ErikVandeWater

> Property taxes are a large source of funding for these investments.

The idea isn't to get rid of property taxes and do without that revenue; the idea is to tax things that aren't beneficial that we want more of.

I think our perspectives are different on how much of a handbrake bad policy is on the market's ability to create what people want.

> * Cost of living only works for so long. We've seen areas in the last decades that have an influx of population and they usually see a corresponding increase in COL. There are approaches governments can take to slow down the growth of COL, but it seems inevitable.

COL increases because it is difficult or impossible to build new housing, and because single-use zoning requires creating massive amounts of infrastructure since it is illegal to build work and shopping near where people actually live. In addition, taxing property value disincentivizes developing land, leaving empty lots in even the most valuable places to build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJqCaklMv6M

Whether something is disturbing or not doesn't say much about whether it's a good idea, just that it is different from the conventional.

Around the world, governments act like abusive parents. If people could migrate freely (creating a competition for residents), much more people would live without the abuse of authoritarian governments.

It's a false dichotomy to say the only two options are walkable and cramped, and spacious and car-dependent.

> I love that so many people are convinced everyone but them is doing nothing and somehow getting paid for it.

That's not the point. The point is what they are producing isn't contributing value to our lives, or actually creating negative value. Building highways looked very productive on paper in the 50's, but now we live in car dependent sprawl, and we continue to pay people to maintain that sprawl when we could have walkable cities that are human friendly.

Is there a fundamental reason that cuts would have to be to benefits? Why not cut xx% of the government budget anywhere but pensions?

In 6 months drivers killed more pedestrians than all the people that died on 9/11.

Your comment is just vague talking points. I see literally no one justifying poisoning the environment and the town by saying this is an acceptable cost of the free market.

Blaming MBAs for this instead of the JDs that are writing and enforcing the laws is also silly.

Finally, almost everyone from the federal down to the local is running unsustainable deficits, so there is clearly a lack of forethought in spending. I would argue we have the opposite problem you are suggesting. Everyone's happy to spend money thoughtlessly because it's someone else's money.

> While there is certainly much to criticize in these areas, you would think one solution to this issue would be to advance a society in which women are valued equally to men.

Women are valued moreso than men. Men are 10x more likely to die at work, have little to no access to domestic violence shelters, and if war comes, the only people who will be conscripted to potentially die will be men.

Disappointing the article didn't specify the marketing that was used to sell the cameras five years ago. Obviously planned obsolescence is bad, but I'd like to know how misleading they were when selling the product.

> someone had been convicted of a crime

The issue isn't that people who commit crimes can hide their past, but that "corrections" facilities to not rehabilitate criminals into law-abiding members of society.

Having a criminal past follow someone for their entire life is a surefire way to make sure they can't find legal ways of making money.

> the new net wage is $23 an hour.

> At that higher wage, more people will apply for the job. The increased supply of labor will allow the boss to pay less than $10 an hour; it might suffice to pay only $7.

How is the boss taking advantage of the increased supply of labor that is conditional on increased pay, if that boss is short changing on pay vs the market?

If all other restaurants have increased net wages, this boss will run short on waiters.

> States have become more ambitious in their policies for tackling the insulin affordability crisis because the scale of the problem continues to grow and the federal government seems capable of taking only limited action to address it.

As if the federal government isn't the one causing the shortage in the first place.

> It cost my mother $150.

Sure, but by being taxpayers, your parents already paid a substantial portion of the cost forward by paying for the healthcare of other people. Perhaps they were net takers from the system, but presumably people on HN have parents that are net contributors to the system.

He didn't say no gas would flow. He said the pipeline would no longer exist. Also, why would he be hesitant to use the word "sanctions?" Sanctions would be a totally reasonable explanation. What he said clearly implied the pipeline would be forcefully made inoperative.

It takes people's time to build runways. That's time they won't be building other valuable things.

You're ignoring the core truth of the comment you're replying to: Scarcity exists. There is no way to have it all; there are only compromises. Simply walking is dangerous because you could fall. We could all go back to being infants* crawling on the floor if we wanted to be safer. But we won't. Making more compromises in the name of safety has to be justified. Planes will never be perfectly safe. That is okay.

People tend to complain about the safety of airplane even though it is in the top echelon of safe modes of transit. There's no reason to try to reach the highest-hanging fruit trying to make it even safer when people are dying in droves on the road just getting to the airport. Much better to do something about that low-hanging fruit.

If no one ever electrified a car, I feel the world would be better off so people wouldn't be mislead thinking electric cars are a green solution to transit. Trains, busses, and bikes are the green solution.

I wish this article were more specific on what "housing first" means. My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that homeless shelters across the country have empty beds, and that these are not considered housing.

When the article describes an alternative of providing the homeless "housing," what does this housing look like? What aspects of housing are provided that are not generally provided at homeless shelters? Is it privacy, security of belongings, a place to stay during the day, quietness during the night, or other factors that are most substantially different from what is currently available?

> Across the country, many laws are passed by red states that might not hold up if they are challenged in Supreme Court.

This is definitely not specific to red states.

> You suggestion kind of sounds like: Let's teach kids how to grow an apple tree by giving them apple juice.

This is a poor analogy because apples and apple juice don't involve social dynamics. I can easily see a man who is experienced having sex with women through prostitution being more confident flirting/being intimate with real-life women. And confidence is a large part of "creating that interest."

> Women have 2x the rates of depression as men. But is there any reason to think that 200 years ago it was even more so?

That's interesting. I would have thought men would have it more since it's an abnormality, and with only 1 X chromosome, men are much more frequently abnormal.

When I said "If the state of women's rights around the world returned to where it was 200 years ago," I meant if women who currently had normal human rights lost them. In that case we would see a major increase in depression among women, the point being that depression would be explained much more clearly by genetic factors, even though the genes didn't change; the interaction between the genes and the world changed.

> I think we overestimate the impact of external factors on our internal mental states.

We definitely do. And the external factors that affect our happiness the most are often the least controllable.

> Our knowledge of the genetics, however, is incomplete. Krystal noted that studies of twins suggest that genetics may account for 40% of the risk of depression. Yet the currently identified genes seem to explain only about 5%.

I see the value in analyzing genetics for depressive genes, but I also consider that how the genes interact with our environment that play a role. For example, if the state of women's rights around the world returned to where it was 200 years ago, it would likely appear a genetic cause of depression is related to having two X chromosomes. To wit - is the issue with the genes themselves, or is it that those with the genes are somehow repressed by the way society works?

A good day to be thankful for short sellers.

Edits should be made clear upon release of the audio recording. The investigation is either incompetent or corrupt if it is not being forthcoming about edits to information released to the public.

According to experts hired by NBC news, the audio between the pilots and ATC were edited: https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/missing-jet-re...

For whatever reason, this doesn't seem to be widely discussed.

Good leadership taking a stand against bad management.

Yeah, starting of a note about layoffs talking "reiterating" about the "most defensible business strategy" is extremely tone-deaf.

How do 52 heads of state and 600+ CEOs of the world's largest companies not have "any control or vision of what's going to happen?"

My guess is amongst the people who set up and used Amazon Smile, the vast majority maintained the belief that Amazon is closer to evil than it is to good.

Smarter for Amazon to pick and choose which charities to spend on so it can virtue signal to the more gullible.