671–680 of 1001 posts
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When wages go up, rents go up. For rents to go down you either have to have more housing or less people in a given area.
Or rent control.
Short review of the research can be found here:
https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-eviden...
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I'm quoting a tweet from the president of Y Combinator. I'm not against giving people housing, but I think there needs to be a sobriety requirement. Why would putting someone in a house cure them of their addiction? Put them through rehab, then give them a house when they leave rehab.
They use drugs because they live on the streets. Treating a symptom instead of the cause is stupid, especially if the symptom (drug use) will likely return as soon as they return to the streets after rehab/prison.
Have you ever used drugs? Drugs are fun. Until they aren't anymore, then they cause problems, like becoming homeless. That drugs are mostly just a symptom of homelessness is such a weird assertion that keeps getting tossed around.
This person likes doing drugs and has no intention to quit: https://archive.ph/wnTq6 But she'll happily take all the free stuff you want to give her. I'm not saying this is every homeless person. But let's not pretend like it's none of them either, and create policies accordingly.
I'm all for housing first. But there needs to be a filter imo to pick only the people with an actual chance of success (which so far turns out to be a pretty low % in LA's program, but still great for those people and I'm all for it).
Also there has to be some consideration for the working/lower class people who live in these neighborhoods. If the people making the policies and those making loftiest arguments online actually had to live amidst all the chaos, I think we'd see a very different approach.
Luckily a San Franciscan figured it all out over one hundred years ago: > THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power: > As productive power increases, rent tends to increase eve…
There is already an incentive to build densely and provide more housing, developers already want to do this because they make more money by doing so. They are literally not allowed to build anything other than single family homes though, the local homeowners actually control what is allowed to be built. That is to say: the people who have an incentive to keep housing supply low are the ones deciding what is allowed t…
We need universal basic income. We just introduced AI that will take millions of people's jobs. We must reframe how we view humans now. We're no longer work mules. AI can do it. So now, if we want humanity to remain a species on Earth, we have to take proactive measures to ensure humans can live. It's time.
So, spend more money then?
When basic physiological needs are covered (e.g., food, water, housing, clothing, healthcare)[1], turns out both petty and violent crime decreases. This means physical and psychological safety increases. As safety increases, ability to develop interpersonal relationships increases, self-esteem increases, and as a whole society thrives. People, less focused on survival only, are able to function in the world with stability.
This is the same with supporting preventative medicine. When you advocate and support infrastructure for handling medical care in proactive ways (e.g., preventative care), turns out people's health concerns are mitigated much earlier. In many cases health issues don't manifest into cost-heavy medical solutions, requirement for pharmaceuticals decreases, and happiness, well-being, and morality rate increases.
So yea. Universal Basic Income and Universal Healthcare are now considered crucial to human survival.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
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The strategy is called “housing first” and has been proven to work in Finland: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle... The idea that homeless people need homes to be able to advance further seems to trigger some people — after all, most of us pay for our housing, so why should they get it for free? What people don’t consider is that when “we”, the people with houses, don’t spend our dollars ho…
It's very hard to work around human nature and the whole "why am I paying rent like a sucker when the drug addicts on the street are getting free apartments?" I also think that people who point out that a huge percentage of the people on the street are on drugs, so the drugs are the problem are not entirely correct either. The drug use is a symptom that also exacerbates the problem. One of the big contributing factor…
"Why am I paying rent for myself and rent for the drug addict on the corner (through taxes) while I cannot afford to pay for my son's college/medicine/whatever?"
Living in a country with virtually no drug use (besides heavily abuse of alcohol ofc) it feels that while drugs are not the main problem for many, they are for some, and definitely make other problems worse.
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How is policy directed? I'm in Los Angeles and it's mostly by business and real estate interests. Republicans, like Rick Caruso, run as Democrats because that's how you get elected here. It's a meaningless label. They'll do culture war signaling like support for pride month to their Twitter feed but when it comes to actual policy, for instance, the "defunding" of the LAPD which just last month included 780 more polic…
There is only one party in the US: Business Money. There are two different culture war teams to keep everyone distracted from that fact.
Morality, fiscal responsibility, small government, local control, you can paint policies like a city chartering its own bank, community banking, cooperative retail, housing trusts etc with the same brush. You can even package say, free college in terms of competition, industry, and nationalism. Call it something like "America winning" or "Competitive Edge" instead of "free college". Instead of being a student, you're "serving your county". It's an easy parlay. I'm surprised I don't see it more.
I'm guessing the people attempting that gambit don't get the millions needed to run the campaigns.
Luckily a San Franciscan figured it all out over one hundred years ago: > THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power: > As productive power increases, rent tends to increase eve…
There is already an incentive to build densely and provide more housing, developers already want to do this because they make more money by doing so. They are literally not allowed to build anything other than single family homes though, the local homeowners actually control what is allowed to be built. That is to say: the people who have an incentive to keep housing supply low are the ones deciding what is allowed t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Zoning and planning issues can be dealt with trivially by the state almost anywhere, they just aren’t fucked doing so (we have this issue in Ireland)." This seems to not reflect reality in the US. There is strong local resistance to construction especially if it's for poor people or worse homeless, leading to tight zoning and rejection of projects during the byzantine approval process. If the government tries to bui…
> There is strong local resistance to construction especially if it's for poor people, or worse, homeless, The US used to do that. It led to high-rise ghettos.[1] And that was before drugs were big. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes
Luckily a San Franciscan figured it all out over one hundred years ago: > THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power: > As productive power increases, rent tends to increase eve…
There is already an incentive to build densely and provide more housing, developers already want to do this because they make more money by doing so. They are literally not allowed to build anything other than single family homes though, the local homeowners actually control what is allowed to be built. That is to say: the people who have an incentive to keep housing supply low are the ones deciding what is allowed t…
When I visited Houston, the lack of sane urban planning was immediately evident. It is insanity to have a neighborhood of single-family detached housing literally across the street from 20-story towers adjacent to the transit line--that's exactly what Houston has.
[1] See https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/visualizations/msama..., you have to hover MSAs and do the math yourself for precise ratios, but the difference between Houston and the San Jose MSAs is stark enough to not need to do the calculations.
Luckily a San Franciscan figured it all out over one hundred years ago: > THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power: > As productive power increases, rent tends to increase eve…