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Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

nytimes.com

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Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#371

Post by HDThoreaun »

TimPC wrote: post #159
UncleEntity wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the US health care system free market is quite the big stretch. I can honestly not come up with another industry that is subject to higher regulatory burdens. Maybe nuclear power?

Ah yes, the old libertarian cop-out. The most free market healthcare system in the world is too highly regulated and if we just take the regulations away it will perform better because ideology. This is despite the fact that if you look at healthcare systems in the world most performance metrics improve with more regulation but not less. But lets forget about being data-driven when ideological purity is at stake.

> healthcare systems in the world most performance metrics improve with more regulation but not less

This claim is almost always because american lifetime expectancies are bad. But thats because Americans are unhealthy, not because our healthcare is bad. Do you have a different reason to make this claim?

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#372

Post by dragonwriter »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #371
TimPC wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the old libertarian cop-out. The most free market healthcare system in the world is too highly regulated and if we just take the regulations away it will perform better because ideology. This is despite the fact that if you look at healthcare systems in the world most performance metrics improve with more regulation but not less. But lets forget about being data-driven when ideological purity is at stake.

> healthcare systems in the world most performance metrics improve with more regulation but not less This claim is almost always because american lifetime expectancies are bad. But thats because Americans are unhealthy, not because our healthcare is bad. Do you have a different reason to make this claim?

“Americans are unhealthy” is an outcome of a bad healthcare system, not an excuse for it.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#373

Post by GardenLetter27 »

Public housing is terrible - why should the government steal my money (income tax) to pay to house criminals and drug dealers nearby which devalues my property and endangers my life and family?

We just need a true Free Market - let people build and invest how they want, where they want. And ensure that everyone has a stake in the property they own and the area they live in.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#374

Post by leereeves »

circlefavshape wrote: post #344
leereeves wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that the person would be burning calories even if they weren't walking.

The figure for calories consumed when walking is excess calories consumed (compared to sitting still)

Are you sure? It doesn't say that.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#375

Post by MeImCounting »

justin66 wrote: post #223
MeImCounting wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in america my whole life and been to many different major cities I can say that the police keep their long guns in the car generally.

In the United States the AR or shotgun will generally be kept in the car. It's fairly common to see automatic weapons in Mexico, depending on where you are. (I don't remember how the Canadian police typically do things. I think I was dazzled by how attractive the police officers in Canada are compared to the United States, particularly in Montreal, but they definitely carry pistols and wear kevlar...)

I havent really spent much time in mexico but in my experience cops in canada also generally keep long guns in the car.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#376

Post by its_ethan »

digging wrote: post #311
its_ethan wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a line somewhere where "giving poor people comfort" goes from providing good and useful social services to essentially a bribe. Where that line is varies based on who you ask - for some it's student debt cancellation (a US thing), for others it's $1000+ subsidies for housing, other people may not see any service the government provides as a "bribe" of any sort. Caring about these bribes/"power grabs" is impor…

> There's a line somewhere where "giving poor people comfort" goes from providing good and useful social services to essentially a bribe. I'm not sure I agree. Like giving out literal tons of candy and soda would be a political bribe but I wouldn't count it as "comfort"; it's poison. If you do think it's in the same category, I guess that would be my line - the aid should not be obviously harmful. > you open the door…

You are free to not agree that giving housing subsidies is not crossing the line into bribe territory. I would say it's important for you to understand that for many people, there is a line. Your example of unlimited candy and soda as being a bribe is a bit odd, but also seems demonstrative to me that your thinking on this is further to an extreme than you might realize.

And yes - this is true of everything the government does. That's why it's an important thing to consider when the government promises to do something or provide a service. It can go away at any time, and people who became reliant on it will suffer it's loss.

That's why I'm saying it's really important to consider that for some people, certain policies can cross a line for what feels fair or what feels like a political bribe. Like I said, you're free to disagree with where that line is, but pretending it doesn't exist (or just writing off anyone on the other side of it) is a sure fire way to bring about consequences that just might be worse than what was originally happening.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#377

Post by krona »

eszed wrote: post #181
krona wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either you willingly misunderstood my comment, or you are so absolutist in your thinking that you're incapable of understanding the concept of a limiting principle in social policy.

Whoa whoa, dude. You're being unnecessarily hostile. GP's question was a fair one, and not (by my reading) unkindly phrased. Even if I'm wrong about that, personal attacks aren't welcome contributions: flag and move on.

Being strawmanned in the most mundane and cliched of ways is deserving of opprobrium. HN is better than that. It's tiresome.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#378

Post by HDThoreaun »

dragonwriter wrote: post #372
HDThoreaun wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> healthcare systems in the world most performance metrics improve with more regulation but not less This claim is almost always because american lifetime expectancies are bad. But thats because Americans are unhealthy, not because our healthcare is bad. Do you have a different reason to make this claim?

“Americans are unhealthy” is an outcome of a bad healthcare system, not an excuse for it.

No. It is the outcome of a culture that values individualism to a toxic level and has accepted decisions that make your life shorter as normal. Really very little to do with healthcare at all. Americans dont value their lifespan like others do but apparently that means our healthcare is bad? Like there are plenty of things to complain about with our healthcare why choose something that isnt even true.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#379

Post by ketralnis »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #106
mebazaa wrote: post #34

As a Parisian, who is generally angry at the city’s housing policy (build taller!), I find the public housing of the past few years to be a great achievement. In general, public housing sits on the outer edges of Paris, but the city has been agressive in reconverting buildings in posher neighborhoods. It doesn’t really lead to reduced rent (because no additional supply), but it decreases social segregation. That alon…

> build taller As someone who lives in an area with plenty of high-density residential buildings, I can attest that this is a perfect recipe for creating congested cities with such intense light and noise pollution.

As someone who lives in an area with plenty of high-density residential buildings, I can attest that I love it and I wish there were more American cities that were an option for my lifestyle.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#380

Post by UncleEntity »

TimPC wrote: post #305
UncleEntity wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any real issue with regulations per se but with people claiming that a highly regulated market is 'free market'. I'm actually quite happy with my socialized health care aside from the last time I went to the emergency room they sent me home to die and when I came back a day later they were rapidly pulling out faulty body parts before I did indeed die. Well, then there's the Phoenix VA death list scandal.…

My issue is less with what we call the individual markets in the experiment. It's more with looking at healthcare across a large data set of countries and finding a general trend that more regulations lead to better cost structures and better health outcomes for the population and then somehow jumping to the conclusion we need no regulation for everything to work. That's just inconsistent with empirical reality and i…

I would very much like to see a study from a credible source who came to this conclusion based on a survey of different health care systems.

What I believe is more likely is people looking at the kind of regulations being used and concluding that the correlation between good and bad regulations can be directly tied to the profit motives behind said regulations. A purely state run health care system has zero incentive to impose regulations that seek to raise costs and hurt competitors because, by definition, there is no completion. A purely private health care system has a lot of incentive to regulate the amount of doctors (to keep wages high) or make reporting costs extremely high to push out the smaller hospitals and increase their market share &etc.

I suspect that reality falls somewhere in the middle no matter what system you look at and everyone wants to argue from the extremes (or accuse someone else as being an extremist as you so helpfully demonstrated) so there is no real dialog for trying to fix anything.

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