MyBrainHurts

joined 3 months ago
[–] MyBrainHurts 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You've hit the nail on the head: it's hard to make housing more affordable without reducing the amount of money people charge for housing.

Or, like any other commodity where there's a market imbalance, you address supply issues and prices come down.

I'm sorry but "everyone gets a free house" isn't particularly realistic or interesting. It's like when people say the trick to ending war is "no more countries are allowed to go to war!" Cool that's nice but...

[–] MyBrainHurts 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So glad trump has ended this conflict like all the Killer Kamala krowd predicted.

[–] MyBrainHurts 1 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I think we're using realistic differently somehow. You seem to mean 'comprehensive' or faster? I mean it in the sense that this could happen and address the issue.

The link you shared is wild but while it has numbers, those are as real as Polievre's numbers to make his deficit projections work.

The stuff outlined is mostly hope and "I would like ot to be this way so it should be." Just some back of the envelope math, a fee years ago the value of Canadian residential real estate was some 7.5 trillion, just call it 7. Even a 10% drop in value means a roughly 700 billion loss. For the 40ish percent of Canadian households which own their home, the plan evaporates a large chunk of their retirement wealth. "Just teach people to be cool with it" isn't particularly realistic or feasible.

The lesson I thought we'd taken from our Southern neighbours was to watch out for anyone claiming simple problems to complex and significant problems.

Carney's plan is long term but actually looks to solve a similarly long term and serious problem, which is that housing starts have not kept pace with population growth. (All the talk of investors scooping up all the houses is a little silly, that works in a tight market but it's not like we didn't have industrial investors in the 90s when housing was affordable. Are people so ignorant they think capitalism just started in the last couple decades?) When part of your plan is to literally create a giant new government organization to do housing ina radically different way, only a very unserious person would put hard but ambitious numbers to it immediately.

Finally, Singapore is wildly different than Canada in a bunch of important ways, Denmark and Austria are doing social housing but suffer in actual housing

[–] MyBrainHurts 1 points 1 month ago (5 children)

And then those changes in the rules are meant to spur developers

This was about the Canadian Housing accelerator fund. Though, also, yes, increased supply tends to lead to a reduction in prices.

I’m not saying that’s impossible, but it would require a concerted effort to build a huge number of units in a short period of time. No Canadian party has released a plan to do so.

I'd take another look at the Liberal's housing platform in detail.

https://liberal.ca/cstrong/build/#housing

Act as a developer to build affordable housing at scale, including on public lands. BCH will develop and manage projects and partner with builders for the construction phase of projects. Build faster, smarter, sustainable, more affordable homes by providing over $25 billion in financing to innovative prefabricated home builders in Canada, including those using Canadian technologies and resources like mass timber and softwood lumber. BCH will also issue bulk orders of units from manufacturers to create sustained demand. This will revitalize how we build homes in Canada, bringing forestry, innovation, engineering, manufacturing, and construction together. Support affordable homebuilders by injecting $10 billion in low-cost financing and capital for homes that support middle and low-income Canadians. This will include housing for students, seniors, Veterans, people with disabilities, and Indigenous housing, shelters, and more.

All of these are things that are government actually getting into the business rather than just handing money to developers while at the same time not miscasting the government as an actual construction company.

I struggle to think of a more ambitious but realistic plan released by any comparable party among any of our developed nation peers.

[–] MyBrainHurts 2 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Oh, I mean the 2% so far. Which was because of a program that is not yet 2 years old, which in itself is based on cajoling municipalities to change their rules. And then those changes in the rules are meant to spur developers. It's a bit of a Rube Goldberg process but given the timelines/scales on which construction projects operate, makes sense. But expecting to see drastic results by now is a fairly nonsensical position and doesn't really give the impression that the author is particularly serious or has given the issue any actual thought.

I'm not sure on the timelines but it seems a much more comprehensive plan with an appropriate amount of funding to get us in a good place not for now but for long term so that housing grows and we can eventually up immigration to offset our aging population.

[–] MyBrainHurts 6 points 1 month ago (10 children)

That's wild, the article just handwaves away the what, 35 billion the Liberals have pledged at new homes in a radically new way because previously a few billion, in one particular mechanism, raised home starts by 2 percent within a year or so?

That's uhhhh, interesting.

[–] MyBrainHurts 3 points 1 month ago

I can only give my experience and I think mine is a bit unusual but here goes.

Like the Office Space folks, I'm a dev in a large (admittedly, non profit and really good) organization. Since covid, I've worked remotely but my day to day hasn't changed.

We have a help desk where people send questions/issues. Someone on our team generally splits those roughly based on workload, skills, knowledge etc. Our goal is about half our work should be those one off requests.

I also have client units within the organization. They usually come to me with wild, bold ideas that I help make a reality or explain (gently) why what they are asking for is insane. Some of thr projects are based on what folks have heard are best practices in our industry, others are about cutting down manual work/seeing what we can automate.

Any of those projects can take anywhere from a couple hours to a couple of months. Some require buy in from other units, so on those I end up on a lot of meetings and email threads answering questions, hearing suggestions etc. I then (usually) coordinate with my manager to make sure I'm not stepping on any toes or there aren't considerations which I had yet to consider.

Today for example, I spent about half the day working on help desk tickets, about 1/3 of my time was clarifying "what the hell are you trying to say?" Or pointing out logical gaps etc (much easier to do this upfront than write a bunch of code and have someone realize they meant something else entirely... People are dumb.) The other 2/3 was coding.

On my major projects, I spent an annoying amount of time emailing around to get approvals so a project manager would accept that my clients were fine with something I built, even though it was a bit unorthodox. Then a couple hours actually working on another project.

Plus, y'know, Lemmy time, cat skritching time and a bit of cooking.

Admittedly, my experience is unusual. I'm hihhly skilled but slightly underpaid in a non profit, so folks compensate by giving a lot of leeway. So a nice work environment plus I think what I do makes the world a better place, I'm pretty happy. I understand most office jobs are not quite like that but I don't think they're far off.

[–] MyBrainHurts 5 points 1 month ago

Ahaha, Verb the Noun is painfully on the nose.

I hope you and 338 are correct. I agree the bastard left but the "4th Liberal government" attack angle does spook me...

[–] MyBrainHurts 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Hopefully.

But usually, high turnouts are associated with a "throw the bastards out" mentality, which doesn't bode well for the Liberals.

[–] MyBrainHurts 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Same two party system has been in place since before the civil rights movements.

The last VP's marriage would've been illegal in multiple states and Kamala wouldn't have been allowed to campaign in any diner she wanted.

Kids got conscripted to die overseas.

Today, we have unfettered capitalism murdering sick people for profit.

You think this got worse since Obamacare? Super curious about how you decided that.

You're making some pretty wild claims. Yes, there's a lot to worry about. But to say everything is hopeless and there's been no progress is just as childish as when conservatives complained that America was now a decadent liberal hellhole because Obama improved healthcare.

[–] MyBrainHurts 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The whole plan came from the heritage foundation - the purpose of the affordable care act was to prevent universal healthcare.

This goes against the entire notion of the ratchet effect.

If things got steadily more right wing, this wouldn't need to be a consideration. But, taking your words as accurate, it means that America went from a less progressive healthcare system to a more progressive one, even if it is imperfect.

On gay marriage, it's worth reading about. It.was a fairly complex move that was pushed by the administration pretty hard. And of course there's a bunch of legislation around it and other gay rights now.

[–] MyBrainHurts 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

This is still not what the meme is saying. Healthcare was even worse pre Obamacare. Gay marriage was not legal 20 years ago.

Both are in a more progressive place than they were twenty years ago, which is completely contrary to the notion of ratcheting.

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