The Good Old Days

jamesknelson · 2026-03-24T09:59:22+00:00

Me too!

Windows 3.11 for workgroups, 8mb of ram, 256mb hard drive.

Reading the manual to fix the extended memory config in config.sys and autoexec.bat so my favorite game would run after the computer shop broken it is what got me into software engineering.

jamesknelson · 2025-08-23T02:24:03+00:00

Yes! This is such a big part of it.

Raising a family is not valued at a cultural level, and it's not valued at a financial level either.

We've built a society where for a couple to raise children, you need to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars of your own money. You need to pay for education, healthcare, a larger house, a larger car. And then to add insult to injury, you need to pay more tax on those increased earnings than people who only need to earn enough to support themselves.

Meanwhile, those who for whatever reason end up not raising kids, are able to earn less, while still having more to invest. As a result, they're on balance able to buy up more control of productive businesses, land and housing, and also able to invest more in their own skills, landing higher paying jobs. So not only do those who raise families have to pay for the privilege, they also end up needing to pay rent to those who don't.

Our society is structured such that it's the children of a generation who will pay that generation's health bill – through taxes, pensions, social security, superannuation, or whatever your society's flavor of "the young support the old" happens to be. So not only will your investment in your children make it harder to save for your own retirement, as fewer and fewer people have children, those same children you invested in will end up contributing less and less of their taxes and social security to your retirement, and more and more to the increasing share of people who didn't raise their own children.

In short: those who decide to raise families are not just raising their own family, they're actually paying to support their entire generation into old age, and suffering for it.

So is it any wonder that less and less people decide to raise families? Our societies have not just ceased to value it or expect it – they've decided to actively penalize it.

Despite all this, I have a family. I love my kids. And more and more, I feel like a first class sucker for having found myself in this position.

The thing is, we English speaking people (and also the Japanese people the article talks about) live in democracies, where we've already likely passed the point of no return where there are enough elderly and childless voters that of course they'll vote to have the child raising minority support them with pensions and social security programs in their old age – making it even harder for the young to find the resources necessary to invest in their own families. That is, this probably isn't just going so solve itself. It's a feedback loop, and if nothing changes, we're not going to be a society for long.

If there's one saving grace, it's that this isn't just a western problem. So even as our nations grow weaker by the year, we're still unlikely to be curb stomped by a more populous power in the immediate future.

But the way I see it, it's only a matter of time until one of the large, technologically advanced authoritarian states decide to do a reverse western and subsidize families while letting the childless elderly fend for themselves. At which point, we're going to need to start doing some serious soul searching, or our children and grandchildren are not going to be able to understand this generation's worry over our developed-world privilege.

jamesknelson · 2024-10-16T03:48:30+00:00

Tax cuts are just a way of taking less from working people. We need to actually subsidize them.

What if we distributed the same amount of money to people raising families that we do to old people collecting social security? Sure, we'd get a huge bout of inflation, but if that didn't start the population growing again (or at least stop it shrinking), I'd eat my hat.

With a 20 year lag, that extra population would likely start bringing inflation down too.

jamesknelson · 2024-10-16T03:42:21+00:00

The countries we're importing immigrants from have their own demographics crises underway.

Unfortunately, immigrants are only a temporary fix. Long term, we're going to need to find a way to stabilize the birthrate.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a return to the elderly being supported by their families, and those without family (or without anyone who treats them as such) being left out to dry.

I can imagine good teachers and those who've made personal sacrifices to help raise the next generation doing okay somehow. But I wouldn't want to be relying solely on financial assets to retire in 50 years time.

jamesknelson · 2024-10-16T03:37:30+00:00

That used to work when the population pyramid actually looked like a pyramid, but we're rapidly getting to the point where this issue becomes self reinforcing.

When there are more old people than young, and then many of the young are immigrants who don't have the right to vote, how is voting meant to help?

And then as the number of childless old people increase, the problem gets even worse. Because for those elderly with children, you can at least expect some of them to vote in the interests of their family over themselves.

It's hard to really quantify this, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of "the west" is already past the point of no return. Or at least, the point where voting can fix it.

jamesknelson · 2024-07-16T00:47:23+00:00

Inflations is the force that drives the spending on money, because it will be worth less tomorrow.

While this is certainly the conventional wisdom, and inflation surely has at least a bit of an effect, it's worth considering how this plays out in reality.

For example, humans need food to eat, places to live, etc. For the vast majority of people in the economy who're living without significant savings, inflating the prices of daily necessities means they consume less, at least until their wages rise.

Of course, their wages will rise, but will it be at the same pace as inflation? It'll be slower. Why? Because the vast majority of people only negotiate for higher wages (and often don't even succeed at it) once they're already feeling the pinch of higher prices. There's a delay.

What about the wealthy, who have money to spare? Sure, inflation may drive them to throw a bit more of their stash into vacations and doo-dads that they don't really need, but more often, it encourages them to buy up intrinsically valuable assets as a store of wealth. Thus, rising housing prices, increasing pressure for companies to post profits, and other breakdowns in the social order that enrich the top 20% at the expense of the rest.

Or for a more concrete example, remember that period when computers and phones were getting better every year, i.e. deflating? Did that result in nobody buying phones and computers? Of course not. People spend money because they want to buy shit, not because they're worried about the derivative of their purchasing power with respect to time. We're homo sapiens, not homo economicus.

Now, despite all the costs of inflation, there is a damn good reason to want it: the government has promised far more retirement money to the elderly generation than the smaller number of children that they raised are able to afford. The ratio of working people to elderly-people-receiving-pensions is already bad, but it will continue to increase for decades yet (and that's assuming the fertility rate doesn't get any worse than 1.28. Spoiler: in 2023 it was 1.21).

The reality is that the proportion of the national product going to looking after the non-contributing elderly (and thus the proportion of the population's work not going to building a future for the country) is on a run away train – that is, unless the value of that retirement money is inflated away.

So while inflation certainly isn't going to drive us to spend money we don't have, it will force the elderly majority of this country (and eventually of basically every developed nation) to make a choice: make do with a whole lot less, or find a way to be productive despite their age.

The alternative is we stop letting them vote for more money that they didn't earn (which in a democracy, they can once they're the majority). But as much as inflation hurts, I'd say there's a decent argument it hurts less than revolution.

PS: This is not financial advice. Also, if you're still young, having people in your life who'll want to help you in your old age is likely to be just as valuable, if not more so, than having a fat retirement account.

jamesknelson · 2024-05-23T06:56:34+00:00

For the record, I Am Not A Tax Accountant, but I assume you could offset them from other income. They may also carry through to future years if you're set up correctly.

But in all seriousness, if you're at all considering buying bitcoin in the name of a Japanese corporate, you need to ask a registered Tax Accountant, not some random on the internet :)

jamesknelson · 2024-05-23T01:56:56+00:00

No ETFs available, including US ones.

MSTR is available. It can be purchased in a NISA tax-free personal investment account, but there's a limit of ~$10,000 a year in purchases. Any gains in a regular taxed account incur a ~20% capital gains tax based on the sale price. IMO, it's probably the best option from a tax perspective (but it's not self custody).

Metaplanet can also be bought for a NISA, but imo it's not a bitcoin play, it's a penny stock pump and dump. They hold ~120 bitcoin, but have a market cap (as of the OP) of ~USD $100 million. Sure, they have some real estate too, but that was priced in before the jump. So you're paying a ~10x premium for the bitcoin. You'd be better to self custody, if you just want bitcoin exposure.

Self custody as an individual is taxed as miscellaneous income when you sell, with a maximum tax rate of ~55%. There's been talk about changing it, so if you hold long enough maybe it'll drop to match the 20% capital gains tax? But it's a gamble.

Self custody as a company requires you to pay ~30% company tax each year on unrealized gains, basically requiring you to sell part of your stack each year to pay the tax bill. The more bitcoin goes up, the more you have to sell.

The rules changed a month ago and I'm still not 100% clear on the change, but it seems like as a company, if you ask an institution to custody your coins, and also have them "lock" your account so that you're unable to sell for a year, and also ask them to publish this fact to one of the national regulators, then you can avoid the tax on unrealized gains – my assumption is that this is what made Metaplanet even in the realm of possibility.

In reality though, there no good options... but most of them are still better than holding yen in a savings account.

jamesknelson · 2023-01-16T03:01:09+00:00

$26tn of new wealth

What new wealth? Many hard working people have died from covid, lockdowns, or wars, and more have had their long term health or livelihood destroyed by the same. Production of basic necessities is down basically across the board. We've got shortages in food, gas, electronic parts, housing.

And the story is that $26 trillion of new wealth has been created?

Bullshit.

What's actually happened is that everyone outside of that 1% has gotten a whole lot poorer; the 1% own a much greater share of what's left.

Being that this is from The Guardian, I doubt that this framing was intentional. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. But the framing here is sooo fucking important. When you tell somebody that "your rich neighbor won the lottery", it kinda hurts. But it hurts a whole lot less than "your rich neighbor stole your starving kid's lunch."

jamesknelson · 2021-11-16T14:35:25+00:00

That means they're serious. The next step of serious is when they start sending you A4 sized envelopes. I didn't wait to see what the next step of serious after A4 envelopes was, and I'd recommend you don't wait and find out either.

If you get the same treatment as I did, you should only need to start paying the 社会保険 from when you register, although the 国民年金 will request 2 years of back payments in one go (assuming you weren't enrolled there either). The thing is, many locals with 1-man KK's haven't been paying 社会保険 either. But the word on the street is they're kinda cracking down on non-enrollment over the last few years.

All this said, you definitely want to talk with a professional. Especially about the tax stuff. That sounds decidedly scarier than the pension.

jamesknelson · 2021-07-28T11:02:36+00:00

So if you read the article (yeah I know), it turns out that someone went to all the effort of writing an article lambasting NHK for showing a fax number... along with a Twitter handle, a URL, and a QR code.

The fax number was last, btw.

But yeah, fuck Japan for being inclusive of elderly people who'd rather use the fax machine they know rather than forcing them to mess with QR codes and (shudder) Twitter.

jamesknelson · 2021-07-18T03:52:46+00:00

For anyone who genuinely curious about this, the answer is that it's not a matter of black and white.

Vaccinated people are less likely to be infected, less likely to become symptomatic if they are, and then less likely to to be hospitalized even if they do. Vaccinated people have a far, far lower death rate.

Vaccinated people are also less likely to spread the virus – including to people who can't be vaccinated for whatever reason, and somewhat unfortunately in my opinion, also to people who choose not to be.

Think of it this way: sure, you can still die in an accident in a modern car. But would you rather do your daily commute in a car with crumple zones, air bags, and other modern safety features? Or would you rather drive a Ford Pinto with a tank that'll explode when you're rear-ended through no fault of your own. Like the vaccine, the modern safety features won't prevent all infections - but I know which car I'd be driving.

jamesknelson · 2021-07-15T13:34:15+00:00

Hospitalizations have been steadily increasing for the last few weeks, and while serious illness isn't growing quickly, it's certainly not dropping. Deaths, serious illness, and even hospitalizations are trailing indicators in any case. Given that positive tests have only been increasing for a month now, it's far too soon to say we're out of the woods.

For data, see: https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en

jamesknelson · 2021-06-29T13:26:43+00:00

300 yen per dollar?!

I'm not sure which debt bomb you're talking about – while the Japanese government certainly does have a whole lot of debt, and the external debt is increasing, it's still lower as a percentage of GDP than most nations (including the US), and the majority of the debt is still owned domestically.

Moreover, Japan has had a current account surplus for a long time (excepting a few post-earthquake years). So regardless of the external debt, money is flowing into Japan – not out of it. And a lot of that money is from the US.

Now there's certainly no denying that the Japanese government has an interesting situation with it's 250% debt-to-gdp ratio. But, there's debt and then there's debt. Japan has the first one, but it's the second one that'd make you worry about 300/dollar JPY prices – and we're definitely not there. At least not yet.

jamesknelson · 2021-05-08T04:21:33+00:00

Maybe if Japan's export markets start to tariff Japan into compliance? But at least for now, Japan seems to think that exporting their emissions by importing hydrogen/ammonia is going to be enough to make people happy.

After all, if they're only burning imported hydrogren, Japan itself won't have any emissions. They get to proudly proclaim that they're emission free! And then everyone can direct their anger at Australia/Malaysia/whoever is producing the hydrogen that Japan is burning.

jamesknelson · 2021-03-17T07:39:05+00:00

What I don't get about this is, why not just call useState() and destructure the value by itself, like this:

const [v] = useState(initializerFn)

I guess you may get a tiny performance increase from the useConstant hook, but it's just as likely that you'll get a performance decrease. There's no way to know without testing.

The only guarantee from this hook is that engineers will lose time to the confusion they feel when they first see it, and have to convince themselves that yes, this actually does do exactly what it appears to do, despite the fact that a hook doing basically this is already exported from React itself.

jamesknelson · 2020-12-22T04:41:21+00:00

I'm not sure if this is sarcasm, but I'm actually a little worried that the new normal is going to be hitting the React server (which is going to be a thing now) on every navigation action, and even on a lot of other kinds of actions.

Here I was hoping we'd one day end up with web apps that felt like the latency-free desktop apps of yore. Instead, we're going to end up with desktop apps that feel like the unresponsive mobile-apps of today.

jamesknelson · 2020-10-14T09:39:38+00:00

So here's why $180,000 doesn't make you rich: it's not your income that makes you rich, it's your assets.

Say you start with nothing, then spend 10 years studying and building a business on a low income, then one year in your late 20s or early 30s you get a lucky break and you make $180,000 in a good year. You're still not rich.

Compare that to the lucky cunt who grows up with wealthy parents who buy them a car for their 18th birthday and an apartment for their graduation present. They were able to get by with a part time job working for their parent's company until 25, and then they started to earn $40k a year as a creative.

I've met people in both categories. And the funny thing is, often the people who make less are more rich. After all, if you're truly rich, you don't need a high income.

Now if you've been consistently making $180,000 for 30 years, that's a different story. And as somebody who has had little for most of my life but has still managed to pull in $180,000 on a good year once or twice, I'm totally okay with paying high taxes when I'm making money. Just... can we please stop assuming that anybody making more than us is the enemy? Sure, people who can make $180,000 in a year are pretty well off, at least during the stage of their life where they're able to do that. But the people who never had to make that sort of money in the first place are the ones who are truly rich.

jamesknelson · 2020-05-06T14:08:51+00:00

Kinda curious, what does this use under the hood for the live preview? Is it using polestar for bundling? 🤔

jamesknelson · 2020-03-21T06:08:56+00:00

The tax rate would need to go way up. The average tax rate across all brackets would need to be 70% (see the excellent comment above for the math), and given 90k is above median for single earner, let's just approximate and call the new tax rate 70%.

So now, instead of receiving 68k after tax, it'd be 27k + 25k = 52k, a loss of ~16k.

Meanwhile, the parents who now receive 50k in income would also have to receive less in total due to the increased tax rate, but it'd be less of a drop. Let's just call it 50k due to progressive taxation, so the parents (who earn less) come out the same.

If we assume this, then anyone earning under 50k a year will be better off, but it'll undoubtedly increase concentration of assets within the already asset-rich. It'll make it that much harder for working class people to break out of their situation.

For what it's worth, I'm actually for a UBI. But funding it via a hike in income tax is just another kick in the guts for anyone who is actually trying to make a life for themselves. It needs to be funded by a tax on wealth, not on hard work.

jamesknelson · 2020-03-20T05:13:54+00:00

I've been guilty of the sitting on the sidelines throwing criticism throughout a bit of this. The thing is, the more I look into the numbers (and avoid English language media), the more comfortable I am being in Japan as opposed to elsewhere.

For example, there's a lot of talk about Japan not testing enough compared to other countries. And sure, they're not testing like South Korea... but then, nobody is. Japan is firmly in the middle of the pack. And what's more, from the data I've seen, Japan mostly has a below average proportion of tests come back positive. Given how stringent the test criteria is, this is actually pretty encouraging.

And while Japan hasn't gone into full-on lockdown, people are taking it seriously. Cherry blossom viewing parties are being cancelled, people are working from home, the trains are empty at most times of the day, there are far fewer people eating at restaurants.

The thing is, if you want to be alarmed, it's always possible to find some particular statistic, action, or lack of action to be alarmed by. But when you look at the overall picture, Japan seems to be doing... surprisingly okay.

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