31–40 of 340 posts
The same goes for cities. For a city, the inhabitants come first. Take care of the inhabitants, and the inhabitants will take care of business. Ensure inhabitants have a safe place to live and give them higher education, and the inhabitants will give a return on the investment.
I will go to my grave not understanding why this is so complex and difficult for people to understand and politicians to fix. Wages are stagnant, save for a handful of sectors, in which they're growing quickly. Housing prices are rising due to limited supply and backward policies towards new construction. Inequality therefore expands exponentially, creating a city of haves-and-have nots. Either reduce inequality thro…
I mean, I think you're missing a key factor here: politicians require money to be elected. The poor (the folks most affected by these issues) don't have the money to donate. The rich (the ones you propose taxing) do. Thus, the only ones who can get elected are catering to an audience that does not want this problems solved in this way (and indeed, one could argue, does not care to have it solved at all). Until the pr…
Irrespective of income, nobody in SF can stand the status quo. It's not a question of whether there's a willingness to pay -- I personally wonder if anyone even has a credible plan.
I will go to my grave not understanding why this is so complex and difficult for people to understand and politicians to fix. Wages are stagnant, save for a handful of sectors, in which they're growing quickly. Housing prices are rising due to limited supply and backward policies towards new construction. Inequality therefore expands exponentially, creating a city of haves-and-have nots. Either reduce inequality thro…
How can we accomplish this without being a nanny state? I see more and more that people that are on fringes don't even want to try to work anymore because they don't have to with all the safety nets in place. I don't know the answer, but I think I do know why you will go to your grave without it being solved - GOP vs Dems solution to this is the exact opposite, and we are permanently stuck. We can't go full bore on e…
I will go to my grave not understanding why this is so complex and difficult for people to understand and politicians to fix. Wages are stagnant, save for a handful of sectors, in which they're growing quickly. Housing prices are rising due to limited supply and backward policies towards new construction. Inequality therefore expands exponentially, creating a city of haves-and-have nots. Either reduce inequality thro…
I will go to my grave not understanding why this is so complex and difficult for people to understand and politicians to fix. Wages are stagnant, save for a handful of sectors, in which they're growing quickly. Housing prices are rising due to limited supply and backward policies towards new construction. Inequality therefore expands exponentially, creating a city of haves-and-have nots. Either reduce inequality thro…
While I am not an American, I'm feeling one tune constantly when I talk with American professionals in China, and it is something close to this:
"I am given a terrible choice in between between living in a sad, stagnating, dysfunctional civil state with bureaucracy and fascist tendencies, or hell, but with full-blown and well run progressive fascist bureaucracy, and which is fun to live in"
I note that:
-Even when nation wide vacancies were at their highest in 30 years, rental price rose.
-Even as home prices plummeted, rental price rose.
-Rent has risen 30% _nation_ wide just since 2013 so zoning an limits on building can't be the main cause.
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf
In San Francisco is equally bad. In the morning @7am you see so many people sleeping on sidewalks like sardines, it's pretty sad considering it's a rich city.
"Houston, the fourth-most-populous city in the nation, has cut its homeless population in half since 2011, in part by creating more housing for them."
Toronto is kind of stuck at the moment because if we want to build more housing, we have to bulldoze the Oak Ridges Moraine, which we can’t do because it’s critical to our water supply (though conservative governments often try). So our only option, like many cities, is to build up. Which is expensive and requires expensive maintenance. Which nobody wants to pay for to give to people who are unlikely to contribute back (debatable).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I see more and more that people that are on fringes don't even want to try to work anymore because they don't have to with all the safety nets in place. See them? Where? In articles? Friends?
Friends, Family and billions of articles https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2018/05/05/sure-une...
The wording implies that there is not much of a social safety net to begin with.
Can you cite some of the actual programs? My understanding is the social safety net is the weakest it's been in many decades. Perhaps I'm wrong, but my "general feeling" seems at least as valuable as your general feeling.
Unemployment insurance and temporary assistance are both that, temporary.
Social Security Disability is, I believe, considered the most widely abused program simply because there aren't many others left to abuse.