Tax the rich and build public housing and supporting infrastructure at scale. And by “build” I don’t mean “give money to developers” I mean actually have the government employ people, buy equipment and run facilities.
I don’t think people realize how damaging having so much of our economy tied up in housing is causing:
It sucks up consumer demand. Can’t buy goods if all your money goes to rent or a mortgage
It eats startup capital. Can’t invest or run a business if you have no free income.
It incentivizes bad investment behaviour. This one gets me, the right-wing think tanks are always whinging about “productivity” but the biggest reason we’re not productive is that our investment class is dumping money into real estate because it provides a quick return, instead of investing it in technology or people
The income from it is not available for taxation, starving government revenues and resulting in programs getting cut
And that’s before you get to the social costs (people stuck in miserable marriages, stress, commuting requirements, loss of security, etc).
And here we are, throwing gasoline on the fire because our governments and their donors can’t bear to make less money. Quite the opposite, really, to keep the Ponzi scheme going they’re moving to strip-mining south Asian immigrants like they’re the human equivalent of an open-pit quarry.
When the collapses, it’ll be horrific. At best, I hope the recovery is more New Deal than Third Reich.
In the before times, when corporate and marginal income tax rates were high and stock buybacks were illegal, a business could do two things with its profit:
Reinvest it into the business, as employee compensation, equipment or facilities, and/or
Pay taxes.
In the 1980s, we gave them a third option:
Keep the money
…which for some reason was supposed to not encourage the rich to hoard money and/or engage in non-productive financialization.
The rich, of course, hoarded and engaged in financial engineering pretty much immediately, and everyone else, which meant employees, suffered for it.
Think about how stupid of an idea this is: giving the rich the ability to hoard money and then against all reason, somehow expecting that they won’t do the thing you’re incentivizing them to do. Even George Bush called it “voodoo economics”.
If you look at wages-vs-productivity curves you can see society “break” in the 1980s, with the rich running away with their wealth and everyone else getting stuck in a quagmire of low wages and starved public services.
So that’s why high progressive taxation helps employee: it forces the rich to either invest in their businesses or fund the nation.
Huh. I had a Predator monitor that was diagnosed with mysterious “liquid damage” when it stopped working. Considering it’s well up and above the desk, that would have taken some work.
I got divorced in the 2010s and it kicked me out of the housing market. I’d be five years from paying off my home now, but had to sell it as part of the separation. We bought it for $210K in 2009, sold for $225k in 2011. It flipped during the pandemic for $900k, as an “investment opportunity for GTA-area landlords looking for rental income”
That’s hard to watch, not just the money, but also seeing the trees I planted with my then-young kids cut down because the landlord needed another parking spot.
Since then, I’ve watched house prices accelerate away from me, so much so that I decided to just give up and bank everything into education savings for my kids in hopes that I’ll have a couch to sleep on in my old age. Even now that’s looking unlikely.
My now-spouse had it worse: when she divorced, she got to keep half of her then-husband’s previously-secret and significant debts, which more than wiped out any equity she had, putting her tens of thousands of dollars into the red. He, of course, got his debt halved.
I don’t doubt for a second the stats that tout rising domestic abuse rates since people become house-locked. I got divorced when rent was at least reasonable where I live. Now? Now the choice is between “a miserable, if not right dangerous, marriage” and “sleeping in a tent in a public park”.
The problem is now that you risk living in a tent in a park, or in your 50s with roommates in a sketchy rooming house. It’s not just “poor” anymore, it’s that divorce can mean homelessness.
I don’t think people realize how badly out of control the housing market is. In much of the country, it’s not a matter of not being able to buy a home, it’s not even being able to rent one.
In the area where I live I can count four or five young couples and/or single parents who are raising kids in rooming houses. Other than one spectacular instance of substance abuse, they’re not “bad people”, and ten years ago they’d at least have been able to rent a space of their own to raise their kids, while thirty years ago they’d have been able to buy a starter home. Now? Now they’re raising children in rooming houses.
That’s not a good thing, but hey, at least landlords are doing well and Galen Weston’s making more money this year than last.
I wasn’t aware that my standard of living was measured by the wealth I can produce for the nation, but I suppose that’s how the right-wing views everyone not of the ruling class: as a resource to be strip-mined.
May 15 (Reuters) - The day before Elon Musk fired virtually all of Tesla’s electric-vehicle charging division last month, they had high hopes as charging chief Rebecca Tinucci went to meet with Musk about the network’s future, four former charging-network staffers told Reuters....
It’s not Israel per se, it’s that these protests could metastasize into general anti-establishment ones. Israel is just the flashpoint.
In case you’re wondering why the authorities didn’t really care about the Convoy is because, frankly, most of the authorities agreed with them. Right-wing protests are inherently pro-establishment, and often have the tacit, if not explicit, support of the police, whereas left-wing protests certainly don’t. The tell, with the Convoy, is that no one was going to do anything until the Ambassador Bridge got blockaded: then it became about money. Otherwise, everyone was perfectly content to see rich, white suburbanites having a tantrum. Fascism, after all, can be good for business.
Thousands of Israelis joined a far-right Independence Day march on Tuesday in the south, led by Jewish activists advocating for resettling Gaza and forcing Palestinians to leave the enclave....
I’ll put this back to you this way: is Likud also a terrorist organization? Is the IDF? Because they do a lot of the same stuff.
There are definitely terrorists associated with Hamas, and Hamas definitely carries water for them, but they’re also the duly elected government in Gaza and if I were Israel I’d be asking why Gazans feel like they were so wronged that the only option seems to be a political movement that’s sympathetic to terrorist tactics.
Saying “they’re terrorists” without acknowledging how we got here is a lot like calling the ANC in South Africa “terrorist” in the 1980s. It’s stupidly reductionist and ignores complexity for the sake of jingoism.
For many Jews, Zionism signifies a connection to Israel. But a large number of student protesters see the violence in Gaza as a logical conclusion of the late 19th century ideology...
Nationalism is almost always bad, why should Israeli Nationalism be any different?
Ask yourself: if it was any other country or ethnicity, would it be “good” nationalism? Would an American or Russian Nationalist worry you? How about a Rwandan or Serbian nationalist?
Chances are the answer is “yes” (unless you’re a fascist), so why does Israeli nationalism get a free pass?
Biden’s labor report card: Historian gives ‘Union Joe’ a higher grade than any president since FDR (theconversation.com)
Shoppers Drug Mart says job post looking for ‘volunteer’ to clean store was a mistake (www.thestar.com)
The job posting, which has since been removed, was advertising for a “volunteer” at Shoppers Drug Mart that would restock shelves and clean the store.
Immigration to Canada surges in April, worsening outlook for housing affordability (www.theglobeandmail.com)
Plus, BMO hikes target on the TSX
Amazon Workers Say They Struggle to Afford Food and Rent (time.com)
Asus just apologized for its outrageous repair costs and RMA process (www.pcgamesn.com)
Divorce rates are falling: Are Canadians too poor to break up? (theconversation.com)
While multiple factors play a role in falling divorce rates, the costs of separation make going it alone a daunting prospect for many Canadians.
GOLDSTEIN: Canadians’ standard of living is on decline, report says (torontosun.com)
Canadians are currently experiencing one of the worst and longest declines in their standard of living in decades, a new report says.
Customers are fed up with anti-theft measures at stores. Retailers say organized crime is to blame (www.cbc.ca)
Susan Dennison recently had an unsettling experience at her local grocery store, a Loblaw-owned Fortinos in Burlington, Ont....
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Four years after losing funds for supporting Black Lives Matter, a Wisconsin domestic violence shelter worries about their future (www.wxpr.org)
Archived at web.archive.org/…/four-years-after-losing-funds-f…
The inside story of Elon Musk’s mass firings of Tesla Supercharger staff (www.reuters.com)
May 15 (Reuters) - The day before Elon Musk fired virtually all of Tesla’s electric-vehicle charging division last month, they had high hopes as charging chief Rebecca Tinucci went to meet with Musk about the network’s future, four former charging-network staffers told Reuters....
BC Ferries making all single-stall washrooms gender neutral (www.nelsonstar.com)
BC Ferries says it will be making all 300 of its single-stall washrooms gender neutral over the next fiscal year....
U of A associate dean resigns over removal of student protesters from campus (edmonton.ctvnews.ca)
Netanyahu ministers join Israeli far-right 'march to Gaza,' demand Palestinians' expulsion (www.haaretz.com)
Thousands of Israelis joined a far-right Independence Day march on Tuesday in the south, led by Jewish activists advocating for resettling Gaza and forcing Palestinians to leave the enclave....
When Housing First fails landlords and tenants (www.youtube.com)
Article
Criticizing Israel? Nonprofit Media Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Without Due Process (theintercept.com)
Donald Trump rally video shows mass "walking out" during speech (www.newsweek.com)
David Cameron urges BBC to describe Hamas as terrorist organisation (www.theguardian.com)
Foreign secretary’s call comes after group releases video of British-Israeli hostage it says died after being wounded in Israeli airstrike...
How ‘Zionist’ became a slur on the US left (www.theguardian.com)
For many Jews, Zionism signifies a connection to Israel. But a large number of student protesters see the violence in Gaza as a logical conclusion of the late 19th century ideology...