jadel

What the article largely says is that there isn't really a housing crisis if people make more money and pay more rent. Is it realistic to pay hundreds of dollars per month in rent when Microsoft pays hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in Seattle? Not from a market perspective. People paying what they can afford isn't really a housing crisis. That is essentially the market working, pricing valuable things highly. It might certainly be some other crisis however, like society favouring property over work.

But that has little to do with this. You are paying market rate in an area with a lot of high paying jobs where housing is expensive because it is valuable. Of course everyone would like to pay less, but that is a different problem. That is about opportunities, fairness or equality. It has little to do with housing as such, which is what the article is pointing out.

I don't see the argument. Bad effect from things that are relatively non-addictive (at least physically) suggest that things that are addictive needs to be even more controlled. If anything there is now a disparity between what science tells us about "junk food" and digital media, and what how we treat them. The idea that you can teach people faster than dangers can appear without boundaries doesn't seem to be supported these days.

How to define a culture is of course a much longer discussion, so I have to defer to my earlier comments. Is the "Smash Bros" or YouTube communities significant enough to be remembered as something special, or is it popular because it is popular?

My point with SoundCloud is that it is a mostly a commercial failure. If youth cultures today was more expressive it would be much more successful. So would make magazine or e-sport venues.

I don't deny that there are cultures on for example YouTube, more the idea that there is something more going on. That we don't understand "beauty blogging", but in the future it will lead to something exciting. No, (or at least mostly not) they will go on to become marketing managers at some company and/or continue to sell Chinese cosmetics. Cosmetics happened last century with people like Estée Lauder.

Asia is a bit of a different story, which I don't know enough about to really comment on. But in the West it is very much that young people have shitty deal and are making the best of it by doing things like playing video games and watching people they can identify with and are popular.

If you think about it a lot of the content is about fitting in, rather than standing out. Which would be the more traditional youth culture.

That isn't really how the Swedish tax system works. A lot of that is paying yourself in one form or another.

The problem in Sweden is that if you for example you get $500k from you parents, buy an apartment that appreciates, go study for five years, have a kid and take parental leave for another two years you pay maybe 10-20% tax overall (on the appreciation mostly) and nothing for health care or education for yourself or your kids, which might go to semi private school.

While the average person who don't have rich parents, or maybe kids, and are trying to work their way up are paying 40-50% or more on their income and not getting much in return. And on top of that are paying for some of the highest property values and general prices in Europe.

Stockholm built the most expensive hospital in the world, yet has one of the lowest tax rates in the country.

I don't mind paying taxes, but I want them to be put to good use and not be some sort of discount system for those who are already well off so they can take more vacations. (I do realize that their is a lot of history behind that, but it is now getting warped into some form of crony capitalism).

I have heard the argument before, that things were always bad, but that isn't the point. The difference isn't that things aren't better, but that they aren't getting better. The reason we remember hippies, punk rockers and skaters is because they ended up having an outsized impact in expanding cultural centres. You can trace back entire movements or industries to certain locations or events. But is anyone going to talk about the subprime mortgage crisis, some algorithm change or even "occupy" in the future? Is anyone going to say "I was there when people were in debt, couldn't afford to live in cities and were playing video games and watching YouTube"? I think it is doubtful. People can't even remember current wars. The cast of "Girls" isn't the cast of "Kids". But I guess I can't entire rule out iJustine becoming president one day.

Youth cultures that become catalysts are expressive. They are pushing what you can do. Whether that is making music, doing drugs, skateboarding or being gay. Because when you actively escape the norm you receive ownership of some new part of society that wasn't there before.

However, most modern youth cultures are defined largely by their lack of culture. They are instead about passively escaping society. The top comment on the first video in the article is literally literally "I have no friends and I’m sitting alone in my room laughing hysterically at this video". There is increasingly nothing to understand. It is an entire generation being marginalized. But you can of course argue that many people always were.

Addition: Another example would be the relative failure of things that would be expressive like the "maker movement", platforms like SoundCloud and E-sports.

Honestly I don't think there is much to be seen. Young people are playing the hand they have been dealt, it just isn't a very good one.

Yeah, I must say that I have never really understood that idea. In times of increased productivity it seem like you would want to tax the machines, the markets and the networks. Now it is people that are paying for housing, education and internet connections while finance, insurance and tech companies makes profits. Putting a huge burden on the one thing that doesn't scale, the input. Rather than what does, the output.

Before the new VAT rules Amazon had a deal over VAT with Luxembourg, similar to the deal with Ireland on income tax.

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-3701_en.htm

Maybe at one point. Today it is all borrowed against the future in the form of private debt, a propped up property market, sold off companies, and tax breaks. Of course people accepts taxes when it is primary labour that is highly taxed and they made hundreds of thousands in the property market so they don't feel like they need to work much any more. It is very unlikely that people would accept taxes to properly fund infrastructure, pensions, the military and whatever else these days.

Edit: Maybe this is uncomfortable for people but it is true. If people are so comfortable paying taxes how come the social democrats are the weakest in decades? How come there is no wealth tax, no inheritance tax, no gift tax, no property tax, deduction for debt, low corporate tax, special tax deals for family businesses, some of the highest privates debt in Europe, as well as some of the highest wealth inequality, most rapid privatization and the highest retirement age? The amount of tax money spent on private sector health care has doubled in 10 years. There is a housing shortage pretty much everywhere, for employees and students alike. The Stockholm subway is run by the Chinese. Volvo is Chinese. So is what is left of SAAB, essentially all Swedish cinemas, mobile operator 3 and partly Spotify, the other Volvo, the Stockholm airport train etc. There isn't going to be any Swedish companies left in 30 years. The steel and paper mills, spirits and other traditional companies are increasingly owned by Finnish companies. Oh, and the right wing populist party with an agenda based on discontent are now the second largest in the polls. Soon enough they will gut public service media like in Denmark.

These are not the traits of a well funded state prepared for the future. People just aren't paying attention.