> public housingNot without people. You already can't get a house built now unless you're willing to wait years. But what good is a house years in the future if you need shelter now? That's not to say stop building, but it remains that more people are needed to have any hope of catching up to what is actually needed.
A great way to attract more people is to pay more, of course, but guess what that does? It increases the cost of housing even more! The only way out of this is to see people start voluntarily (possibly with a token payment, but certainly not the market rate) offering their services to build houses.
> rent caps
The formal definition of storage is: A situation where an external mechanism, such as government intervention, prevents price from rising. Do you think introducing a housing shortage is the best idea here? In any other world a shortage is considered a crisis in its own right.
> subisiding new and denser construction
You can open your wallet instead of volunteering, I suppose, as that's ultimately the same thing at the end of the day. But you don't need the system to open your wallet for you. Just do it!
> It's a little odd that you comparing liberals to a religious group that reject basically any technology from the industrial revolution and onward.
That's a bit of a strange characterization. They reject any technology that they fear will impact the family unit (which is why you see strange things in certain churches like brand new tractors with metal wheels; with the thinking being that rubber tires would make it easy to leave the family behind), but healthcare is definitely not that. Health is essential to maintaining the family unit!
> but once you get cancer or need an x-ray or a blood transfusion or bone-marrow transplant or birth complications? The way to fix all this is universal healthcare, period.
Yes, exactly. Insurance isn't limited to healthcare, but in the case of healthcare that's exactly what the Amish in the USA have: Universal healthcare (where universal is with respect to those within their community). Were you under the impression that they reject healthcare or something? They don't, actually. Their system is self-administered, operated by the people of the Amish community. As before, it is recognized you need to have a community to make that work, but they prove you don't need the nebulous system to provide it. Just do it! If a community of liberals want this, there is nothing to stop it but themselves.
> then let's fund mental health programmes like crazy?
By funding, you mean pay people to do work? Why not just step up do the work yourself? Or, failing that, pony up and pay someone else to do the work? You don't need the system here, just do it!
Look, I fully understand the appeal of hoping someone else will do it. I don't want to do any of these things either. But if I'm not going to do, why would anyone else? Why would I expect it of someone else? That is strangely irrational.
> do you consider other countries at all?
Certainly my own. Last time I checked I live in a country that is not the one in subject. But the topic has been about one particular country since the onset, so one cannot detour too far into what goes on in other countries without straying beyond what the discussion is about. For the sake of good faith participation, it is best to stay on-topic as much as possible.
> conservatives don't do this, they just accept these issues as facts of life and don't spend time worrying about them at all.
Right, the idea given at the onset was that conservatives recognize that if they're too lazy to do something, everyone else will be too. In contrast, liberals seem to think that everyone but themselves sit around bored all day just waiting for instructions, then act surprised when that isn't the case. I asked earlier if you felt that was an unfair characterization, but I didn't pick up on your answer (if you gave it).