BirdieNZ

16 ms·

151.
by BirdieNZ 4y ago
You can still do all those things on the Pentium 4 (boot up Windows XP, install Morrowind, use MS Office 2000 or whichever version was current, watch The Matrix), but the cost to buy the PC is significantly less (even taking into account th
152.
by BirdieNZ 4y ago
> That's how we get figures saying that computers cost 20 times less than what they used to be when in reality it costs a little less than 2 times less. Can't you buy old PCs for 20 times less than a (second-hand) modern PC? I
153.
by BirdieNZ 4y ago
> Someone with little income (retired) and property in a desirable location is going to lose. Most advocates of a higher LVT also advocate for a provision to defer the payment of the tax until sale of the property for pensioners.
154.
by BirdieNZ 4y ago
He does benefit from the increase in value, because land increases in value due to increased services and amenities. If you put a train station nearby someone's house, their property hugely increases in value, and they benefit from the
155.
by BirdieNZ 4y ago
> have driven up prices to an extreme. So your land, through no effort of your own, has hugely gone up in value; don't you think there's something wrong with you benefiting from other people's labour that increased the val
156.
by BirdieNZ 4y ago
Most of the housing bubble is actually a land price bubble. Land is only a long-term depreciating asset in shrinking cities, because demand for the land is decreasing.
157.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
This is country-dependent. In New Zealand, you cannot walk away from the mortgage. You might be able to if you declare bankruptcy, perhaps.
158.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
> So many of societies problems can be traced to high housing cost. While a significant portion of housing costs are due to materials, labour, and regulations that limit how much you can build, a very large amount of house price increase
159.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
Not the parent, but the big issue I've had with the Snowball (which I think is an issue with condenser mics in general) is that it picks up way too much audio, so if you don't have a very quiet environment and a good mic boom and
160.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
Note that this is pretty US-specific. In New Zealand we don't use the word "condo", and usually you can purchase an apartment which will have an associated body corporate (a legal entity that all the other apartment owners in
161.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
In New Zealand our sound insulation requirements mean that every shared tenancy wall I've ever had has been almost impossible to hear the person next door. It doesn't seem to be prohibitively expensive to do, although it certainly
162.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
Can I ask who it is that you see pushing people towards urban life over suburban or rural? What I mostly see is people saying that suburbia and rural areas are being subsidised by urban dwellers and that people should pay their fair share o
163.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
Have you seen Rognlie's addition to that book? https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/deciphering-the-fall... It pairs nicely with Henry George's understanding of land, capital, and labour.
164.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
Economics 101 might start with that, but you need to progress to Economics 201 and so on. "Changes to price will alter the equilibrium point and therefore quantity demanded." is only true if certain assumptions are true, such as &
165.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
Yes, economists thought for a long time that minimum wage increases reduce employment, as their models showed that it should. Reality doesn't care about models, though. In reality, you can increase minimum wage without decreasing emplo
166.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers.html#6 "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania." (with Alan Krueger), American Economic Review 84, September 1994.
167.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
Last year's Nobel Prize in Economics went to researchers who showed, via natural experiments, that raising minimum wage does not decrease employment. It's counter-intuitive, to be sure, and there are vested interests who want mini
168.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
We could change the zoning laws so that it isn't illegal, though. One of the ways you can reduce cars is by zoning to allow greater density, which enables forms of transit which are more space-efficient than cars are. It's a chick
169.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
Per-unit rent will go down if you increase supply of housing, but the value of the land underneath will go up if you increase the amount of houses allowed to be built on said land. There's one part of "standard economics" tha
170.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
> Let's take this to the extreme, do you think you have a right to set up a commercial kitchen in your home, and set up patio furniture for random people to show up and order take out? You can do this in Japan. Why shouldn't yo
171.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
Think about this: land value appreciation is so crazy that you can not charge rent and still make enough money that a property has a good return on investment.
172.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
No, although the median of the bell curve of ranked players is probably further to the right than the median of the bell curve of unranked players.
173.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
> It's as if ADHD is a manufactured diagnosis to pathologize a healthy response to living conditions humans should find intolerable: sitting at a desk all day. I won't link to Born to Run, but it's easy to see that pre-ind
174.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
All property discussions won't make sense until you separate land from capital improvements (houses). Property prices will not stop climbing if you build more houses, and in fact, land prices go up if you build more houses. Rents go
175.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
You can have both, if you have a grid of main through-roads for transporting people around and then inside each "square" of the grid you have a continued fractal of sub-grids which aren't for through-traffic (slower speed lim
176.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
> You will know then that Apple Daily and Stand News were pushing "freedom of the press" into territory that no western media dares to push in their own countries, including actively calling for foreign military intervention in
177.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
> Do you want to take out the rubbish? Or do you start out wanting to and then want to do something else? Both can occur but the first one is more problematic: I want to take out the rubbish but it feels like torture to force myself to s
178.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
I did get it from society, of course. I wouldn't equate changing society's accommodations with changing how easy the normal adult finds life, though. Changing accommodations has no impact on how easy my non-ADHD friends find their
179.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
How is society being more accommodating going to help with me wanting to be able to live my life like a normal adult rather than struggling with simple things? It isn't society's expectations that make life most difficult for me,
180.
by BirdieNZ 5y ago
That's a fair statement. For ADHD medication specifically, for most people diagnosed with ADHD I would expect to see both improved life quality AND life expectancy. Of course, specific individuals may experience worsened life quality o

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