We have both a Model Y (late-2020) and Model 3 (2022), and the 50-60% estimate definitely reflects my experience with the MY. Not so much the M3.
I chalk it up to doing most of my driving (90%) on California freeways going 70+ mph most of the time. Understandable that the range is reduced since the batteries are being expended more, but this issue is definitely the biggest complaint I have with our Teslas so I'm tracking this story closely.
Are you me? I have the exact same symptoms, especially the left arm pain and panic attacks. Full heart checkup and nothing was found to be wrong but I always suspected it had to do with my nervous system.
How has Airbnb not been sanctioned by more local governments seeking to curb this behavior? Just like Napster, Uber, and all of the other "sharing economy" apps that have popped up in the past 20 years, Airbnb's profit model hinges on the ability of its users to skirt local laws and operate in this very gray area.
It seems like very short-sighted planning by city councils who impose some nominal license/approval fee in exchange for the long-term health of their own communities. I don't see how this is sustainable.
I'm all for some implementation of UBI, or more broadly, less inequality in society, but the numbers just don't add up to support it (yet).
Even if you took all of the US Federal transfer programs (Social Security, Medicare, etc...) AND taxed the top 1% at a 90+% rate, you'd still fall short of the amount needed to distribute a basic income to reach the minimum poverty level for the masses.
Surprised this isn't higher given the demographics of HN. Another one that felt similar to me, but more focused on mass media specifically and its effect on society, was Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Be warned, you will have a very dim view of the future of humanity if you read all the way through.
Don't forget California also has one of the higher population growths rates in the country. There's still no serious long-term plan for how California is going to handle droughts in the future proposed by any lawmakers, and the gridlock between farmers v population centers, norcal v socal will continue.
Interesting take, but isn't this also the motivation for companies to automate as much of their workforce as possible? Nobody really wants to take orders at McDonald's for $9/hour and Ronald McOwner doesn't want to pay his workers $15+ when the minimum wage gets raised so he installs automated kiosks to take customer orders. Theoretically, those workers who lost their jobs to the machines are "freed" to pursue more productive ventures, but what we've actually been seeing is the 1% capturing that capital even more (as the poster above noted).
I think we're getting to a point where society is going to have to accept that vast swaths of the population are simply not necessary or otherwise employable, in the modern labor force, and hopefully, treating "labor" as an expendable market resource becomes an archaic concept, similar to how we view human slavery.
The problem is, the 1% will not change on their own, that has never been the case. The incentives are just not there for them to want to.
Having attended school in California at a community college, UC, and finally an elite, private university I couldn't more agree with your characterization. I don't know how much I would agree with the claim that the stratification was purposefully constructed (I'd argue it's more of a reflection of American society writ large - i.e. successful parents have more resources to ensure their kids are successful), but otherwise this rings very true.
I was considering a position there, and did some research into the company culture (because everything else about them just seemed impossibly awesome, with the exception of pay). Apparently, they had a fairly low review rating about a year ago which was hurting recruiting efforts, so company leadership "asked" employees to write reviews and a bunch of 5-star reviews popped out in a very short period of time. They all sound like PR copy, all cut from the same mold, and the "cons" of the company aren't really negatives but disguised positives. If you click on the "rating trends" next to the overall star rating you'll see when this happened.
Totally creepy and a bit cult-ish if you ask me. Some of the other reviewers actually called them out about this, but since they're an "engaged employer" on Glassdoor, it appears those reviews are getting buried in favor of the ghost-written ones. You can still find them fairly easily though because they'll have 20-50x more helpful tags than the kool-aid reviews. Turned me off completely to them, and makes me think there are some serious issues going on underneath the surface.
Privacy is dead. Not just as we knew it, but every dystopian prediction of the future where we are ID'd, tagged, and tracked at every action has already come true.
Not for the sake of some vast government surveillance apparatus (while they are one of the factors behind this movement, the US government is too bloated and largely too incompetent to be effective at this even if they wanted to) but because there is money to be made in knowing our every detail. In our consumer society, marketers/retailers and the companies that cater to their businesses find great value in this information, and as consumers, we largely benefit from having the efficiencies of amazon product recommendations, facebook/twitter suggestions, tailored advertising, etc... at the cost of some loss in privacy. And people have largely silently accepted this, unknowingly or otherwise.
I have a facebook, linkedin, google, github, multiple handhelds, multiple email accounts, I'm a former federal employee, I've had the same phone number for the past 15 years, and countless other retail/online accounts. If you know my name and middle initial, you can find most of my personal information - age, former/current addresses, relatives - through a quick google search on Intelius. I've requested they take down my information several times, and it seems to disappear from their public listing for a while, but reappears after a couple years or after I've moved again.
I accepted long ago that any/all information I post online (and even locally on my Macbook in some cases) is being scraped, compiled, and stored in some DB somewhere. It would only take a little focus and some link analysis to build a comprehensive profile of nearly every detail of my life using some basic selectors - primarily my email and phone. I assume every link, website (yes, including every porn - pornhub has an analytics team!!!), email I write/send, emails I draft but don't send, fb picture I stalk, youtube video I watch is being tracked/stored/compiled somewhere. If it's not by default made public information or being used by the company in question for their profit motives, I assume it will be in the future when the information is hacked/sold/"leaked" for whatever reason.
As I sit here on my school's public WiFi, I know my IP/MAC address/cookies are exposed to those with the know-how, but I've since given up trying to avoid that. Encryption protocols have been broken too many times to count, and while we continually fight for better security methods, those with enough motivation will find ways around - e.g. NSA firmware hacking. I've decided the only information that is truly private are the thoughts in my head, but it seems that even that is subject to debate (look up memory transplants).
It's alright though, because as we head towards the singularity, my consciousness will be assimilated somehow into some Borg-like meta-consciousness anyway. I just hope they have micro-brews available.
You're totally missing the point of what I'm saying.
They are putting themselves at a significant competitive disadvantage by incurring a drastically higher yearly operating expense, expenses which their competitors (in a very saturated market) don't have. They were already operating at <1% margins, and this cuts into that even more.
Dan's bet is that they can make up for this by the PR and goodwill they are getting from this story, but in credit card processing, fractions of percentages matter to the customer.
You are assuming too many things and you HAVE to account for the fact that the minimum wage is going to be $70k, so the minimum average wage possible is $70k (i.e. everybody is making 70k). Thus, there is a net increase of at least (70k-48k)*120 = 2.6m
This assumes everybody will be brought down to $70k salary, which we know is not going to happen.
Also, 5.5% for total payroll taxes is wayyy low. Did you include FICA/medicare/SS/unemployment insurance (federal and state)?
Yeah, I get the sense that it's just Dan too. Which means this is even more likely to fail.
Don't get me wrong, I totally support this from a moral perspective and wish more companies would follow suit, but the economics of this move are just not favorable.
The system is structured in a way to dis-incentivize this behavior (paying above-market rates for labor), and I'm skeptical what one man/company can really do to change the system. They will have to make up the increased expense/opportunity cost of having less money for re-investment & new employee hiring somehow, while their competitors will have a significant marginal advantage.
I hope they are wildly successful and I hope this becomes a trend because, in my opinion, income inequality is probably the greatest threat to social stability going forward, but I am not holding my breath. History has shown that anything short of real organized labor and government regulations (anti-trust) are just swinging at windmills, unfortunately.
There are 120 employees total and you're only accounting for salary paid directly to employees (good rule of thumb is employer pays an additional 25-40% of your actual salary in employer taxes/expenses).
Under your scenario (assuming the 120 employees figure from the article is correct) a jump in average salary from $48k to $70k minus the CEO's old salary results in a net increase of $1.7mm (or about 75-80% of this year's profits as the article stated).
This scenario isn't correct though, because an average salary of $70k means there are still a significant number of employees still making below $70k. A more realistic estimate is the average salary will be well north of $70k, and if we include the additional cost of payroll taxes (let's say very conservatively 10%), then we're talking about:
($80k new avg - $48k old avg) * additional 10% payroll taxes * 120 employees = ~$4.2 million in additional wages
Granted, that's over 3 years, but this is a very conservative estimate assuming 10% payroll taxes, no additional employees hired, and the new average wage will be $80k which is also very conservative.
I commend the spirit of what this CEO is trying to do, but if I am an investor, director, or just even regular employee I would have serious reservations about this business strategy.
> pay for the wage increases by cutting his own salary from nearly $1 million to $70,000 and using 75 to 80 percent of the company’s anticipated $2.2 million in profit this year.
I don't know what the financials for Gravity look like, but this really only makes sense from a financial standpoint if (1) the company can't re-invest the profits with a better ROI (rate of return) and (2) they aren't worried about competition - i.e. have a serious business moat. In addition, the company will have a higher payroll tax burden because of the higher salaries. (1) is somewhat justifiable as investing in your employees may garner loyalty/harder work which may raise the top-line, but (2) seems unlikely. There are a lot of credit card processing companies.
What happens if profits aren't as good next year? Are they going to slash wages to previous levels (or lower)? Or, if he's intent on sticking to the $70k minimum wage, this means he'll have to let go more people if the time comes. Did they look at alternatives - issuing more equity, special dividend, more generous bonuses??
I wonder how the conversation with finance went on this one.
Oh man, my fondest early memories with computers was modifying the autoexec.bat and config.sys files so I could play DOS games. I can only describe the feeling of finally figuring it out and getting a certain game to work as pure joy.
Conversely, the feeling when I changed something incorrectly (without backups of the original file, of course) and the system error'd out during boot - sheer panic.
After solving each challenge, you're given access to the message board for that problem where people post their code and discuss how they solved it. The problems tend to become more focused on math implementations than programming after a while though, so this may not be the best example for you.
I chalk it up to doing most of my driving (90%) on California freeways going 70+ mph most of the time. Understandable that the range is reduced since the batteries are being expended more, but this issue is definitely the biggest complaint I have with our Teslas so I'm tracking this story closely.