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On October 15 2015 07:37 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2015 05:44 Simberto wrote:
Why is that depressing. Depressing is that US society appears to push these people into getting a degree, as opposed to doing something that would make a lot more sense for them, like an apprenticeship at a job. A lot of people are quite happy to be done with high school and would prefer to not spend even more time studying, but afaik there does not seem to be a reasonable way to do that in the US. Plenty of politicians, including Obama, Clinton, and Sanders, have been very careful with their rhetoric... They'll say things like "Anyone who wants to go to college should be able to go at an affordable rate" as opposed to saying "Everyone needs to go to college". So subtlely leaving other options open. That being said, we still put way too much emphasis on a college degree. It's getting watered down. This generation, everyone has a college degree. Our bachelor's degrees are our parents'high school diplomas, and now the next tier of master's degrees is only unique in the same way that a bachelor's degree was unique 30-40 years ago. The bubble is eventually going to burst, hopefully sometime before everyone "technically " gets a doctorate but no one actually learns how to do research.
When something costs society 25k per year in direct costs, the standard needs to be higher than "wants to".
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On October 15 2015 07:27 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2015 07:07 Nyxisto wrote:On October 15 2015 07:03 Mohdoo wrote:On October 15 2015 06:35 hunts wrote:On October 15 2015 03:42 oneofthem wrote:On October 15 2015 03:05 KwarK wrote:On October 15 2015 02:52 oneofthem wrote:On October 15 2015 01:57 KwarK wrote:
It's pretty great when you're married, two incomes no kids in a low cost of living area. It lowers the already low cost of living, makes cooking your own meals better and you get an awesome roommate. Would recommend. move to new york New York is a choice. If life sucks in New York then the answer isn't that life must inevitably suck, it's that you should leave New York. Come to Albuquerque, I'll buy you a drink. nah new york is not replaceable for me i dont like rural places. point is the grind of life is more of a problem for people facing higher cost of living, worse if they have no mobility such as when they are confined to ethnic ghettos or whatnot. Living in a major city is a choice, and not one that is wise if you are struggling with money. Tell that to these idiots in Portland, Oregon who pretend housing costs are some kinda human rights issue. Well if you have family living around especially older parents or grandparents or people otherwise dependent on you I think moving might be a problem. Having the poor turn into nomads doesn't sound like a great idea. Housing actually is a human rights/social issue, at least if the idea of a community is supposed to mean something. There are lots of important things the poor can't afford, from good healthcare to education to healthy food, why should housing be any different? Your problem may be with capitalism in general rather than housing costs specifically. Living space in a city is a limited resource with exponentially increasing costs that can be substituted for a lower cost and no loss in quality with living space in a suburb or smaller city.
There's also the idea that citizens have a 'right to the city' and that it isn't just a commodity being traded like luxury watches or Swiss chocolate. If you don't want a society in which nobody talks to each other people need to live together. Driving workers and the poor out of urban areas creates cultural divide that produces all kinds of nasty stuff.
You don't even need to get rid of capitalism or anything. You can provide healthcare and regulate the housing market so that gentrification is kept at bay within the current system as well.
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On October 15 2015 07:50 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2015 07:27 KwarK wrote:On October 15 2015 07:07 Nyxisto wrote:On October 15 2015 07:03 Mohdoo wrote:On October 15 2015 06:35 hunts wrote:On October 15 2015 03:42 oneofthem wrote:On October 15 2015 03:05 KwarK wrote:On October 15 2015 02:52 oneofthem wrote:On October 15 2015 01:57 KwarK wrote:
It's pretty great when you're married, two incomes no kids in a low cost of living area. It lowers the already low cost of living, makes cooking your own meals better and you get an awesome roommate. Would recommend. move to new york New York is a choice. If life sucks in New York then the answer isn't that life must inevitably suck, it's that you should leave New York. Come to Albuquerque, I'll buy you a drink. nah new york is not replaceable for me i dont like rural places. point is the grind of life is more of a problem for people facing higher cost of living, worse if they have no mobility such as when they are confined to ethnic ghettos or whatnot. Living in a major city is a choice, and not one that is wise if you are struggling with money. Tell that to these idiots in Portland, Oregon who pretend housing costs are some kinda human rights issue. Well if you have family living around especially older parents or grandparents or people otherwise dependent on you I think moving might be a problem. Having the poor turn into nomads doesn't sound like a great idea. Housing actually is a human rights/social issue, at least if the idea of a community is supposed to mean something. There are lots of important things the poor can't afford, from good healthcare to education to healthy food, why should housing be any different? Your problem may be with capitalism in general rather than housing costs specifically. Living space in a city is a limited resource with exponentially increasing costs that can be substituted for a lower cost and no loss in quality with living space in a suburb or smaller city. There's also the idea that citizens have a 'right to the city' and that it isn't just a commodity being traded like luxury watches or Swiss chocolate. If you don't want a society in which nobody talks to each other people need to live together. Driving workers and the poor out of urban areas creates cultural divide that produces all kinds of nasty stuff. You don't even need to get rid of capitalism or anything. You can provide healthcare and regulate the housing market so that gentrification is kept at bay within the current system as well.
How do you regulate the price that someone is allowed to sell their home for?
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On October 15 2015 07:50 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2015 07:27 KwarK wrote:On October 15 2015 07:07 Nyxisto wrote:On October 15 2015 07:03 Mohdoo wrote:On October 15 2015 06:35 hunts wrote:On October 15 2015 03:42 oneofthem wrote:On October 15 2015 03:05 KwarK wrote:On October 15 2015 02:52 oneofthem wrote:On October 15 2015 01:57 KwarK wrote:
It's pretty great when you're married, two incomes no kids in a low cost of living area. It lowers the already low cost of living, makes cooking your own meals better and you get an awesome roommate. Would recommend. move to new york New York is a choice. If life sucks in New York then the answer isn't that life must inevitably suck, it's that you should leave New York. Come to Albuquerque, I'll buy you a drink. nah new york is not replaceable for me i dont like rural places. point is the grind of life is more of a problem for people facing higher cost of living, worse if they have no mobility such as when they are confined to ethnic ghettos or whatnot. Living in a major city is a choice, and not one that is wise if you are struggling with money. Tell that to these idiots in Portland, Oregon who pretend housing costs are some kinda human rights issue. Well if you have family living around especially older parents or grandparents or people otherwise dependent on you I think moving might be a problem. Having the poor turn into nomads doesn't sound like a great idea. Housing actually is a human rights/social issue, at least if the idea of a community is supposed to mean something. There are lots of important things the poor can't afford, from good healthcare to education to healthy food, why should housing be any different? Your problem may be with capitalism in general rather than housing costs specifically. Living space in a city is a limited resource with exponentially increasing costs that can be substituted for a lower cost and no loss in quality with living space in a suburb or smaller city. There's also the idea that citizens have a 'right to the city' and that it isn't just a commodity being traded like luxury watches or Swiss chocolate. If you don't want a society in which nobody talks to each other people need to live together. Driving workers and the poor out of urban areas creates cultural divide that produces all kinds of nasty stuff. You don't even need to get rid of capitalism or anything. You can provide healthcare and regulate the housing market so that gentrification is kept at bay within the current system as well.
Housing regulation is like the #1 reason its so expensive to live in the city...
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On October 15 2015 07:44 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2015 07:35 TheTenthDoc wrote:On October 15 2015 07:12 hunts wrote:On October 15 2015 07:07 Nyxisto wrote:On October 15 2015 07:03 Mohdoo wrote:On October 15 2015 06:35 hunts wrote:On October 15 2015 03:42 oneofthem wrote:On October 15 2015 03:05 KwarK wrote:On October 15 2015 02:52 oneofthem wrote:On October 15 2015 01:57 KwarK wrote:
It's pretty great when you're married, two incomes no kids in a low cost of living area. It lowers the already low cost of living, makes cooking your own meals better and you get an awesome roommate. Would recommend. move to new york New York is a choice. If life sucks in New York then the answer isn't that life must inevitably suck, it's that you should leave New York. Come to Albuquerque, I'll buy you a drink. nah new york is not replaceable for me i dont like rural places. point is the grind of life is more of a problem for people facing higher cost of living, worse if they have no mobility such as when they are confined to ethnic ghettos or whatnot. Living in a major city is a choice, and not one that is wise if you are struggling with money. Tell that to these idiots in Portland, Oregon who pretend housing costs are some kinda human rights issue. Well if you have family living around especially older parents or grandparents or people otherwise dependent on you I think moving might be a problem. Having the poor turn into nomads doesn't sound like a great idea. Housing actually is a human rights/social issue, at least if the idea of a community is supposed to mean something. I wasn't aware that moving to the suburbs, roughly 30-60 minute drive away, and saving a lot of money in the process, was sudden + Show Spoiler +ly never being able to visit and help your parents/grandparents, and that they would become nomads. You really don't have to move far from a big city to find much cheaper housing prices. And to be honest, I don't see the problem in mcdonalds employees not being able to afford living in downtown of a major city, they have tons of options, and can find minimum wage work anywhere. Many of the people who have more incentive to live in major cities are ones who work in the various companies that are usually found there. While I don't entirely disagree, if your parents or grandparents need a lot of help it's very possible for a 30-60 minute drive to be too much-elder care can be incredibly demanding. I know for sure my girlfriend's grandmother would be very uncomfortable if her parents decided to move that far away. Assuming the grandmother also cannot be moved. The reality of the situation is that where you live is a luxury purchase and that living space is a limited resource that there is intense competition over. If you live somewhere that means that another person cannot live there, it's a zero sum game. It is not realistic to expect that everyone can live in the same small place, people will get priced out and if they need to live next to their grandmother that means the grandmother should probably leave too. And given she most likely no longer works and lives somewhere where property prices have gone up a lot selling up is probably a good move.
Not if she has rent controlled housing and this is the only place left that she can function on her own...but this is becoming more and more exceptional. Telling a ninety year old her home of 40 years she should just go live in the suburbs is probably not going to go over well with her. It can be disorienting and precipitate functional decline too...There are human factors like these in every case, and roundly declaring people should just do x to be monetarily efficient loses sight of that.
It's just not going to be best or practical for everyone and people need to realize that it isn't.
+ Show Spoiler +it's almost like capitalism fundamentally makes us lose sight of human and emotional factors in the pursuit of more things...funny that
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
this stuff about the choice of moving is not really a policy solution. apply the statement to some dangerous ghetto to see an even stronger version that does not really tackle the problem.
a large part of this may simply be familiarity and comfort. basic conditions or dispositions that are hard to change and can be powerful. together with basic problem of friction in terms of finding new job, adjusting to new environment and all the associated uncertainty, it's a lot to ask.
there is an ableist bias here in some of the first person accounts. it is a basic cognitive blindspot that is apolitical and should be recognized, the autonomous person thinks it's easy to do so and so, while ignoring the work or conditions that went into making that move easy. this is not to say the solution does not involve making people better equipped or able to move. it is definitely the economically efficient solution. but the path to that is not easy to figure out.
i am also not much of a fan of communitarian arguments for the 'community' of the city, but fact of the matter is the land rent generated by a city's economic growth accrues entirely to the land owners and makes renting in a city a pretty bad preposition.
personally i pay 0 rent in new york because the family has a bunch of property that stands to gain value if they get rid of rent control stuff. but i also work with immigrants in less well off situations that are hugely burdened by rent and living costs, while having no resources or opportunities to move.
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On October 15 2015 07:08 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2015 06:51 notesfromunderground wrote:On October 15 2015 05:38 Simberto wrote:
Also, even if college is free, that does not mean that you suddenly have 300m people with college degrees. (If college actually means something). Not everyone is cut out for a university degree, and that is perfectly fine. If there are actually requirements to passing, that also means that some people will fail. To me, it makes a lot more sense to have the chance of getting a college degree tied to how good you actually are at the subject, how hard you work at it, etc..., as opposed to how much money your parents have.
And not everyone NEEDS a university degree. There are perfectly fine jobs for people without college degrees, some of them quite well-paying too. The world will always need plumbers, construction workers, etc...And those surely don't need to study for 3+ years in a university to do their job. As a college instructor who loathes both my own complicity in the debt-factory that is the modern, corporate university, and who also loathes the utter lack of challenge or academic rigor, I think all college should be 100 percent free and that there should be a passing rate of about 40 percent. That doesn't solve much, because really you are just doing what high school needs to be doing. If we wanted that model, we should just utilize the current Community College system for a +1 year that does that 40% pass rate style teaching model and have that part be free, and make it a prereq for 4 year colleges.
I'm saying that students who are not ready for college level work (in my experience, about 80 percent of incoming freshmen) should be failed. The CURRENT situation is that colleges are doing what high schools should be doing, because if they upheld any kind of standards very few of the students would be able to pass. Colleges should have college-level coursework. It should be extremely difficult. Anyone who can stand the heat should be educated for free. In fact, they should be paid a stipend.
It should be extremely easy to go to college, but extremely difficult to stay there. Right now it's a ludicrous rat race to get into college, but once you're there it's of very little value and nearly impossible to fail.
The reason grade inflation in college ended up happening is that it started at places like Harvard where they said to themselves, "Wait a minute, these kids are already the top .1% of students, and I am failing them? It doesn't make sense for him to lose out on a job opportunity to the guy at UConn with a 3.5 who couldn't even shine this kid's shoes."
Do you think Harvard is a good school?
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On October 15 2015 08:26 notesfromunderground wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2015 07:08 cLutZ wrote:On October 15 2015 06:51 notesfromunderground wrote:On October 15 2015 05:38 Simberto wrote:
Also, even if college is free, that does not mean that you suddenly have 300m people with college degrees. (If college actually means something). Not everyone is cut out for a university degree, and that is perfectly fine. If there are actually requirements to passing, that also means that some people will fail. To me, it makes a lot more sense to have the chance of getting a college degree tied to how good you actually are at the subject, how hard you work at it, etc..., as opposed to how much money your parents have.
And not everyone NEEDS a university degree. There are perfectly fine jobs for people without college degrees, some of them quite well-paying too. The world will always need plumbers, construction workers, etc...And those surely don't need to study for 3+ years in a university to do their job. As a college instructor who loathes both my own complicity in the debt-factory that is the modern, corporate university, and who also loathes the utter lack of challenge or academic rigor, I think all college should be 100 percent free and that there should be a passing rate of about 40 percent. That doesn't solve much, because really you are just doing what high school needs to be doing. If we wanted that model, we should just utilize the current Community College system for a +1 year that does that 40% pass rate style teaching model and have that part be free, and make it a prereq for 4 year colleges. I'm saying that students who are not ready for college level work (in my experience, about 80 percent of incoming freshmen) should be failed. The CURRENT situation is that colleges are doing what high schools should be doing, because if they upheld any kind of standards very few of the students would be able to pass. Colleges should have college-level coursework. It should be extremely difficult. Anyone who can stand the heat should be educated for free. In fact, they should be paid a stipend. It should be extremely easy to go to college, but extremely difficult to stay there. Right now it's a ludicrous rat race to get into college, but once you're there it's of very little value. Show nested quote +
The reason grade inflation in college ended up happening is that it started at places like Harvard where they said to themselves, "Wait a minute, these kids are already the top .1% of students, and I am failing them? It doesn't make sense for him to lose out on a job opportunity to the guy at UConn with a 3.5 who couldn't even shine this kid's shoes."
Do you think Harvard is a good school?
No idea. I know it has good students that attend it. As I said previously, IMO there is very little benefit to any college and that the primary reasons that college students earn more is because they start as higher achieving people with better social structures surrounding them, and then admission + graduation are simply signaling mechanisms to those two underlying traits to the rest of the world.
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On the whole saving money thing. Maybe I'm crazy but for some reason this shit has been really appealing to me lately. I mean, as long as you have good internet what more do you need really? Plus the PC can double as the furnace lol. You could save literal butt loads of money, I dunno, it doesn't seem too bad to me.
+ Show Spoiler +
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Yes! You're right. The function of college within the logic of power is to reinforce entrenched privilege through cultural signaling. It has nothing to do with job skills. It "inscribes distinction" we might say. In the post-War New Deal imaginary, the causality of the linkage between education and prosperity was reversed - a central premise of the new Warfare/Welfare state was that education *caused* prosperity, and that "others" (women and brown people as well as returning GIs) could be integrated into the white-collar petite bourgeoisie through education. They could, then, as Hillary Clinton put it last night, "realize their God-given potential" and join the ever-expanding American middle class. But of course mass higher education does not change the social structure of society - and the push towards rectifying social ills through educational boosterism merely resulted in credential inflation, the decline of intellectual standards, and a debt crisis.
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Looking through that link on Vienna, and other sources on Vienna, I question the degree of its actual success; the housing still looks expensive by some numbers, less so by others, and/or requires significant subsidies to function, which raises the social cost. It looks more like an unsound system heavily propped up to look decent.
Still poking into sources and analyzing things of course. Need more info.
edit: looking at more numbers the prices look reasonable, though I question how extensive the subsidy system is, and whether the program apparent success may not be due to other factors.
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On October 15 2015 08:26 notesfromunderground wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2015 07:08 cLutZ wrote:On October 15 2015 06:51 notesfromunderground wrote:On October 15 2015 05:38 Simberto wrote:
Also, even if college is free, that does not mean that you suddenly have 300m people with college degrees. (If college actually means something). Not everyone is cut out for a university degree, and that is perfectly fine. If there are actually requirements to passing, that also means that some people will fail. To me, it makes a lot more sense to have the chance of getting a college degree tied to how good you actually are at the subject, how hard you work at it, etc..., as opposed to how much money your parents have.
And not everyone NEEDS a university degree. There are perfectly fine jobs for people without college degrees, some of them quite well-paying too. The world will always need plumbers, construction workers, etc...And those surely don't need to study for 3+ years in a university to do their job. As a college instructor who loathes both my own complicity in the debt-factory that is the modern, corporate university, and who also loathes the utter lack of challenge or academic rigor, I think all college should be 100 percent free and that there should be a passing rate of about 40 percent. That doesn't solve much, because really you are just doing what high school needs to be doing. If we wanted that model, we should just utilize the current Community College system for a +1 year that does that 40% pass rate style teaching model and have that part be free, and make it a prereq for 4 year colleges. I'm saying that students who are not ready for college level work (in my experience, about 80 percent of incoming freshmen) should be failed. The CURRENT situation is that colleges are doing what high schools should be doing, because if they upheld any kind of standards very few of the students would be able to pass. Colleges should have college-level coursework. It should be extremely difficult. Anyone who can stand the heat should be educated for free. In fact, they should be paid a stipend. It should be extremely easy to go to college, but extremely difficult to stay there. Right now it's a ludicrous rat race to get into college, but once you're there it's of very little value and nearly impossible to fail. Show nested quote +
The reason grade inflation in college ended up happening is that it started at places like Harvard where they said to themselves, "Wait a minute, these kids are already the top .1% of students, and I am failing them? It doesn't make sense for him to lose out on a job opportunity to the guy at UConn with a 3.5 who couldn't even shine this kid's shoes."
Do you think Harvard is a good school?
On a relative scale, Harvard is a very good school. Not just nationally, but internationally.
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As evidence that most Americans are political hostages afflicted by Stockholm Syndrome we have people like Mohdoo saying that he wouldn't vote for Bernie because he just can't see how Bernie would change anything, so it's better to vote for Hillary the Corrupt.
We should get away from this, "it's not politically practical" line of reasoning because it's not practical at all to put the blinders on and continue on our current trajectory.
Re: this city vs. suburbs thing
Anyone who thinks its a piece of cake to just commute an hour into a 9 or 10 hour job in the city every day and thinks that's a great life is fucking crazy. Long commutes are one of the biggest drags on overall life satisfaction for everyone, and they never get better. You can't just "get used to it." If anything it gets worse. And spending 12 hours a day either commuting or doing some bullshit job is buying a ticket straight to a self-medicated (alcohol, marijuana, opiates, video games, whatever), disengaged, hollow existence.
Suburbs are economic and cultural ghettos that only really took off in America because it was uncomfortable to confront the reality of what capitalism did to the cities in this country.
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On October 15 2015 09:50 IgnE wrote:
As evidence that most Americans are political hostages afflicted by Stockholm Syndrome we have people like Mohdoo saying that he wouldn't vote for Bernie because he just can't see how Bernie would change anything, so it's better to vote for Hillary the Corrupt.
We should get away from this, "it's not politically practical" line of reasoning because it's not practical at all to put the blinders on and continue on our current trajectory.
Re: this city vs. suburbs thing
Anyone who thinks its a piece of cake to just commute an hour into a 9 or 10 hour job in the city every day and thinks that's a great life is fucking crazy. Long commutes are one of the biggest drags on overall life satisfaction for everyone, and they never get better. You can't just "get used to it." If anything it gets worse. And spending 12 hours a day either commuting or doing some bullshit job is buying a ticket straight to a self-medicated (alcohol, marijuana, opiates, video games, whatever), disengaged, hollow existence.
Suburbs are economic and cultural ghettos that only really took off in America because it was uncomfortable to confront the reality of what capitalism did to the cities in this country.
So then if we assume that the long commute from out of the city into the city is "one of the biggest drags," and assume that not everyone who would like to work or live in the city can fit in the city. How do price controls make sense? Why should the person working at mcdonalds deserve to live in the city and not have that "huge drag, man" of commuting, while the programmer, engineer, architect, doctor, etc... has to commute? If it is not possible to fit everyone who would like to be in the city, into the city, then why shouldn't a person's earning power set them apart?
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Need to rethink urban architecture, city planning, and design obviously.
But why should a person born in El Paso be given American citizenship while a person born in Juarez be denied it? There are plenty of traditional norms that recognize a person's right to a space based upon past occupancy. The market logic that ignores everything but dollar amounts is relatively new in historical terms.
But do you know how much space on Park Avenue is basically unoccupied all year? Maybe a couple nights a year it hosts a Chinese billionaire's son and his friends.
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On October 15 2015 09:18 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2015 08:26 notesfromunderground wrote:On October 15 2015 07:08 cLutZ wrote:On October 15 2015 06:51 notesfromunderground wrote:On October 15 2015 05:38 Simberto wrote:
Also, even if college is free, that does not mean that you suddenly have 300m people with college degrees. (If college actually means something). Not everyone is cut out for a university degree, and that is perfectly fine. If there are actually requirements to passing, that also means that some people will fail. To me, it makes a lot more sense to have the chance of getting a college degree tied to how good you actually are at the subject, how hard you work at it, etc..., as opposed to how much money your parents have.
And not everyone NEEDS a university degree. There are perfectly fine jobs for people without college degrees, some of them quite well-paying too. The world will always need plumbers, construction workers, etc...And those surely don't need to study for 3+ years in a university to do their job. As a college instructor who loathes both my own complicity in the debt-factory that is the modern, corporate university, and who also loathes the utter lack of challenge or academic rigor, I think all college should be 100 percent free and that there should be a passing rate of about 40 percent. That doesn't solve much, because really you are just doing what high school needs to be doing. If we wanted that model, we should just utilize the current Community College system for a +1 year that does that 40% pass rate style teaching model and have that part be free, and make it a prereq for 4 year colleges. I'm saying that students who are not ready for college level work (in my experience, about 80 percent of incoming freshmen) should be failed. The CURRENT situation is that colleges are doing what high schools should be doing, because if they upheld any kind of standards very few of the students would be able to pass. Colleges should have college-level coursework. It should be extremely difficult. Anyone who can stand the heat should be educated for free. In fact, they should be paid a stipend. It should be extremely easy to go to college, but extremely difficult to stay there. Right now it's a ludicrous rat race to get into college, but once you're there it's of very little value and nearly impossible to fail.
The reason grade inflation in college ended up happening is thats started at places like Harvard where they said to themselves, "Wait a minute, these kids are already the top .1% of students, and I am failing them? It doesn't make sense for him to lose out on a job opportunity to the guy at UConn with a 3.5 who couldn't even shine this kid's shoes."
Do you think Harvard is a good school? On a relative scale, Harvard is a very good school. Not just nationally, but internationally.
It's very good at signaling its students, but given my experience with the french equivalent school's students, or my own experience within the french mit (or something), it can very well go with dismal teaching and ever partying students getting dumber by the minute. Once you're in obviously. See David Cameron too.
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Harvard (and pretty much all other Ivies) is really two school in one. One where people got in because 2300 SAT and 3.9 GPA, and one people got in because all their relatives went there and are prominent donors. One of them is very good, the other not so much. Also a lot prominent schools put more emphasize on research and graduate school, to the detriment of undergrad. MIT CS undergrad for a while was in such bad shape it was nearly cut.
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On October 15 2015 08:14 Nyxisto wrote:Two options, you cap the rate at which rents and prices can increase annually, (which is usually considered to be sub-optimal) and secondly the government starts to provide social housing itself which drives the prices down through competition (and provides affordable living space). Vienna is a good case study. It's one of the 'most livable cities' and most of it is publicly owned. It also doesn't happen to look like something out of a Soviet horror movie. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/11/vienna-model-public-housing-presented-by-austrian-cultural-forum_n_3054446.html
On October 15 2015 08:49 zlefin wrote:
Looking through that link on Vienna, and other sources on Vienna, I question the degree of its actual success; the housing still looks expensive by some numbers, less so by others, and/or requires significant subsidies to function, which raises the social cost. It looks more like an unsound system heavily propped up to look decent.
Still poking into sources and analyzing things of course. Need more info.
edit: looking at more numbers the prices look reasonable, though I question how extensive the subsidy system is, and whether the program apparent success may not be due to other factors.
Another factor I wanted to mention is the crime rate (Austria seems to have a low crime rate, so I'll just apply this to the US). Where I grew up, I knew that public housing meant a pretty bad crime rate area. I mean, didn't care to pass through it, stop to eat, etc... but I knew it was generally a bad area due to a lot of homicide, robberies and assault. In FL all the police records are public, this is why you hear a lot more stories about FL than other states and in South FL there is definitely a lot of public housing.
On October 15 2015 09:50 IgnE wrote:
As evidence that most Americans are political hostages afflicted by Stockholm Syndrome we have people like Mohdoo saying that he wouldn't vote for Bernie because he just can't see how Bernie would change anything, so it's better to vote for Hillary the Corrupt.
We should get away from this, "it's not politically practical" line of reasoning because it's not practical at all to put the blinders on and continue on our current trajectory.
Re: this city vs. suburbs thing
Anyone who thinks its a piece of cake to just commute an hour into a 9 or 10 hour job in the city every day and thinks that's a great life is fucking crazy. Long commutes are one of the biggest drags on overall life satisfaction for everyone, and they never get better. You can't just "get used to it." If anything it gets worse. And spending 12 hours a day either commuting or doing some bullshit job is buying a ticket straight to a self-medicated (alcohol, marijuana, opiates, video games, whatever), disengaged, hollow existence.
Suburbs are economic and cultural ghettos that only really took off in America because it was uncomfortable to confront the reality of what capitalism did to the cities in this country.
I don't think it's about the commute really, it's more about how a business takes advantage of a persons life in order to obtain profits. If you really want to affect all American lives, then change the way that businesses take care of their employees and how they force them to work 50 weeks non stop, because weekends fly by as you get older.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
it's a seriously legit question for sanders to answer, how much of his program is realistic and does it accomplish its goals wtihin the constrains of party politics as it stands.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yLxBMRf.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Uy8PGsZ.jpg)
