Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters • Hacker News Board

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#501

Post by harryh » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 11:25 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #440

yummyfajitas wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they should resist the use of violence by others. I'm merely suggesting the French shouldn't violently resist people coming to France and peacefully selling weinershnitzel and saurkraut to people who enjoy these things.

I don't think you'll get any principle out of this beyond something like "my preferences are the best preferences."

In general the right of people to do as they please as long as they aren't infringing on the rights of others isn't considered a mere "preference."

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

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Post by sportanova » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 11:26 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #469

joeyo wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could absolutely borrow on margin to play the stock, although you would probably need to have more than the typical home mortgage 20% to get the loan.

Is that really something that is available to the ordinary man/woman in the street? (Genuine question, I have no idea ..)

ordinary people can borrow 50% on margin

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

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Post by ClayShentrup » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 11:39 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #393

Ressuder wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You deal with that by restrictions of noise. Outlawing minarets to stop noise is like banning vodka to stop alcohol drinking. It doesn't make any sense.

It is very common in many places to restrict highly visible outside advertisement (e.g. the Hollywood sign would not have happened in Switzerland). Visual attention-grabbing is considered just as much as annoying as noise. It seems very reasonable to not exclude religious communities from that rule. I do agree however, that things like minarets should better be left to a general building code addressing the problem o…

Yes, Approval Voting with multiple options would have been better. They did this in Landerd, Holland last year, where voters had six options to select from with regard to how to restructure the municipality (e.g. merge with various bordering municipalities). I believe one of the options was "Status Quo". Voters could select any number of options.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

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Post by brandonmenc » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 11:40 PM UTC

rs999gti wrote: post #175

akerro wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on the opposite, I never understood how people can not own a house and waste money on renting for decades. Where market for houses in western countries is very limited due to stupid regulations and every year a few millions of people move to that country causing renting prices to increase by XX% each year. It decreases my financial stability. Losing a job for less than a month is a financial disaster, I still to…

> waste money on renting How is renting wasting money? Are you not living in the unit? You're gaining 100% benefit by paying rent and receiving a roof over your head. You must mean a waste by losing out on building equity? That's a crap shoot in itself. A hot housing market and equity can go into the toilet at anytime due to very irrational market conditions. Look at the housing markets of Las Vegas or Miami for exam…

> How is renting wasting money?

My parents paid off a $200k mortgage in 15 years. When they sell the house and move, they will get $200k - breaking even.

Meanwhile, I've been renting for 15 years and will never get that money back. It's just a loss.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

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Post by tptacek » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 11:42 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #464

tptacek wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because moving a family of four is extremely disruptive for everyone, and it's very rare to have more than a year's security with a lease, even with a good relationship with the landlord. Not only that, but if your kids are school age, there's serious pressure to find a new rental in the same school area, which makes shopping for a new home that much harder.

>>and it's very rare to have more than a year's security with a lease, even with a good relationship with the landlord. Huh? Landlords prefer stability as much as tenants. Very rarely will they say no to a multi-year lease. They may want to add the option of rent re-evaluation after the first year, but from a landlord's perspective it is very difficult to find good tenants, therefore the longer those tenants stay the…

No landlord I have ever had has ever agreed to a 2-year lease. There's no "huh" about this point: if you rent, your tenancy continues at the pleasure of the landlord. That's not a fun place to be if it's important to you to provide a stable address for your kids for the next 10 years --- and that is usually pretty important.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

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Post by tptacek » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 11:43 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #500

kuschku wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

"Urban core" has little to do with it. "The loop" in central downtown Chicago hosts pretty much nothing but large office buildings. It's dead after 6PM because nobody is there. Where are they? Other parts of the urban core of Chicago.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

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Post by Retric » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 11:47 PM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #455

Retric wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EX: http://mls.catskill4sale.com/idx/details/homes/b253/34760/4-... 200k, 10br house ~2h from NYC depending on traffic. Basically as soon as you step past reasonable daily commutes prices really fall.

It has four bedrooms, not ten. You can't reasonably fit ten bedrooms in 2912 square feet of living space.

3,000 sq feet is 20.8 rooms at 12' by 12'. Sure larger rooms, walk in closets, or wasted hallways could eat that up. But the real issue is there are only 2 bathrooms.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

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Post by cplease » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 11:54 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #418

cplease wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad analogy missing the point that ZeroFries was making. A car's lifespan is mostly determined by mileage. When a car is not being driven its condition and value is largely unchanged. It is not analogous to a vacant house. If you drive a car twice as much of the time it will have to be replaced nearly twice as soon.

>A car's lifespan is mostly determined by mileage. This is far less true in regions with snow. Assuming you drive the vehicle in the winter, a non-trivial contribution to "wear and tear" on the car is rust which occurs even if the car isn't driven a lot. (Cars are far better in this respect than they used to be but rotted out fluid lines etc. is still very much a thing.)

I'm in the snowbelt and well aware of this. Mileage (at a given city/highway mix) is still the biggest factor presuming the car is getting some minimum duty cycle. I said "mostly," not that the number of winters is nontrivial.

If you only drive 5,000 miles a year, sure, but that's not typical.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

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Post by brianwawok » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 11:55 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #391

rayiner wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Depends if you mean with kids or not. Most college educated families with kids in Chicago move out of city limits post kids to avoid the bomb that is Chicago Public Schools.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

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Post by bane » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 12:04 AM UTC

grkvlt wrote: post #485

bane wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In a great many housing markets, there are several kinds of mortgages. But basically the fall into two types, fixed and variable (go up and down with then current market rates) -- there's some hybrid loan products and some non ursury types, but this is basically how they break down.

The most popular kind of mortgage is one where the rate is "fixed" or locked at the then current market rate, and it won't change regardless of market forces. The great benefit of these kinds of mortgages is that the repayment terms operate without respect to any inflationary forces or changes in lending markets. Repayment is typically 15, 20 or 30 years.

Historically, and I intend this to mean for something like 99% of history where these types of mortgages have existed, this means that by the end of the loan period, the monetary amount per repayment period (say monthly) is the same, but it's actually cheaper per repayment period in then future real currency. In other words, in 30 years, you're paying for housing at nominal currency values from 30 years prior. Given historic inflation rates, at the end of a typical 30 year loan, this can be around 50% per payment period discount over then future real currency value.

My understanding is that in the U.K., a "fixed rate" mortgage is what we in the U.S. would probably call an "Adjustable Rate Mortgage" or ARM with a fixed 2 year rate (though I believe the closer approximation for an ARM in the U.K. is a discount rate mortgage).

There are also variable rate mortgages, in some markets those are the only types available, in others they exist to cover higher risk borrowers but in others they offer some kind of monetary benefit to the borrower. Depends.

While mortgage rates under such systems can increase, it's not generally normal for them to over decades. For example, in the U.K. over the last 30 years, it's been the general trend for the rates to decrease. (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/iadb/Repo.asp)

Even if the rates do increase at some slow rate, the average of the mortgage payment is still likely to become cheaper over decades than the then future rental price. Following general inflationary trends, rents in most markets have doubled in the past 30 years, while a person who took out a mortgage on a house 30 years ago will be paying much less or will have payed off the property by now and has no specific monthly housing costs.