I assume the guy succeeding me has nastier anger issues than I do, lacks my reluctance to initiate violence, and knows where I live.

You think talking union is left-wing? Man, your perspective is fucked. I haven't even started talking about work-for-hire alienating developers from their work.

Try DuckDuckGo. No ads, no tracking, no Microsoft.

Can you get manage a 40 hour workweek as a coder in NYC/SF/Austin/Boston or Chicago (as another reply mentioned)?

I write SF, but it's hard to let go and not give a shit at my day job because I'm still enough of a Randroid to want to give people their money's worth.

As somebody who started working in the trade in 2000, what do you mean by 'good times'? :)

Going by my wife's experience, I can suggest a better way to discourage somebody from learning to code. It's called Java.

Save the right-wing talking points for somebody who gives a shit. And stop conflating unionization with government-mandated licensing. If you're smart enough to code for a living, you're smart enough to know better.

Pay me enough, and I'll happily GTFO of the programming trade. $50,000/year will do.

I wish I had known to pick a different trade instead of programming. Programming isn't a profession like law or medicine. It's a skilled trade like plumbing, masonry, or electrical work. But unlike plumbers and electricians, programmers aren't smart enough to unionize, and so they get fucked in the ass by management. If you have to live in the United States, don't become a programmer. There are better ways to earn a living.

Aside from a joke being modded (Score: 5, Insightful)?

IMO, reification is generally pretty stupid, and has no legitimate place outside of literature and poetry, where it's called "personification". It doesn't make sense to treat nature, society, government, or any abstraction as if it has a concrete existence and can think, plan, know, desire, or do anything on its own.

Isn't this how we got "killer bees" in the first place?

Sales taxes are supposed to be paid by consumers to the states. If consumers aren't paying the taxes they're supposed to be paying, then it's the state governments' job to enforce their own laws and collect the taxes. The states have no business demanding that Amazon act as their tax collectors.

Didn't your father ever teach you that your feelings don't matter to anybody else? You're not a Jedi. Don't feel; think.