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America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

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Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

#151

Post by fzeroracer »

vel0city wrote: post #115
Workaccount2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sort of is. When a property owner has loan against a commercial property, the lender uses the monthly rent to calculate how much they will loan you. The rent number they use is the last paid rent. So you, the property owner, end up in a situation where if you lower rent to attract a new tenant, the bank will recalculate your loan, potentially ending in a margin call. Because you are a heavily leveraged house of ca…

Given what seems like a high rate of vacancies in a lot of markets maybe its time for those landlords to be wiped out, the loans defaulted, and the buildings sell to get back to their real valuations. But no, we can't have wealthy people lose some money or the banks take a loss, that'd be terrible. We'll just continue crushing the middle class and poor with high rent costs and empty properties.

In an ideal situation, cities should be placing pressure on property owners and businesses to lease out vacant space because otherwise they are effectively offloading the negative externalities of empty space to the city and its tax base. If the city isn't going to outright buy vacant property for the sake of development, then it should heavily tax property owners for leaving said property empty or undeveloped.

Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

#152

Post by vel0city »

floatrock wrote: post #88
vel0city wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine I'd ever want to buy a house from someone who makes a point to live someplace where they can install sub-par plumbing and wiring, that this lack of code compliance was the selling point of where to build. Imagine buying a meal from a restaurant which prides themselves by not meeting the standards of the nearby town's health department.

It's not about not meeting the standards of the town's health department, it's about having a 1-size-fits-all health standards. If you make a 5-seat japaneese-style neighborhood micro-eatery conform to the same cross-contamination standards as a 800-people-per-hour mcdonalds, you're making one of these unprofitable and de-facto illegal. Yes, lets have health codes. But lets also recognize different risk profiles and…

Can you be more specific on exactly what kind of cross-contamination standards make it impossible for a small eatery to exist? Do you have any specific rules in mind?

Its been a while since I went through a food safety course, but I don't really recall any that would make it impossible for a small shop to achieve. I follow most of the rules I learned in my own kitchen at home. Stuff like don't use the same cutting board and knife between meat and veggies without cleaning in between, don't wear jewelry while prepping, keep things in safe time/temperature constraints, etc.

Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

#153

Post by milkytron »

systemtest wrote: post #64
KellyCriterion wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and sorry: Thats absolutely OK. I do not want strangers stopping by for 3 - 4 years to be able to influence the politics of my country? Thats totaly understandable? I would never to ask to vote at a remote place where I do not live permanently, yet where I even not a citizen?

That is OK but OP should not be complaining about people not being engaged with local politics if you are excluding a large part of the people living in the city from voting.

Among those that are registered to vote locally, most don't. Regardless of whether or not people should or shouldn't be able to vote, many of those currently with the ability to do not.

Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

#154

Post by Cornbilly »

bee_rider wrote: post #101
joshuaheard wrote: post #50

America is going in the opposite direction with instant food delivery. Your $11 meal is delivered to your house within 30 minutes. But, there's a service fee of $5, a delivery fee of $6, and a 20% gratuity.

There’s something very weird in the US, it’s like we intentionally set things up to accelerate convergence to obviously dumb local optima and then don’t explore any options to get over those barriers.

I think we just lack the ability for self-critique as a country. If you try, you get a bunch of loud morons yelling at you for being un-American or some other nonsense.

Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

#155

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

The article's diagnosis just doesn't seem connected to the facts. It has nothing to do with "restaurant tiers"; as the first link describes, the "healthy lunch bowls" are provided by the fast food chain Yoshinoya, which sells the same bowls in their US locations for $9.

Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

#157

Post by verisimi »

milkytron wrote: post #15

I serve as a planning commissioner for my city, and my city just recently tried to overhaul our zoning code to allow for more affordability and better economic outcomes for our citizens and future as a city. Here is what I have learned: In the US, few people participate or care about local laws, zoning, and elections, or even understand why participation may be important. In a citizen ballot to determine if we should…

> most have rose tinted glasses of better economic times from the past, and want to recreate the past instead of learning from it and using it to make the future better for future residents and businesses

So the voters are wrong? You know what's "better" for them, right? Whether they want it or not, right?

> we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally

Because they are more in line with what you think?

PS

I'm being downvoted - but what is the point of local administrators, except to follow the voters demands? Sure, if you are a local politician, make your case, but local administrators ought to be doing whatever-it-is that people voted for. That's the whole point of voting, as I understand it.

The point is NOT to make people keep voting until they get it right, according to the administratots. That's the wrong way around! The administrators should be enacting whatever the voters want.

Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

#158

Post by epistasis »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #57
systemtest wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in various European cities where I was not able to vote for various reasons. Such as living hotel long-term, living in a holiday home, being semi-homeless, sub-letting, crashing on someones couch. Seasonal workers, migrant workers or people with unstable employment are typically in this situation. No, I was not able to vote.

...and sorry: Thats absolutely OK. I do not want strangers stopping by for 3 - 4 years to be able to influence the politics of my country? Thats totaly understandable? I would never to ask to vote at a remote place where I do not live permanently, yet where I even not a citizen?

Somebody who spends 3-4 years in a place has an immense interest in how it's governed. Their view is 100% as valid as yours, and they should have equal voice, if we are going to judge people based on how long they live somewhere.

I live in a college town. Why shouldn't student voices be represented, when they are a huge chunk of our community?

Maybe I'm too US focused, and have been accused of that a lot recently, but your views are fundamentally at odds with basic democracy as I see it as a US citizen.

Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

#159

Post by topspin »

fzeroracer wrote: post #33
AmVess wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how commercial real estate works.

I disagree, and it's one of the things our new mayor is working towards (imposing a vacancy tax).

> imposing a vacancy tax

That might help a little, but you won't notice. Beating such taxes is done with low value businesses. A mattress store is a typical case, good for holding larger spaces with almost no capital cost: a low overhead business used to hold a retail property until values appreciate. Smaller spaces are held with little clothing stores nobody shops at, or wire transfer shops and such. There is a plethora of such operations holding real estate everywhere, barely breaking even or losing modest amounts of money.

It's compelling to imagine there is some brilliant tax fix for every ill, but investors are a lot more agile than tax authorities; they make their living solving these impediments. Handling food is one the costliest ways to hold a commercial property, so that's rarely how its done.

Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

#160

Post by silisili »

floatrock wrote: post #36
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #26

Ok… if this is the case, then why are food trucks charging $18 for a burger and fries now? It isn’t all zoning laws.

from the article: > But the restaurant industry fights to limit food trucks. On average, food trucks must handle 45 separate regulatory procedures and spend $28,276 on associated fees. Lets napkin-math this. If we assume a food truck has margins at the upper end of the fast-casual industry of 9%, then each $18 burger-and-fries nets 1.62 in profit. $28,276 / 1.62 = 17,454 burgers-and-fries. If you were open every day…

I feel like this math is double dipping a bit. The 9% net profit figure would have already accounted for associated fees.
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