Yes, for better or worse, the issue is political. If you agree with that, then this post is against the Hacker News guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

Either way, it’s hard to imagine this generating the type of thoughtful conversation Hacker News is known for. I hope to be proven wrong.

All issues are political. However, this article is not an opinion piece, but a nice set of analysis based on public data. You can comment/criticize the analysis, bring out counterfactuals, point to other analysis etc.