Norwegian Air does not serve free food on transcontinental flights. Fine by me, I'm comfortable surviving 12 hours without eating hot food, in fact I do it almost every day.
"Probability of death conditional on an accident" sounds like a statistic designed to fool people who really just care about the probability of death, preying on a cognitive error.
We know how to safe six-story buildings in SF are a solved prblem, and developers have no problem following building codes when zoning allows them to build 6 stories.
The problem is that most of the inhabitable stuff in SF is being rented out at >$2500 per studio in those old Victorian homes, and it's not exactly easy to just evict everyone for a few years to build higher density housing. A lot of stuff is also under rent control, and since no new buildings are under RC (and all the new construction I've seen is explicitly luxury), tearing old things down to build means tearing down "affordable" (relatively) housing to build luxury junk.
It'd sure be nice to be able to clear a few blocks at a time and start over with fresh buildings, but it's more a matter of changing wheels on a bus while it's full of people driving down the street.
Cities are expensive for a reason - they are not just a Veblen good like a Mercedes AMG, mainly valuable due to scarcity. Cities are more like doctors - they are extremely useful, and we would all be better off if there were enough to go around.
Throughout US history there have been economically booming areas where people could move to become more prosperous. The majority of good new jobs are in cities. The fact that we are not building enough housing and transit infrastructure so people can actually live somewhere while working those jobs is a problem for national employment and economic growth. The landlords end up taking home a great share of the economic benefit instead of the workers as the price for scarce housing is bid up. This is also the root cause of gentrification.
This leads to megacommutes as people occupy housing further and further from the booming economy. That's clearly the case in the Bay Area, where many cities have built more units of office space than housing, guaranteeing a rough commute for the people who work in those buildings.
Assuming Clinton had those dirty secrets and Trump had nothing equivalent, that's what a level playing field looks like.
If you want to assume there were also some dirty Trump secrets that didn't come out then it seems like the only way to "level the playing field" would be for e.g. Venezuela to hack the Republicans and air their dirty laundry too.
And people are running around saying how terrible this is and asking "what if everybody did this?" But it seems like the answer to that question is, then people would know more relevant information about their political candidates. Or politicians would get better at computer security. Which of those is supposed to be bad?
> Assuming Clinton had those dirty secrets and Trump had nothing equivalent
Those are two rather incredulous assumptions considering that:
- Clinton released all of her tax returns, whereas Trump didn't release any
- The Clinton Foundation has been audited by at least three well respected, independent, organizations (garnering top ratings from all), whereas we know comparatively little about the Trump Foundation (or whatever it's called), yet it's admitted within the last six months to several inappropriate expenditures or donations, and is likely being investigated for more
- Trump sits atop a network of literally hundreds (if not thousands) of "independent" corporations designed solely to evade disclosure, liability, taxes or some combination thereof
Level is relative here. But remember DNC candidate had 6 or more multibillion dollar mass media corps actively supporting their candidate, POTUS was campaigning for them, had a top strategy team, support from tech giants, Wall St., huge contributions from countries like Saudi Arabia and so on. A few emails leaked I would say still wasn't a level playing field but it was close?
100 minutes of Clinton emails vs. 32 minutes of policy issues for all candidates combined - who do you think benefits from that, the candidate with realistic policy proposals, or the one who wants solve all problems by building a wall?
>Yes, but it still doesn't affect the (rational) landowner's decision. Imagine an improvement that can net the owner $Y a year in profit. A rational owner should always make that improvement, regardless of whether the government is also taxing them $X a year on the land.
It's not just about whether return is positive, it's about the highest ROI considering opportunity cost.
Consider a simple case where two lots with one story of development each can produce as much as a single lot with two stories of development. With a tax on land+improvements, a landlord does not prefer one over the other. With a tax on land value only, the single lot with two stories is preferred.
>If they doesn't have the money/capital to do so, they should sell the land to someone else.
Indeed. If the neighbors have ten stories of development, a landlord with a one-story building will not be able to afford the LVT and will sell to someone who can afford to build ten stories.
> With a tax on land value only, the single lot with two stories is preferred.
Yes, but that's because tax on land + improved value distorts incentives (by discouraging improvements).
Usually when we say the LVT doesn't affect incentives, the baseline of comparison is against no land taxes of any form. In that world, you would prefer to develop the single lot because you need to buy less land, so the result is the same as with LVT.
> Usually when we say the LVT doesn't affect incentives, the baseline of comparison is against no land taxes of any form.
That really confused the whole discussion as the current situation is tax on land + improved value, making it look like you were arguing from the other side. No tax at all is anyway taking it to the extreme as the government need money, so it becomes merely an academic exercise.
The number of people in the area is greater than the number of homes. No amount of income redistribution can possibly fix this. If you rent a room for a homeless person, you are just going to price out the poorest person who can currently afford a room. The only way to fix this is remove people or build homes. The first option is better for the landed gentry, the second option is better for the nation as a whole.
I don't see any data about where people are from in that link. Just where they lived most recently. A good way to become homeless is to move into an unstable housing situation in a far away place with high rents.
"Seventy-one percent (71%) of respondents reported they were living in San Francisco at the time they most
recently became homeless, an increase from 61% in 2013."
It's true, it doesn't measure length of stay, but they came from SF and claiming it's still an external problem with no evidence seems particularly disingenuous.
The original statement "They vast majority of poor in SF grew up there or in nearby areas, they didn't migrate there like the economic elite have." is simply not supported by this evidence.
Given historical population growth of California, I think it's not a winning argument. Very few of California's residents have moral ground to live here at the exclusion of others. Pretty much everyone moved here. The only way forward is to allow enough homes to be built for everyone who wants to live here.
