dgzl

> Taxes are great when they are fair, well spent, and seriously monitored

Which rarely happens in my opinion.

My college town's (~60k people) bus system was free for everyone to use, paid for by an extra charge on the water bill. The biggest benefit of course is not having to pay, but a close second was the time savings from not having to fiddle with money. The system ran a lot smoother because of this.

I would say this extra tax is a good thing, and I'm not at all a fan of taxes.

I'm not following you... What did you believe, and what has it changed to?

I suppose if people suffer less and love more, they reproduce more. I believe the world can sustain many times more people than it currently does, but only if we spread out. Cities are not good places for people who can't sustain it.

I know many people who would rather live in a shipping container than where they're currently living.

I hate that mentality. It achieves nothing good in the long run.

California is also one of the most taxed and regulated states. Do you think that is a coincidence?

Land prices go up because that's what it's worth. If the government says "you can't do this profitable stuff on your land", then the land is less valuable.

Thanks for that, I didn't know this term. However I disagree with the idea that two wrongs make a right. Forcing the suffering around like that just creates more problems than it's worth.

Construction isn't easy anymore. we've taxed and regulated it into a luxury.

I'm not a landlord or homeowner, and 1 makes me cry Big Government.

What if something crazy happens to the economy, say the dollar gets devalued, and all you have is rental property for income? Realistically you would raise your rental price.... But wait, there's a cap, and you can't.

2) "legalizing backyard cottages" is actually against Big Government, and I'm with you there.

You're forgetting another option: deregulate and let the market compete.

Regulations and taxes drive developers away.

I fear Portland is close to some kind of serious breakdown, and I feel like they're not going to learn anything from it, only blame others who don't vote for hyper-progressive laws.

> I assume such a tax would replace the local state based sales taxes?

Probably not. Government's aren't keen on reducing tax.

I don't understand how that's possible. Housing is a good/service, how can that be decommodified?

I'm a renter in Oregon and I've been outspoken about this long before the laws were passed. From my experience, people who support heavy laws, regulations and taxes don't spend enough time considering potential side effects. They feel like with enough support, they can just force anything they want to happen, while completely disregarding the market.

I feel like an amount of the general public just wants Big Daddy government to come in and authoritatively force everyone into an unnatural framework, which is pure ignorance.

> "No one has ever looked back on their life and said 'I wish I spent less time with my family'".

Not everyone has a family worth being with.

All-day, but not necessarily all-night.

GDPR is hard and I don't blame a business from simply refusing to comply and narrowing their audience.

When I was in high school, I would play a game called "fugitive"[0] with 100+ people from nearby schools. Essentially, it's a game of chase through a few miles of town. Everyone starts at the same line but runners get a head start. Runners who are tagged become chasers who carpool with drivers. Runners use any means necessary to get away, including hiding and deceiving, trespassing across properties, jumping fences and scaling houses.... It was a frenzy and madness and probably didn't last an hour overall. Athletes win the race and everyone else has a brilliant hilarious experience.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_(game)

Today's kids are essentially experiments. Being connected to the modern internet from as early as age zero is going to have some very serious side effects, and I don't believe parents understand that. This is especially bad if the parents don't have the understanding or ability to keep the child's experienced age appropriate.

The amount of construction needed for that kind of project that would only benefit a small number of people... It's just absurd. Rural people would rather that money go into more important projects.

The idea is interesting but your "minimum speed of 120mph and modern car requirement" is not. Remember, this is rural America we're talking about, that is having trouble keeping hospitals running.

I agree with not giving a young person a phone, but I don't consider it easy. This life has all but demanded the smart phone be an essential part of success. A well off (not necessarily financially well off, rather good parent status) parent might be able to keep this away from a child, but I don't think the same is for most parents in America.

I don't agree that it's social death, because I've seen it managed fine. But I do think that rebellion is inspired from rules, especially over socially popular phenomenon.

How about softcore porn in the form of music videos? This is media kids are taking in every day.

I think young humans are not developed enough to understand that the media's high praise of corruptive behavior is not healthy. I think young people are growing up thinking all the outrageous and adult content on the media platforms is not just some outlier entertainment, but rather that's what their future is going to be.

And what about exposure from outside your control?

Edit: and what about for parents who don't have the resources or ability to manage that kind of control? My point is that it's not easy, not even in the slightest.

You think that is easy?

To be honest, I see quite a lot of inappropriate content on YouTube's tending section pretty often. This can't have a net zero effect on youth.