I thought we all knew he always says whatever he thinks he could benefit from at any give time, no matter if he believes it or not. No matter if it’s the exact opposite of what he said two seconds ago.
Covid was going to miraculously disappear like a miracle in 2020, we were gonna build a wall that Mexico would pay for (I’m ok w that one not panning out tho), very nice people on both sides, Antifa stormed the Capitol on 1/6, he can direct hurricanes to various states with a sharpie, so on and so forth.
Honestly, there is no point in paying attention to anything Trump says. Nothing has any relation to reality or the truth. You can only come away from that experience more ignorant than you went in.
Between Trump avoiding the debate and DeSantis avoiding even been seen with Biden after a disaster, the Republicans are really nailing the point home that they are absolute wusses. Political cowards.
Yeah, Republicans turned on Christie for acting like a normal human being instead of a political hack.
So DeSantis, in his pathetic and desperate quest for political power, would much rather run away from anything that has even the slightest possibility of making him look as inferior as he actually is. In other words, he's a cowardly political hack who spends every waking minute of his time calculating his next move in terms of optics, and not in terms of what is right, or true, or good for the people of his state, etc.
How should this have been handles instead? If she really really doesn’t want to comply, You write down her license place, and you let her go.
That simple.
You have her face on video, you have the license plate, it’s trivial to then go visit her at her home and have a talk. Hell, follow her if you have to, but not in a high speed chase. Just keep your distance, let her go where she wants to go until she’s done.
Worst case scenario, you just let her go.
This extreme focus on that every petty little thing MUST be stopped, every small time offender MUST comply only ends in this. Suffering.
Instead focus on fixing poverty and you know, making sure that pregnant women have all they need so that they don’t need to steal? That is why we banned abortion, no? Because we care about babies?
Oh yeah that’s right. We care about unborn fetuses, but born babies can get fucked.
Let this woman have an abortion if she can’t afford a baby. Now she doesn’t need to shoplift, at least not for the baby
Lift people out of poverty. Push people to be better educated. THOSE are things that will actually lower crime rates but then it means they ml o longer are the common pulp that can stand on
That is why we banned abortion, no? Because we care about babies?
No, we banned abortion to keep controlling women and make sure they keep their head low and their financial situation lower. And it works so well that they have to shoplift, in which case we can justify killing them. Mission accomplished!
I’m guessing the time and ammo it took to kill her amounts to more dollars lost than she could ever shoplift for. Did the store get their money back? No? Then what the fuck was the point? Who was actually helped that day?
The point of having police is to make society livable. This seems to be the opposite of that.
Regardless, her trying to run one of the cops down is only going to end 1 way.
Exactly. I get the hate on police, and frankly they did initiate the situation here and should have handled things better, but ultimately if you intentionally drive a vehicle into someone responding with a gun is warranted.
The thing is she didn’t floor it. Didnt even pull away quickly. He could have stepped out of the way… he in fact did, right after he pulled the trigger and shot her. He literally stood in front of the car, pulled his gun and basically said “move the car and you die”. He put himself in harms way, pulled his gun and escalated the situation.
This will in all likelihood be deemed a justified shooting by the police and court, but with a little compassion from the officer it could have ended without this lady being dead. Bet he doesn’t even care.
Yeah I was thinking the same, she moved very cautiously forwards, he then basically climbed onto the hood and shot her. She was being so careful he had the perfect shot lined up.
This will in all likelihood be deemed a justified shooting by the police and court,
Almost certainly - but I would still say this is more or less rightly so. Maybe they can successfully argue that she wasn’t trying to kill him, she was trying to drive around him, based on evidence from the video. Normally a court would give the benefit of the doubt to the victim of having a car driven towards them, but if that doubt can be proven with video then that’s another matter.
but with a little compassion from the officer it could have ended without this lady being dead. Bet he doesn’t even care.
He definitely wanted to shoot from the start. He initiated that whole situation to give himself justification to draw, he created the opportunity to kill her. A lack of compassion is an understatement.
The phrase “the police should have handled it better but…” should just be outlawed. I guess it does let everyone know to never have a conversation with whoever says it though, so I guess there’s that.
I didn’t call them an asshole, I said they were behaving like one. I assume they’re perfectly capable of not acting that way and are just taking an opportunity where they feel they can get away with it.
The insult was in implying that what I say has no value simply because I’m pointing out the police aren’t the only ones who did things wrong here; rather than engaging and arguing ideas they made an ad hominem attack. Saying that in reply to me but directed at everyone else is incredibly rude.
From what I could see, the gun was out first. Most people go their whole lives without having a gun pointed at them. How you will respond is very unpredictable. Panic sets in - it doesn’t seem real. Cops are (or at least should be) trained on how to handle life or death situations- ordinary people are not.
The gun was drawn when she started turning the wheel to drive around the officer stood in front. You can hear it coming out of its holster, and you don’t see it before then.
However, I’m not condoning the officer’s behaviour here. They created the situation, they should have known better, both reasonably and from their training. What they did was essentially a form of entrapment.
All I’m saying is that she made a mistake herself also by driving the car towards him, and, regardless of whether it’s a police officer or a regular human being, responding with a gun is most likely going to be justified.
This 21 Year old has a 6 and 3 year old sons. I’ll let you do the math on that. But it adds up to before some states had bans.
First of all, red states made it next to impossible to get abortions even when it was legal. Also, they cost money. Contrary to apparent popular belief, George Soros or the DNC don’t just appear to fund every abortion. Or, sometimes people are Catholic, which is fucking stupid, but maybe there’s some family shit you don’t know about. Especially for a minor trying to get an abortion. Again, contrary to popular belief, they weren’t just being handed out for free on every corner to every 16 year old who wanted one. There were still a million obstacles long before the Dobbs decision.
Second, “I’ll let you do the math” is a judgey, self-righteous, and gross statement.
It’s indeed not the job for the police to solve poverty and I’m sure this woman has her problems.
None of that excuses what happened. They should never have pulled their guns. That police officer should not have been standing in front of the car. The woman tried to run away, nit murder a cop. The officer was standing in the most dangerous nokace he could, I’m arguing that that was in purpose. “I’ll stand where if you make a move you might kill me, giving me reason to shoot you”
Even that car not having license plates excuses anything. Then follow her, distantly. She’ll stop somewhere, pick her up there.
Hell, even letting her go is preferable to this outcome. It doesn’t matter that his woman had kids since she was 15, it’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter that she is poor, uneducated, it’s all irrelevant.
The point is that police in the US is horribly educated, and has a terrible culture. They need to be educated for years, not 6 months. They need to get a culture of “we are to protect and serve” instead of “we are Rambo Cowboy”. They need to learn to calm and deescalate every situation they arrive in, not always make shit worse
I already said that they shouldn’t have drawn weapons didn’t I?
Your story about how they should follow her from a distant and stop her once she gets out is just fantasy. That’s also not where the fault lies.
Her trying to run one over is vehicular assault at best. Yes. The police stood there on purpose. To make sure she didn’t take off. That’s fine. Dare I say common procedure in multiple countries, not just the US.
Pretty sure it’s been stated everywhere that their education and work culture is a big problem. I agree. The police conduct that lead up to the shooting was poor. I agree.
The moment she tries to run one over. It was only going to end 1 way.
I’m agreeing with you in my first comment so I’m not sure what you’re trying to argue.
Your story about how they should follow her from a distant and stop her once she gets out is just fantasy.
It’s reality in countries with police officers who had an actual education and training though. Let the “criminals” go for now, pick them up later. In this case, it would have saved two lives.
Yes, when it’s deemed that approaching the criminal in public poses an imminent danger to the public.
Or if they have reason to believe that the Alleged shoplifting is organized, They might hold of to later follow them home and conduct a search of the home for evidence of more stolen items.
Are suggesting she’s either a danger to the public or part of organized shoplifting?
Or when approaching a SUSPECT (she wasn’t convicted of anything) causes danger to the suspect itself, for example.
Let’s say that she is mentally ill, just to make the point. Are we going to do the same? Stand in front of the car, she gets a panic attack and just drives without thinking because of me tal illness. Are we going to shoot her too?
Oh wait, that is what is happening all the time in the USA where innocent civilians with mental illnesses are murdered by police because police in the US isn’t trained to do their job right. This is actual realiti there.
Again, had these police officers been trained properly, she (and her unborn baby) would still be alive today.
Okay, question: are you okay with police shooting the mentally ill when they’re having some episode? That, instead of controlling the situation and making sure that everyone gets out safely?
And if you’re not, then why are you okay with them shooting a pregnant woman that likely got scared after they drew their weapons on her?
Did I not explicitly say, multiple times. They shouldn’t have had weapons drawn?
What you’re being caught up on. Is her choosing to run an officer down and then be like woah… they shot for that?
This woman was for all we know. Sane. She would have known that if you try to run over a cop. They’re going to shoot you. Even if everything that lead up to that was the police mistake. She sealed her fate on her own with her last action. The police was wrong for handling the situation poorly. She was wrong for trying to run them over.
Let me put it this way for you. Think this sums up my feelings towards the situation:
I know that a semi-truck is supposed to, by law. Stop for me at a pedestrian crossing without lights. I have the right of way. That doesn’t mean I’m just gonna go for it without looking. Because I don’t want to die.
Is it the trucks fault for plowing through a pedestrian crossing and not seeing me? Yes.
Could I have also done something to prevent the situation? Yes.
I would say it’s mostly my fault for not looking before crossing. Because I’m a fully functioning adult that knows i should look before crossing. I’m the one getting hurt by my own action.
If I’m in a car and there is a guy standing with a gun drawn and pointed at me… I might get scared and flee. That is not crazy, that is human behaviour.
If a police officer is stupid enough to stand in front of a car it kinda shoes his education and training level. Non existent. That is the entire problem.
Blame this woman all you want. I don’t know of she stole from the store or not but it’s irrelevant. She was shot because she was suspected of shoplifting. The woman and these police officers made all this happen together. The only difference is that the police officers are supposed to know better, they are supposed to know how to do their job, how to deescalate and they didn’t.
The second they drew their guns they were wrong, they were escalating the situation. They could kmhave kept their guns holstered as they were in no danger. The girl got scared and wanted to run off. LET HER. you can catch her later, it’s not as if she was a criminal mastermind. She did not deserve to die because of this
I really don’t have anything more to add. You can stop strawmanning this into oblivion with statements I’ve already said I agree with.
I never said she deserved to die. I never said they were right to draw weapons. So I’m not sure why you keep pushing those points. For the 8:th time now. I agree.
I blame the cops for escalating the situation. I blame the woman for her last action of trying to run them over.
Two wrongs does not make a right.
If you see it differently that’s ok. But don’t go putting words into my mouth I never once said or hinted at.
I’m not sure what words I was putting in your mouth but from what you’re saying er pretty much agree.
The woman may be a criminal (or not) and yeah, she should not have tried to escape though maybe she panicked with the guns, who knows. The police officers are very much in the wrong, they should not have been standing in front of the car, they should not have drawn their guns, they should have deescalated the situation.
Blocking the way of escape is common practise pretty much everywhere. Even here where I live, where police-school lasts for 2.5 years, rather than 6 months.
Oh I believe you that this is done everywhere in the US, and it shows.what other civilized country has so many cases of police shooting and killing people for tiny offenses?
It’s again an extreme lack of training. You can just let them go and resolve the situation later, or do a list of other things than deciding to stand in front of the car and then claim your life was in danger because you were standing in front of the car…
This shit hardly ever happens in other countries, only in the US is this a multiple per day occurrence. Doesn’t that make you think that US police officers should receive better training?
Mind you, the 6 months is in a good state, there are many way worse. And then there is the problem that many police officers get trained with pseudo science and outright bullshit. So if these police officers magically get 2.5 years of education, good on them. Of they stand in front of cars to block them, then I can already tell you want kind of education they get.
Oh I believe you that this is done everywhere in the US
Believe it or not. But the US is not the entire world. I’m not talking just the US when I say everywhere.
This shit hardly ever happens in other countries
As in police standing in front of cars? Happens in tons of countries.
As in frequency police shootings? We’ve already mentioned and talked about the lack of training. Like so many times. Why are you continuing to argue and debate about stuff we already agree upon?
The video seems to suggest she tried to get away, not commit a homicide. Police could have easily let her go. They have a license place, they have a face, they can go pick her up any time later.
This was a SUSPECTED shoplifting. The problem here is that in the USA police have no idea about de-escalation. They always seem to make every situation they get in to worse.
Police needs to arrive into a situation and make it calmer, better. To protect and serve remember? You can’t protect anyone if you just get in waving guns every single time.
This is about shoplifters. You stop them. They don’t let you? Then don’t start shooting, there are other solutions. I recall a few years ago there was a similar situation where US police officers tried shooting a suspected shop lifter in a parking lot ending up shooting and killing a little girl standing being the suspect.
Actions like these are madness and show that police officers in the USA are wholly unprepared to do their jobs. This is not surprising if you realize they received a fraction of the education that police officers get in (for example) Europe. There they do teach de-escalation and it works, people don’t get shot for stealing a bread.
Oh im sorry did the police not wait out for the right time for an arrest? That is so rude. Yeah better let the future officer do it that is the best solution. How bout she get out of the fucking car? she could have done something even more stupid and harm someone else if they let her go.
Even if she was a shoplifter, killing her is not an appropriate response. But we don’t know if she was a shoplifter, do we? We only know a store employee said she was, is that employee infallible?
No matter if she was an angel incarnate i fully expect to get shot at when i pull this sort of nonsense in presence of police and i dont even live in a country where anybody can be armed to the brim. I wish more people would think this way too.
On the other hand, there are plenty of examples where the police show lack of training, which is an issue, but this isnt one of them.
Yeah, that kind of mind set is what the typical US police officer seems to have. And it gets people killed over and over for petty offences, if any.
This woman gets scared, she becomes unpredictable. “Well then, let’s stand in front of the car so that she can’t leave without trying to run me over! That is a great reason for me to murder her!”
Or you can just let her go. It’s the same reason why in other countries you typically don’t see the high speed chases that you see on the US. You start chasing somebody, they start taking risks that put everyone at risk. You just let them go and catch them later when things have calmed down.
It’s the same reason behind why do many mentally ill people are murdered by police officers in the US because they don’t know how to deescalate.
This in turn is all a consequence of the lack of training that US police officers have. They barely train with their gun and that is most of the Training they get.
They gotta stop you somehow. The cops are supposed to bring the situation under control. Because whoelse will? The more bullshit you pull, the easier it is for the cops to run out of options.
In this case it killed a pregnant woman.
She is primarily responsible for her own death and the death of her baby.
No they don’t. Not at all costs. If you’re an active terrorist shooting around then sure, stop at all cost, even risking the lives of innocent civilians.
But this is a barely suspect of shoplifting. Death should never occur trying to stop a person like that. Worst case, you let her go. Yes. You let her go, as it’s not worth it.
This reminds me of that time where us police started shooting in a busy street, managed to miss all the bad guys but hit various innocent civilians.
You don’t start shooting unless there is no other option and for too many US police officers, shooting is the first option, like here.
The police officers could both have been standing next to the car, out of harms way. Had the woman left, then they could have followed her, at distance or close by if safely possible. Nobody had to die.
The police officer standing in front of the car cannot say that she endangered him, as he endangered himself by deciding to stand in front of the car.
Somehow the entire basic point is being missed that there CANNOT be a reason that a simple shoplifting (if that happened at all) leads to a person being shot dead. Police is responsible for safety of all and they should have deescalated the situation but instead they escalated it at every turn. Again this shows that US police officers have a huge lack of training.
Depending on poverty levels, she actually might have to. Not saying shoplifting is fine, but it might help to keep in mind that if people cat fed their children the legal way that they will move to crime to do so. Whether they caused their own situation (at least in part) or not doesn’t matter in that equation.
Also, again, you don’t murder somebody (actually, somebodies, according to their own laws as she was pregnant) for stealing a few items. There are better ways of handling that.
Correct me if I am wrong but didn’t the same people having a whinge over this make the point about how businesses have the right to choose who they serve? I believe this was a few years ago when a different bakery refused to serve gay people.
So it wasn’t about the rights of business to be run without government interference afterall.
A few years ago conservatives got their back up because a bakery refused to serve gay people and reasonable people found that to be wrong.
Conservatives argued that a business has the right to choose who they serve without government interference. And this was held up in court.
Therefore those same people complaining about another bakery not serving the police is the same thing. But now the shoe is on the other foot and they are crying foul.
My post was meant to point out yet another example of hypocrisy from conservatives.
The point they made enhances yours. Yes it is hypocritical, but is arguably worse on the conservatives’ part since sexual orientation is something you’re born with.
Thanks for explaining - yes I misunderstood and thought you were saying that those who were mad a bakery refused to serve gay people shouldn’t try to ban anyone else from their own stores. Sorry about that and thanks for explaining!
I’m sure there is a message in there somewhere. I wouldn’t know because I’m just a dumb Libtard. But I’m sure those conservative geniuses out there could figure it out.
The ridiculous notion is that such things are entertained for anyone by our courts, but often are for “important” (possessing capital means) people.
Sure you’re implicated in serious crimes, but the justice system will take your affluent schedule into consideration!
Watch a street dealer, aka a low income criminal ask to have their trial delayed by 3 years through a public defender and judge all but dictating they take a plea “deal” that only makes the court’s life easier.
We crow about being a “developed, first world, wealthy nation” but just like the utter ruins of our K-12 system and our collapsing infrastructure, our pay to play justice system makes us anything but.
Law applied unequally means those in privilege will flaunt it and those still wanting, correctly, have no respect for it.
Fuck the law. Fuck the judges. Fuck the lawyers. Fuck the police. Might equals right in America. The winners will, and currently are, rewriting the histories to absolve them and their ancestors any wrongdoing.
Stop acting like there’s some kind of decorum to uphold. If only one side is upholding it, news flash, it doesn’t exist. You’re just allowing yourself to be outmaneuvered. While any of y’all are up there on the high road, look down and witness the cruelty you arent protecting against. Keep clutching them pearls, cuz every minute more of us are being murdered by those sworn to protect and serve, or medicines that demand the culmination of your entire life’s work. The law ≠ morality. This immoral, institutionalized, embodiment of corruption we’re in can be summed up with this fact. Footage of whatever crime you are accused of, from police cams, citizens dash cams, private business security cams, the state will leverage it’s power to use against you - but that power will actively be used against you if it exonerates you
So what I’m saying, is if your toes are dipped into the criminal courts, there is absolutely zero incentive to not go full cartel. Just wear a suit, sponsor a little league team, donate to both parties, the mayor and the police union and remember to let your obstacles well enough for an open casket, have some class after all, and you’ll never see the inside of a cell.
Under a government that imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison - Thoreau
I’m a lawyer and I enjoy getting fucked. I also enjoy fucking. And conserving the fuck out of nature so that it exists in the future—so much so I do it for a living.
“Trump has already lashed out at the special counsel … for asking for a trial date that would likely overlap with the Iowa caucuses” Do you mean you’d have to rearrange your schedule to accommodate a criminal trial due to your own actions?!? shockedpikatchu.jpg
It’s disgusting that homosexuality is seen as such an abhorrent thing in this day and age. Are all humans not capable of love? If the answer is a resounding yes, then why are we stopping consenting adults from expressing this? Because of some archaic scripture from thousands of years ago? Excuse my French here, Lebanon, but kindly get to fuck.
This is exactly why the separation of church and state is supposed to exist in democracies. The zealots will continue to take away your rights until morale improves.
I'll just mention that in the middle east the vast majority of people don't support LGBT rights. Bringing up the separation of church and state makes no sense in this context.
They don’t support those rights cause they have been brainwashed by their religion. Maybe if religion was removed from government, that wouldn’t be the case, at least not to this extent.
I am such a mental case that I worked for a company that designs and sells machines to make computer chips. I speak 3 languages, and when I got my superior driverlicense I could effortless use manual transmission. But I am still a mental case according to a “smart” American
As a gay man, these are my thoughts every single day. Do I not deserve love? Is some old book really more important than what’s happening now? I just don’t get it.
It’s not about the book, it’s not even about sexuality. Yes these are the justifications they use, but at the core it’s all about finding someone they can hurt, and they found you. The cruelty is the point.
This seems a bit oversimplified ? I am no scholar, but as far as I can tell it’s phobias all the way down : these islamic lawmakers (certainly not using the term muslim here as I reserve it to refer to decent religious people) don’t know shit about homosexuality, and as we know ignorance holds the door open for bigotry and hate. This quickly becomes self-perpetuating as gay folks have no way of changing that status quo without risking their lives, and become invisible in these societies. I would say it’s about difference, and difference in sexuality certainly
Not with me, they didn’t. Being able to help out a few friends was the last thing keeping me on Netflix, so with the account sharing restrictions I cancelled, bought a lifetime Plex pass (which was more just to show my support for them not being a shitty company), and now I just use my PC as a media server and pirate all my shit. And I can still share it all with friends!
We cancelled Netflix about a year ago for good - which made me setup stuff like Sonarr. Without Netflix being dicks I wouldn’t have proper pirating infrastructure…
While I still pay for Disney+ we’re also throwing everything we care about into sonarr - so if they do something stupid I’ll just cancel and still have everything I want.
My understanding is that rent control backfired pretty spectacularly in the long term.
The better plan here would be to stop companies from buying residential properties, to incentivized the conversion of commercial properties into apartments, to penalize banks and individuals who are sitting on unused residential properties.
Oh, and wipe out all student loan debt so that younger generations have a prayer of buying a house someday.
Who told you rent control backfired? Cause that's a lie. It was just never adopted as widely as it should have been, and rich owners always have the ear of lawmakers ... the same can't be said of poor/working poor people.
Rent control works just fine in a more socialist model, especially when the government is a prime builder of housing without seeking profit, as almost every European country was during the 50s-70s. It’s only when government gets out of house building and everything gets privatisated and for-profit that rent control fails.
Semi. It’s got bits and pieces of all systems, which is a hint that the “-ism” powering any country’s economy doesn’t have as big an impact as its leaders.
Unfortunately, capitalism tends to reward corruption, it’s much easier and profitable to be corrupt than to do the right thing™.
Libraries are socialist. Otherwise every person in a fully capitalist system would be expected to buy their personal copy of a book.
And you’re right - there are scales with capitalism and socialism weighing against each other in basically every economy. Finland, Norway, France are examples where it’s tipped a bit more in favour of the “socialism” side. But the US has plenty of elements of socialism, from housing coops in the Bronx, to utility coops in the midwest (that helped pave the way for the electrification of rural America), to credit unions, to welfare policies, to the Alaska social wealth fund, and I could keep going.
Finland and Norway have among the highest percentage of private investment in the world, to the extent that investment is the leading economic driver in Nordic countries.
It truly depends on the definition of socialism. Is it socialist anytime a service is provided by the govt? Or solely when public policy limits the abilities of capital?
You and I disagree, and that’s ok cuz I don’t care.
The US has lots of socialized losses but privatized profits. To call it a capitalist economy is a gross oversimplification which glosses over the fact that no corporation is actually competing in a free market at this point.
I unfortunately can’t read that article as it’s paywalled, but looking at the link, it’s an Opinion piece, so not factual reporting. It’s also from Bloomberg, one of the most pro-capitalist publications out there, second only to The Economist in its championing of all things pro globalist and pro capitalist.
The main stream media which is all very pro capitalist (as they’re all owned by billionaire oligarchs) has been shitting on rent control for decades.
Rent didn’t shoot up, how could it, the whole point of the law was it was frozen.
I think you’re missing the forest for the trees in this entire conversation: rent has been skyrocketing everywhere, in every G8 country, for the last 20 years. Especially in places like London, NYC, LA, Seattle, Paris, Toronto, Bay Area, etc. Hell, even in Salt Lake City where I used to live my rent went from £1816/mon to £2600/mon for the same flat, in just 2 years. And none of those cities have classic rent control (NYC has a few places which have it, but overall it doesn’t). So clearly with a free market, pure capitalist approach, rents have only been skyrocketing. Same thing for housing to buy, have you tried buying a house lately?
So to claim that rent control or rent freezes lead to higher rentals or less supply is wrong, because rents are going up in a free market too, and supply is already at an all time low (hence the prices shooting up).
So you’re fucked in either situation. The real problem is there just isn’t enough supply of shelter for people, and that’s because if you leave it to the free market, there’s no incentive to build affordable housing with no profit. Hence, because shelter is something required by citizens, government should be building it even at a huge loss. Just like government provides fire brigade and military at a financial loss, because people need these things. You don’t leave essential services to the private market because it may not be profitable to do them, for example, rural communities have shite internet, why? because it’s not profitable to dig and lay fibre optic cable into some rural hinterland for just a few hundred customers. So in Norway, the government steps in lays that fiber optic at a financial loss because it wants its citizens to have a better life. Same for housing. If the private sector isn’t doing it, the government should be. Just like in the 60s.
Rent goes up because we have insufficient housing construction, and we have insufficient going construction becuause zoning laws prevent housing construction. Literally none of the places you bring up have anything approaching a free market wrt housing construction.
I am aware that the government can encourage building and it should do so. Vote locally to repeal zoning laws.
If government says the private sector cannot do something, then yeah you’ll see few or no businesses doing that thing.
Zoning is only a small part of the problem. Even if you zoned a bunch of new land today, if you let the private, free market have its course, then what do you think will be built on that land? Highly unaffordable luxury flats/houses, because that is what leads to the highest profit margins for the private sectors builders. And those flats will be bought up by investors or wealthy individuals to create more unaffordable rent.
That’s the core issue, individual private sector interests are not aligned to be altruistic interests for the good of society. They want to maximise profit, nothing more. Hence, you need someone willing to build houses and sell them at a loss, so average people can afford housing again. Only the government can sell for a loss and remain in business.
Ergo, you can zone all the land you want, but if you only let private sector builders have it, then you’ll just get more and more unaffordable properties built, chasing rich foreign investors, tech millionaires, or pension funds.
This is the core issue with Thatcherism/deregulation/privatisation. An individual company’s profit margins don’t always align with the good of society, but society needs essential services (water, sewage, electricity, food, housing, defense). These things need to be provided to all citizens, urban and rural, but doing so doesn’t always guarantee a profit, so you can’t just leave it to the private sector only.
You’re so close! Once you figure out those luxury flats will go for quite a lot, then free up downchannel housing you’ll understand how this all actually shakes out when people can build.
But that’s not what actually happens!! It’s like the Laffer Curve, we don’t actually see any of these benefits of letting the free market try to create all these supposed benefits and efficiencies. The textbooks say they should happen but in practice they never do. Even when the UK government releases state owned brownfield land, developers build overpriced flats no one in the local area can actually afford. So it doesn’t actually create any net new living space because 1) the local populace can’t afford it, 2) it gets bought by investors.
How does having investors scoop up luxury flats release downchannel housing at all? I have never seen that happen. Even in places where land is cheap and zoned for residential, like in areas of Utah, they never actually build affordable housing on it. People end up locked into renting.
It’s not a metaphor, it’s as you say, an economic theory for the optimal rate of taxation, which exists somewhere between 0% and 100%. However, in the USA it has been put into practice over the past 30 years, where taxes on the extremely wealthy have fallen drastically over that time, with the thinking being that this would raise government revenue and also all that trickle down hogwash. Only it hasn’t, and it has only served to weaken revenues at the local community and state level, and caused wealth inequality worse than the gilded age.
In terms of housing, you are correct in principle, if the supply of housing was to drastically increase such that it outpaced demand, then sure, prices would fall. But this is a specious argument for a number of reasons. First, even if zoning was abolished tomorrow, it’s impossible to actually build new housing in most of the world’s most expensive cities, such as NYC, London, and LA, because there’s simply no space to build anywhere, except on the extreme periphery. London still has some brownfield land, but LA is boxed in by mountains, and Manhattan literally has no more space because it’s an island. So where do you actually build? Vertically, okay, but then you have destroy existing structures.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, even if you allowed easy zoning, and cleared out lots for mega towers, who is going to actually build so much supply so as to flood the market in order to crater prices and make housing affordable? That’s the dumbest thing ever, no builder wants to see prices come down, that would be like DeBeers flooding the market with diamonds, massively increasing supply and dropping the price, and killing their own profits/margins. Builders want high prices, not low, they have no incentive go on a building boom like in 2007 such that prices drop.
So you’re left with my original argument: you can’t leave housing solely to the for-profit, private sector. They have no incentive to build affordable housing, or flood the market with over supply in order to drop prices.
Yeah but by whom? What’s the incentive for private sector builders to do that at scale if it means lower prices and lower margins by dramatically increasing supply?
Why do you think this will significantly impact margins? If a builder builds a house for $300k right now, the cost of the lot is eating a shitload of that $300k. If my home doubles in value (which it has), the land itself is more valuable.
By the same token, if I build a 4 story apartment building on my same lot, I make significantly more money over time than I would selling it once to a homeowner.
Your own answer from earlier said so: increase supply massively whilst demand stays constant, means prices come down. Fair enough.
Well, if prices come down, margins by definition decrease, because building materials and labour aren’t decreasing too.
Ergo, even if zoning restrictions were relaxed massively, and permits handed out quickly and easily, there’s no incentive to flood the market like in 2007. This is especially true of big high rise, high density properties, as there usually are only a few companies who can build such buildings (in central London there’s like 4), so it makes collusion to keep supply low much easier. Sort of like how OPEC works.
This is not how the housing bubble popped. It was demand-side, due to (absurdly) loose credit. Home prices were still rising dramatically in 07 - supply was not keeping up with demand.
Why is it not accurate? House prices come down but cost of materials and labour stay constant or go up, what am I missing?
Also, I feel like we have gotten so far off track so as to forget what exactly we are arguing about.
The original discussion was how to fix the housing market so as to create way more affordable housing. My original argument was the government has to do that, by building houses at a loss, which only the government can do.
Your argument seems to have originally been that the true problem is the zoning and government red tape, but I feel like we have both come to the conclusion that neither of those is true. Firstly, even if zoning isn’t a problem, in places like LA and NYC there’s no physical space left to build, except vertically. In London, the only new land to build is way outside Zone 5. Furthermore, what incentive is there for private sector builders to flood the market with new supply, either horizontally or vertically? No industry likes it when the price of their product goes down, not a single one, and no industry is going to help that happen.
Finally, building vertically requires way bigger companies to get involved, meaning there are fewer of them, meaning it’s easier for them to collude to keep prices high. Building a ranch house out in Wyoming can be done by some local two-bit builder, but a skyscraper in Manhattan would need to be some big multinational. Ergo, even if the only solution is Shanghai style vertical flats, the prices are even more suspectible to collusion by the few big companies able and willing to build them.
Or, like I said, bypass all this bollocks and have the government build loads of houses and sell them at a loss, flood the supply and bring prices down for the altruistic, non-profit motive of getting more people into housing. Done and done.
Materials and labor are relatively static compared to home costs. A 10% rise in housing costs was like another 15-20 grand in most cases, before housing costs exploded, factoring in inflation.
Compare that to the doubling (or more - my home is over 250% of what I paid) of home prices (tied to lot value) and the difference is stark.
Even assuming a dramatic increase in parts/labor of like 50% of those costs and you’re barely hitting on the final value, all things considered.
Space is the problem and building vertically (even just 2-4 stories) is the answer.
If it helps, consider that parts and labor are generally 30-50% of home costs (assuming “normal” values) and even a doubling of that cost is less than the growth of home prices.
By far, the biggest cost increase has been lot value.
Depends on your definition of “success.” Countries such as Holland, France, Canada, Germany, and China all have caps on the amount by which a landlord can increase rent in any given year, usually by law it’s less than 5%, or indexed to inflation (but with 5% as the max). These laws are incredibly popular with renters and have been around for decades.
Berlin implemented a hard rent freeze in 2020 which was extremely popular with renters, but not with landlords, naturally.
Putting all your faith in economists whose sole purpose is to back the current capitalist shitshow that rapes the land and kills the poor is a strange take.
The author of that article is Megan McArdle. A quick look at her other articles:
An article that attempts to shift blame away from media execs and onto consumers, in response to the writers/actors’ protests
"Higher minimum wages may increase homelessness" (literal article title)
Says we shouldn’t expect to keep taxing wealthy people more
Wants to reduce medicaid but conveniently doesn’t mention the amount of death poor people will experience as a result of that, using the same austerity justifications we’ve heard in Europe already (that turned out to be bullshit)
There’s also an underlying layer to this problem with a specific type of home owner: the foreign investor. These individuals use American properties to hide their wealth from their home countries. Tax evasion, high ROI, and increased scarcity in every purchase. Homes often go months and years without occupancy, sometimes with minimal furnishings so as not to appear vacant.
I’m not saying foreigners shouldn’t buy homes in America. However, if they do buy a home they should be required to occupy each individual property for a minimum of 6-9 months every year. Otherwise, a heavy tax that exceeds the property’s/ies annual appreciation to encourage occupancy or selling would be ideal.
So they’re buying a new house every few years and selling the old one? If they have only one house at a time, I don’t really care much. The issue is when billion dollar corporations buy up single family homes to rent out, not an individual buying a house to live in and sell it in a few years
True I guess I was reading more into the original comment on taxing more than appreciation and such. I know there are tax benefits to primary residence already, which maybe covers their original idea, but I figured it would be even higher taxes for foreigners for non-primary residence or something was what they were suggesting.
Georgia had this problem decades ago and fixed it by lowering adverse possession requirements down to 13 months of occupation. It’s back to over a decade now but I liked that approach.
I’m not really worried about commercial landlords. Most of them are okay. A few are great, a few are slumlords.
What I’d really like to see is more and denser housing being built, period. And investment in infrastructure like public transit so that places are more accessible, more livable.
My understanding is that rent control backfired pretty spectacularly in the long term.
There are critiques against rent control that have persisted for decades that are now seeing a growing body of counter-evidence that it maybe isn’t that bad after all. Hence the resurgence of rent control being suggested as a policy tool. It makes sense that the myth that rent control is bad has persisted for so long - high earning economists (yes, they’re very high earners) who are thus more likely to own rental units have an incentive to publish research showing that policies that harm their rental income are bad, and have less incentive to publish research that shows policies like these benefit the renter over the landlord.
Here’s a great article by J. W. Mason, who has a PhD in economics, who goes over more recent research around rent control. He shows that it’s far more nuanced and less clearly “bad” than right wing economists have been trying to push us to believe.
This better matches my understanding than OP’s take. It’s not necessarily that certain folks were being disingenuous (though of course with financial matters that’s also common), but more so that rent control is designed to help people closer to the bottom of the financial ladder, and those people are also disenfranchised in other ways, including their results bring unreported or thrown under the rug.
The difference now is that the housing system is so screwed and skewed overall, rent control would likely benefit far more folks than those at the absolute bottom of the financial ladder – that, or the wealth gap is just so large that there’s a huge number of people at the bottom, all roughly equivalent to each other given how rich the rich have become.
My understanding is that rent control backfired pretty spectacularly in the long term.
Yeah, the basic problem with rent control is that it creates the opposite long-term incentive from what you want.
Rentable housing is like any other good -- it costs more when the supply is constrained relative to demand, costs less when supply is abundant relative to demand.
If rent is high, what you want is to see more housing built.
What rent control does is to cut the return on rents, which makes it less desirable to buy property to rent, which makes it less desirable to build property, which constrains the supply of housing, which exacerbates the original problem of not having as much housing as one would want in the market.
I would not advocate for it myself, but if someone is a big fan of subsidizing housing the poor, what they realistically want is to subsidize housing for the poor out of taxes or something. They don't want to disincentivize purchase of housing for rent, which is what rent control does.
If you subsidize housing you create increased demand for housing, ultimately leading to rent going up for all.
So, as I said, I'm not an advocate of subsidizing housing out of taxes. I'm just saying that people who are arguing for rent control are arguing for a policy that tends to exacerbate the problem in the long run.
Subsidizing housing doesn't normally run into that, because it's normally possible to build more housing.
It is true that that's not always the case, and one very real way in which that can not be the case is where there have been restrictions placed on constructing more housing. If housing prices are high, the first thing I would look at is "why can't developers build more housing, and are there regulatory restrictions preventing them from doing so". It is quite common to place height restrictions on new constructions, which prevents developers from building property to meet that demand, which drives up housing prices (and rents). In London, there are restrictions placed that disallow building upwards such that a building would be in line-of-sight between several landmarks. That restricts construction in London and makes housing prices artificially rise. Getting planning permission may also be a bottleneck. I agree with you that that sort of thing is the thing that I would tend to look at first as well: removing restrictions on housing construction is the preferable way to solve a housing problem.
I remember an article from Edward Glaeser some time back talking about how much restrictions on construction -- he particularly objected to the expanding number of protected older, short buildings -- have led to cost of housing going up.
How Skyscrapers Can Save the City
Besides making cities more affordable and architecturally interesting, tall buildings are greener than sprawl, and they foster social capital and creativity. Yet some urban planners and preservationists seem to have a misplaced fear of heights that yields damaging restrictions on how tall a building can be. From New York to Paris to Mumbai, there’s a powerful case for building up, not out.
Part of the problem with rent control is that it doesn’t subsidize the building of new housing. The times in which housing prices dropped in the USA were typically when a government either opened up land to development, subsidized the building of housing, or built the housing themselves.
Where’s all this housing being built as a result of sky-high rents? If they are being built, they’re being snatched up immediately by “investor” parasites.
What are you referring to? I don’t see all this new housing being built. I only know about three active sites in my city. I also know that our local zoning board has been rejecting applications because of neighborhood character.
I would run to serve but it’s an appointed position. Which yeah not great.
I can’t see myself headed back to Oregon any time soon, but good. It was so frustrating trying to get gas behind a line of twenty five cars being “served” by a single slack jawed yokel taking smoke breaks between each car and God help you if you needed gas at night when everybody was closed.
New Jersey gas attendants can be surly, but my experiences driving there at least moved the cars through getting gas efficiently.
As someone from NJ I agree 100% with surly. Also you can get someone weird or the guy who just wants to talk the entire time. I really do hope this changes one day.
Having lived in NJ most of my life, and recently driving almost cross country to FL, the only benefits of living in FL is that there are like never any lines waiting for gas, and I don’t have to wait for a guy to come out. I just pull up, fill up, and GTFO.
I fucking hate this state. I’ve been here for 9 months, and hate every part of it. The water is fucking disgusting, the heat is absurd, the traffic is ridiculous, the roads are shit, the beaches are shit, the people are… mentally handicapped is the nicest way to put it, the food is meh at best unless you want Cuban or something fried. There are absolutely no cultural things, like museums or anything that’s not hick crap. Went to a ship museum in Tampa with my kids, and it was a rusted out hulk of a boat.
Enjoy the cultural overload of the excess of museums, including the Nimitz, the amazing and huge variety of food, the cooler weather, really good pizza, and amazing pizza if you get closer to NYC, water that doesn’t smell like sewage until it’s ran for a minute or 2, water that doesn’t destroy your pots pans, and basically rust everything, you lucky bastard.
Oh yeah, and go fruit picking other than oranges, because you can just hit up dozens and dozens of orchards for all kinds of fruit picking, without sweating your balls off, pretty much any time of year.
Also, it’s called pork roll. Anyone that tells you it’s Taylor Ham is a monster, because Taylor Ham is the company that makes pork roll. Pork Roll with egg and cheese is a cure-all. Hangover, depression, snacky, quick breakfast, hungry, and dying? Yeah pork roll with egg and cheese on a roll will solve all your problems. If you have extra problems, add bacon and double meat. Pork roll with bacon, egg, and cheese on a hard roll will cure all your problems.
That’s an awfully misleading situation. They state that her boyfriend’s gunshot caused her death, which I think most people would reasonably interpret to mean that her boyfriend shot her in the moment, but what they really mean is that if he hadn’t opened fire on police officers entering their home without prior warning, they wouldn’t have returned fire and killed her.
Thanks for the link, I was too lazy to look for it. Note that all charges were dropped in that case. I.e. throwing a flash grenade into an apartment, then breaking in and shooting a 7 y/o sleeping in her grandma’s arms is A-OK in the US.
Edit: Never mind, I found it. Note that this is the newspaper’s phrasing. Apparently what the judge actually wrote is more technical and less misleading:
In his ruling, Judge Simpson wrote that the gunshot fired by Walker “became the proximate, or legal, cause of Taylor’s death.”
It’s still the same concept. The exciting incident is breaking and entering by the cops. Judge is still stating them entering illegally is not the cause which it is.
They state that her boyfriend’s gunshot caused her death, which I think most people would reasonably interpret to mean that her boyfriend shot her in the moment, but what they really mean is that if he hadn’t opened fire on police officers entering their home without prior warning, they wouldn’t have returned fire and killed her.
Holy shit that’s beyond fucked. How can a judge rule that?
edit: Oh nvm, I just saw who appointed that judge, wow.
He’s been shitting on Maduro, but aren’t his tariffs a large part of why Maduro is in power? IIRC, his tariffs basically allowed Maduro to consolidate money and power.
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