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Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

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Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#491

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Buying a house doesn't necessarily mean buying in the suburbs. We've got kid and live in the city, and we know other families that do as well. Probably still a minority, but a growing trend. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that people with kids lived in cities too.

This is a weird comment. Is this a Baltimore thing? American cities are full of families. With the possible exceptions of San Francisco and Manhattan, they are mostly families, aren't they?

Downtown and surrounding areas in Seattle seem devoid of families with kids. My wife and I live in Bellevue but wanted to move to Seattle. We tried finding people at our workplaces who lived there and had kids, to ask about schools and such, but found no one. Everyone seems to move to farther neighborhoods or to the suburbs once they have kids here.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#492
post #63

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As already mentioned, you're ignoring a fact that even by working there for 10 years, it's close to impossible to buy a part of land and build a house anywhere near a city. Land and house prices are too high to stay there for live. It's only profitable to live there, make savings and buy 2-3 houses in Uk/Germany for it. Like two of my co-workers did.

I've never understood why people believe/feel that buying land and/or a house is the pinnacle of... something. Sure, it gives the person a feeling of control and stability. But rooting oneself in one labor market (vs. being mobile) decreases one's employment options and therefore their salary. It's also very risky, as it's the equivalent of putting one's eggs in one basket and leaves their financial wellbeing in the…

> Renting is, unfortunately and quite inaccurately, viewed as "throwing money away."

I hate this mentality, and it seems pervasive worldwide. As I said in another comment in this thread, I like to see rent as paying for a housing service: I pay a monthly amount in exchange for a roof plus a lot of annoying things I'd have to take care of myself (and spend money on) if I were a homeowner: broken appliances, water heater issues, heating issues, etc. It's quite a list.

"Service" is sort of key in the way I see it, and is the reason why I only rent from apartment companies and not from landlords. There are so many stories about downright insane landlords out there that I don't want to take my chances dealing having to deal with those.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#493
post #437

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Just a quick bit of advice. Getting a flat from an agent is very hard if you're not friends with them. I've seen this first hand. Bizarrely it can be just as cheap getting an air b&b for a few months at a time. Also it is absolutely worth looking in to a place across the border in France, it's cheaper, not that far away, and public transport is pretty good. I've been here for 6 months or so, but leaving soon... its r…

> Getting a flat from an agent is very hard if you're not friends with them. I find that rather odd, any ideas why it is that way? Is there really so few flats on the market? I would think that estate agents would be happy to help anyone find a home... I have tried to email a number of estate agents and all I got was automated responses. Some in French, despite the fact that I wrote the email in English. They all mos…

> I find that rather odd, any ideas why it is that way? Is there really so few flats on the market? I would think that estate agents would be happy to help anyone find a home...

Vacancy rate in Geneva proper is about 0.4%. As usual in such situations, why bother with a foreigner who isn't going to stay long when you likely know friends/acquaintances (Geneva is a small world :) looking for a place?

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#494
post #431

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Would anyone really consider that a farmhouse, when it has only 0.68 acres of land?

Because you only care about the farmhouse and not the land.

You can rent land to farmers. Depending on the land and location in NY, you can rent it for $20-$80 an acre.

USDA agricultural statistics service

https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/E0F5EB36-3313-3D7B-...

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#495
post #19
post #7

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The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum. Now we have the sentence «The construction of minarets is prohibited.» in the constitution. ( https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/... ) I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.

You can say this about any level of democracy though (that its downside is populistic decisions, or, more precisely, decisions that you or I think are wrong.) It's easy to find a country where most decisions are made by elected leaders and they chose leaders you or I find terrible, who proceeded to make a lot of bad decisions. I don't see an argument either for more or less direct democracy here (though I guess with…

The political system in Switzerland is known to increase stability, not reduce it.

The way I see it, this is down to two factors:

1. Since Switzerland does have multiple parties and all of the bigger ones a represented in the federal council, there is more compromise and decisions made by consensus. This in turn leads to less dramatics shifts after a term is up and some politicians are replaced. In contrast in the US, where you could have a democratic president and parliament coming in after a term of a republican majority and president (or vice versa). It seems likely, that the new powers to be would set about undoing some decisions made by their predecessors. At the very least you'd have a rather dramatic course change at hand.

2. It is very easy to collect enough signatures for a referendum (50000 signatures within 100 days of the law being passed in parlament) and for every change to the constitution there is a mandatory referendum (no signatures needed, it will brought to a public vote). This means that any controversial law can be brought to a public vote. Which more or less prohibits sudden drastic changes and promotes more incremental change, which brings more stability.

On the other hand, there might be something to the Idea, that direct democracy reduces stability. Basically it is the flip side of 2. above: it is also quite easy to gather 100000 votes to establish a popular initiative. The parties have picked up on that and often introduce controversial initiatives to further their election campaigns. There are not many safeguards in place, so unfortunately there was an increase in badly drafted amendments in recent years. Different parties have brought forward initiatives that contradicted other parts of the constitution.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#496
post #485
post #326

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The algorithm to make money as a landlord is pretty simple. 1) mortgage the property you wish to rent out 2) rent it out 3) wait until rents increase and earn profit (mortgages do not increase while rental rates do)

Not sure about point 3. Normally mortgage costs do increase - in line with interest rates. Even with a fixed-rate mortgage, there is usually a term for that rate, which is generally substantially less than the lifetime of the mortgage, often as little as two years, and rarely more than five. This is certainly the situation in the UK, do things work differently in the US?

Yes they do. The most popular mortgage here is a 30 year fixed rate.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#497
post #367

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Do you do anything in particular to make use of the time during the commute besides just concentrating on driving, listening to music, or daydreaming? I struggle with long commutes since I inevitably feel like I'm wasting the time.

As someone who did this for some time. Get out. I, like you probably, think that it's not "too bad", but once you're away from this practice, you'll realize that you were wasting so much valuable time.

I work remote and my voluntary commute (could work from the house) is 7 minutes to an office in town where I work every day. My colleagues Live around the Bay area and pay exorbitant amounts and/or drive 1.5-2 hours each way into the office. My quality of life is much better on that front.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#498
post #37

Switzerland is the only country in the world that implements direct democracy. You can really feel the difference to the rest of Europe. Swiss more often than not stand behind decisions made by their government. When talking about their politicians, the Swiss say "WE decided that ..." whereas e.g., Germans say: "THEY decided that ..." If you look for a coding job in Europe, Zurich is a great place to live and is the…

This may not come as a suprise to people from the US, but my sister (who lives and works near Zurich) says you have to pay everything yourself. Dentist, doctor, they just got a child and the father got one day off work if i got it correctly, and she only a couple of weeks. Still children stay at home untill they are 5 or something, you just have to pay someone privatly if you want to work.

The list goes on and on and on, so from this Bay Area like salery there is only something left if you're young, without children and healthy.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#499
post #356

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You do incur a lot more costs as a property owner than as a renter, which you should bear in mind. Over the life of your average 20-25 year mortgage you should expect to have to replace numerous appliances, encounter a couple of catastrophic and unexpected issues (leaking roof, etc.), and after 10 years the decor will be outdated and shabby. To get optimum resale value you will have to sink a lot of time/money into r…

All of those costs are simply amortized over the rental agreement. I'm not sure why people who rent seem to think landlords are appliance/maintenance charities.

Not at all. Rental costs are most strongly influenced by supply-and-demand of housing, whereas sale costs are mostly influenced by supply-and-demand of credit.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true in the U.S. Downtowns all across the country are dead at night.

Well, I can’t really compare – I’ve never been in the US. But I’m gonna assume the relaxed zoning in the EU, and the resulting mix of commercial, residential, and offices, often even in the same building, leads to the people having a reason to go downtown.

People have been moving out of the urban core in U.S. cities for the last 50 years. This has hit mid-sized U.S. cities particularly hard. While enough businesses may have stayed behind to maintain a central business district, the residents chose to live elsewhere and commute in.

The St. Louis region, where I live, has nearly 3 million people (about half of which are inside the I-270/255 loop, for some context on a map), but only around 3000 residents in its primary Downtown neighborhood (and another 4000 or so in the adjacent Downtown West). These two neighborhoods have a population density that's lower than the city average (and much lower than in the most dense neighborhoods).

By the way, this actually represents a bit of a comeback for the neighborhood. There were only 800 residents Downtown in 2000. Warehouse-to-loft conversions became popular about 15 years ago, which has reversed the trend, at least for now.

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