Counterpoint citation: https://osf.io/preprints/socar...

Abstract: A popular view holds that declining housing affordability stems from regulations that restrict new supply, and that deregulation will spur sufficient market-rate construction to meaningfully improve affordability. We argue that this ‘deregulationist’ view rests upon flawed assumptions. Through empirical simulation, we show that even a dramatic, deregulation-driven supply expansion would take decades to generate widespread affordability in high-cost U.S. markets. We advance an alternative explanation of declining affordability grounded in demand structure and geography: uneven demand growth – driven by rising interpersonal and interregional inequality – is the primary driver of declining affordability in recent decades. For cost-burdened households, trickle-down benefits from deregulation will be insufficient and too slow

"The study doesn’t say that upzoning is a terrible idea; it might allow more people to live nearer where they work, reducing commute times and carbon emissions. What it won’t do, the authors say, is bring down housing prices in any significant way."

The situation is still super broken. Labelling any part of this Open Source means the "senior justice official" is either ignorant or intentionally misleading. Just plain wrong.

Look, there is overwhelming demand for many of these events. The question is do we (as a society of consumers) want to allow shows to become financial trading instruments like so many other things in our lives, or put into place mechanisms to remove the incentive associated with scalping and secondary ticket markets. IMHO this could be done with cooperation of artists and then ticketing mechanisms. But of course Ticketmaster, et al are more than happy to keep the up-bidding going so that they can get their XX% of whatever the overbid price becomes. Tay-Tay isn't getting any of that overbid money so artists like her should be onboard.

The cost of housing is truly one of those issues that is multi-faceted. You are 100% correct that houses are bigger and the number of persons per household is smaller. Also worthwhile to remember that many of the places that are desirable to live today either didn't exist at all or were unsatisfactory decades ago. Easy example is Levittown NY where they massed produced small (750-1000 sqft) single family homes, on small lots for relatively little money starting in 1948

Before it was built, this was just a farm field 25 miles as the crow flies to NYC. How many folks in 2026 are willing to live in a small place like that, 25 miles from city center?

Counterpoint, in 1948 average income** was $3,200 and these homes cost $8,000, so say the house was 3x annual income Now one of these same houses are selling for $650,000 (https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/64-Cornflower-Rd-Levittown-NY-11756/31280843_zpid/) and the annual income is $66,000 so the same house costs more than 9x annual income.

Counter-counter-point. I went into a bit of a black hole on Zillow just now. There are tons of 2-3 BR houses in places like Wilkes Barre, PA and Allentown, PA for around that 3x annual income ratio. The problem of course is lack of a substantial number of jobs in those areas. Having employment opportunities more widely distributed would also seem to be a way to make housing more affordable.

**just using first Google search results for nation. Obviously this varies from place to place

I would add that there is so much more than just the structure in having a "home". A lot of it has to do with your social networks, even after kids have grown etc. My parents have stayed in the same home town they were born in, and have spent the past 3 decades of their lives in the same house. Friends of theirs who moved out to smaller, less maintenance-heavy condos quickly found that a beautiful, fancy condo with all the amenities like pools, rec rooms, etc did not make up for the loss of the social connections of having long time friends and family nearby. More than a few of those folks moved back near their old neighborhoods (albeit in smaller houses, apartments, and the like).

It gets a little old to hear the internet chatter about boomers and others treating their houses like hedge funds, when most homeowners simply want to
a.) live in a safe neighborhood
b.) live near their friends and family
c.) be affordable within their budget/not lose money
d.) close to work / employment opportunities

Very similar story here. I buy from eBay from time to time when necessary, but when I tried to sell for the first time it was a nightmare. Compared to say Craigslist or Facebook marketplace (barf) eBay is not at all simple, friendly or worthwhile. So much friction in setting up an account, they hassled the crap out of me and their system is still begging me to send them my SS# so they can refund $0.40 they owe me for some reason. Ridiculous. I ended up donating the items to local Goodwill.

The other ding against eBay is usually I will search on closest location + price, because I need the item soon. Over the past couple years those institutional type sellers have figured someway to game the system such that items that said they ship from say 150mi away ended up shipping cross country instead, and even a few times from overseas.

tldr; eBay used to be ok, now another example of enshitification. etc etc

Worth a read. Published in 2012 so apparently "The Future" is only 10-15 years ahead of us at any given time now.**

https://marshallbrain.com/mann...

I don't know why everything needs to be politicized...us versus them. Texas vs. California. Glad Texas is moving to renewables. Glad China is adding tons of solar. The climate is global so improvements anywhere are incrementally beneficial to all of us.

My dunk against California is that with a pretty decent installed solar+battery capacity they (PG&E and their CA State govt enablers) have found a way to make the electrical rates 2nd highest in the nation, after Hawaii . It would be sooo much better to demonstrate solar+battery as a viable part of the electrical generation mix that actually reduces rates over the long term. All the shenanigans that PGE has be allowed to pursue via aforementioned State govt complicity ruins that plan.

Guessing we will be getting into negative territory for that group as well.

This is Facebook. They are the gatekeeper and online influencer for billions of people. Yeah, the $65 million is what they have to report due to laws, etc etc.

But IMHO the real problem is that they will certainly be 1. Promoting pro-AI news stories on people's feeds and 2. Have AI bots sh-t posting all over the place pushing a pro-AI agenda. For the "I spend most of my days watching FoxNews and scrolling FB" crowd, which includes a nice chunk of that older, high-turnout, voter...this will be gold for FB, making that $65mil literal chump change

This. This. The plant based, ground meat substitutes are still more expensive in my area, where 1 lb 85/15 ground beef is $7.49 (not organic) at Target. Meanwhile a 12 oz of Impossible meat is $6.99 at same Target**. As a semi-frequent user of Beyond/Impossible I will also admit the taste is not quite there depending on the dish you are making. The more spices/flavors in the dish (think lasagna, mexican, sausage replacement, etc) the better.

I don't understand how pea/soy + processing can be more expensive than raising, culling, processing, shipping, beef cattle products. I know there are a ton of subsidies to beef cattle, both direct and indirect but still, we are apparently sitting on a mountain of unsaleable soy beans. WTF is $9 per lb of processed soybeans at Target about?

I have yet to see a well thought out thesis on how UBI would work in a national scale. Minimally convincing the folks who are working for paychecks to agree to this plan which blah, blah, blah is "universal" but basically is taxing them to pay for others UBI would be quite a challenge. Current fiscal state of government also makes this a non-starter.

The problem as I see it is that the the AI-promotion machine is going to affect jobs well before the actual AI is capable of replacing those jobs. That leaves us with this:
-In 2025, AI-related stocks are estimated to have driven around 75% of the S&P 500’s gains ( JPMorgan report )
-67% of US GDP is due to consumer spending (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DPCERE1Q156NBEA/)
-The wealthiest 10% contribute 50% of consumer spending. ( Moodys Analytics )
-62% of employment are considered 'white collar'

In retrospect the economy mostly was able to sustain itself over Covid, because the 'white collar', jobs easily make up the bulk of the wage income and therefore the bulk of the consumer spending.

But, AI will be the reverse of Pandemic. Lower paying, blue collar, and service industry jobs stay, but the white collar jobs that make up the bulk of GDP are disappearing. That's a much bigger impact to the economy. Less spending, begets slowing GDP, now the bond and stock market take hits, AI makes up huge part of equity value, you get the idea. Granted this seems like every other "Seeking Alpha" post, but I am keeping an eye on things for my self.

No UBI but partial answer might be regulating AI (and offshore employment).
-Make it expensive to hire AI or offshore workers to reduce the domestic job losses to a rate that is manageable as older workers leave the workforce.
-Revamp health insurance awfulness so that insurance isn't tied to employment, that will allow more older workers to retire more quickly. open up spots for younger workers.

On the plus side it has recently cured me of ever clicking onto a YouTube short again. Almost 100% AI-slop at this point.

I counter with, I would think the board of any public corporation would have a succession plan ready, say for instance there is a health emergency with the CEO. Or more likely the CEO does something bad and needs to be removed. The response to this should be "Enrique Lores has decided to leave HP, the acting CEO is Stacy Smith who is fully capable of fulfilling the role."

From what I have seen over the years, public boards of directors are utterly useless. They provide almost zero oversight. They approve non-sensical CEO pay. Just awful.

Sidenote. I worked at a Fortune 50, public firm in a role where I was included in the exec deferred comp plans. There was a ~100 page plan detail and no kidding, 80 of those pages outlined all the stuff that only applied to C-suite comp. All the special goodies, health insurance for life, the corporate jet, crazy stock options that could never be under water. They could not lose money even if the firm went bankrupt. This part of the system is completely broken.

I'll bet Musk gave the major SpaceX investors an ultimatum...basically take this junk firm, xAI, or he doesn't let SpaceX go public, and their investments will remain locked up. But, oof, a $250 billion valuation on xAI...that value will not be returned in our lifetimes. But somehow TSLA is still at >$400/share so don't take stock advice from /. btw the TSLA PE is 392 ...that's bonkers)

Recall that previously Tesla invest like $2billion in xAI, but my guess is with Tesla's declining prospects in their electric car biz there isn't the free cash there to keep milking. So onto the next one...SpaceX. If the recent update to the "Kessler Syndrome" paper is correct , SpaceX is rolling the dice for each launch to basically end access to LEO for decades.

Appreciate the groundbreaking progress SpaceX team, Shotwell, Musk have made in the past 25 years. But as an investment...I'll have to pass.

We are in a day and age where this statement "...focusing on President Trump's policies for maximum security for all Americans," feels like it could be easily replaced with "focusing on President Trump's policies for maximum security prison for all Americans," Or at least subliminally the same.