Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters • Hacker News Board

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#561

Post by dsfyu404ed » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 12:31 PM UTC

cplease wrote: post #508

ghaff wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A car's lifespan is mostly determined by mileage. This is far less true in regions with snow. Assuming you drive the vehicle in the winter, a non-trivial contribution to "wear and tear" on the car is rust which occurs even if the car isn't driven a lot. (Cars are far better in this respect than they used to be but rotted out fluid lines etc. is still very much a thing.)

I'm in the snowbelt and well aware of this. Mileage (at a given city/highway mix) is still the biggest factor presuming the car is getting some minimum duty cycle. I said "mostly," not that the number of winters is nontrivial. If you only drive 5,000 miles a year, sure, but that's not typical.

Beyond using 10k/yr as a rule of thumb for average duty cycle mileage is a horrible indicator of vehicle wear. Engines are worn by cold start cycles, transmissions are worn by shifting, brakes get worn by stopping and suspension components get worn by potholes, etc.

Newish used cars with ~200k on them are usually good buys because often times it's someone who used it for work (salesperson, etc.) and just ground out the highway miles (which are nearly free from a wear and tear perspective)

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#562

Post by collyw » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 1:21 PM UTC

rs999gti wrote: post #175

akerro wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on the opposite, I never understood how people can not own a house and waste money on renting for decades. Where market for houses in western countries is very limited due to stupid regulations and every year a few millions of people move to that country causing renting prices to increase by XX% each year. It decreases my financial stability. Losing a job for less than a month is a financial disaster, I still to…

> waste money on renting How is renting wasting money? Are you not living in the unit? You're gaining 100% benefit by paying rent and receiving a roof over your head. You must mean a waste by losing out on building equity? That's a crap shoot in itself. A hot housing market and equity can go into the toilet at anytime due to very irrational market conditions. Look at the housing markets of Las Vegas or Miami for exam…

This sounds like my parents telling me how stupid I am for renting here in Barcelona for the last 8 years. Property prices have dropped by over a third, and I am spending less on rent than the prices are dropping by every year.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#563

Post by Memph » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 1:21 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #475

kuschku wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I can’t really compare – I’ve never been in the US. But I’m gonna assume the relaxed zoning in the EU, and the resulting mix of commercial, residential, and offices, often even in the same building, leads to the people having a reason to go downtown.

Thats part of it, the other part is simple market economics. It is hard for the things that people want to do at night (clubs, art galleries, restaurants and bars) which are much lower margin businesses to compete with the large financial and governmental institutions that dominate places like the Chicago loop, lower Manhattan or downtown Dallas. These leads to a pretty common pattern where just outside of the financ…

I don't think it's so much the financial uses pushing out restaurants and retail but rather housing that's being pushed out.

In Toronto the Financial District doesn't go completely dead, but the 4million square foot underground mall shuts down, and it's just a few ground level businesses that stay open. It's still more lively at night than the typical suburb, but not as bustling as the adjacent neighbourhoods or as the Financial District during the day when there 200,000 office workers there (vs just a few thousand tourists and residents within walking distance at night). From what I heard it's not as dead at night as the Chicago loop.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#564

Post by brianwawok » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #543

brianwawok wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if you mean with kids or not. Most college educated families with kids in Chicago move out of city limits post kids to avoid the bomb that is Chicago Public Schools.

Do you have stats to back that up?

Is it origin/master or origin master?

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#565

Post by Memph » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 2:11 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #397

mortehu wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But by European standards, Chicago is a small city of about 100,000 people surrounded by an enormous commuter town.

To pick a random European city, let's compare Chicago to Amsterdam: http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.com/2015/01/amsterdam-area... . Amsterdam's metro region has about 670,000 people living in neighborhoods above 20,000 people per square mile. Chicago has between 1.1-1.3 million people (twice as many) living at that density or higher: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Z3ai_T6K_40/T4I6B9akQDI/A... . It's actually mo…

Chicago has 1.12 million people living in census tracts above 20,000 people per square mile, the satellite cities are more in the 10-15k/sq mi range. http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca/2014/03/toronto-and-chi...

Chicago quickly drops off past the 20k/sq-mi range too, which is basically typical rowhouse density. It only has 88,000 people living in >50k/sq-mi census tracts, mostly stretched out along the northern waterfront. Amsterdam has almost twice as many at 162,330.

Amsterdam isn't even that dense by European standards, although Swiss cities are probably similar. The densest cities are in southern Europe, ex Valencia has about 800,000 residents over 20k/sq-mi, and 400,000 residents living at 50k/sq-mi densities and it's not even a big city. https://chartingtransport.com/2015/11/26/comparing-the-densi...

But back to the original point... Chicago has fairly dense areas within a short commute of downtown - but those mostly have 2-3 flats and bigger apartments, and the few single family homes are quite expensive. For more affordable SFHs with a decent school and crime situation, I think you'd have to go to neighbourhoods that would be considered "suburbs" by European standards even if they're within city limits.

San Francisco is even more expense, the better neighbourhoods have SFHs at $2m+. More far flung areas like Sunset would be more like $1m which is still not exactly cheap and it's getting to be a long commute (40-50min each way by transit).

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#566

Post by rayvd » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:27 PM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #544

Houshalter wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument against direct democracy is that the population isn't very informed. Not necessarily that they are selfish. Even in the US, voters often tend to vote against their own self interest. E.g. people that stand to benefit from social programs often vote for conservatives against social programs.

Could it be that those people think that more social programs would only be in their self-interest in the short term, and are taking a longer view (as appears to have just happened in Switzerland)? Why is anyone who votes against short-term self-interest automatically uninformed?

This.

However, I think the prevailing thinking will lean more and more towards voting for the free stuff. Someone else is paying for it, right?

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#567

Post by saiya-jin » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:49 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #560

saiya-jin wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok let's get down back to earth and reality - it's their country, they are a bit hardcore christians, and since they don't bow to anybody but themselves, they can choose to do whatever they deem good for their society. Most armed and most free nation said it's opinion and I have to agree with them on this one. One's freedom ends where other's begins. If similar vote would be done now in countries around europe, resul…

I am pretty sure the ISIS guys being pretty hardcore Wahhabis Muslims doesn't exactly makes us comfortable with mass executions, does it? One's freedom may end where other's begins but how far can the other deny freedoms to one and still claim it's an exercise of other's freedom?

These lines are blurry to the point of invisibility, that's why they had public vote (and for other reasons). See, what I find perfectly OK for given situation, you don't. Majority decided as they did. There might be a million Swiss citizens which agree with you, another million (or two) who don't care much but the rest expressed their opinion.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#568

Post by obiouzera » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:53 PM UTC

marvelous wrote: post #554

obiouzera wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The political system in Switzerland is known to increase stability, not reduce it. The way I see it, this is down to two factors: 1. Since Switzerland does have multiple parties and all of the bigger ones a represented in the federal council, there is more compromise and decisions made by consensus. This in turn leads to less dramatics shifts after a term is up and some politicians are replaced. In contrast in the US…

Your first point is IMO too often understated. The fact that our executive branch comes from most parties in the parliament, instead of a barely-reaching 50% coalition like in most countries is a huge factor. It has nothing to do with the direct democracy thing, but the most surprising is this so-called "magic formula" is only a tradition and there is nothing in the law that prevents a parliamentary coalition from vo…

I'd wager that there is some connection to the direct democracy thing: once you'd have any sizeable party in opposition they could abuse the referendum system to bring the legislative process to a near standstill.

It might be not the only reason for the way the executive branch is set up, but IMO it's an important part of the system as it is.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#569

Post by tptacek » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 4:09 PM UTC

Memph wrote: post #565

rayiner wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To pick a random European city, let's compare Chicago to Amsterdam: http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.com/2015/01/amsterdam-area... . Amsterdam's metro region has about 670,000 people living in neighborhoods above 20,000 people per square mile. Chicago has between 1.1-1.3 million people (twice as many) living at that density or higher: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Z3ai_T6K_40/T4I6B9akQDI/A... . It's actually mo…

Chicago has 1.12 million people living in census tracts above 20,000 people per square mile, the satellite cities are more in the 10-15k/sq mi range. http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca/2014/03/toronto-and-chi... Chicago quickly drops off past the 20k/sq-mi range too, which is basically typical rowhouse density. It only has 88,000 people living in >50k/sq-mi census tracts, mostly stretched out along the northern wat…

I think we're getting pretty close to "No True Scotsman" territory when we start designating neighborhoods --- inside the city limits of a metro statistical area with vast, sprawling suburbs --- as themselves suburbs, despite being on trunk CTA train routes, on one of the city's main drags, because "European cities would call those neighborhoods suburbs".

I'm getting the impression that Europeans would "call them suburbs" because they have affordable single-family houses in them, which makes this debate pretty disingenuous.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#570

Post by tptacek » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

Memph wrote: post #563

kasey_junk wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats part of it, the other part is simple market economics. It is hard for the things that people want to do at night (clubs, art galleries, restaurants and bars) which are much lower margin businesses to compete with the large financial and governmental institutions that dominate places like the Chicago loop, lower Manhattan or downtown Dallas. These leads to a pretty common pattern where just outside of the financ…

I don't think it's so much the financial uses pushing out restaurants and retail but rather housing that's being pushed out. In Toronto the Financial District doesn't go completely dead, but the 4million square foot underground mall shuts down, and it's just a few ground level businesses that stay open. It's still more lively at night than the typical suburb, but not as bustling as the adjacent neighbourhoods or as t…

Relative to NYC, not that many people live in downtown Manhattan either, and there isn't that much stuff open there at night. I'm not sure what conclusions there are to draw from nightlife in the loop.