Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | cjpearson's commentslogin

It makes sense if you're looking at it from the perspective of a European investor. e.g. You start with 1000 EUR, convert and buy into an S&P500 fund, wait a year, sell and convert back to EUR.

Celsius and Fahrenheit doesn't work as an analogy because the rate does not change over time as it does with currencies.


I think it depends on whether you're planning on holding it in currency or using the currency to buy other things. Does the cost of material goods and services mostly stay the same in EUR, or does it somewhat follow the S&P? If more the latter, then converting to EUR is just a very temporary exchange and its nominal amount doesn't exactly matter.

> Does the cost of material goods and services mostly stay the same in EUR, or does it somewhat follow the S&P?

I don't understand this question, are you asking if material goods and services in Europe, which uses EUR, "somewhat" follows the S&P, a US stock market index?


If you have to hold USD to buy and sell USD products (as a European) it doesn't make sense to compare your SPY position vs EURUSD because you have to use those USD to buy something or pay some debt.

> If you have to hold USD to buy and sell USD products (as a European)

Approximately no individual does this. Some companies may hold some foreign currency reserves, but even there it is not _particularly_ common in most cases.

As a European, I have never, in 40 years, had any USD, except a small amount of paper currency. If I'm buying something made in the US, I'm probably buying from a local vendor, or else will convert on the fly. If I'm visiting the US, I'll convert on the fly (this is even cheap, now, thanks to neo-banks). I own a bunch of US equity, but indirectly via a euro-denominated global market index fund. This is fairly standard. In general it's only common for individuals to hold foreign currency where the local currency is particularly unstable.


> If you have to hold USD to buy and sell USD products (as a European)

Do people do this? Up until some months ago, I was heavily invested in some US companies, and I never actually held USD in my accounts at any point. I used EUR to buy those stocks, the conversion happening together with the purchase, and same thing when I sold them, I received EUR ultimately.

I know I could have another account in my bank with USD set to the currency, I just don't know why'd anyone would want to, when you can convert at the point of sale/purchase. Of course, if you're doing forex trading or whatever, that might make sense, but I don't think generally people hold USD to buy/sell US stocks, because you don't have to.


It is not common for Europeans to hold USD to buy and sell USD products.

> Does the cost of material goods and services mostly stay the same in EUR, or does it somewhat follow the S&P?

... Wait, why would you expect the price of goods to follow the valuation of, well, any market index, never mind one specific foreign market index? Like, I don't understand why you think that would happen. If anything, you'd expect a minor inverse relationship, at least on a global scale; rapid growth of cost of goods indicates inflation, which implies central bank tightening, which tends to depress stock values a bit.


I mean, for retail investors outside the US, the question you're asking boils down to „does purchasing power parity follow popular US domestic market indices?“, to which the answer is a resounding no.

There may be some offset for goods imported from the US, but that's a minority of consumer goods globally, and even then, the purchase currency will usually still be the local fiat, and then the attractiveness of the US index fund still has to be weighed against the performance of non-US-based indices in that same local currency as opportunity cost.


Also an American investor, really; an American investor who'd pulled out of S&P and moved to Eurostoxx at the time would have made something like 40% in their local currency (about half of it due to the decline of the dollar).

You can't effectively paywall it because not only is it open source, but there are many nearly equivalent competitors all of which are free. Any subscribers would essentially be donors.

There are people like yourself who would be happy to donate, but not nearly enough. Replacing MoCo's current revenue with donors would require donations at the level of Doctors without Borders, American Cancer Society, or the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Turning into one of the largest charities in America overnight simply isn't realistic. A drastic downsizing to subsist on donor revenue also isn't wise when Mozilla already has to compete with a smaller team. And "Ladybird does it" isn't a real argument until and unless it graduates from cool project to usable and competitive browser.


Oh no, it would be a donation and it's not going to completely replace all the funding of the parent entity of the project mentioned, therefore it's not realistic or worth trying. Right... That's a lot of arguments unrelated to what I wrote.


> That's a lot of arguments unrelated to what I wrote.

What I understand they are saying is that donations wouldn't be nearly enough. Which is related to what you wrote, which is that you would gladly donate to Firefox (not Mozilla, but Firefox).

They compared it to the largest non-profits in America, presumably because if we look at the money spent by Mozilla every year, that's similar. Right now Google pays for Mozilla, and if you wanted to replace that with donations, it would have to become one of the biggest charities in America. Which does not sound plausible.

If I understood correctly, I'm not the OP :)


Thunderbird has succeeded at doing this and is in a somewhat similar spot (though huge asterisk there given the existence of Chrome)


> You can't effectively paywall it because not only is it open source, but there are many nearly equivalent competitors all of which are free.

You're forgetting that people will buy a product on brand identity alone. If the Firefox brand is solid enough, those forks won't matter.


I think the point is that if it was open source but free, it would require donations. And given the money that Mozilla spends every year, it would mean that the amount of donations they would need to receive would make them one of the biggest charities in America. Which sounds implausible.

I think the argument makes sense, to be honest.


A big factor in the quick return (and maybe one reason for its popularity) is that Germany has some of the most expensive electricity in the world. The ROI doesn't look as attractive in France, the US or Norway.


> A big factor in the quick return (and maybe one reason for its popularity) is that Germany has some of the most expensive electricity in the world.

Part of that is because our method of pricing is different than it is in the rest of the world.

It doesn't matter if you got a 3x50A or 3x200A three phase service, only during construction (because a 3x200A uplink will obviously be a decent bit pricier), the monthly fee is the same and very low (I think ~15€ a month). All other costs are rolled into the per-kWh price, making it appear much more expensive than in other countries. On top of that we have a ridiculous tax load because large industry is exempt from a lot of things and consumers gotta pick up the slack.

In contrast, Italians for example pay fees based on capacity which means a home there will usually have 3x10A uplink, something greatly troubling EV adoption and moving off of natural gas [1].

Additionally, Germany is one pricing zone whereas ENTSO-E, the European Commission and the Northern German population would rather like to have two or three pricing zones, given that there is a serious lack of North->South transmission capacity, but our "beloved" Bavarian prime minister Söder plus his green counterpart in BaWü Kretschmann both try to prevent that as much as possible because it would send prices in the south skyrocketing [2].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/1ksqrq1/t...

[2] https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/energiepoli...


Yep in a lot of ways it's a failure of the electricity market.

It's absolutely bonkers how much I pay for electricity while I sit in the shadow of a giant onshore wind farm in Brandenburg. Transmission losses are nothing at this distance and the turbines cover the towns needs many times over.

But because of the lack of regional and dynamic pricing (and tax burden) we pay ridiculous rates.

I think if folks could financially benefit from renewable projects in their neighborhoods, suddenly citizens opposition would fall apart.

Maybe balcony solar is just a tax minimization play, in that the energy you get from panels isn't burdened by excessive network charges, consumer taxes etc.


> I think if folks could financially benefit from renewable projects in their neighborhoods, suddenly citizens opposition would fall apart.

That's actually happening already in some places - in Thüringen, nearby residents of a windmill get a share of the income [1], and the local municipality also gets a sizable amount... in small Mühlenfließ (Brandenburg) with less than 1000 souls living there, the 16 windmills provide 200.000€ a year in taxes, 10% of the municipal budget [2].

Unfortunately, you need politicians with a backbone to present such plans to their voters, and in rural areas many simply are afraid of far-right terrorism up to and including death threats [3], on top of "alternative" media and even supposedly democratic politicians riling people up against renewable power sources.

[1] https://www.gruene-thl.de/klima-energie/buergerinnen-und-kom...

[2] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/technologie/windkraft-g...

[3] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/region-muenchen-windrae...


More and more "Energiegenossenschaften" are also founded, I think. At least here in the South-West near Freiburg it feels like every second larger village or community has its own Energiegenossenschaft. They are working on getting solar on every roof, pushing water and wind turbine projects forward and are really working on making the switch to renewables happen. I'm looking to get into some of them to fund the cause. :-)


Some good points, i have a few thoughts to add.

Norway: yes, they are doing fine (80% EV, btw, so it seems you can actually use EVs in colder weather... I think the nordics are actually way ahead of the rest of Europe when it comes to sustainable energy creation, with norway getting about 90% last year from Hydro - super impressive. https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Norway

France: I think they might turn around, because their low prices are tied to massive subsidies (that are scheduled to end in part end of 2025). And, France has the weather and sun to be even more successfull. That would however mean a decentralization of the power grid and probably storage solutions (batteries, hydro or h2), something thats complicated and not sexy to sell to the public - one of the reasons Germany is so far behind. Our grid is stuck in the past and enough company lobby politicians to keep it that way.

US: it is probably less of a pricing issue and more a topic of resiliance and stabilizing the power grid. It looks like rolling blackouts in the US get more, especially during the summer months (where solar could directly be used for the AC). https://urbanclimate.gatech.edu/current-projects/blackout-tr...

I think it would especially make sense to run your AC on if you have a flexible plan - i remember so many stories of people suddenly having to pay thousands during peak times in summer.

California, Texas and most of the rust belt does have enough solar to easily get by, especially if you add a battery backup.


Norway gets most of its wealth from fossil fuel. While it's not Saudi Arabia nor Venezuela, and they invested in long term sustainability, it's not fair to everyone else to say that they are at 80%EV because they are forward thinkers, but because they have the money to do that.


It took forward thinking to dump their wealth into a sovereign wealth fund.

Australia started at a similar point with mineral wealth in the 90s and decided tax cuts for the middle class were a better idea (under Howard/Costello).


> It took forward thinking to dump their wealth into a sovereign wealth fund.

Such a proposal can be adopted much more easily if the population is rather small and homogenous.


100 % agree. They somehow figured out early that its better to sell to the others and stay renewable themselves.


Yes, like any other argument about Norway, the situation must and shall be considered to be that they are smart and progressive and forward thinking, rather than rich. It's "not" that they have money to burn to do the new fancy thing. It must be forward-thinking policies!

There's a small amount of truth, I'll admit. I guess you can say that Norway's policies are easily a lot smarter than Saudi Arabia's policies. But what is always done is comparing Norway's policies to, say, Spain or France and declare Norway a progressive forward-thinking nation with great and working policies. In reality the opposite is true because France and Spain can't just fix big problems by showering them in money.


also France and Spain (and Italy, Germany, UK etc etc) they have bigger population, far more diverse one, far more decentralized issues etc etc.


Yes, but you have to somehow insinuate that this is a bad thing without ever clearly stating a thesis of why it's a bad thing.

Otherwise people might think investing in green energy, EVs and heat pumps is a good idea with good return on investment and positive externalities and should be done by any competent government.


Any competent government with infinite money they can just dig out of the ground, and dump into the sky via its customers, a small, mostly-homogenous law-abiding population and military cover, at least until recently, mostly provided by the US taxpayer.

Easy.


Norway: 5.50 million people. Finland: 5.6 million people Sweden: 10.57 million people.

All these 3 together have slightly more population than NRW in Germany, and they have way more money.

So: almost same population, way more money and way more resources to generate energy (unless we want to consider Coal again... then we'd win).

The sooner we stop considering the Nordics as the model example the better it is for all of us in EU.

They are great countries, but very specific.


While we're on the topic, Finland gets around half of its energy from nuclear. It doesn't have the luxury of fjords for hydro like Norway and Sweden, or easily tapped geothermal like Iceland.

You can see a nice live graph here. Wind isn't blowing at the moment, so the fossil fuel co-generation plants had to kick in.

https://www.fingrid.fi/en/electricity-market/power-system/


I mean, in Germany, issue number 1 is the grid, especially in Bavaria. Politicians were just asleep or did not care.

For example, there is a super interesting agri PV installation in the Hallertau, where they grow most of the hops for beer. The farmer built and payed it himself and its a commercial trial instead of a public testrun.

He lost about 20 percent of the hop compared to the non-pv areas; however, the money from the solar panels easily covered that and made a profit. In addition, he used about 30 to 40 percent less water with no impact on the quality of the hop, which is one of the biggest issues in that area, as it runs out of water in summer.

The Hallertau would be ideal for generating large quantities of power; however, due to not having a modern power grid, he is unable deliver more power to the grid. (article in German here: https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/pilotprojekt-hat-erfolg...)

you would think that this is a simpel fix, and it would be in the political interest to decentralzie the powergrid and create local storage solution (or at least in the local power companies interest), but it seems like nothing is moving forward for about a decade now.

Personally, i think agri pv has a huge potential as enables the farmers to have additional income while keeping the field open for farming. Its also an easier sell than wind or hydro (especially because you have the farmers on your side, and with them their lobby), but it needs grid upgrades and storage capacities. It baffles my mind that our politicans are willing to throw millions at nuclear, but everything besides that needs to have a strict business plan or it is not even tried.


To add to this, I know person a farmer who wanted to use part of his farmland for solar panels. The project failed. Reasons: lack of power grid connection, no one wanted to takeover the costs for added capacity; and local resistance from residents. „I want to see the nature in front of my home“ is all what’s needed to fail consent.


i don't understand those nimbys. With solar, its crazy! The soil will regenerate and you'll probably get more nature than before, especially if the farmers use sheep to mow it. That's why we can't have nice things.


To be honest, I do understand some people preferring pastures in front of their home. But we can't have nice things if individuals are capable of blocking projects for that. Personal preferences should not be a valid reason to block projects. Unmitigated negative externalities are reasonable objections, but even then, you have people "finding" this one protected snail type living there and - boom - project can't be realized due to environmental protection laws. There needs to be a re-balance of the commons, but try getting that through legislation.


FWIW, that "blackout tracker" link is garbage. First, because it's five years old: if the data showed that growth someone would have updated it.

But also because it's wrong! There's one outlier bad data point, in 2020, and they draw a line straight through it. Take that one year out and it looks awfully flat to me.


oh, thank you, I'll see if there is a better source.


And it barely works out in Germany. I did the math for my small city flat with a small south facing balcony and got a realistic payback period of 6 years.

The issue is not solar per se, but that tiny installations are not very efficient. It'd make much more sense to bolster funding for building sized installations.


I think you should be better off.

I did a small installation at my parents house with two panels at south-southwest-orientation with a 600 W inverter for around 800 Euro.

Turns out those two panels have created over 1.1 MWh since the late summer of 2023. With cost dropping heavily, your ROI should be much sooner.


The other aspect of this is the reduction of demand on the grid - which potentially reduces infrastructure costs ( or reduces the rise ) and hence shows up in a reduction in electricity prices ( if not absolute, against where they would be ).


A building sized thing has much higher installation costs. And you can't DIY it, it's not just plug and play.


That is true and it is where the regulation and bureaucracy comes in. I vouch for making building installations low friction and better subsidized.

Security will make this never as simple as balcony plug and play but there is a lot of room for improvement.


If you break even in Germany in 3 years, you'll break even in France in 4. Maybe faster, given the differences in climate.


Balcony solar is likely to make this worse, given Germany has low/zero electricity market prices when the sun shines.

Balcony solar production means Germans don't buy solar from their utility when utility costs are low, and they do want to buy some when utility costs are high.

Unsurprisingly, fixed contract prices are bound to be an average of electricity price at different times. With balcony solar, the times where it costs the least will be weighted less in the average, so contract price is bound to go up.


Germany needs more battery storage, full stop. It is rapidly declining in cost, it is fast to deploy, and it will soak up excess low carbon energy (both domestic and imported from interconnectors) versus curtailment as more generation comes online.

> Germany’s solar industry calls for 100 GWh 2030 grid battery target

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-solar-industry...

> German battery storage hits 22.1 GWh in [2025]H1

https://www.ess-news.com/2025/07/18/german-battery-storage-r...

> PV curtailment jumps 97% in Germany in 2024

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/04/03/pv-curtailment-jumps-...

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/


Yup. Flexibility should be the thing that’s subsidized. However, I would advise against "balcony" battery subsidies, and I assume balcony solar is an electoral strategy more than an energy strategy.


Lots of residential batteries being installed, as mentioned in the link https://www.ess-news.com/2025/07/18/german-battery-storage-r... above.

> By the end of the first half of 2025, Germany’s official registry of energy installations recorded nearly two million battery storage systems in operation. This figure, now unofficially but safely surpassed into July , includes a gross power capacity of 14.535 gigawatts (GW) and a usable storage capacity of nearly 22.1 gigawatt-hours (GWh).

> Photovoltaic home storage systems constitute the majority of these installations, with 1.967 million small battery storage units (up to 20 kilowatts) accounting for 11.5 GW of gross power and almost 18.3 GWh of usable capacity.

> Small photovoltaic home storage units made up the bulk of new additions, with 251,948 systems providing 1.34 GW and almost 2.7 GWh. In the medium segment, 2,418 new systems added 117.7 MW of power and 160 MWh of capacity.

> The expansion of battery storage is driven by increasing demand, highlighted by 389 hours of negative wholesale electricity prices in the first half of the year. Germany has also significantly expanded its solar power generation, with approximately 107.4 GW of photovoltaic capacity installed and over 7 GW added in the first six months of 2025.

The future of electrification is distributed, broadly speaking. Distributed assets can be orchestrated to optimize for both cost and grid stability ("VPP" aka virtual power plants). Get generation and storage as close to the load as you can.


I pay 13 cents a kWh here in Canada. I got a 7.8kw system on the roof, payback will be 6-7 years, then I get $1000 of free electricity a year for the life of the system.

I’m in a tight valley where it snows a ton

Also got an interest free loan from the gov to cover the outlay.


That is definitely a factor. But depending on your energy usage and how smart your home appliances are, you can save a lot more than 10%. I.e. if you run all your washing and most of the heating of the water tank during your own generation times you can potentially save quite a lot more than 10%.


Electricity costs 24c per kwh in France and I just checked and can get it for 23c. So it's not true any more. Once you factor in that one is financed by the state and the other is not, it was likely never true. Germany's expensive electricity is a myth.


In the US the price varies a lot by state [1].

[1] https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/


The author was for a long time a developer on Chrome and now works at Microsoft on Edge. I would not expect them to lead an anti-Chrome crusade.


The author here.

It will seem odd to most, but my big concerns about Chrome relate to Android and ChromeOS. In neither environment did Chrome win share competitively. I think this has made them weaker and less useful, and that was mirrored in the tremendous difficulty we had in getting expansions of web capabilities done within the Chrome team, nevermind what I am documenting in this most recent post.

Sadly, the CrOS problem will be partially resolved when Google trashes it with Android rebasing in upcoming releases. On the Android side, Google is still withholding WebAPK support from competitors (suppressing PWAs on Android) and has failed to follow Apple's lead on hotseat browser replacement when choice screens are shown in the EU.

But neither of the bad effects are nearly as structural or impactful as Apple's out-and-out suppression of the web on mobile, because wealthy people carry iPhones and they have all the power:

https://infrequently.org/2025/09/apples-crimes-against-the-i...


> Perhaps Google and Mozilla, leaders in JavaScript standards and implementations, will start developing a real standard library for JavaScript, which makes micro-dependencies like left-pad a thing of the past.

It's not wrong, but this take is kind of tired and well out of date. For about a decade or so left-pad's functionality has been standard in all browsers or runtimes. Plenty of other micropackages have been obsoleted as well and the current zeitgeist is to avoid publishing or using any sort of micropackage.

"Zero dependencies" is now a top marketing term in the frontend world. Unfortunately, their removal is an ongoing process and it's taken way too long already to fully purge the ecosystem of these packages. However, it's not because the JavaScript community has never thought of this issue before. "Add more features to the JS standards and don't use is-number" is not a particularly new idea or valuable insight.

But beyond that, there were plenty of not-tiny packages impacted as well. Continuing to beat this dead horse may be fun, but it distracts from the actual issue here.


It's also an effort being stymied by a handful of bad actors.

Case in point: one very prominent individual taking ownership of projects and inserting his libraries as dependencies. It then turns out he has a financial interest in increasing their download counts: https://github.com/A11yance/axobject-query/pull/354


In many cases it is required to access the content. Courts have allowed "Consent or pay" for sites such as newspapers.


In some cases is how I would state it. It's actually very rare that you have to consent to 'accept all cookies' to read content, I've never actually seen it myself. 'Pay if you want to read more' is common, for certain types of sites.


For a magazine like the New Yorker, there was money. You might be interested in Bryan Burrough's experience writing for Vanity Fair in the 90s and 2000s.

> For twenty-five years, I was contracted to produce three articles a year, long ones, typically ten thousand words. For this, my peak salary was $498,141. That’s not a misprint—$498,141, or more than $166,000 per story. Then, as now, $166,000 was a good advance for an entire book. Yes, I realized it was obscene. I took it with a grin.

https://yalereview.org/article/burrough-vanity-fair-graydon-...


There's a common view that home-ownership is important because a home is the most expensive asset most people will ever own and its increasing value is key to their comfortable retirement. But this view of a home as an appreciating asset is incompatible with increasing housing affordability.

There are definitely downsides to renting such as landlord issues or missing out on mortgage subsidies, but maybe a higher proportion of renters could lead to improvements in affordability. And if the well-off are renting as well, there's also more hope for better legal protections for renters.


People don't say home ownership is important because it's an asset for retirement; if you sold it, you wouldn't have a home in retirement!

They say that because owning a home allows you to reduce your bills, but also more crucially and viscerally because owning a home allows you to be free and have a place that is truly yours to do with what you will. You can paint the walls, have a pet, host a party, knock down a wall and build an extension, do whatever you like to make your mark on it and the world. It's yours and if you will it, it always will be. It's a level of peace and security that's almost incomparible. There's a reason in most of history there was a distinction drawn between bonded peasants and freeholders.


I think you listed great positives for ownership. I would agree with those. But the parent is correct that, at least in the USA, owning a home is considered a financial investment that should appreciate in value. I think treating a house as a financial investment leads to all kinds of bad outcomes, and here we are.

"People don't say home ownership is important because it's an asset for retirement; if you sold it, you wouldn't have a home in retirement!"

It's very common in the USA. A married couple has some kids and buys a house big enough to accommodate them comfortably. 20ish years later, the kids have moved out and the parents don't need such a big house. They also are about to or have recently retired, and they would like to stretch their retirement money. Sell the big house, make a lot of money, and then buy a smaller, cheaper house. In the USA this pattern is pretty common.


This pattern has been disrupted because of the decades of under-building. The neighborhood I grew up in around an elementary school is populated by empty nesters and has been for over a decade. There is nowhere for the empty nesters to downsize into that isn't 3-5x what their mortgage is on their family sized home (in CA we also have the complicated of Prop 13 on property taxes) so they aren't moving. My highschool recently shut down because there weren't enough families in the neighborhood around it anymore.


I think things are breaking, for sure, but how badly and in what ways is very local. To your point (and my point, a bit), with current market conditions, many homeowners are staying in their homes rather than moving. We had a pretty long period of very mortgage rates, and now rates are higher. Home prices have not decreased, either. So someone with a home that is a little too big has something valuable that they want to hang to, and buying a smaller house is, at least for now, not necessarily a good financial decision. But if housing were not an investment, a elderly retired couple could just move to a smaller house and not think too much about it. But it is an investment, so they stay in their unnecessarily large house hoping the market changes in their favor.


Also, it’s a risk hedge. In many very populous areas property tax increases are capped.

This allows someone to quite concretely limit their housing costs in retirement (a large portion of anyone’s expenses!) in a way that is impossible in almost any other way. The only other similar types of deals are specific types of rent control in very limited metro areas.

That is huge.


Even if property tax increases are not capped, they are generally a fraction of what the house payment would be. (though after 30+ years of inflation the tax is what the original house payment was)

Generally if you rent your share of property tax in the rent payment is higher than an equivalent house share would be Tenters don't see how property tax affects their rent and so they generally don't oppose property tax increases, if they even bother to vote which they are less likely to. To be fair, how tax affects tax is complex - rent is supply and demand first, things like taxes put a floor on prices and so affect supply but this means it is indirect and so hard to see even though it will catch up eventually.


Almost no one is still making house payments in retirement. Those that are, almost certainly got that mortgage decades ago and it’s now a tiny fraction of current rental prices.


"Buy a home, pay it off, then downsize to generate funds for retirement" is a pretty widespread approach.


> "Buy a home, pay it off, then downsize to generate funds for retirement" is a pretty widespread approach.

[citation needed]

> The majority of retirees don't relocate. A 2015 analysis (the most cited historical data) from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey showed that only about 5% of Americans age 55 and older move annually (local or long-distance).

[…]

> A more recent study, from Hire a Helper, showed that in 2024, only 22.7% of all retirees (both new and existing) moved, compared with 25.3% in the year before.

* https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/retirement-planning/myt...

Lots of folks say they want/plan to downsize though:

* https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/05/21/home-buying-...

And of the half that say they are moving, half (25% of total) "want their next home to be the same size as their current one, and 22% want it to be larger".


Those are perfectly good reasons and in the hypothetical world of housing affordability such utility should compensate for the depreciation. Similarly many people find value in owning a car despite the nearly guaranteed decline in value. Ideally neither would be viewed as a wealth-building tool.


It’s all this but don’t underestimate predictability. If you own a home with a fixed rate mortgage you know what your payment is and it doesn’t change. You know where your kids are going to grow up.

Sure you might need a new roof and insurance and taxes fluctuate but that’s a BIG BIG deal as anyone who’s rented and been at the mercy of markets can tell you.

This is even more true now as the rental market (like so many markets) is coming to be dominated by corporate landlord La using revenue extracting software.


I recall talking to a real estate guy as a recent high school graduate 25 years ago. He claimed real estate rates will stay above 7-10%. I countered that long term, real estate needs to remain tied to inflation or else all buyers will be priced out.

He is doing very well.


Interest rates, or appreciation rates? They are different and I'm not sure which either of you are talking about.


Talking about investment returns.


Looks like you can both be right.


Classic ‘the market can be irrational longer than you can be solvent’ situation if I ever saw one.


In a situation of supply scarcity all the market needs to do to function is to sell this limited supply. And this does not require the median citizen to be able to afford this supply. Thus the market isn't even irrational.


All those tax cuts to the super rich have to go somewhere. Buying up property is one of them.


More so you need to generate the money that goes into stocks and other assets from somewhere. This seem to be done either by government debt or by debt against increasing home values...


I don't see how I could ever afford to retire whilst still having to pay rent in the UK.


> But this view of a home as an appreciating asset is incompatible with increasing housing affordability.

It isn't, but it seems that way. If you pay your house off before/when you retire that means you live rent free (you still have property taxes and maintenance, but they are far cheaper than rent). Social security is the same either way. Your 401k and IRAs have maximum contributions and so again not having to pay rent means your retirement income is effectively higher.

A house as an appreciating asset is only good for retirement if/when you sell - but then you either need to invest that money and pay it out in rent which has also increased, or you need to buy a new house. There is also risk - if you go to a nursing home the house is treated special, but if you sell it the additional money is used to pay the nursing home before government kicks in. Which is to say that for retirement planning house values are meaningless.

An appreciating house is useful if like many people you "cash out refinance" I've seen many people refinance their house every few years to the current house value. They take very nice vacations paid for by the house increase in value. This is all good until they retire and now owe what the house is worth and so they are paying rent with their limited income.


> But this view of a home as an appreciating asset is incompatible with increasing housing affordability.

Historically it's appreciated in the 2-5% range, which is roughly the same as inflation.

* https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-vs-inflation/


During most of history, slaves were allowed to purchase their freedom with money they had made on the side. Your argument is the equivalent to saying that maybe it is not worth it, because the price of freedom is too high to be worth it. Sure, that's a way to see it. But another way to see it is that something else is wrong in the situation.


Don't own anything and be happy, kids!

Seriously, the fact this comment is, so far, at the top is mind boggling.


"Everyone should be able to afford to buy or build a home" and "everyone's home should appreciate in value as an investment forever" are direct opposites.


I think people tend that think that home ownership is important as people tend to care more about thing they own.

But then again. Now where home ownership is so financialized, people don't dare to do zit out of the ordinary, which again leads to boring cities.


If even a smaller group controlled the supply of something why would that supply decrease in value.

Currently rental prices have to compete with how much effort a boomer wants to put into profiting from their second or third homes, a fair amount but most realize a stress free tenant is better than maximizing profit.

If you remove these independent landlords then it falls to a tiny group of giant orgs that then control the market and can charge whatever price they want.


That’s why the dynamic is unlikely to change until a large portion of boomers have died out.


Why would it change after the boomers die out? The population age histogram is going to get even more top heavy:

https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...


Because most of the younger generations didn’t have a chance to buy in at the lower prices, and hence haven’t owned much as a percentage at the same ages. Boomers own most of the real estate right now, and have for a very long time.

It’ll spread around more when they die.

At least as this quotes “Millennials own less than two-thirds of the real estate Baby Boomers did at the same age”.

[https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/ter01-real-estate-owners...]


I've generally not had an interest in working for one of the big tech companies, but the opportunity to escape JIRA is tempting.


It basically comes down to the face that the quarterback position has an outsized importance in the game and those players become the face of their franchises. They are often credited with wins and losses despite those being a team stat.

Some of the players do find this fan/media obsession strange. They may be asked about playing against QB X and reply that they're actually playing against the opposing defense.

There are rivalries between players who are on the field at the same time, but they're less prominent. Those between a wide receiver and cornerback are probably the most common. Throughout the game they are racing, pushing and deceiving each other and fighting over the ball and it can become heated.

However, it's also possible to have a competitive rivalry without directly facing each other on the field. In individual sports like golf this is the only way. But in other sports players can also compete with each other on some individual aspect. In baseball, the 1998 HR chase and Dimaggio brothers are some prominent examples. In Brady's case he had a strong desire to be number one. The threat of Peyton winning MVPs over him, having better statistics than him or Peyton's team winning over his was a strong motivator for Brady to protect his status.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: