151–160 of 213 posts
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ooh, I'm gonna go with "a lot". Because motorcycles are a lot cheaper to buy, own, and maintain that cars. And a lot of them don't even require licenses in the US (49cc and smaller, if I'm not mistaken).
It’s the expensive Harley’s that are the most expensive AND loud, not the little scooters.
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This is the largest building in Croatia, housing around 5000 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamutica It's a normal building with normal apartments, not a ghetto or a prison.
Actually it currently houses less than 3000 people, and is serviced by enormous green space. That's not remotely comparable to a 9000 seat cube in an urban setting. I can't speak to Croatia, but having travelled in the former Soviet Union often what makes such places livable are the enormous (by Western standards) amount of amenities which survive from Soviet times - skating rinks, public parks, ice skating rinks, bo…
That's just normal green space, at least for that part of city :) I lived a few blocks away when I was at university.
> amount of amenities which survive from Soviet times - skating rinks, public parks, ice skating rinks, bowling alleys etc. Added to which is a grey economy of apartment run stores selling fresh and preserved produce.
I would not say that is true of Croatia. Stores are mostly large chains (and it's for the better, in my opinion). Parks are there, sure, but other amenities didn't seem any more prevalent than what I saw in Los Angeles.
Anyway, my general point is that large density housing can be pretty nice and does not need to be ghetto-like.
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Banks are businesses, why can't they charge what they want for services?
And the dark patterns of opening accounts without your permission, burying fee information in the fine print, etc etc...? It's not just business; it's predatory.
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This is so depressing to see. These are the symptoms of a system slowly grinding to a halt under its own weight. Compare the tax code in 1970 (or earlier) vs today (1). Regulations and laws keep getting more and more complex. It keeps getting slower and costlier to get anything done. Then throw in the aging infrastructure, the greater wealth inequality along with significantly decreased social mobility. Un-affordable…
I sold a piece of software to the state of California once. Among the 100+ page contract was a page where we had to agree that if, during the installation of this web app, a baby was to be abandoned, that we promise that we would abandon said baby at an approved fire station within 3 days of birth. That was probably 10+ years ago, but it was a real eye opening moment in seeing the mindless wheels of bureaucracy turn.…
Eventually, someone actually read the contract and noticed that it required anyone working on it to have a security clearance. I ended up working on other parts of the same open source application that were being funded by a contract without such a clause, so we could have someone with a clearance charge the contract.
No new house around me was sub 1500 sq ft... guess bigger is better. But all the other houses in the area built between 1950-1990 were all under that.
> Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots. How did it ever get here? Requiring more than 2 parking spots per apartment is insane.... especially for "affordable housing".
Low-income families often pack many people into a small apartment, so it's not unrealistic for one apartment to need 3 parking spots for two working parents and a working child, just as an example. I lived in a household like that growing up
They got to get to work, school, etc. And in the US you need a car, cuz public transit sucks, ergo, multiple parking spaces.
A dumb law, perhaps, but the parent comment isn't wrong.
The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking. That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots.
A friend of mine lived in the bay area for a bit and ended up leaving because he couldn't handle the virtue signaling. From his experience a significant amount of people would talk about helping low socioeconomic folk, oppression, or any other in vogue topic but never actually do anything. These would then be the loudest voices lobbying against having a methadone clinic in their neighborhood. He's living in Denver no…
After moving to America a while ago, one thing that struck me is how a lot of things are designed as effectively regressive taxes: the poor pay more than the rich. I opened a basic bank account with a giant American bank. The account has an exorbitant monthly fee, something like $15, but it’s waived if you keep a sufficient balance or have a steady salary. So the only people who pay the crazy fee are the broke people…
$15/mo is far too high at current interest rates so your point stands, but, rich people with steady balances are also paying the bank a fee in the form of an interest-free loan that the bank re-invests. $15/mo is equivalent to ~$14,400 balance at 1.25% APR [0] so anyone with a higher balance than that across their big bank low-interest/no-interest accounts is paying more than $15/mo. [0] I chose this number as someth…
However, I'd consider banking an essential need to modern day life. Thus I think it is worth looking at through a humanities perspective. Unfortunately in our current situation, it's very expensive to be poor.
Man this hits deep. I moved out to Southern California a few years ago from the south east. It’s crazy, I can barely afford to buy a house here with a 300k/yr income. Even then it’s gonna be some non remodeled, in need of upgrades 700k home. To get anything decent (new kitchen, windows, working hvac) it’s at-least 900k+. I don’t get how people are buying these homes.
Help me understand. An average mortgage is 200k, at the average household income of 63k and a 30 year at 4.1%, thats 18.5% of your pretax income going into a mortgage. The same numbers for a 300k income and a 700k house works out to 13.5%. Seems like you are doing significant better than most? Happy to be corrected.
Man this hits deep. I moved out to Southern California a few years ago from the south east. It’s crazy, I can barely afford to buy a house here with a 300k/yr income. Even then it’s gonna be some non remodeled, in need of upgrades 700k home. To get anything decent (new kitchen, windows, working hvac) it’s at-least 900k+. I don’t get how people are buying these homes.
Help me understand. An average mortgage is 200k, at the average household income of 63k and a 30 year at 4.1%, thats 18.5% of your pretax income going into a mortgage. The same numbers for a 300k income and a 700k house works out to 13.5%. Seems like you are doing significant better than most? Happy to be corrected.
The ultimate result of the totality of California housing policies is that California senior homeowners transfer resources from the rest of society to themselves while reducing quality of life for everyone else.