If you want productive discussions that you need to enter them in a good faith.
Building an argument based on personal anecdotes and applying it to national policy not good faith. Science literally exists to limit subjective bias and to separate actual trends in reality from notions in your head, subjective experience basically worthless for understanding large-scale trends.
It's always alarming to me to see how many people on HN don't acknowledge the bubble they're in.
If you're a well-paid engineer, and nearly everyone you interact with is a well-paid engineer, you're going to think everyone lives like you.
And I wonder how many of them grew up poor. And I mean, poor as in "half my meals as a kid were rice and beans", not "One time my dad didn't get the bonus he was expecting, so we had to fly coach rather than First Class when we to France during Christmas".
Building an argument based on personal anecdotes and applying it to national policy not good faith. Science literally exists to limit subjective bias and to separate actual trends in reality from notions in your head, subjective experience basically worthless for understanding large-scale trends.