The high cost of housing is due to rising construction costs (materials and labor) and land prices, along with an imbalance between supply and demand. And the market isn't crashing again, at least not in any widespread sense. Some markets will see short term value declines, but that will halt new housing starts anyway, because you don't build a house that costs you $400,000 to make if you have to sit on it for a year to make any profit.

And your solution for all this? You're endorsing a nightmare scenario where private property rights are trampled on and land is seized by a totalitarian government? That's a haunting echo of Mao's disastrous policies in the late 1950s. This disastrous experiment in state control resulted in one of the deadliest famines in human history, wiping out an estimated 60 million lives. Yet here we are, decades later, with the same doomed ideas being paraded around as if they're fresh and innovative. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, and it's alarming to see just how many people are willing to march blindly down a path that we know ends in catastrophe. It's a sobering reflection of the state of education when failed, lethal ideas from the past are presented as new and revolutionary solutions for the future.

At a time when housing affordability is at its worst in history and when commercial real estate stands on the edge of oblivion, and industrial manufacturing is being moved to places around the world to cut costs, you want to massively jack up costs for all new construction?

That's why we don't just default to all new buildings having solar panels: most people can't begin to afford that. You speak from the same place of privilege a lot of green energy activists do; shouting down from your ivory tower about why the people barely hanging on don't fork out five figures to implement a solution you find agreeable.

Tell ya what, if you want most people (who can't afford a $1,000 unexpected expense) to make a five-figure investment in solar, YOU BUY IT. I'm sure they'll be happy to accept your gift.

As an American, this is 100% accurate. Everything is political, and everything is tribal.

You literally have Republicans cheering on Russia in a victory over a NATO effort to defend Ukraine because the defense of Ukraine is happening while a Democrat is in the White House. 30 years ago, if people had been cheering on Russian victory over NATO, Republicans would have been looking to haul such people in for sedition and/or treason.

That's one example. There are a thousand more. People are completely reversing their own claimed principles and turning themselves inside out with mental gymnastics in order to justify how they're against the other guy's position when the other guy's position perfectly aligns with their own. And yes, it's happening across the political spectrum. Anti-war progressives suddenly support riots, mob justice, and violence against people with differing ideologies. Again, one example among a sea of examples. The ideas don't matter anymore. The actions don't matter anymore. All that matters is if the other side is for it, then I'm against it because fuck them. This will be our undoing.

Except the power company doesn't pay you the market price and you can't arrange a damn thing. They tell you what they'll pay and it's typically a small fraction of what they'll charge you for that power. You don't have any negotiating power. You don't have any choices. Well, you have two: buy it or don't.

A lot of places make it effectively impossible to opt out (i.e., go off-grid) using things like building codes which make grid connectivity a prerequisite for habitation. In other words, you can tell the power company "no thanks"; you just can't live in that house anymore - legally. Which leaves you back to dealing with a power company that doesn't care about you as an individual. In texas, they might be selling you power at 10 or 15 cents per kWh normally, but they're probably only giving you something like 3-5 cents for power sold back to them.

In California, the situation is even worse. PG&E, for example, might be charging you 30 cents per kWh to use, but they'll flat tell you themselves that they're going to pay you 2-4 cents per kWh for what you sell to them. (https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/solar-and-vehicles/green-energy-incentives/solar-and-renewable-metering-and-billing/net-energy-metering-program-tracking/understand-net-energy-metering.page - "California State Assembly Bill 920 allows PG&E to make payments to NEM customers who generate more electricity than they use over their 12-month billing cycle. The compensation received is called Net Surplus Compensation (NSC). The NSC rate is based on a 12-month average of the market rate for energy. The rate is about two to four cents per kilowatt hour (kWh).")

I see posts like this and I can only assume they're written by teenagers who've never actually lived in the real world, because the real world doesn't work like some textbook's hypothetical economic fantasyland.

Sure, but that's just pointing out the problem with no real solution, right? A new AC unit can easily cost $13,000 - $25,000 (ask me how I know!), and a comprehensive energy efficiency upgrade (windows, insulation, etc.) can similarly reach well over $10,000 as well. And while some upper middle class families may be able to absorb those kinds of costs, the vast majority of people don't have $30,000 sitting around. And while you can say they'll save money on the electricity bill, even the most optimistic assessment wouldn't show break-even until at least 5 years in.

57% of Americans can't afford an unexpected $1,000 expense. $30,000? Not a chance. So yes, those are problems, but they're problems without economically feasible solutions for the vast majority of the people who need a solution.

You didn't witness it because it didn't happen. If it had, it would have been in every newspaper and scientific journal on Earth because it would be the first documented case of the laws of thermodynamics failing to apply, thus throwing our entire understanding of the physical universe into chaos.

If your body loses the ability to burn calories then you die. Full stop. The systemic cessation of metabolic processes is the definition of death.

A calorie is a unit of energy. If energy is not entering a system, but the system is outputting energy, there is a net loss. Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the number of calories you burn as your body performs basic (basal) life-sustaining function.If you were in a coma laying on ground, your body would burn a given number of calories, typically between 1,000 and 2,000 calories per day. An 8 lb newborn baby will burn around 207 calories per day if they're in a coma.

When you say that you knew someone who was consuming 200 calories a day and not losing weight, what you're saying is that you know someone for whom the physical laws of thermodynamics do not apply. It's like saying you once witnessed an actual perpetual motion machine. The claim is, on its face, false, given all we know about the physics of our universe.

ALL obesity ultimately stems from in imbalance between calories in and calories out. All. The laws of thermodynamics and our physical universe DO apply to the human body.

An underlying medical problem may CONTRIBUTE to an unhealthy lifestyle (e.g., it can be more difficult to get exercise if you're on oxygen for respiratory problems), and people who experience a sudden loss of physical ability (e.g., suddenly unable to walk) often don't modify their eating habits to adjust to their new level of physical activity, but it is a myth that one cannot control their weight through caloric control.

Eating properly nutritious foods, individually appropriate exercise, and caloric balance are the cornerstones to human health. This is basic factual information; activists be damned.

This is absurd. You want the US Federal government mandating convenience features in products?

If a product doesn't meet your needs, DON'T BUY IT.
If enough people agree, the product will either add features to meet the need or a competing product will eat their lunch.

Government mandates increase costs for everyone and are typically about the least effective way to manage a market. If you really want a government that manages every aspect of every product you buy, try China. Of course, like other authoritarian governments, China's is rife with corruption, so I'd stay away from the baby formula.

Ridiculous claim given that the Koprowski vaccine trials in Belgian Congo occurred in 1958 and the origin of HIV is estimated to be in the 1920s (but absolutely 100% prior to 1958 as it was already in the US no later than 1952).

"I do not believe that college is about getting a good job."

If your product is expensive and the ROI is infinity years, then your product is dogshit and should be avoided.

Laws have sprung up all over to prevent credit card companies from enticing college students to sign up for credit cards on campus because they may use said cards irresponsibly and pile up thousands in debt that they can't afford.

But many if not most of the students going to that university are already piling up debt orders of magnitude greater than the cards offer, and most will spend a large chunk of their lives struggling to live because of that debt. The contradiction is absurd.

Lack of a college degree does not make one a "dumbfuck", nor does getting a college degree make one not a "dumbfuck".

What's dumb is spending $120,000 a 5 years of your life getting a useless degree in English only to wind up in a job making $20,000 a year when you could have spend those 5 years making money while learning how to be an electrician who ends up making $100,000+ a year.

College isn't for everyone. Trying to make it for everyone and guaranteeing unlimited funding regardless of the value of the degree or ones ability to repay using said degree is what got us into this mess in the first place.

"The debt isn't being paid with your taxes, its getting erased. No money is changing hands."

Who paid the school money for that student's tuition? Was it the government? If so, wiping the debt absolutely means that taxpayer money was spent on tuition and never reimbursed by the student. Was it a private entity, guaranteed by the government? If so, the private entity isn't suddenly a charity; they're getting paid by somebody. i.e. the government. i.e. taxpayer dollars. So either it's getting paid by taxpayer money or it's getting paid by taxpayer money. Which is it?

"tuition has been rapidly going up for decades everywhere because we've been repeatedly slashing government funding of colleges"

No, that doesn't make sense. If that were the case, colleges and universities which don't rely on government funding would have relatively stable tuition rates. But they're all going up. The more likely cause is a sudden and rapid shift from only select professions requiring college education to an expectation that everyone goes (i.e. a sharp spike in demand with supply hopelessly unprepared) coupled with profit motive coupled with an unlimited ability to pay regardless of costs thanks to loan guarantees offered by the government. In other words, the most broke bastard on Earth can spend $500,000 getting a degree that will only ever pay $20,000 a year. No one in their right mind would give that person a loan... unless somebody (e.g. the government) guaranteed it would be paid back, no matter what. So a degree that either shouldn't exist at all or should only cost $5,000 to get can cost $50,000 or $150,000 or $500,000 or $500,000,000 because money is no object.

"Why is it ok that your education was massively government subsidized, but the people after you have to pay for it with high interest rate loans?"

Why is a mistake that has devastated millions of lives made yesterday required to continue happening today? You aren't doing anyone any favors by continuing to distort the education market. All it's doing is enabling and encouraging teenagers to take on suffocating lifelong debt in order to dump more taxpayer dollars into a greed-fire fueled by money. We need construction workers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, mechanics, janitors, medics, police officers, firemen, and plenty of others and they don't need a $120,000 degree in underwater bongo drumming to do their jobs effectively. They need training in their individual trades, apprenticeship programs, and on-the-job training that enables them to make money from the start and learn to do the job right rather than spending 4 or 5 years racking up debt that will haunt them for a lifetime, earning nothing, and learning about 17th century Bulgarian poetry for no reason whatsoever.

Lawyers, doctors, certain types of engineers, physicists, and certain other specific positions really require all that a university has to offer. And those who demonstrate the aptitude necessary to complete degrees in those fields should absolutely have the opportunity to attend real universities regardless of their family economic or social status, but it MUST be done without fueling the greed-fire. Fix that imbalance and the cost for college education will crater.

I actually have Powerwalls and PG&E and I'm telling you that you are wrong. You absolutely 100% CAN charge the Powerwalls any time of any day from the grid. And PG&E does NOT force ANY plan changes when you get solar. I literally just added solar to my home months ago. What you're saying is flat incorrect.

That said, PG&E is Satan incarnate and the whole reason I got solar panels and Powerwalls was to avoid their awful service, repeated blackouts, and ludicrously high prices. PG&E as a company should be burned to the ground and everyone in charge of that company thrown in prison. I hate them with a passion. But that doesn't alter the fact that you're posting in total ignorance. "Look into it" more.