[dheera]

They're still paid a lot less than Apple employees, and considering that they are getting fewer and fewer opportunities for exposure outside of Apple/Google/Facebook ecosystems, it doesn't seem fair that they should be subject to insane taxes by these mega-corps, far more than the government would tax them.

Even consider a tech geek, gets $1M a year from a hot app, 30% goes to Apple, 37% of what's left goes to federal taxes, 13% goes to California taxes, there's hardly anything left, do we even own our money anymore?

And then lose another 10% of what's left to sales tax when you try to actually spend any of it ... god damn.

[troad]

Plus the sales tax on the hot app to begin with. Plus all the paperwork for all these various fees, cuts, and taxes. Plus all the start up costs. Plus full responsibility for the (relatively high) risk of failure.

What incentives are we setting up for people looking to start new tech businesses? No wonder the average start-up plan these days is 'don't bother with sustainable profits, just make a splash, cross your fingers and hope to "exit" on the back of some VC with more money than sense'.

[calsy]

There is a big difference between public school teachers and guided meditation helpers. There is no benchmark that says guided meditation helpers should be paid on par with apple employees.

Guided meditation helpers are receiving less and less opportunities outside of app stores? What are these shrinking alternative opportunities you talk about?

Likewise, You make it seem that each one of those % values are deducted directly from the $1M/year. Thats not how taxes work.

[lupire]

Wow that tech geek should have created her own phone and OS to claw back that $300K per year.

Also $320K/yr spending money is pretty good.

[kanbara]

what? that’s just shy of 32k a month. enough to save for all your retirement, pay a mortgage, support a family, go on holiday, do whatever you want. and if this supposed dev did $999,999 he’d only pay 15%.

hardly anything left? i made less than that at a FAANG and live an amazingly comfortable life.

also, everyone pays sales tax: consume more, pay more. how is earning over $350k in cash a year net a bad place to be? this is insane

[erik_seaberg]

Retirement shouldn’t be the grand prize. If you execute well on a good idea, it’s important that you have an opportunity to scale it into a real business.

[dheera]

> what? that’s just shy of 32k a month. enough to save for all your retirement, pay a mortgage, support a family, go on holiday, do whatever you want.

Really? Houses here cost $3M, and since you can't afford that you'll be paying an arm and a leg to rent from a greedy landlord. You'll take 20 years to save up that 3M, by which time you're too old to enjoy life, and houses will cost 8M at that point in time. Good luck if you plan to have kids, that $32k/month won't be enough at all for daycare, schooling, afterschooling, insane medical expenses, fixing all the shit they break, and all that.

And no, taking out a loan to buy a house doesn't mean you can afford a house, it means you're spending money that you don't have. This should NOT be the norm. People should be able to afford basic shit, like a roof.

This tech geek actually COULD have afforded that roof if Apple and the government weren't stealing all of her money.

> and if this supposed dev did $999,999 he’d only pay 15%.

No that's not how taxes work

[dxdm]

Living a comfortable life on much less income than a million a year, in another western country with way higher taxes and social insurance payments, it feels grotesque to read about these complaints. Comes across as supremely out of touch.

[Kirby64]

Setting the expectation that people should be able to afford a house with cash to be comfortable is quite a leap. If you’re making 850k/yr (1M/yr minus apples cut) then you are making more than the vast majority of people in the Bay Area. You’d be doing just fine, much better than most people, and could easily, easily, afford a $3M house.

[dheera]

> Setting the expectation that people should be able to afford a house with cash to be comfortable is quite a leap.

I disagree. EVERYONE should be able to afford basic necessities (housing, food, car, clothing, heating, electricity, water, internet, medical care) with cash.

> 850k/yr (1M/yr minus apples cut)

The government steals close to 50% of that 1M. More than 50% if you're self employed. You aren't left with anything close to 850k.

[ericd]

I'd just like to point out that you're talking about the most expensive form of housing in the most expensive pockets of one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, with the highest tax rates. This is not representative, to put it mildly.

[Kirby64]

I don’t know what world you’re living in, but even if the government “steals” 50% of your 850k you’re not living like any sort of pauper on 425k net. That’s just ridiculous.

[swozey]

My god it gets better.

[AndrewKemendo]

>Houses here cost $3M, and since you can't afford that you'll be paying an arm and a leg to rent from a greedy landlord.

Where is this?

[dheera]

Anywhere in the bay area. (Except maybe Oakland, though you probably not live very long if you live there, so I guess you could get away with less retirement savings.)

[FireBeyond]

Yeah, that's not remotely accurate.

The median in the SFBA is $1.4M.

Even in Sunnyvale the median is $1.6M.

Unless you want to try to make arguments about places like Atherton, in which case you can't really point to a community of 5,000 people with residents including multiple NBA and NFL players, Eric Schmidt, Ben Horowitz, Robby Krieger of The Doors, Charles Schwab (the one and the same), Lindsay Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac... any more than you can point to Medina in Washington and try to extrapolate that to Seattle.

[AndrewKemendo]

The latent bigotry in this comment is astounding

[mlhpdx]

Simply not true. For independent verification just peek at Zillow or similar.

[willsmith72]

i hate that people can get a mortgage with as little as 5% upfront at the moment, it's a terrible financial decision

but to say that any mortgage should not be the norm i think is clearly wrong. history doesn't repeat itself, but through the past 100 years, the extra leverage you get from putting, say, 25% down on a 20 year mortgage has made it an amazing investment.

[swozey]

I got a $365k mortgage with 3% down at 3.2% when I made $180k and I had absolutely zero problem paying it.

If I'd done your stupid "wait till you have 20% deposit" thing that some 75year old told you they did 40 years ago to buy their first home - my first home would've been bought 20 years later because with the way the market prices are going up the length of time for me to save 20% vs buying now and reaping the reward of the 2019+ housing market.. And now I'd have at least an 8% APR.

Yeah, nobody listen to this warren buffet here.

[willsmith72]

because you made 180k at the time....

the people i'm talking about earn $60k and this is their only chance to own property. 1 interest rate change, unexpected expense, property market downturn, and they're literally broke.

[swozey]

If I made $180k and didn't have 20% and they required 20% I wouldn't be able to buy a house. That's what I'm saying. There are also people like me, a LOT of us, who buy house we can "afford" (technically speaking) but just doesn't make sense to wait another 5+ years to accumulate the 20% total.

I don't care at all about 20% now that I know PMI is only around $160/mo and can be removed. I wish I'd known that like a decade before I bought my first house, I would've bought WAY earlier.

I thought you HAD to have 20% until I was probabyl nearly 30 and could get anywhere near buying a house.