Ironically, not even 10 years ago we were having exactly the opposite conversation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring

I already use white lists -- I simply don't answer the phone if the person isn't in my contacts list and I'm not expecting a call from an unknown number. I assume this is pretty common practice.

> If every cell phone has LTE and internet connection, why the fuck do we need traditional cell phone number?

I almost never have LTE or even mobile data of any kind when I'm outside of cities (for a liberal definition of city).

> Also, why can't cell phone providers use same spam filtering techniques used in email filters?

Because spam filters rely on contents in addition to meta-data. You can't pick up the phone and listen to the contents for a few minutes.

I'm curious what countries /places these are. My operator doesn't even activate 3G on modern phones, I literally have nothing aside from LTE/VoLTE. Since LTE got deployed on the low frequencies reclaimed from analog TV, the reception is generally BETTER than 3G etc.

Also when there are natural disasters, the voice infrastructure is the first to collapse, but data in chat apps still makes it through

The United States. Not even the western or mountain states! One of the places I regularly go that doesn't have data coverage but does have voice coverage is in a national (or maybe state there?) forest in New York state.

> Also when there are natural disasters, the voice infrastructure is the first to collapse, but data in chat apps still makes it through

I don't have any experience with this, so I'll take your word for it.

It's extremely invasive for some random civil servant to execute an unexpected search on a device that most reasonable people assume is private.

This might be a reasonable solution if it's a one-off unique solution and is therefore unlikely to be detected. But if you can't count on security through obscurity, this is a good way to end up serving real jail time.

However, it's pretty well understood criminals aren't legally required to self-incriminate. For example, if a criminal was to hand over their password, they're not then obligated to assist border security in navigating through their phone's storage to specifically point out evidence against themselves.

Whilst I'm not advocating this solution for criminals(!), I'd assume the same logic ought to hold true for those that have careers where privacy is paramount.

If you simply boot up your phone (into the "non-private" environment) and have no password, or perhaps even use the same real password (remember to change it later), then it's not necessarily your fault the border agents don't know how to use your phone.

EDIT: In terms of lying / being discovered, this is why I'm proposing a low-level dual-booting solution, rather than simply having multiple profiles on the device. It ought to be 100% undetectable that the device supports dual-booting at all, unless the user performs a precise action to boot into the private environment e.g. connect the phone to PC, and submit a specific boot command with a user provided password. Without the correct password being provided, the phone should respond no differently than a phone that does not support dual booting.

Although, IANAL nor have I made any attempt to look into the laws surrounding this. I would be surprised, although not too surprised, to hear there are laws specifically covering this situation. Nonetheless, it'd be a loophole for sure, and presumably easy enough to close off with further legislation.

Unlike janitors or checkout operators, software work can be outsourced. Outsourcing doesn't make sense for high-skill software engineering for two reasons. First, actually writing the code is only a small part of the job. And second, even when it comes to writing the code, there's still a real quality difference between top US candidates and top international candidates [1].

But software work that requires "little to no skill" is exactly the sort of thing you can successfully outsource.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/us-computer-science-...

1. The skyrocketing cost of college really does create enormous problems. I'm assuming the family profiled are either doctors or lawyers, because otherwise those $32K/yr payments would only last for a few years at most. (I paid $40K/yr in loans for both my wife and I when I got my first real job, but that happened exactly once... and we weren't buying BMWs or Land Rovers while we were doing it.)

2. Pensions, which have largely eroded away in the private sector, were enormously valuable. The switch from pensions to 401(K)s without a significant corresponding increase in pay is one of the most significant ways in which the real value of take-home pay has declined in the past 30 years.

But everything else could be cut in half, probably without even noticing:

1. $42K/yr on childcare is au pair/"elite" preschool money.

2. $5,000/mo mortgage is pretty high, even for a family of four in a high CoL area.

3. Three vacations a year @ $6,000 a pop. I take more than three vacations a year, but most of them are closer to $500 for a family of 4 (camping/backpacking). The expensive ones never get higher than $3,000. There's "getting away from work for a while" and then there's "flying a family of 4 to Paris a few times a year". The former is not a "luxury" especially for a high stress job, but the latter definitely is.

4. Luxury cars. For $10K they could buy a perfectly functional new car (which would last 10 years) every year. The only way that these are not "luxuries" is if they're required for work.

5. $3K on clothing per year, every year. That's high even for someone who has to dress nicely for work. Yes, nice suits are expensive, but they also last a long time. And your kids definitely don't need "meetings with high value clients" clothing.

6. $1K/mo on "children's lessons". I know how this happens, because I charged up to $100/hr for private tutoring while in grad school. But it's entirely unnecessary. It really is OK for your kid to get a B in an AP course. And if they need $100/hr quality tutoring for every course they're taking, the real world is going to be a rude experience. Also, $1K/mo on "children's lessons" while the kids are also young enough to need childcare is absolutely insane.

In NYC, these fees are necessary if you want to get your child into a "good" public middle and high school. The alternative is to pay $50K/year for private school. So #6 is a valid strategy to cut costs via attending public school--the very opposite of "luxury".

Yes. Plenty of perfectly accessible public schools are good even though they're not nearly the best.

Again, access to the elite educational institutions in the country with most of the elite educational institutions in the world is... a luxury good.

Also, as someone who tutored those kids, IMO you're not doing them any favors in the long. If you have to work for a living, then at some point way before "the best public schools in NYC, $50K/yr private schools, or bust", grit >> prep. That sort of prep also has the effect of disabusing them of a clear-headed understanding of their own limitations; which, again, can be a really terrible thing for them in the long.

I'll take you task on this one, as a crummy 3 BR apartment in Manhattan is north of $2MM. Interest alone on that is $6700/mo. And I've personally seen number of dispiriting 3 BR's listed for $3MM.

Also, you can recoup up to $3K of that $5K mortgage by cutting the other luxury goods in the budget.

I guess the point is: any one item on this list might be justifiable. At the very least, each on its own is a totally reasonable luxury to indulge in after decades of not just hard but also smart and stressful work. But the budget, taken as a whole, is hard to describe with any word other than "luxurious".

Have you ever tried to carry one or more toddler car seats to a rental agent? Even The Rock would balk at that task.

In any event, I appreciate all your counterpoints, but I'd prefer to hear counterpoints from current/former Manhattan parents than a logician without on the ground experience.

And even in some of the "very expensive" housing markets, you can still find homes that are affordable relative to income within 40 minutes of downtown areas. Chicago and Boston both come to mind.

The primary differences, as far as I can tell, are that:

1) Niche senior positions are harder to find in cheaper cities (think "deep hard tech expertise"). For example, nearly all of the major corporate research labs in CS (MSR, Google Brain, Google Research, IBM Research, Oracle Labs, ...) are in or around expensive CoL areas. On the startup side, "hard tech" startups are very often more capital-intensive so are even more attracted to geographic VC bubbles.

2) Moving up within BigCos is sometimes more difficult if you're in a satellite office.

Google, Amazon and Microsoft don't have any sort of engineering presence in Utah. Though Adobe is majorly expanding here. And operationally, Facebook is adding a huge data center.