> Before the pandemic, she says, she might have done two disability tax credit forms; last year, she did twenty
Did Covid cause massive disability? Did legislation change to make claiming a disability easier or more lucrative? Are people claiming disability in response to inability to get jobs that meet their expectations?
It's not the point of the article, but a 10x increase in requests for "disability tax credit forms" seems like a very significant sign of something deeply concerning.
I wonder how many people seeking disability are more accurately described as disenfranchised. If people are looking at bleak prospects of low-paid jobs with limited possibilities for advancement, alongside soaring housing and other costs, how many people with previously manageable impairments are throwing in the towel and using a disability designation to escape the rat race.
Yes, Covid did cause massive disability. The colloquial term for it is Long Covid. I know at least three people suffering from it —- along a spectrum from slight to severe impairment of daily functioning.
> Covid did cause massive disability. The colloquial term for it is Long Covid
I know a previously-healthy guy who got an early variant that went for his pancreas. He now has Type 1 diabetes, a condition one is normally born with and for which there is no cure, just chronic, expensive and time-consuming treatment.
> He now has Type 1 diabetes, a condition one is normally born with
Type 1 Diabetes isn't something someone is born with. Rather, it's something that you generally get when young (and, in fact, it used to be called Juvenile Diabetes, vs Adult Onset, which is what Type 2 used to be called), but it can happen later in line, all the way into the 20s (or later, I believe).
There is a genetic component, but it's also completely possible to get it with no family history.
Didn't realise it was autoimmune. Nevertheless, in his case it was directly caused by Covid attacking the pancreas. That said, he got it in 2020. The virus got milder over successive generations. (Intrinsically and due to broader vaccination and antiviral administration.)
There's actually a couple different "types" of Type 1 Diabetes. For example, you can get it during pregnancy (Gestational Diabetes), etc. So it doesn't surprise me that it's possible to get it from Covid. I seem to recall someone getting it from an injury that damaged the Pancreas enough to prevent it from generating insulin. I don't know if that still "counts" as Type 1; but it certainly has the same effects.
Even for the first person described in the story, her search for a doctor is not primarily described a search for medical care, but a search for someone who can create a paper trail to ensure her child's eligibility for benefits.
The HN crowd is far left but they would never admit it.
Go watch Bill Clinton talk about illegal immigration and border security in the 90s. He'd be considered far right today. Read a book or newspaper from 50 years ago or 100 years ago and look at how much more freedom people had to build homes and businesses without a thousand licenses, permits, taxes and inspections.
There was a time in America where the notion of an income tax or of restrictions on running a business out of your home were considered far-left authoritarian and unconstitutional, but now we've all gotten used to a million regulations on how we use our private property, the government surveilling our communications and finances, government oversight and permission required for all activities.
Admittedly "left vs right" is hardly useful in contemporary politics, things are so multi-faceted and people's notions of what those terms mean is variable. But nonetheless, it's obvious that "the center" of American politics today is drastically far to the left from where it was previously.
In some sense, the 1960s counter-culture liberal progressives "won" and became the center and the establishment. A leftwing extremist in 1968 on issues of feminism, race, social welfare, tax policy, foreign policy, housing policy and probably others is a centrist today.
Environmental issues and unions are the only two areas I can think of where America has stayed the same or moved right since WWII.
The US is the most right-leaning country out of the first world.
> but now we've all gotten used to a million regulations on how we use our private property
Many of these originating from the right. Because the right is not, and has never been, a party of small government. They want big government, just their big government. That has meant historically enforcing slavery, then segregation, suppressing women's rights, suppressing abortion, dictating what you can do in the bedroom, and on and on and on. These are all conservative policy - and all HUGE government.
> it's obvious that "the center" of American politics today is drastically far to the left from where it was previously
Yes, this is called the progression of time. This is why people who are unable to change their mind over time end up falling behind and sounding crazy.
Have you ever asked an old dude about how they feel about black people? Whoa! Clearly they grew up in a different time. Some let that shit go like they should, some don't. Those that don't are destined to be left to the past.
Just a few decades ago a slight right winger might be anti-integration. Slight. A far right-winger would be lynching people in their neighborhood. So you're correct - we've moved past that.
And, in 40 years, if I personally don't change my beliefs, I will also sound crazy. To conservatives that's scary or something. To me, that's how the world works. I say either adapt or be relegated to the insane.
I think you have it backwards. Open borders are a right-wing goal. See Bernie Sanders comments on the subject circa 2015. How the Koch brothers want open borders to weaken labors leverage.
The wealthy and powerful don't benefit from citizenship. When you have wealth you can just pay for what you need or want. It's the common person who needs the benefits and protections that come from citizenship.
You're on the right path, pointing out how counter-culture liberals won but they are in fact right-wing. They LARP as liberals/leftists.
The best thing was that the internet was made by and for smart people.
It was an incredibly unique dynamic- access to incredibly diverse people from all over the world, but simultaneously tilted towards the intellectually curious and tech-savvy. It was maybe a little bit like the vibe of being on a college campus, even if you were talking about sports or the weather, the default level of knowledge, intelligence, openness and curiosity were far higher than the default in "real life".
There was this unique culture of "the internet" as a place separate from "the real world" that was heavily skewed by the demographics. It was a world where nerds were 50% of the population instead of 1%.
In my biochemistry class at MIT during undergrad, the professor showed during the section on the krebs cycle that the pop-culture concept of "ketogenic diet" is almost never actually doing what people believe.
To force your body into a purely ketone metabolism, you'd need to restrict not just carbohydrates but also protein. If a person is eating a high-fat, high-protein diet, their body will make glucose/glycogen from that.
Not to say there isn't value in a low-sugar diet. There's a whole cascade of other things happening metabolically in response to blood sugar. Just that the notion of "burning ketones instead of glucose" is a medical myth, like "depression is because you have too little serotonin in your brain".
>To force your body into a purely ketone metabolism, you'd need to restrict not just carbohydrates but also protein. If a person is eating a high-fat, high-protein diet, their body will make glucose/glycogen from that.
That is expected and fine. It wont make glucose/glycogen in the same way/manner it would do from carbs though, and it's not really a problem for getting into ketosis and staying there (as shown by ketone measurements).
That professor was making a pedantic argument it seems.
Ironically, "building more housing" still solves this problem.
The corporations are buying and renting because it makes business sense. If we just keep building houses, the market values for rents and home prices will reach an inflection point. Investment companies aren't going to keep buying houses if they have a high vacancy on existing stock, they're going to start selling houses or lowering rent.
The fundamental problem is "too little supply". Regulating the demand side is at best a bandaid. The solution is to change regulations to allow faster, cheaper, easier building until the equilibrium market price of housing is something reasonable.
>> Ironically, "building more housing" still solves this problem.
Raising interest rates may help too. How many of those purchases are financed? I'm guessing a lot. The commercial side got screwed when they needed to refinance underperforming properties at higher interest rates.
As long as cheaper lines of credit (or straight-up massive amounts of cash on hand) remain more available to RE corporations than regular people looking for their first home then no, building more housing will never solve the problem.
There are structural problems with the demand side that also need addressing.
> building more housing will never solve the problem.
It only seems that way because in many popular metros around the country, demand has far outstripped supply for decades.
The problem is "solved" in areas that aren't as popular, with zero regulation on who's allowed to purchase homes; ordinary people can buy ordinary homes on ordinary incomes. But aspirational young people don't tend to move to such areas.
Why has this been the case in every area in our country? Because we have a policy at the national level that encourages speculation and hoarding. The problem is not just supply, we have a national aversion to shaping demand.
> The problem is "solved" in areas that aren't as popular,
The problem is absolutely not solved, in any place in our country[1]. You used to be able to maintain a minimum standard of living on a single wage earner's salary. That is not the case, literally anywhere in this nation any more.
SpaceX and numerous other companies were able to draw in billions of dollars of funding for R&D to chase after US Government contracts that could only be won by proving massive technological feats (reusable rockets, etc).
Hypothetically, it seems we could do something similar for drugs. Instead of "If you make a medicine that works, you get a monopoly to sell it for X years" it could just be "If you make a medicine that works, you get a check for $X, and then the drug is immediately generic".
The regulations are different. The FDA only gets in trouble if they approve a drug that turns out to be harmful, not if they fail to approve (or delay approving) a beneficial drug. On net, the FDA has caused far more harm than they’ve prevented. eg: Banning the importation of infant formula from the EU, or delaying the approval of new beta blockers by a decade.
Regarding your point 3, the challenge is that at present, so many incentives are aligned against that.
I'd love to do hard science, rather than my current meaningless consumer webapp job. But it'd mean... giving up 5-6 years of tech salary to go back and get a phD, and then post-phD my job prospects would be geographically limited to a couple locations where all the science/research jobs are, with worse hours, worse flexibility, less stability and drastically less pay.
It's hard to say "I should quit my fully-remote, wfh, $200k, low-stress, unlimited PTO software job to work in a lab in Boston for 50 hours a week for $90k". I don't have any solution here, kinda just venting through my golden handcuffs.
I never got this frame of mind. You chose to wear them. You like your golden bracelets. You can take them off any time you want. You are making the choice of staying. At the very least assume the responsibility.
I'm not sure where your confusion is, maybe it's just the terminology. I'll address your points individually and see if maybe that helps you understand what people mean by the "golden handcuffs" framing.
>You chose to wear them.
Correct. Because it is the least-bad option that I see as a possibility.
>You like your golden bracelets
I do not. I dislike my handcuffs. I just recognize that the other handcuffs I'm allowed to replace them with are worse.
>You can take them off any time you want. You are making the choice of staying
I can replace them with different, worse handcuffs. I'm unhappy about being in handcuffs, but if someone suggests I replace my golden ones with the sharp, rusty ones, I will decline and choose to stay in my current ones.
>At the very least assume the responsibility
I am? In fact the degree of agency here is central to the whole point. If you tell a prisoner they can choose between death by lethal injection or death by being burned at the stake, they can make the choice of lethal injection and "assume the responsibility" for that, but it's not like it's what they actually want-want. It's what they want under the constraints of the circumstances.
As some apolitical context, these two situations are pretty different in terms of representation.
Utah was 77% Mormon in 1990 and somewhere between 42%-60% Mormon today, with a lot of that drop-off coming in just the last few years as people have stopped identifying as being members of the church. (https://religionnews.com/2023/12/28/study-utah-is-no-longer-...)
While it's absolutely true that the Utah state government is predominantly made up of Mormons, that's also representative of the population. Which may still be problematic in many ways, but feels meaningfully different to me than a group that is only a small percent of the population holding significant power.
Also to note, but not identifying as an LDS member doesn't make someone not culturally Mormon.
This can be hard to unpack for many, because they're often unaware, products of an environment that they're still living within. My ex was very culturally Muslim despite not knowing which of her traditions were specifically Muslim. I grew up with a Japanese mother, and thoroughly American people still find it difficult and exasperating to extract decisive answers from me when I think I'm being perfectly clear. Even understanding this, I'm not always as compassionate and yielding to people I find tedious, which I won't ever talk to them about if they don't also realize it.
I'm not sure how specifically cultural Mormonism presents, but knowing how deeply and totally Mormonism informs people's identities and worldview, I'm sure there are plenty of tells.
It's wild that 99% of the "point" of crypto and a Bahamas-based exchange was to avoid all the laws around securities trading, banking, money transferring (anti-money laundering, taxes, etc), etc and yet when things go south, people still expect the government to come in and enforce a tiny subset of the financial laws they've otherwise been operating outside of.
This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" but with the benefactors being the people intentionally avoiding all the financial laws.
If you conduct criminal activity while employed, you conducted criminal activity. You can't just walk into work at 8am, kill someone at 9am, and go home at 5. You still did the crime, and can be prosecuted for it.
So let me rephrase your question: can a US citizen file some papers internationally that would permit them to conduct criminal activities in the US against other US citizens.
That's not at all how I interpreted the comment you are responding to.
That is, FTX's customers knew, or most definitely should have known, that FTX (and crypto at large - that is essentially the primary selling point of crypto) was "outside the regulatory financial framework". Yet when things blew up and all these FTX customers lost all their money, there was very little reflection of "Hey, perhaps these financial regulations really do have some purpose.", it was more "I want the government to now enforce the banking laws that I was essentially trying to evade in the first place."
If you look at the superbowl ad, it all looks American style and doesn't say much about offshore. "FTX US all rights reserved." and crypto is volatile it says in the small print. It looked kind of US regulated and US regulators certainly took note when it stole US customers money. https://youtu.be/hWMnbJJpeZc?t=129
SBF wasn't convicted for violating financial regulations (such as maintaining capital liquidity, reporting transactions or meeting KYC requirements). He was convicted of fraud and conspiracy.
Yes, I know, but the type of fraud and conspiracy SBF committed is much easier when you're at a financial institution that essentially has no regulators or auditors keeping tabs on thing.
Just read some of the reports John Ray III, the current "cleanup" FTX CEO, wrote shortly after he was brought in. It was a total clown show, with little to no documentation for things like huge multimillion loans to FTX principals. It's a lot easier to steal money when there is no standardized, auditable paper trail to begin with.
I agree, the average citizen would have expectation that the government would enforce these laws. However, I do think OP can be more clear that when they say "people" here, they don't mean your average citizen, but proponents of crypto who would agree that 99% of the "point" of crypto and a Bahamas-based exchange was to avoid all the laws.
> This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" but with the benefactors being the people intentionally avoiding all the financial laws.
No, it's, as usual, the government choosing to do the wrong thing with your tax money, because it will be bad publicity not to, because votes, because power.
Yeah, I agree. This should fall under “caveat emptor”. Everyone using unregulated exchanges (which IMO should be an option for everyone) should recognize that they are subject to additional risks (and benefits).
The government shouldn’t outlaw free climbing either.
It’s your own fault if you treat a bunch of foolish kids with millions of dollars the same way you would an onshore FDIC-insured regulated bank.
Climbing pedant checking in. I think the type of climbing you're referring to is free-solo, that is climbing alone with no partner or protection from falling. "Free climbing" is climbing using only hands and feet for upward progression but typically involves the use of protection (gear, ropes, and a partner) to save you in the event of a fall. It's called "free" because the climber does not use metal tools, hooks, pitons, or bolts for upward progression like in aid, ice, or alpine climbing.
I agree with you as well, but this is a major example of how, despite this ideal, something like this can sweep up so many people that would otherwise never interact with a system like this. People who don't know who SBF is, never heard of Hacker News, who don't understand crypto, getting convinced to put money into this by, say, a younger relative. It is a real side-effect of this thing existing on this scale on a planet populated by humans.
People don't go mass free-climbing because it isn't something you do by accident. The danger is obvious. But this danger is abstract, and the ease of entering this type of system can happen with just a few clicks from the comfort of your home. And getting dollar signs in your eyes is a very psychologically influential pull.
It's worth noting that a huge amount of the government's case involved evidence that SBF and team were buying lavish oceanfront condos, paying superstar athletes for weird TV commercials, etc.
This was actually a tiny slice of the overall financial mischief at FTX. But it told well in front of a jury. And it reinforced a big point that prosecutors keep wanting to make, as publicly as possible. "Don't take the customers' money to live large on your thefts!" That's a message that they want countless bookkeepers, financial planners, etc. to hear, again and again.
So, yes, they wanted to make an example out of SBF. The intricacies of FTX's full financial gyrations were sometimes too complicated to put in front of a jury. But the clueless or duped crypto-trading clients got a free bailout anyway. It came on the back of a prosecution that was largely intended to be a public slapdown of a guy committing lifestyle offenses with other people's money.
The article doesn’t say that anything was too complex to put in front of the jury. It says that prosecutors presented the story as a straightforward case of fraud.
>The key at trial, aside from the multiple cooperators, was the way in which prosecutors simplified the case and tried it as a garden-variety fraud instead of as a complex crypto scheme.
Free climbing in populated areas is outlawed (and should be). Try climbing your nearest skyscraper and see how it goes.
Similarly, torching your money on some random shitcoin isn't outlawed. But when they enter populated areas, renaming stadiums and hiring celebrities to try to trick the masses, the rules change.
Its the US Government courts who are handling FTX's bankruptcy. So at a minimum, they are expecting the USA Government to figure out how to split the money / clawback what they can and untangle the mess of the balance sheets (rumor has it: a completely non-existent set of documentation in the case of FTX).
"Expecting the government to bear the costs of enforcing the law" is not generally what is meant by "socializing the losses", even if you can define the expression in a way that that makes sense.
But I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you've never referred to it as "socializing the losses of having possessions in your home" when police unravel a burglary operation and return the loot to its rightful owners.
SIVB stock collapsed and all the investors into SIVB were wiped out. US Government stepped in and started allocating the remaining assets, prioritizing the customers and hurting the bondholders and shareholders.
IE: The shareholders / bondholders of SIVB were basically wiped out. The losses were privatized so to speak, isolated to the investor class.
Sure, you can quibble somewhat -- investor losses are not socialized. However, the FDIC insurance fund that makes depositors whole is ultimately funded by taxpayers.
> However, the FDIC insurance fund that makes depositors whole is ultimately funded by taxpayers.
FDIC funds don't come from taxpayers. *Banks* pay FDIC insurance fees.
Now you can quibble if FDIC is paid by banks, or if you think the "costs are passed onto the customers". But bank-customers are not necessarily "tax payers". At very least, the vast majority of my cash is in VMFXX and SWVXX, so I personally have very little money in Checking/Savings (so I barely pay any kind of "banking insurance" fees in practice, just enough to keep my checking account open).
The little banking insurance that my money is going towards is my Checking account / Savings Account at a local Credit Union as well. Which is NCUA (not FDIC), so a totally different insurance program.
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So none of my personal wealth is actually tied to FDIC in any way, despite myself paying plenty of taxes all the time. I'm simply not a bank customer, so there's no way I personally am related to any FDIC related situation.
Murder is still murder even if it’s a dispute between two criminals. I suppose the same is true of fraud. Law enforcement is always a socialized cost.
Though, there are fines. Apparently, FTX might owe $9 billion in fines and penalties and $10 billion other government litigation [1]? The creditors might not get much at all.
I don’t know what the users of a cryptocurrency exchange expect. I think there’s always some chance of a “rug-pull?”
> > This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" but with the benefactors being the people intentionally avoiding all the financial laws.
It was SBF who put it in the hands of the US by declaring bankruptcy in essentially 3 days instead of playing the long wait game
Also SBF who put it in the hands of the US by staying in the Bahamas and essentially waiting to be arrested (and immediately extradicted to the US) instead of fleeing to Cuba or Colombia or South America. 25ft Inflatable ribs can make that route.
During the first day of crisis he could have gone to Russia too by private plane and pull a Snowden
That ship sailed years and years ago. You can buy Bitcoin ETFs from traditional investment companies (like Fidelity and BlackRock), and those companies aren't in it for the freedom.
More to the point, the IRS has been collecting taxes on Bitcoin earnings since around 2014[1]. Since the government is taxing you, it's fair to ask the government to protect you.
I agree 100%. You want to operate outside the law? That's fine with me, but you gotta accept the risks. However, that means you have to be extra-judicious about who you operate with. I've found it funny to hear crypto proponents scream about how the government needs to prosecute him yet they'll turn right back around and demand that the government needs to have less regulation and taxation of crypto.
Your complaint would be solved with less gray area.
Businesses outside of the US should be able to do business with US citizens _without_ the consent of the US government. This comes with the caveat that if you, the customer, reject the "protection" of the US government, you are completely and totally SOL if things go south.
The hard part is that US citizens may not know they are doing business outside the jurisdiction of the US government. Are you rejecting the protection of the US government if the company is doing its best to obscure that fact and the associated risks? How about if they are advertising in the US? On the superbowl?
If they're putting life changing amounts of money into a company they should be doing a modicum of research on it. If someone gives $100k to a Nigerian prince, I don't think the US government should be spending thousands of dollars of resources on attempting to recover that money.
US citizens have never implicitly been allowed on these off-shore exchanges. You have to deliberately circumvent and lie to get an account.
Let me just provide a counter-point. As an early crypto advocate, and someone who has lost thousands of USD to hackers and scammers, I did not ever expect the government to bail me out. As you said, the whole point of crypto was to free ourselves from these regulations, which means high risk high reward investments, and the opportunity to create truly innovative products. High risk means sometimes you lose your money, even to illegal and unethical actions.
The real tragedy is that NFTs turned into digital trading cards and DAOs turned into pump and dump scams. The really interesting use cases will appear once the USDT Tether books are exposed and Bitcoin price plummets. Imagine NFTs attached to shipping containers tracking custody throughout a series of mutually distrusting last mile carriers. Or DAOs that allow people to organize for collective action with radically transparent finances to prevent corruption and grift.
Of course I'm sure this will not go over well here on HN, where everyone reflexively hates crypto and loves government regulation. It's a bit ironic for a forum where the majority of members are engaged in the business of "disrupting" one or another traditional industry. Of course the industry of finance is too sacrosanct to risk such disruption. Why should Uber have to pay for taxi medallions though?
As a former eth miner and now crypto un-enthusiast, i was attracted to the idea of contract disruption and value transfers utilizing blockchain but ever since the entire industry has become scams, wall street and *bros, yeah I'd love to see it all crash and burn. Exposing tether would be a great start.
Yeah, no, the hate of crypto stems from a fairly well grounded understanding of the technology here. BTW, the good folks at FT Alphaville also mostly hate crypto - there, it stems from a good understanding of finance. Basically, everyone that understands the tech/finance intersection reasonably well hates crypto, with one important caveat best expressed by Upton Sinclair nearly a century ago:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Using crypto with or as a custodian never had that standard you are referring to.
Fascinating level of cognitive dissonance that is prevalant in this thread. It’s a mixture of conflating competing ideas, and strawman arguments to discredit crypto users.
Custodians are subject to liability based on their own citizenship, the citizenship of their clients, and the location of the infrastructure being used, it doesn't matter what type of asset is involved.
Dang, we should really flag these non sequitur posts on every crypto thread that appears on HN, we’re almost 20 years in and the discussion level is a large aberration lower compared to other tech topics on HN and other dev and enthusiast crypto forums still, when it should be the opposite. flagging practically everything would promote more substantive discussions by making that point to otherwise well adjusted people, and surfacing the things that work well within crypto to people that otherwise aren’t exposed to that.
> Before the pandemic, she says, she might have done two disability tax credit forms; last year, she did twenty
Did Covid cause massive disability? Did legislation change to make claiming a disability easier or more lucrative? Are people claiming disability in response to inability to get jobs that meet their expectations?
It's not the point of the article, but a 10x increase in requests for "disability tax credit forms" seems like a very significant sign of something deeply concerning.
I wonder how many people seeking disability are more accurately described as disenfranchised. If people are looking at bleak prospects of low-paid jobs with limited possibilities for advancement, alongside soaring housing and other costs, how many people with previously manageable impairments are throwing in the towel and using a disability designation to escape the rat race.
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