

(I hence appreciated the quotes).

I am also not sure it’s so simple; the tools are so much more powerful than I would have believed just a couple years ago. But there’s value and then there’s perceived value; the fact that there’s so much nontechnical interest is perhaps suspect.

The majority of planners I’ve met are what you might call “urbanists”. They are generally limited by policy and politics to maintain the status quo, and are therefore frustrated.

(Like, 5 people. This is not a study).