101–110 of 687 posts
The Sweden story sounds so much like the SF story. Area doesn’t building housing, leading to a massive increase in house prices and a destruction of class mobility as the rich get richer (as their houses get more valuable) and the poor get poorer (as they pay more to rent the same living space). The growing wealth inequality leads to all sorts of other dysfunction including increased crime, worsening services, etc. a…
The Sweden story sounds so much like the SF story. Area doesn’t building housing, leading to a massive increase in house prices and a destruction of class mobility as the rich get richer (as their houses get more valuable) and the poor get poorer (as they pay more to rent the same living space). The growing wealth inequality leads to all sorts of other dysfunction including increased crime, worsening services, etc. a…
It's always the same story. Can't we just make the economy more fair by saying that the wealth gap must at least be smaller than some value or else the rich will pay (taxes) to make it so?
I am currently living in Munich to finish my CS Master's at TUM and build a startup, and it is absolutely impossible to find anything remotely affordable. I am supported by two startup scholarships and make enough to get by, but no landlord even gives me the chance in the first place after they see my income and plans. Right now I am paying 940€ for ~20sqm, and only because my mom co-signed my contract - which is incredibly humiliating as a 24 year old guy.
And even with high-paying jobs it's impossible to get anything remotely affordable. My girlfriend just finished her degree and makes 75k straight out of college and still gets rejected either for her financial situation or because the rental contract is already set to increase 8% each year - which we simply cannot afford. And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem.
How the hell are we ever supposed to build up some savings, settle down and have a comfortable life? It really feels like being born 15 years too late for this.
Germany paid a lot for our education but offers us little reason to stay. We are already looking to move to other places and created a university-wide google sheet where we compare different countries and cities around the world for those kinds of categories.
Sorry for the rant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The growing wealth inequality leads to all sorts of other dysfunction including increased crime, worsening services, etc. as the govt cannot raise enough taxes. Hold up. I don’t think the people of San Francisco grew weary of increasing rents and decided to turn to a life of crime. Most of the “trouble makers” in the Bay Area are recent arrivals to the area and come because of poor policing and the government is ge…
This is debunked every time it's brought up. The "trouble makers" you're referring to are local. It is not in fact the case that San Francisco mass-imports its downtrodden.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Honduran-Migrants-and-San-Francisco-D...
Here is the mayor apologizing for saying it. Not because it isn't true, but because you aren't supposed to say it out loud.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-20/san-fran...
The Sweden story sounds so much like the SF story. Area doesn’t building housing, leading to a massive increase in house prices and a destruction of class mobility as the rich get richer (as their houses get more valuable) and the poor get poorer (as they pay more to rent the same living space). The growing wealth inequality leads to all sorts of other dysfunction including increased crime, worsening services, etc. a…
> the rich get richer (...) and the poor get poorer It's always the same story. Can't we just make the economy more fair by saying that the wealth gap must at least be smaller than some value or else the rich will pay (taxes) to make it so?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Canada even if they do build housing 1) the immigration rate is so high it isn't enough to keep up 2) the house values in areas that dont build in enough housing have skyrocketed, and smart homeowners in those areas have decided to sell and move to places with lower house prices and purchase more than one, which of course rockets the price even in the places that do build a lot. So even in provinces where lots of…
> The government doesn't want to do anything Looks like the voters dont want to do anything either, if they keep re-electing the same party/politicians.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a conspiracy theory about a global suit-and-tie version of TED Talks whose members consistently underperform the S&P 500. The World Economic Forum sounds important, like the IMF is, but it's nothing at all like that. It's a convention, in the ComicCon sense, that happens to be frequented by high-status people, because high-status people go where other high-status people go. Ironically, talking about them as i…
> It's a convention, in the ComicCon sense This is a common way people use to rationalise it. But how do you think decisions are made when there is group of people where each one has a part to play to execute a policy? The word you are looking for is a meeting. People meet, discuss, share concerns and agree plan. At this level, this is not something you can do over a Zoom call as you don't know who may be in the room…
All the "theories" I've seen conveniently forget about China & India - the world's largest population by a long shot. How does these conspiracy of WEF impact them?
Until I see something that doesn't have a "me" complex as the main reasoning I'm going to dismiss it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is debunked every time it's brought up. The "trouble makers" you're referring to are local. It is not in fact the case that San Francisco mass-imports its downtrodden.
More like activists start the gaslight machine when people point out that a lot of the problem in SF is imported. https://cis.org/Arthur/Honduran-Migrants-and-San-Francisco-D... Here is the mayor apologizing for saying it. Not because it isn't true, but because you aren't supposed to say it out loud. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-20/san-fran...
It should not be a major surprise that the gap between the haves and the have-nots will widen if you have a large compareable influx of have-nots, or to speak more precisely, an influx of new citizens with low social-economic status compared to those who already were ctiziens. In a very dispassionate perspective, it is just plain math. It is going to take time to return back to the same levels as before.
I usually find that “obvious” reasoning is very often wrong, especially when politically contentious. You could look at countries with higher rates of immigration (say my own country New Zealand at 30% immigrants, compared against Sweden with 20%, although NZ immigrants are often middle-class from culturally compatible English countries). Switzerland has 30% immigrants. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_st…
At the start of wars (or rather, the start of instability in a region) this actually occurs. The people who leave first is those with economical means to leave early, and those with higher education is generally those that tend to have an easier time to relocate successfully.
A other way to see this in economic terms is to look at the cities which took in a lot of immigrants. The first "wave" of immigrants did not increase the social costs that society had. It was only in the later waves that local budgets started to become strained from immigration and where the average tax revenue increase from immigration became significant less than the average increased costs per additional immigrant. An economic paper around 2017 tried and sadly failed to explain this in Swedish news, as it basically got labeled as being both anti and pro immigration.
Sweden is broken? That's news to me. Why isn't this in the media?