I think the downvoting is because you mentioned "welfare state", and people demand more welfare hate you to say that. But thankfully downvoting is limited now.
Tip: No idea how HN is used on a phone, but on a PC and browser I just CTRL-A to select all text on the entire page and the light gray text becomes clearly readable. Since this does not impact scrolling location or anything else I'm satisfied with this very simple workaround.
Click on the time stamp if you want to read a particular downvoted comment. (On technical threads, it’s rarely useful; on political/social threads, much more commonly used.)
