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I believe in taking time away from work to raise kids. In fact, I am taking several years away from work now for that purpose. What I disagree with is who should pay for it. I'm paying for my living expenses and raising my child from my savings that I earned at my generous paying job. I think the government should pay for up to perhaps 3 months for raising kids (and it shouldn't be based on your salary, but tied to some universally agreed upon basic living wage), but any more than that should be self-financed. There is a set amount of handouts society can give out before it implodes, and there are far better uses for that money than giving you the privilege of a plush lifestyle while you choose to stay at home with your toddler.

You are asking for an incredibly high amount of welfare, essentially "everyone else in society should pay me for 5 years because I chose to have a kid". I'm choosing to have a kid too, but I'm taking the personal responsibility path of saving and paying for it on my own. Perhaps there is some middleground, but 5 years is absolutely absurd.

I agree with most of the article except for the evidence of block size used to claim that the bulk of the volume was not retail. 500k - 4 million blocks can easily be retail. I trade that size all the time, even up to 12M blocks, I'm a retail trader. There are dozens of screenshots from wallstreet bets of fellow retail traders trading this size. Many retailers use up to 3x or more leverage, meaning one would only need a low 6 figure account size to trade the low end of that block range, and yes, many retailers are "all in" during this frenzy with a single trade, again evidenced by YOLO screenshots on WSB recently.

Retail does not mean "poor". Retail means you don't work for an investment fund. In fact, my grandfather is worth $250M and frequently trades 10-50M blocks. He is still a retail trader managing his personal assets. Despite popular belief, a large portion of the 1% and even billionaire class manage their own money or at least a large part of it in the stock market.

I made an average of $220k including salaries, bonuses and 401k matches. I lived on 30k and invested the rest, mostly in QQQ after maxing my retirement contributions for tax advantages. I had about 40k saved when I started working after graduate school. Yes I benefited from a booming tech market, both in my investments and my career. But that boom is ongoing, and really it only majorly picked up 5 years ago. I quit working 2 years ago to focus on my own projects, so someone starting today would likely have an easier path than my own. I saw someone on reddit fatfire yesterday who has $75k at age 20 just from FANG internships. He could have 200k by the time he starts his first real job, and there are entry-level offers higher than my average salary at top companies right now.

IMO in the age of insanely high tech salaries, early stage funding is very overrated. I saved $2.2M in my 8 year Bay Area career as a regular engineer with no exits, and I didn't even work at FANG. I have friends who saved more than twice as much as me. And then YC gives out 150k? 150k is a joke to anyone with a decent job. Why not save 2 million and then start your company at age 29 instead of 21 begging people for tiny money for huge share of your company? The YC model made sense back when it was founded and engineers made 60-80k. Now after the second tech boom, you are much better off working for FANG for 5-10 years and then starting your own company owning 100% of the equity until a real money $10M+ series A