
What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt - cpeterso
https://letsencrypt.org/2016/09/20/what-it-costs-to-run-lets-encrypt.html
======
jedberg
To everyone complaining about the $250K (see edit, it's actually 200K) per
person in salary (which seems to be everyone at the moment), a few things to
keep in mind:

1) That includes benefits

2) They are in Silicon Valley and have to compete with everyone else in
Silicon Valley

3) Given what they have accomplished with such a small team, these are
probably high caliber people.

4) In SV there is a good 25% premium you pay for engineers with security
expertise.

As someone who runs a business and has to hire talent, I can say that I'd
consider myself lucky to get such a team for such a great price.

Edit: A bunch of people are saying "why not remote". I think they are in fact
mostly remote, but they still have to _compete_ with SV wages because really
good people command those wages whether they are here or not.

Edit2: As has been pointed out multiple times, the blog post was not clear,
and it is actually 200K per person, all in.

~~~
zeveb
I think $200K/person is fine, but I do quibble with this:

> They are in Silicon Valley and have to compete with everyone else in Silicon
> Valley

Why? Why compete for talent in Silicon Valley when there are people all over
the country who'd love to work on something like this? I can get why they
might prefer not to do remote teams (it's a challenge), but there are cities
like Seattle, Boston, Denver, Dallas, Kansas City, Houston — all of which have
folks quite capable of building this.

In fact, for some folks not being located in SV is a huge plus!

~~~
jedberg
As covered elsewhere, most of the team is remote. But they still get SV
salaries because great people get those salaries no matter where they are.

~~~
optimuspaul
that is ridiculous, do you have evidence to back that statement up?

~~~
vostok
If you consider anecdotal evidence then I have received, with no negotiation,
similar (statistically identical) offers in low cost of living areas and high
cost of living areas.

~~~
needcaffeine
I'd love to know where. Not trying to be snarky.

~~~
vostok
I work in a pretty small niche that's concentrated in high cost of living
areas so I would prefer not to get too specific. One example was a company in
the same country as Omaha with similar cost of living.

A different company was in a different country than Omaha and the naive cost
of living was higher, but the cost of living, after adjusting for taxes, was
actually very similar.

I hope that gives enough information. I really enjoy living in high cost of
living areas so that's where I ended up, but I did have the choice to live
somewhere cheaper.

~~~
needcaffeine
Country, or county?

~~~
vostok
Country.

------
mikeyouse
Funny to see people quibble over a few hundred thousand dollars when they're
doing a substantial amount of the heavy lifting to encrypt the web. At over 10
million certificates issued in the past year, their staffing costs represent
$0.20/cert. For those who've deployed with Let's Encrypt, did you get a
quarter's worth of value from their service?

~~~
koolba
> For those who've deployed with Let's Encrypt, did you get a quarter's worth
> of value from their service?

The certificate price isn't even the issue. It's the signup + auto-renew!

Before LE came out, I would have paid $100 to not have to 1) Not go through
the hassle of manually ordering certs and 2) Not having to log back into
servers to periodically update them.

I get both of those with LE ... the fact that it's free? That's just icing on
a very delicious cake!

~~~
rmc
How about donating $100 to Lets Encrypt then? :P

~~~
koolba
> How about donating $100 to Lets Encrypt then? :P

That'd require me getting a refund :P

------
nappy-doo
Fascinating. Everyone here is complaining that 2M for 8 employees seems steep,
but I think this seems really cheap. Admittedly, I work at Google, but we bat
around the number of 400-500k per employee when discussing them here. 250k/ in
SV seems really reasonably priced in comparison.

~~~
EugeneOZ
Maybe SV is not the best place then. Especially when they are working
remotely. One thing is to make money and pay salary as you want, and another
one is "we want such salaries, please donate".

But don't get me wrong, I'm going to subscribe for monthly donation to them.
They save a lot of my time monthly.

~~~
freehunter
I'd say it's a true statement. The reason you start a company in SV is to get
access to the people who live and work in SV. If you don't use that pool of
resources, there is no point in being in SV and paying to be in SV. Might as
well move to Madison, WI and halve your expenses. And there you'd have access
to University of Wisconsin graduates and can compete on wages with Epic
instead of Google and Apple.

------
gamedna
When considering the salary for their staff, it is important to point out that
LetsEncrypt only works if there is trust. They need to have high caliber
people that they can trust and this costs money. Hearing that LE Is paying
their people a fairly good wage, makes me much more comfortable using and
supporting them.

~~~
lucb1e
Lots of people are talking about how expensive Silicon Valley is and how they
have to compete with other salaries... but this is the justifying reason to
me. If you pay enough that money is off the table, you can trust them a lot
better.

------
maker1138
They are not paying $250k per employee. You have to factor in payroll taxes,
paying accountants to keep books and CPAs to do taxes, benefits, and a
multitude of other regulation-imposed payroll costs.

All of this is to support salaries of around $125k - $150k.

The same goes for pretty much any employer. If a fast food restaurant hires
someone at $8/hr, it actually costs them around $16/hr to hire the employee.

In a free market Let's Encrypt could probably cut its expenses to close to
half what it's at now.

~~~
callesgg
In Sweden the head of state earns less money than the average Let's Encrypt
employee.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
The Swedish head of state does not live in Silicon Valley (and I would be
surprised if the Swedish state is spending less than $250k/yr. in total on its
monarchy).

~~~
callesgg
My point was not that Sweden i great and cheap, it was that you can get allot
for those sums of money.

------
djaychela
I'm quite surprised - $2.06 on staffing seemed steep, so obviously read on as
I was thinking that there must be a lot of employees. But 8? OK, I'm just a
teacher, and I earn around £30k a year... not the kind of figures I've seen
bandied about on here for graduate programmers who seem to be pulling in 8-10
times that for their first job... So I'd be interested to see a breakdown of
the payroll (which I doubt would happen) - an average of $250k seem normal to
others on here?

~~~
walrus01
people who seriously know how to code mission critical X.590 root CA PKI
infrastructure are __not cheap __when you 're looking at total
benefits/compensation per head.

~~~
resmote
Creating a certificate is easy.

~~~
msinclair
It sure is! Just go to [https://letsencrypt.org](https://letsencrypt.org)

~~~
freehunter
It's so easy, I have a cron job do it for me!

(That is a comment on how easy LetsEncrypt makes generating certificates,
something I very much appreciate).

~~~
resmote
I agree, LetsEncrypt has done a great job. My original comment was snarky
though accurate in a focused sense concerning the actual creation of a self-
signed certificate (which can be easily cron jobbed). Of course I understand
and appreciate that there is the whole negotiating the larger certificate
scene, multiple companies, politics, etc. and that takes time, talent, effort
and money. If LetsEncrypt had just come out from the start and said, "we can
offer this service for X dollars" then it would have been more transparent.

------
sidlls
All the complaints about salaries are dismaying. Why not consider that plenty
of other places seriously undercompensate engineers instead of trying to cut
this organization's pay structure down?

~~~
amazingman
People overwhelmingly want others to have less than them more than they want
themselves to have more. It's ridiculous, but true.

~~~
sidlls
Yep. The same phenomenon augmented by racism applies to certain demographic
populations of the US with respect to minimum wage, welfare, etc.

It's just completely irrational.

------
MichaelApproved
> We’re currently working to raise the money we need to operate through the
> next year. Please consider donating or becoming a sponsor if you’re able to
> do so! In the event that we end up being able to raise more money than we
> need to just keep Let’s Encrypt running we can look into adding other
> services to improve access to a more secure and privacy-respecting Web.

Wouldn't they want to secure funding for 5+ years for existing services before
considering adding other services?

~~~
rocqua
I'd guess that the company-sponsors are on the hook for more than a year.

------
mmanfrin
It is astounding to see so many people here who think employee cost ==
employee salary.

------
mrb
To Let's Encrypt: if you guys took bitcoins as donation I would give $10 in an
instant. The friction of filling out this long Paypal form is just too high
for $10... [http://i.imgur.com/oZZWeuG.png](http://i.imgur.com/oZZWeuG.png)
(And, no, I don't have a Paypal account.)

 _Make it easy to give, and you will receive more donations!_

Edit: I am not the only one who wants to donate BTC! Bitcoin was the number
one request asked last year:
[https://twitter.com/letsencrypt/status/581177744152784896](https://twitter.com/letsencrypt/status/581177744152784896)

~~~
Dylan16807
That's an interesting way of putting it. I think I would spend longer double-
checking a bitcoin transaction that I would one through paypal.

Name/address are easy to autofill even if you don't want anything saving your
card info.

~~~
mrb
I'd do the bitcoin donation as such: unlock my phone, launch Bitcoin Wallet,
capture on-screen QR code, type $10, hit send. Done.

~~~
Dylan16807
I guess that's simple enough if you have two devices handy at the same time.
But the simple flow for paypal is just as easy. Click to let my browser
autofill payment info, type the CSC, hit submit.

------
matt_wulfeck
$20m is such a great bargain to how much value LetsEncrypt provides to the
world at large. I can hardly think of better money spent.

They have a donation page here:
[https://letsencrypt.org/donate/](https://letsencrypt.org/donate/)

Let's keep it going.

------
jakewins
I wish there was a way to donate money towards a fund - like, give $100USD,
that goes into some index fund, and then LetsEncrypt withdraws $3.50 (as per
[https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates))
a year until the sun burns out.

I'd much rather spend my money knowing its a small ways toward making this
kind of thing self sustainable.

~~~
hiddenkrypt
You could set such a thing up yourself. It's basically a trust. Put your money
in the index fund, and have a process to automatically withdraw the safe
amount and donate it.

Now build a product around that idea, and be the next patreon. I heard of this
great company that'll help you get ssh certs for free.

~~~
rabidrat
I've thought about this extensively, and it's actually not that easy to set
one up yourself. For one thing, the overhead required to administer a trust is
non-zero, and would be prohibitively expensive (non-sustainable) for a small
amount. The _barest minimum_ endowment is at least $10k, and possibly $100k.
Best case, you find a way to align the trust with a university, who adds it to
their portfolio and administers the funds according to your/their goals.

This also presumes that there are public investment instruments which can get
a reliably positive rate of return. In today's economy, it's difficult to get
even a few percent reliably. Some places are toying with negative interest
rates, even (which means that passive investments are deflationary).

~~~
daeken
How does the overhead scale when you go from, say, having $10k in the pool to
$10m? If a service existed that ran a trust where you could put in money and
then dictate where your share gets routed, would this overhead keep going up
dramatically as it grows?

~~~
rabidrat
The overhead is nearly constant with respect to the number of dollars. But the
cost goes up linearly with the number of shareholders (as each one needs at
least a modicum of attention over time, to update records reflecting changes
of dispensation, or to verify death certificates, etc). And the costs also go
up with the complexity of the trust, e.g. if the money has to do anything
other than being held and dispersed at appropriate times. (Someone has to file
the taxes).

Banks often employ someone called a Trust Officer, who handles things like
this related to the trusts that the bank is managing (and carrying). They make
around $30/hour. And let's say that 100 people each put in $1000, or $100k
total. At 3% interest, the fund would generate $3k/year. If each shareholder
requires an hour of the trust officer's time over the course of the year, then
all income from the trust goes to pay the trust officer, and there's nothing
left over to be dispersed.

It sounds like a good idea, and I'd definitely take advantage of the service
if it existed. But lawyers and accountants have to be involved, and they want
to be paid. And they're expensive.

------
hughes
The services of Let's Encrypt, let alone the cause they stand for, is well
worth a small recurring donation. I think this is totally reasonable to pledge
even $2/mo.

~~~
mrweasel
If companies that uses Let's Encrypt would chip in just 1/10th of what they'd
pay for certificate from for profit providers, then Let's Encrypt won't be in
need of donation anytime soon.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
ICANN could just fund the whole thing.

~~~
wtbob
That'd be a bit ironic, ICANN funding a project to verify assigned names and
numbers because decades ago folks decided they couldn't trust ICANN to do its
job.

------
brilee
I recently replaced my paid SSL certs using LE. I took what I would have paid
in SSL costs over the next two years and donated it instead.

~~~
ersii
That's a fantastic initiative! Bravo!

------
Grue3
So, what's the plan for when the bubble pops, Let's Encrypt runs out of
funding, and meanwhile all browsers have switched to requiring HTTPS for all
websites?

~~~
dawnerd
My guess is someone like Google would come in and fill the spot for free or
very very cheap. I think Google/Microsoft/Apple/etc could donate the 10+
people they need without even batting an eye.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
And Let's Encrypt have created open-source software and standard protocols for
running an automated, free CA. So anyone (with sufficient money) could provide
a drop-in replacement if needed or desired.

------
pw
So programmers mad that other programmers are making good money (although,
taking into account overhead, salaries are rather normal). This is why we
can't have nice things people.

------
jimktrains2
"Hardware/Software" and "Hosting/Auditing" seem to be weird things to lump
together.

I wonder what software they pay for.

~~~
sophacles
Hardware and software are both capex.

Hosting and auditing are both opex.

Makes sense to me.

~~~
mmkx
Doesn't to me. Staffing/Auditing/Legal/Administrative are up to 2.7MM of their
3.0MM expenses. The way they grouped things is very deceptive.

------
thewavelength
Funny to see that some of the sponsors on the Let's Encrypt website are linked
without https even though they offer https.

------
cptskippy
My multi-domain (3) cert just came up for renewal at $28.99 a year, instead I
setup Let's Encrypt on 8 domains for free. I think I'll just setup a recurring
donation to Let's Encrypt simply because I'll never have to do the SSL Cert
song and dance ever again.

------
juandazapata
Thanks for doing such a great job. It's truly amazing what you have achieved
with such a small team.

------
rexreed
GEEZ - Those Legal and Administrative costs are INSANE. Especially if a lot of
their stuff is handled by Linux Foundation. What the heck? 12%+ of total spend
to lawyers and admin, and this is not salary? What's going on here?

------
guelo
People are confused. The end salaries are probably in the $110k-$150k range.

------
sp527
Surprised no one is commenting that their software has really poor usability.
It may work well in providing secure certificates, but setup is a PITA and the
documentation is abysmal.

~~~
lucb1e
Agreed. If I remember correctly it even destroyed a site once when it was
attempting to make sure their validator could reach the verification file. I
just did what everyone said: "it's so easy, just run it on auto mode with
apache and it'll configure your cert for you". Turned out to be a huge PITA.

Recently I had to renew that site again (I've been postponing and dreading it)
and looked for a different client. The getssl bash script[1] had its own
problems (all caused by me not taking the time to read the readme, but the
default settings were a bit odd), but overall a 10× better experience than the
official client. Much less magic, much more a unix-like tool ("it does only
one thing, and one thing very well").

[1] [https://github.com/srvrco/getssl](https://github.com/srvrco/getssl)

~~~
tghw
I'm not sure I like their "we'll do it all for you" approach. It seems like
there are a lot of ways to accidentally break config files. In general, I'd
rather not anyone touch those without me knowing what it will do.

Fortunately, the certonly script grabs the cert and puts it in an easy
location. Updating the config from there is easy enough.

------
dstroot
Offering an alternative viewpoint. Many seem to be focused on the cost/FTE.
The alternative view is that if this was a business then $3m a year to run it
is "peanuts" for the services provided. In fact I prefer the for profit model.
I'd like them to charge for each account/cert to cover their costs.

~~~
jitix
The whole point of Lets Encrypt is not to charge people for the certificates.
But I agree that the amount they are spending per year is very modest compared
to what they are doing.

------
vacri
So many people complaining 'why not remote', when half the staff is
operations, and they run their own hardware.

It's going to suck when your ops staffer in Tahiti has to fix a physical
server problem in the SF datacenter...

------
jmuguy
Ya'll should get some swag for donors. I'd like a cool sticker :)

------
Gatsky
Reading these comments, it's hard not to agree with the sentiment that being
transparent about salary data is of dubious value to a company.

------
tschellenbach
2m - ~200k in benefits. Looks like 180k per engineer. Thats high, but looks
like they've got the corporate sponsors to support those salaries.

------
mmkx
They need to spend less or they're the next Tor foundation, an ineffective
black hole of hacker wannabes and hanger-ons. Running high performance
services don't cost very much as evidenced by their hosting entry. Maybe 5
engineers max. No way they are working on features every day. Should be very
slow outside of patches. CA/SSL specification does not change weekly...

~~~
bracewel
> CA/SSL specification does not change weekly...

The draft ACME specification does though.

------
naveen99
Has anyone tried to incorporate signed executable loader into the Linux kernel
?

Hopefully letsencrypt can start certifying code signing keybase keys.

Also would be nice if someone would offer a service to build executables from
open source code and code sign certifying that a particular executable was
built from a particular source openly available.

------
throw2016
There is no problem with being located in sf but I would take issue with the
idea its a job that 'requires' one to be located in sf or have access to the
absoute 'highest quality' of engineers.

On the contrary there is a risk of adding complexity where none is needed
because super high quality talent requires super high quality work and if the
work of generating certs is not challenging enough, complexity is created,
like Acme.

I am not sure why generating a cert is so involved with letsencrypt. Does Dns
validation, file validation or email validation require a new standard.
Perhaps a simple rest api and web frontend would be better.

Here is my domainname, my cert request and a file on my server or dns entry to
verify, now can I have a cert please? This is the process. Why does it need a
client, and one that can automatically update certs!! and an elaborate new
standard? There is no way I am running this on a live server, so the
automation is then moot.

I would rather pay $20-40 a year than babysit my ssl every 90 days, and this
is for a wildcard.

The kind of folks who automate things spend hundreds of dollars a month on aws
or gce, and willingly pay 10 times more for bandwidth than they would at do or
vultr. Is $20 a year or $2 a month per wildcard domain in this context really
an issue? So who does the automation target and benefit?

For others a manual process would have been more accesible, there are tons of
others things to do with one's time, le is automated but that is one more
thing to monitor and that can go wrong.

I can't help feeling the whole cert generation process could be simplified and
artificial restrictions around 90 days and wildcards re-evaluated. That would
be valuable to users, contribute to make running things simpler and money well
spent.

------
test6554
If the market crashes or they cannot raise needed funds, they could easily
turn around and begin charging $1 per certificate per year and still be a much
better value than other CAs.

------
tmaly
I would be interested to know how many certificates they currently issue. I
would have no problem paying a small annual rate for using the service.

------
otakucode
I notice that they explain the purpose and benefit to the organization of
every single category of employee - except the executive director.

------
ceejayoz
If any LE staff are in here, I'd happily chip in on a Patreon.

~~~
imron
You can donate directly, either once off or recurring monthly -
[https://letsencrypt.org/donate/](https://letsencrypt.org/donate/)

~~~
ceejayoz
I'd rather avoid PayPal, and I like Patreon as a central clearinghouse for
monthly donations.

~~~
imron
On the flipside, Patreon takes a 5% cut on top of whatever fees there are for
the payment method you use, so there's less of your dollar reaching the
intended recipient.

~~~
ceejayoz
[https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-
content&conte...](https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-
content&content_ID=merchant%2Fdonations) says PayPal takes $0.30 per
transaction plus 2.2%, so that's a full 1/3 of my dollar gone there.

------
desireco42
At first glance, it looks huge. But then, honestly, when you just consider
vast benefit all of us are getting from them, this is nothing and probably
should be funded on a higher level. Like 10-15M.

------
nodesocket
Curious where the 20K a month in hosting is spent? Perhaps Google or Amazon
could throw in some credits to help out?

~~~
dublinben
It is almost certainly necessary for them to have dedicated hardware in
neutral datacenters. They can't just run their infrastructure on AWS or
Google.

~~~
artimaeis
Maybe there's something very obvious I'm missing - but why?

If their environments are not bare-metal then moving from a virtual solution
to a cloud one seems fairly simple. If they are bare-metal then it hardly
seems necessary for issuing certs - but if you have more insight I'd love if
you'd share it!

~~~
detaro
CAs require special hardware security modules (HSM) to contain the signing
keys and have to control the entire path to them, so yes, you need to own your
hardware for a public CA.

And independence from their sponsors is an important organisational feature
for Let's Encrypt.

~~~
fireflash38
The second part of it is why they can't use cloud HSM products offered by
various companies. If you're functioning as a CA, you _absolutely_ want
restricted physical access to your root keys, which you can't guarantee
otherwise.

------
unabridged
How many employees does it take to run Let's Encrypt? 8 2 to run the website 1
to ask for money 5 to say "are you sure you need a wildcard cert?"

------
jruroc
|$250k/employee

hmmmm

~~~
Descon
They should consider running the service in Canada, where software engineer /
programmer salaries are a third of that

~~~
cc81
A follow up tweet clarified that it was 10 people and not eight. But even that
is a pretty high cost per employee I agree.

But the question is: Can you get a team of engineers that have the ability and
crypto know-how to build something like Let's Encrypt in Canada for 1/3 of the
salary?

~~~
ryanobjc
probably not. the best canadian coders are already here in the US.

~~~
Fogest
Says who?

~~~
ryanobjc
Says a Canadian who lives in the US who overgeneralizes.

It's not entirely true, but its way closer to the truth than you'd admit.

~~~
Fogest
I mean I am a Canadian who lives in Canada and I disagree. So that's why I
don't get your argument? I know plenty of very skilled people here.

~~~
nkassis
But you gotta admit a lot of recent grads end up leaving. I'm another Canadian
who left given I was offered doubled my salary in one move.

~~~
Fogest
But isn't the cost of living also higher and you have medical expenses and
things? Are you actually taking home double as much, or does a lot of that
extra have to go to living expenses that you wouldn't have in Canada?

~~~
ryanobjc
The cost of living is higher. Medical expenses aren't really a thing for
recent grads, and good medical insurance limits your outlay. Normally most
people with solid insurance and serious health concerns will max out at a few
thousand dollars a year. And for the kinds of jobs we are talking about, that
isn't a big deal.

Anyways, I'm making way beyond 2x as much as I ever could have in Canada. Also
I get to work on world class tech, with world class people. And when I changes
jobs, I don't have to take major compromises. There are way more high quality
employers in the bay area than anywhere else for technology!

------
bowmessage
Bitcoin?

------
denfromufa
no windows sadly

~~~
denfromufa
can you explain why I'm downvoted?

~~~
pfg
There are a number of client options for windows[1].

[1]: [https://letsencrypt.org/docs/client-
options/#windows](https://letsencrypt.org/docs/client-options/#windows)

~~~
denfromufa
seriously has anyone actually got to work any of these third-party options?
Don't they all depend on IIS which is not free?

~~~
pfg
Many of the clients above support something like certbot's webroot plugin,
which is web server-agnostic and works by simply putting a verification file
in your webroot and serving that to Let's Encrypt's validation server.

Also: As far as I know, IIS is included with any Windows version (definitely
any version of Windows Server).

------
ausjke
Can the business model be charging for the certificate directly, just cheaper
than others? I'm fine with that.

~~~
watwatwatwat
I'm not. I test a lot of ideas but don't have much money. I have already to
pay for hosting and DNS. SSL is optional. I'm very thankful to let's encrypt
for the opportunity to use SSL on my sites. Also SSL (and the web) is a broken
technology, I'm not going to pay for something broken.

~~~
ausjke
there is nothing really that is free beer in the world, the money has to come
somewhere, either some "rich" guys donate the fund, so the rest gets a free
ride, or everybody pays a little, say, $5 per year, what's wrong with that?
I'm not a rich guy per se, but I want to pay reasonable fee for what I got.

~~~
ersii
You can still do so by donating 5$ per year or any other amount you'd like -
which is awesome! More things should come around in this way. Talk about being
inclusive.

~~~
ausjke
yes but if you do the math since not everybody is paying whoever donates need
pay more to take care of those who does not, which is really what the whole
topic is about.

------
mimog
$2.06M for eight employees seems very steep

~~~
hughes
Approximately 100% salary overhead is pretty standard, so eight $125k
employees plus infrastructure and office costs sounds reasonable.

~~~
unfunco
8 x $125K would be $1M, not the $2M that is currently being spent on
employees.

Edit: Missed the first part of that, I apologise. 100% overhead doesn't seem
reasonable per employee to me though.

~~~
cjbprime
You missed the "100% salary overhead" part of the sentence. Consider taxes,
benefits, insurance, other non-salary costs to employing people.

------
red_blobs
Many people here don't realize what it costs a business, in taxes, to employ
someone. I think if more people realized this, we would have less people
demanding a $15 pay-raise for minimum wage workers.

~~~
eropple
I strongly disagree. What the worker needs to make to have a puncher's chance
at a life is not related to the amount paid in taxes.

~~~
red_blobs
Yes it does. As a business owner, more taxes means less money for employees
(and less employees hired).

People that don't understand taxes never consider this and immediately think
employers are just greedy.

Inflation is also never considered, which is exactly why we have to keep
raising minimum wage in the first place.

Minimum wage increase will not help anyone in the long-run. It will only
inflate the cost of goods and services for everyone within a few years.

The real answer is more education

~~~
eropple
Let's be really real for a sec: minimum wage does not, in any meaningful way,
drive demand-pull inflation. Minimum wage doesn't even _track_ the rate of
inflation. This is macro-averse horsepuckey.

This position of abolition of minimum wage is not seriously held by any
macroeconomic experts except on the _extreme far right_. There is a reason
that wage floors, in lieu of GMI, are accepted by even centrists: because the
alternatives are literally unconscionable.

Further: capital _is_ greedy. It's functionally unable to be anything else.
Throwing labor a bone once in a while is not, desperate hair-shirting aside,
going to somehow kill it and destroy the jobs, homgz.

------
jcoffland
This does not instill confidence in Let's Encrypt's longevity. It sounds like
a cry for help. $250k may be a reasonable sum for an established company to
pay it's employees but for a company to have that kind of burn rate with out
having next years funding secured is scary.

~~~
imron
Have you seen their sponsors page?

Multiply the cost of the various sponsorships by the relevant sponsors and I
think you'll find they're doing alright.

That doesn't even take in to account individual donations either.

The point of this post was not just fundraising, it was because they believe
in transparency and openness.

~~~
jcoffland
It reads like, oh shit, if you don't donate we might not be around next year.

------
sadness
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