[HN Gopher] Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billion...
___________________________________________________________________
Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public
housing
Author : mooreds
Score : 273 points
Date : 2024-03-20 12:48 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| trueduke wrote:
| https://archive.is/wx7yj
| afpx wrote:
| Is Paris considered a great place to live? I've been there a
| couple times in the last few years, and it just seemed like every
| other big western city. (except for the police walking around
| with assault weapons.)
| wk_end wrote:
| This is hard for me to imagine. Where in Paris were you? Which
| big western cities specifically do you feel like it resembled?
| afpx wrote:
| Sorry my communication skills aren't great. It was a genuine
| question. I spent a total of 14 days there, but I'm an
| adventurous walker and covered much of the city. My
| expectations were too high, probably. (Too high expectations
| lead to disappointment)
| torus wrote:
| There's even a name for this specific case of
| disappointment:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome
|
| "the disorder is caused by positive representations of the
| city in popular culture, which leads to immense
| disappointment as the reality of experiencing the city is
| very different from expectations: tourists are confronted
| with an overcrowded and littered city ... and a less than
| welcoming attitude by French hospitality workers like
| shopkeepers, restaurant and hotel personnel without
| considering the higher safety risks to which tourists used
| to safer cities are suddenly exposed."
| cm2187 wrote:
| I think like every city it has good parts and bad parts. Food
| is great, lots of stuff to do, employment is ok, the city is
| generally superb. But the population is irascible, the metro is
| a dark, overcrowded, grafiti covered, piss-stinking place, and
| the city is one gigantic traffic jam. Health and education is
| cheap, though state-run schools are in free fall and parents
| rush to put their kids in private schools. And the city is
| surrounded with poor neighbourhoods that are a ticking timebomb
| (with regular riots that are now spreading inside Paris).
| jacktribe wrote:
| I'm surprised, to me it always looks & feels very different
| than most other Western cities, in part due to low-rise
| buildings and almost exclusively independently operated
| restaurants and shops.
|
| Most other large European cities allowed for high rises and
| chain coffee shops & restaurants, to the point where they've
| started to become indistinguishable from one another.
| bombcar wrote:
| Paris has the CBD called La Defense which looked like most
| cities to me. Apparently tourists and residents alike hate
| it.
|
| The rest of Paris is pretty "European city" and maybe I'm not
| tuned into the differences, but it seemed quite like Munich,
| Rome, or Barcelona except for the language, etc.
| testingParisGPE wrote:
| For me the size of the core of Paris what make it
| different. It's still comparatively small, but you can walk
| for hours through streets with shops and restaurants. In
| other European cities I feel like I hit much faster the
| suburbs.
| justin66 wrote:
| > except for the police walking around with assault weapons
|
| So you've never been to North America. Where is it you're
| comparing Paris to, such that it seems like every other big
| western city?
| samatman wrote:
| I've been to most major American cities, and Toronto, and
| D.F., as well as Paris and Brussels.
|
| What Paris and Brussels have in common with D.F., which they
| do not share with either the major American cities or
| Toronto, is police open-carrying machine guns.
| justin66 wrote:
| I assume by "machine guns" you mean rifles, and by "open
| carrying" you mean "carrying." (there's no way to carry a
| rifle concealed) I have no idea what "D.F." is.
|
| Another response above mentioned that American cops
| generally keep the long gun in the car. Since today we've
| got National Guardsmen with rifles in the NY subways acting
| as police, this conversation all feels a little tone deaf,
| but it's fair enough to point out that French law
| enforcement do like their rifles. I noticed that the first
| time I used a French airport, though, not out in the
| street. I don't remember ever seeing police walking in
| Paris, although I admit that I was a pretty sheltered
| tourist there.
|
| (I bet there's a more nuanced conversation to be had here
| about the difference between police and gendarmerie and I
| just don't know enough about it, except I sort of wonder
| what the OP was doing that caused him to cross paths with
| heavily armed law enforcement outside of the airport or
| government buildings. Maybe Paris really _has_ changed.)
| samatman wrote:
| > _I assume by "machine guns" you mean rifles_
|
| I mean both fully-automatic rifles and submachine guns,
| but sure, I never saw someone lugging around an M2 like a
| 1980s action character.
|
| > _and by "open carrying" you mean "carrying."_
|
| I mainly meant to contrast it with having one easily
| accessible in their squad car, actually. American police
| do have long rifles, although these are mostly semiauto.
|
| Since there is no way to carry a rifle concealed, all
| carry is in fact open carry... or is it? Is a rifle in a
| case open carry? It is not. The term means something in
| the U.S., and I was using it correctly. In places where
| citizens have the right to open carry, this applies to a
| slung rifle as well, in places where they do not, it's
| legal to carry a rifle, but it must be in a case.
|
| > _I have no idea what "D.F." is._
|
| Distrito Federal, Ciudad de Mexico. Had you been a bit
| more curious, the answer is very easy to determine:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=D.F+city
|
| This is no stranger than referring to New York City as
| NYC, it is an utterly commonplace term for the city, the
| one which Mexicans normally use in referring to it.
|
| > _Since today we 've got National Guardsmen with rifles
| in the NY subways acting as police, this conversation all
| feels a little tone deaf_
|
| That may be the case, I've been to New York many times
| but not for many years now. If I had seen this, I would
| have mentioned it.
|
| I don't see what about this conversation is tone deaf,
| other than perhaps your refusal to read what I said with
| reasonable generosity, or look up a common term for the
| largest city in North America when you didn't recognize
| it.
|
| > _I noticed that the first time I used a French airport,
| though, not out in the street._
|
| They do tend to cluster around airports and train
| stations in both Paris and Brussels, although not
| exclusively. In D.F. you'll see machine guns open carried
| pretty much anywhere, true throughout Mexico in fact.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| DF is an abbreviation of Distrito Federal, a name for
| Mexico City. It was changed officially in 2016 to just
| Ciudad de Mexico/CDMX.
| justin66 wrote:
| Thanks!
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Having lived in america my whole life and been to many
| different major cities I can say that the police keep their
| long guns in the car generally.
| justin66 wrote:
| In the United States the AR or shotgun will generally be
| kept in the car. It's fairly common to see automatic
| weapons in Mexico, depending on where you are.
|
| (I don't remember how the Canadian police typically do
| things. I think I was dazzled by how attractive the police
| officers in Canada are compared to the United States,
| particularly in Montreal, but they definitely carry pistols
| and wear kevlar...)
| MeImCounting wrote:
| I havent really spent much time in mexico but in my
| experience cops in canada also generally keep long guns
| in the car.
| justin66 wrote:
| Thanks. It's not too surprising that Canada would do
| things similarly to the US, perhaps sans some of the
| over-the-top use of surplus military equipment and with
| fewer donuts.
|
| By all accounts, heavily armed security (and I'm sure
| it's not just sworn law enforcement officers, but also
| private security) in tourist areas are a bigger thing in
| Mexico than elsewhere in North America.
| bko wrote:
| The problem with charging below market prices for anything is
| that it necessarily leads to a mismatch of supply and demand. So
| the question is how do you allocate that supply?
|
| One way is to have hidden costs. This could range from straight
| up bribes, to paid consultants to fill out a lot of forms or talk
| to the right people, to just knowing someone
|
| Another way is a lottery which benefits a tiny percentage of
| people. Sure it's "fair" but the incentive to rig it is huge
|
| But even with a lottery it's still inefficient. If you give
| someone an apartment with a market rent of 4k for only 1k you're
| effectively giving them a 3k apartment subsidy. But if you handed
| them 3k, maybe they would spend 1k dollars on extra apartment and
| 2k for something else.
|
| There are other distortions. Overall these are the worst kinds of
| policies because it's all hidden costs. If we realized that with
| a system like this we're giving 1 out of 1k eligible people the
| equivalent of a 30k a year transfer, we'd likely realize it's a
| ridiculous policy. But instead we just say how nice it is so and
| so is paying only 600 Euros to live in the center of Paris
| bedobi wrote:
| I used to think like you but no longer do. A city NEEDS to have
| people of all ages, backgrounds, income levels etc in it to not
| die. Yes those people who live in that most central subsidized
| housing are in some ways winning a lottery ticket, and the real
| policy is to build _a lot_ more housing as close to the city as
| possible. But Paris are doing that! AND adding new public
| transit etc etc. This multifaceted approach is better than just
| sterile economista policy. Vienna does it very successfully as
| well. Almost no one owns their home there, they 're all renting
| very cheaply very high quality beautiful homes, including
| inside and very close to the city.
| bko wrote:
| Ok,think of the politician you dislike the most. Now imagine
| the discretion of "people of all ages backgrounds income
| levels etc" would fall to his or her purview to decide. Would
| you still support the system?
|
| We should have a clear objective system of governance that
| allows even terrible people to oversee it
| digging wrote:
| > Now imagine the discretion of "people of all ages
| backgrounds income levels etc" would fall to his or her
| purview to decide.
|
| How much room for discretion is there actually in promoting
| diversity? I suppose you could forcibly break up poorer
| immigrant communities which would be pretty harmful.
| bko wrote:
| It's simple, there are laws in the US that state that you
| cannot discriminate based on sex, religion, nationality,
| race, etc. if you would want to allow certain programs to
| help certain groups based on those characteristics you
| would have to lift those laws.
|
| Do you favor removing those laws?
| digging wrote:
| Oh this is one of _those_ conversations; I 'm leaving
| bboygravity wrote:
| Why does everybody need to concentrate in huge cities?
|
| If Romans where able to relatively evenly spread their towns
| and population all over the place in the analogue age, then
| why aren't we able to do so in the digital age?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Rome may not have invented the apartment block ( _insula_ )
| but they sure were fond of their high density
| residential/commercial space...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insula_(building)
| penetrarthur wrote:
| While being "huge", good European cities are quite
| homogenous throughout most of the area with 4-6 floor
| apartment buildings, small businesses in almost every
| building, parks, schools, good public transport system.
| They don't feel exactly "huge".
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Because ~90% of the population was farming
| ttymck wrote:
| Did Romans enjoy walking to the coffee shop or the grocery
| store?
| digging wrote:
| The principles would be the same even if we concentrated on
| small cities. A city must promote social diversity to grow
| the quality of social interaction (even indirect
| interactions, like walking through a neighborhood built by
| different ideas and in different styles).
| rafaelero wrote:
| What do you mean cities need it not to die? Would you say
| Monaco is dead? What about Zurich? Oslo?
| foldr wrote:
| Don't those all have a reputation of being rather dull and
| culturally insignificant in comparison to Paris?
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Are you suggesting there's a strong correlation between
| the number of low-salary workers living in the city and
| the presence of the Louvre or the Centre Pompidou?
| foldr wrote:
| Are you suggesting that nothing of cultural significance
| has happened in Paris since the Louvre opened as a museum
| in 1793? Or that Paris's culture can be reduced to a set
| of buildings?
|
| Also, mixed income housing in Paris has a long history: h
| ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_
| Pa...
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _Are you suggesting that nothing of cultural
| significance has happened in Paris since the Louvre
| opened as a museum in 1793?_
|
| No; I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. In fact,
| that seems like a fairly strange statement given that I
| mentioned the Centre Pompidou (opened in the 1970s) in
| practically the same breath.
|
| > _Or that Paris 's culture can be reduced to a set of
| buildings?_
|
| No; again, not sure where that's coming from.
|
| My point, which you didn't address at all, was that you
| seemed to be implying that there was some kind of
| correlation between lower-income housing in cities and
| their cultural significance. Was that your goal? If so,
| can you explain further?
| foldr wrote:
| In a sentence: artists are poor. Hence the correlation.
| You can see this on a smaller scale with neighbourhoods
| in a given city. The culturally cutting edge
| neighbourhoods of NYC aren't the ones where all the rich
| people live.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Monaco, absolutely yes, because most of the workers commute
| from France, they don't live in Monaco.
|
| Zurich and Oslo, I don't see the connection, they both have
| workers of all kinds, old and young people. They're organic
| and alive cities.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| Monaco is artificially restricted from growing, how can
| you build a factory there if the state border can't be
| moved?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Who cares if most of the people working there drive in
| from France?
|
| The point in Monaco farthest from France is like a 10
| minute drive away.
| walthamstow wrote:
| If the workers don't live in the city, how can they be
| considered part of its lifeblood? All of their cultural
| pursuits happen elsewhere.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Well, they don't live there, but they spend probably 10
| hours/day there, or 60% of their waking hours. Where
| someone sleeps doesn't seem too important.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I would say what a person does with their life outside of
| their working hours is rather important actually,
| particularly when we're talking about the life and
| culture of a city.
| orwin wrote:
| Isn't it practically the same in Oslo, with rent control?
|
| And I don't know about Zurich, but Monaco is clearly dying.
| Luckily they can build on the sea (and do so), but it
| suffered greatly from covid and Russia invasion of Ukraine,
| as without the Russian mob, a lot of 'amenities' aren't as
| available, which slow the 35yo+ fratboy life.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I don't get it either. Cities were dying for decades until
| people with money decided to move back into them and then
| they began to thrive. In fact, the actual data shows that
| as a city becomes more expensive it becomes more desirable
| and attracts more people and the city begins to grow.
| Places that were once considered off limits become spaces
| that are coveted. It's a flywheel that brings more and more
| prosperity. The best way to ruin that is to introduce
| masses of poor people to these areas. We did this in the
| starting in the late 1950's and the cities began to empty
| out because of the crime that came with it.
|
| As the poor constituency builds greater numbers they
| attract politicians that promise them things by stealing
| from those with money. This in turn chases those people
| away and the city is left poorer and poorer and becomes
| worse and worse. Once nice areas become undesirable and
| decay sets in.
| moconnor wrote:
| Interesting, so to put this in market terms, the city is
| allowing the value that such people add to it to be offset
| against the cost of their rent. This would mean that cities
| like Paris choosing to do this is entirely rational and GP's
| calculation fails to reach this conclusion because it ignores
| the actual trade that is being made in these cases?
|
| Or to make a cliched example: being cool and arty isn't
| particularly rewarded by salaries because there are a limited
| number of opportunities for this to improve a company's
| profitability. But it can be rewarded by subsidised rents
| because people prefer to live in cities with a population of
| cool and arty people for the non-monetary benefits they bring
| to that society.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > But it can be rewarded by subsidised rents because people
| prefer to live in cities with a population of cool and arty
| people for the non-monetary benefits they bring to that
| society.
|
| Well, some people do. But everyone is paying for it, even
| if they'd rather save.
| underlipton wrote:
| If the value your espousing is, "No one should ever pay
| to have others live better than them off a livelihood
| that they don't support," a great portion of the
| remainder of America's middle class gets Thanos snapped.
| A lot of the decently-paying jobs in services, tech, etc.
| that these communities rely on essentially make the world
| a worse place, but they're profitable, and people gotta
| eat.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > A lot of the decently-paying jobs in services, tech,
| etc. that these communities rely on essentially make the
| world a worse place, but they're profitable, and people
| gotta eat.
|
| If those jobs are paid for by voluntary customers, then
| that's fine. If they're subsidised through taxes of
| people who don't want them, that's the issue I'm
| mentioning.
| underlipton wrote:
| >If those jobs are paid for by voluntary customers
|
| >If they're subsidised through taxes of people who don't
| want them
|
| Yes.
| bedobi wrote:
| there is no job on this planet that isn't subsidized by
| taxes
|
| how do people show up to work at Google, Apple etc?
|
| through everything from "not dying from preventably
| disease in adolescence" to "being educated in public
| schools" to "being carried to work on roads and transit
| paid for by the public"
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > there is no job on this planet that isn't subsidized by
| taxes
|
| As in if I am a private plumber who does jobs for people,
| my job is subsidised by taxes?
| bedobi wrote:
| Yes. Who do you think laid the infrastructure for people
| to get water and sewers in the first place?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That depends on the city. If it was originally a company
| town, probably the company. If it's a new build, probably
| the property developer. But either way, something that
| already exists is not subsidising the plumber's salary.
| The plumber is paid by the customer.
| moconnor wrote:
| I guess ideally people who live in the city pay for such
| subsidies through various municipal taxes. People who do
| not value this policy and choose to live in a different
| city that aligns with their values would not pay for it.
| Everybody gets what they want.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > People who do not value this policy and choose to live
| in a different city that aligns with their values would
| not pay for it. Everybody gets what they want
|
| Well, not necessarily. People stay for jobs, family and
| friends. They will just pay for something they're not
| bothered about if it's not so expensive they're forced to
| move. That doesn't mean them staying is anything to do
| with the thing some people want.
| dandellion wrote:
| I live in Southern Europe. A lot of the people I talk to
| (about half I would guesstimate) would rather live
| somewhere else but can't. Some would even prefer to move
| to a cheaper place but can't (work, elders, kids,
| mortgages, are some of the reason).
| bedobi wrote:
| I mean, OK, you could say the same about literally every
| public expenditure?
|
| I'm passionately opposed to private automobiles and the
| fact that my tax money goes to subsidizing them
| (including stupid road upkeep etc)
|
| unfortunately I don't get to choose not to pay for that
| (but I can choose to live in a place like Paris where the
| Mayor is taking active steps to support not only private
| automobiles but give equal importance to other modes of
| transport)
| robertlagrant wrote:
| If you want emergency services vehicles to be able to
| access and help at any location, you want roads. That's
| what you're paying for.
| bedobi wrote:
| Yeah because you ardent motorists care so much about
| emergency vehicle access right?
|
| I don't have a problem with roads, I have a problem with
| roads being gridlocked and destroyed by single occupancy
| private automobiles and the resulting unnecessary deaths
| and road upkeep.
| krona wrote:
| > A city NEEDS to have people of all ages, backgrounds,
| income levels etc in it to not die.
|
| Correct. Therefore, subsidized housing is good and more of it
| is better? No, it does not follow.
|
| What you say is correct, to a degree. Beyond that, it is
| incorrect. There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
| TimPC wrote:
| If you agree the city dies without people of all ages
| backgrounds and income levels what is your alternative
| proposal to subsidized housing. It's just a fact that some
| income levels are being priced out of the city and certain
| occupations may become entirely unavailable without some
| mechanism of solving that gap.
| krona wrote:
| Either you willingly misunderstood my comment, or you are
| so absolutist in your thinking that you're incapable of
| understanding the concept of a limiting principle in
| social policy.
| eszed wrote:
| Whoa whoa, dude. You're being unnecessarily hostile. GP's
| question was a fair one, and not (by my reading) unkindly
| phrased. Even if I'm wrong about that, personal attacks
| aren't welcome contributions: flag and move on.
| krona wrote:
| Being strawmanned in the most mundane and cliched of ways
| is deserving of opprobrium. HN is better than that. It's
| tiresome.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| In general, I'm against govt interventions like this, but in
| the case of housing, I agree with you. For a society to
| function in a healthy way, it can't be divided in social
| class "gettos". It is the responsibility of the State to
| spend public funds to avoid that. This is not about fairness
| and equality. It's about the long term survival of a society.
| mistermann wrote:
| Even further: extremely affordable technology now exists
| such that the leaders of our "democracies" could ask the
| public's opinions on such matters in a wide variety of
| fine-grained ways, or even better: facilitate a high
| quality moderated public conversation _that actually
| involves the public_ on these and other matters. This may
| even be a requirement for a healthy society.
|
| Unfortunately, current _styles of_ "democracy" not only do
| not do this, they instead engage in deceptive propaganda
| _to make it appear like_ they do this and more (how you can
| tell: observe how people praise "democracy", based on
| clearly silly memes). I often wonder if the quality of
| these institutions _in an absolute sense_ (as opposed to a
| _relative_ comparison to _literal fascist dictatorships_ ,
| the only other option dontchaknow) may have something to do
| with some people thinking they should be eliminated and
| replaced, a sentiment which is _always and without
| exception_ represented as being dumb /etc.
|
| Note also that these institutions also control school
| curriculum, which "denies" the public the skills needed to
| realize any of this is going on, how utterly riddled with
| error and deceit/delusion the public conversation is, etc.
| bedobi wrote:
| > ask the public's opinions on such matters
|
| this would be a disaster
|
| take how Hidalgo is deprioritizing private automobiles on
| the streets of Paris
|
| most of the public was passionately and intensely opposed
| to that, but she did it anyway
|
| now, people can't imagine ever going back to how it was
| before - families being able to walk and ride bikes along
| the Seine and Rue de Rivoli is too nice
|
| = asking for peoples opinion on stuff in lots of cases is
| just going to result in locking in status quo because
| people don't really know what they want, but they're
| usually pro status quo and opposed to change
| mistermann wrote:
| > this would be a disaster
|
| It depends how you do it. For example, if you ask their
| opinion and then carry out that opinion without thinking
| about it, it would probably not yield optimum results,
| because humans almost always hallucinate (our culture
| teaches them this behavior). But with patient guidance I
| believe it is possible for people to improve over time.
|
| As it is, we are at the mercy of bureaucrats with
| questionable ethics and goals, _who also also always
| hallucinate_ (again, because of culture), so this is not
| a fantastic position to insist on maintaining either.
|
| It has been well demonstrated that under very specific
| conditions, humans can achieve a state of high coherence.
| We've only managed this in a few select domains so far,
| because of hard work and counter-cultural attention to
| detail, and mainly: _because a few individuals thought it
| seemed like a good idea, and made it happen against the
| odds_. I personally think we can make it happen again,
| but not if no one tries.
|
| > now, people can't imagine
|
| Not quite. In fact, people _cannot stop_ imagining, the
| problem is that they do not have control over it, or
| realize they are doing it. But we are in luck: we have
| children and teenagers, who have yet to fall victim to
| the hypnosis /Maya that has spread throughout the adult
| world. They could teach adults how to do it in a
| controlled manner, as we could in the past, or ideally
| even better (children and teenagers have never had enough
| say in decisions if you ask me, they are waaaaaaaay
| better than adults at specific forms and domains of
| thinking).
|
| > asking for peoples opinion on stuff in lots of cases is
| just going to...
|
| Do you still believe this?
| closeparen wrote:
| Local democracies on housing questions are extremely
| consistent the world over: no more people near me. If
| there absolutely must be more people near me, they better
| be exactly like me.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Subsidies always have a cost on public finances.
|
| In Paris' case, the financial situation is bad and getting
| worse with a debt on track to reach EUR10 billion.
|
| So it seems to me that Paris is borrowing like there is no
| tomorrow. This usually does not end well.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| It entirely depends on how the money is spent. If Paris is
| making investments that will enable it to substantially
| grow its tax base, it's a good prudent strategy, certainly
| better than the supposedly more fiscally responsible do-
| nothing strategy that can just as easily lead to financial
| ruin as irresponsible drunken-sailor spending.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _If Paris is making investments that will enable it to
| substantially grow its tax base_
|
| Obviously, this is not what they are doing, debts growing
| with quite high tax rises at the same time ("taxe
| fonciere" [property tax] _doubled_ last year).
|
| Paris is often depiected as a great model, especially by
| liberal foreign media, but the reality is rather
| different, and I believe that the Mayor's approval rating
| is currently abyssmal...
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Not at all obvious. What is obvious is that returns on
| many investments, such as vastly improving housing and
| transportation for city residents, have multi-year lags.
| Like, obviously when you just spent billions on improving
| your RER, properly redesigning your streets to not be
| deadly by design anymore, and buying up housing, you'll
| be in the read that fiscal year.
|
| >"taxe fonciere" [property tax] doubled last year
|
| My French is rusty, but it was a 50% increase, it was
| previously the lowest of all cities in France, and it was
| not raised since 2011[0]. It is also peanuts compared to
| property taxes in Canada where I live, and especially
| compared to many parts of the US. Not an apples-to-apples
| comparison because property taxes pay for different
| things in different countries (i.e. in Canada provincial
| taxes pay for schools, in the US it comes out of your
| municipal property taxes). But still, we're not talking
| about one of the main taxes for an average French
| citizen, clearly.
|
| [0] https://actu.fr/ile-de-france/paris_75056/taxe-
| fonciere-a-pa...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Well, you can insist on looking at things through rose-
| tinted glasses or notpicking. But the facts I highlighted
| are inescapable...
|
| And I won't even get into how ghastly areas around the
| Eiffel Tower (for instance) have become with crime,
| beggars, etc everywhere.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| You highlighted no facts, actually. The one fact was off
| by a factor of 2 and missing all context. What you call
| "nitpicking" is in fact the process of forming an opinion
| using facts and context. You could offer valuable
| insights, presumably being a Parisian, but instead you
| switch topics to beggars and crime. Oh well.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Debts ballooning and tax skyrocketing are facts.
| Everything I wrote are facts except of a small error in
| number but of course you chose to argue that the tax rise
| was 50% not 100% like if that made a difference to the
| point.
|
| As I mentioned, rose-tinted glasses can be very strong,
| especially in people who have no insight but are looking
| for ideological reinforcement because, frankly, articles
| about how great Paris is in the NYT only serve that
| purpose, the readers will not know a thing about the
| actual situation.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| So I've thought about this before because the city I'm in
| has received the same critique. I'm in a 200-something
| thousand population city that's carrying a billion in debt,
| so about 5K EUR per inhabitant. Given your numbers that's
| pretty much about the same amount of city debt for each
| Parisian.
|
| Big number scary, but looking at it on a per citizen basis
| is it really that big, or unreasonable a number? Assuming
| that this debt has been spent rationally on say
| infrastructure, social housing policies, QoL upgrades for
| xyz?
|
| Yes, good fiscal policy to keep debt stable or reduce in
| the long term is necessary, but it sure doesn't seem as
| doom and gloom as people make it out to be.
|
| You should see how much debt some countries are in... It's
| an order of magnitude more in the extreme cases.
| closeparen wrote:
| Suppose you get a job offer, or your adult child has a
| newborn, or your aging parent's health takes a turn for the
| worse. Instead of being able to simply move, this instead
| starts a decade-scale process that has a 1% of chance of
| allocating you a public housing unit in the end. What does
| that do for dynamism?
|
| People's intentions about when and where to move are
| important. A housing system that removes all individual
| agency from this question, abdicating everything to a
| government lottery/waiting list system, can meet other
| desiderata but is clearly losing something important.
| BWStearns wrote:
| I get these arguments against it and I'm sympathetic to the
| reasoning, but the point of public policy is results and the
| Parisian policy certainly seems to just work better than most
| US housing policy. SF, Boston, NYC also spend a ridiculous
| amount of money ostensibly trying to achieve similar outcomes
| but their approaches just don't work.
| datameta wrote:
| Afaik 30% of all new luxury high rises are made low and
| middle income affordable and rent stabilized. In which ways
| is the NYC system inefficient? Do you believe that is due to
| policy, abuse by bad actors or some mixture of the two?
| BWStearns wrote:
| NYC is wildly unaffordable compared to Paris even
| accounting for the earnings differences. That is the
| outcome and the failure, not the presence or absence of
| some specific policy.
|
| I am not saying Paris' approach is transplantable directly
| to NYC, but rather that first principle analyses (such as
| gp's commentary) that say that the Paris approach doesn't
| work are flawed. I know these analyses are flawed because
| one can look at Paris and see that they have achieved their
| policy objective of Paris being affordable for a wide swath
| of incomes.
|
| Policies should be pursued, adopted, changed etc based on
| their outcomes above their adherence to abstract models.
| Models are great but once you have data that a policy has
| failed you should change that policy and try something
| else.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Paris housing works better than SF, Boston, or NYC because it
| is much denser, not because of public housing. American
| cities artificially limit density which drives up prices as
| everyone wants to live in the high demand area that cant
| densify.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| And yet Vienna is one of the most beautiful, livable cities in
| the world, with its masses of public housing, while major U.S.
| cities have homelessness crises and TV shows about house
| flipping for profit. Perhaps we should stop debating things
| based on the hokum of Econ 101 textbooks and look at what in
| the real world has actually worked (e.g. abolishing most forms
| of zoning, massive investments in public housing, robust public
| transportation, drastically curbing real estate speculation).
| brainwad wrote:
| Vienna has had the luxury of having had relatively little
| demand for housing for over a century. The population peaked
| in WWI and still hasn't recovered (it was 2.24m in 1916,
| 2.00m in 2023).
| trgn wrote:
| Manhattan's population dropped 25% from its peak in the
| early 1900s. Pre-war was just a different era, this is more
| of a function of changing living standards, people live
| larger, not of contemporary housing dynamics.
| em-bee wrote:
| vienna also had a lot of buildings destroyed in the war
| which increased the demand. population was as low as 1.5 or
| 1.6m in the late 80s/early 90s. it grew back to 2m in just
| a few decades, and it is going to continue to grow, so i'd
| argue that it has recovered quite well.
| malermeister wrote:
| Vienna actually had a terrible housing crisis before the
| Austromarxists of Red Vienna built housing en masse. See
| this article for example:
| https://citymonitor.ai/environment/housing/red-vienna-how-
| au...
| brainwad wrote:
| Right, that makes a lot of sense because the city
| absolutely exploded during the preceding decades. But
| having the population stagnate has certainly made it
| easier for them to catch up than if the population had
| kept increasing.
| ecshafer wrote:
| The US also has a per capita GDP 50% higher than Austria
| ($52,131 vs $76,399). At $52,131 a year per capita GDP,
| Austria would be neatly in second to last place as the
| poorest state in the Union, as it would beat Mississippi at
| $47,190 but be beaten by West Virginia at $53,852. So perhaps
| the US policy is doing something correctly.
| detourdog wrote:
| I look at the numbers and think they demonstrate how much
| more efficient Austria is compared to any US state. I would
| prefer living in Austria to Mississippi.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Less than 5% of households in Austria have air
| conditioning, vs 93% in Mississippi. Granted it gets hot
| and humid in Mississippi, but the average summer highs in
| Austria is a sometimes-muggy ~27C and it will probably
| get worse with climate change - heat waves up to 40C have
| already happened. I'll take the AC and the other
| conveniences the Americans have, though it would be nice
| to have the social atmosphere Austria has too. To a large
| degree, Austrian efficiency is just getting by with less
| than an American does.
| BWStearns wrote:
| European lack of AC is mostly that they historically
| haven't needed it. It's not like they can't afford ACs.
| Also, 27C (80deg in freedom units) as your normal peak
| temp is pretty firmly in "why bother with AC" territory.
| detourdog wrote:
| I would rather compare education and healthcares since I
| value those more than A/C.
| Amezarak wrote:
| This is one of those things that are harder to compare.
| Mississippi, like all of the US, has free public K12
| education. The public university system also extends
| automatic full scholarships for academically qualified
| (and the qualification is not that high) students, and
| also admits basically anyone else who is able to pay,
| though without academic qualifications they will have to
| take advantage of Pell Grants (free money but not much)
| and federal student loans. Of course, you could argue
| about the _results_ of the system, and admitting students
| who are not going to succeed in college and thereby
| saddling them with debt in exchange for nothing is a
| failing of the US system.
|
| For health care, there are many publicly owned hospital
| systems in Mississippi, and of course Medicare is
| available for everyone 65+. Mississippi is not a Medicaid
| expansion state, so while Medicaid (free health care) is
| available for children, pregnant women, and the disabled,
| there is a coverage gap between that and qualifying for
| the ACA subsidies for health insurance (aka "Obamacare")
| which is sort of similar to the German system if you wave
| your hands; I think Austria has something similar, but
| I'm not familiar, but obviously the coverage is broader.
| pdinny wrote:
| A more relevant measure might be median income per
| capita/household, adjusted for purchasing power. On that
| basis Austria does quite well.
|
| Additionally, quality of life amounts to more than measures
| for disposable income etc. If you consider access to
| education and healthcare the picture might take on greater
| depth.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Oh yes, it's much better to make 53K a year and live in
| West Virgina than Vienna. This is a sentiment with which
| everyone would agree.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| What's wrong with West Virginia?
|
| If you used housing prices an an indication of
| desirability (and an attempt to stay on topic) people
| much prefer to live there than the smallish mid-western
| town that I bought a house in.
|
| I mean, trees and mountains instead of miles and miles of
| corn...
| orwin wrote:
| To be honest West Virginia is the best US state (I also
| am close with back to landers communities, and visited
| through their lenses, so I am biased). Homemade booze (I
| don't drink, but still), homemade goat cheese (best
| cheese I had in the US), best kayaking rivers, great
| hiking trails, great people, great horses, great
| musicians. What's not to love.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| The rates of childhood poverty and food insecurity, for
| starters.
| sofixa wrote:
| How is GDP per capita relevant, especially not adjusted for
| purchasing power parity? For Austria the GDP per capita PPP
| is at $67-69k depending on the estimate, which would put it
| somewhere between 27 and 33 place of US states, so roughly
| in the middle.
|
| If you compare the Quality of Life Index, Austria is 9th,
| USA is 15th. Freedom Index - Austria is 93, USA is 83. HDI
| USA is 20th with 0.927, Austria is 22nd with 0.926. Another
| fun one is Cost of Living index which shows that Austria is
| significantly cheaper to live in compared to the US (66.8
| vs 72.9 out of NYC).
|
| I can go on, but it's frankly ridiculous that you think GDP
| per capita is relevant, or somehow directly impacts the
| lives of Austrians and invalidates the good choices Austria
| and Vienna have made.
| Amezarak wrote:
| I don't think most indices are very valuable - when you
| drill down into them, you usually find out there's a lot
| of decisions about what that really means made for you by
| some NGO or think-tank in order to get the desired
| result. That's not to say they still can't reflect some
| underlying true reality about "freedom" or whatever to
| some degree, but I don't think it's worth citing them in
| a discussion.
|
| You're quite correct he should have used GDP w/ PPP, but
| I don't think the fact that Austria would rank merely
| below-average rather than second-worst is a very powerful
| argument. And there is some truth to this: visit the
| average American household and they have a lot of
| material wealth compared to the average European. I
| remember being particularly shocked by the state Germans
| live in and find acceptable.
| sofixa wrote:
| > You're quite correct he should have used GDP w/ PPP,
| but I don't think the fact that Austria would rank merely
| below-average rather than second-worst is a very powerful
| argument
|
| It is, because they were implying that Austria having the
| social housing policies that it does, it severely impacts
| GDP; but it doesn't. A tiny mountainous country that was
| twice in the middle of disastrous wars in the last
| century, has practically no raw materials... and would be
| in the middle of the US GDP PPP-wise, which has a much
| bigger market, a lot more workers, a lot of raw
| materials, etc etc etc etc. And again, this is assuming
| GDP matters for the average person's life... and it
| doesn't.
|
| > visit the average American household and they have a
| lot of material wealth compared to the average European
|
| At the expense of crippling debt :)
| https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm (don't
| forget the fact that American savings have to account for
| losing your job or getting sick, as well as retirement,
| while in Austria they don't).
| Amezarak wrote:
| > A tiny mountainous country that was twice in the middle
| of disastrous wars in the last century, has practically
| no raw materials... and would be in the middle of the US
| GDP PPP-wise, which has a much bigger market, a lot more
| workers, a lot of raw materials, etc etc etc etc.
|
| Austria got screwed by WWII for sure, but it still had a
| literate, educated, relatively wealthy population and was
| once the center of a great empire that amassed great
| wealth. And, I mean, Vienna was practically the cultural
| center of Europe for a brief period.
|
| > At the expense of crippling debt :)
| https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm (don't
| forget the fact that American savings have to account for
| losing your job or getting sick, as well as retirement,
| while in Austria they don't).
|
| I'll be the first to argue that the American safety net
| needs improvements, but Social Security, (retirement and
| disability benefits), Medicare (65+ government health
| insurance), Medicaid (poor, unemployed, and disabled
| health insurance), and unemployment insurance all exist
| in the US, and together with other benefit programs
| constitute the majority of US spending. Indeed, US
| _government_ spending per capita on health care is higher
| than many European countries. It 'd be a good example of
| where having a higher nominal dollar value doesn't buy as
| much even adjusted for PPP, since obviously despite this
| the US doesn't have universal public health care.
|
| This is considered uncouth to say, but household debt is
| _sometimes_ due to horrible exigencies, but it 's much
| more often the result of easy access to debt and material
| consumption. It's really shocking to see the people you
| know cannot be making more than 40-60k driving around
| 50-70k vehicle, and who also have a nice boat and a huge
| house. But even people not doing these things tend to
| live more materially comfortable lives than most
| Europeans I know.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I have worked for some time in Austria and I have many
| friends who are US citizens.
|
| While the latter have indeed revenues that seem much
| higher, I would say that there is no doubt that the
| quality of life of my former Austrian colleagues was
| higher, based on purchasing power, balance between job
| and personal life and quality of food and environment.
| ecshafer wrote:
| GDP Per capita isn't pa particularly good metric, but it
| is a measure for how productive a country is. So when the
| original poster laments that Vienna has this model of
| subsidizing housing while the US needs to "get rid of
| econ 101 hokum", I think it does do a good job as showing
| that for their differences, the US does do a good job at
| things (creating economically productive value in this
| case).
| penetrarthur wrote:
| When comparing two developed countries only using GDP/per
| capita, make sure that the person you are debating with is
| way less educated than you are.
| arethuza wrote:
| I think that just goes to show how misleading GDP can be!
| malermeister wrote:
| Only an American could make this argument. Vienna tops
| global comparisons for quality of life all the time. Life
| expectancy is higher in Austria, as are safety, education
| standards and all other meaningful indicators.
|
| Who cares about some silly numbers on a bank account? We
| live good lives.
| dangus wrote:
| Basically, you're assuming that this system is going to be like
| the underfunded and scarce public housing in the United States
| where a difficult to win lottery will be necessary to secure an
| apartment. In that sort of market of scarce supply, slumlords
| can overcharge for low quality rentals. But they couldn't do
| that in a market where the government is offering a real
| alternative that you can actually get into. From the article it
| seems like the Parisian government has such a large supply of
| public housing that it is a serious market force that can
| influence the rest of the city and the makeup of its
| neighborhoods.
|
| Your description of the situation sounds more like America
| where a tiny inventory of antiquated public housing units built
| ~40 years ago (the last time any American politicians cared to
| lift a finger to address poverty and inequality) are made
| available by a bleak lottery.
|
| Just because the public housing system doesn't work in America
| where it's basically an afterthought doesn't mean that it isn't
| working in other places.
| bko wrote:
| Not Paris but NYC:
|
| > For many New Yorkers, the most desirable jackpot is not the
| New York Lotto, but to be selected in the city's
| extraordinarily competitive affordable-housing lottery. Tens
| of thousands of people, and sometimes many more, vie for the
| handful of units available at a time. Since 2013, there have
| been more than 25 million applications submitted for roughly
| 40,000 units.
|
| Central planning has been tried over and over and has failed
| and led to more scarcity. It's like fitting climate change by
| regulating thermometers. Maybe this time is different?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/nyregion/nyc-
| affordable-h...
| amanda99 wrote:
| Your top comment sounded pretty sensible and fair but in
| your responses to comments you now just sound like a troll.
|
| Central planning works very well: that's how every
| corporation, city, and state works. It works well as long
| as you apply it to a small enough market and e.g. don't try
| to plan the whole economy.
|
| The problem in NYC is that there is not enough affordable
| housing. 40k units is nothing in the housing supply, and
| the rent inflation has been way too high lately.
| TimPC wrote:
| Yes if you support 40,000 units and your demand is much
| higher you're going to have problems. That tells you the
| system is underfunded. Central planning hasn't universally
| failed in every aspect and every application. Central
| planning tends to do poorly at solving problems that market
| mechanisms solve effectively, but it's sometimes useful at
| solving problems that market mechanisms solve poorly.
|
| Centrally planned universal healthcare is generally
| effective and much cheaper than other systems. The US has
| out of control healthcare costs with its free market
| system. The next most expensive country to the US has less
| than 50% of the administration costs so the free market has
| actually come up with a bureaucracy that is more expensive
| to administer than what the government creates.
|
| In general, central planning fails when market mechanisms
| are replaced by using force to allocate something. That
| doesn't mean opt-in programs with voluntary registration
| are going to experience the same type of failure. We know
| replacing salaries with a gun and telling people what they
| have to work on is a bad idea. That doesn't mean all
| central planning ever is a bad idea. I don't think anyone
| seriously argues we should abolish federal, state, city
| governments and let my local neighborhood manage it's own
| policy but that's the logical extreme of all central
| planning failing.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Calling the US health care system free market is quite
| the big stretch.
|
| I can honestly not come up with another industry that is
| subject to higher regulatory burdens. Maybe nuclear
| power?
| TimPC wrote:
| Ah yes, the old libertarian cop-out. The most free market
| healthcare system in the world is too highly regulated
| and if we just take the regulations away it will perform
| better because ideology. This is despite the fact that if
| you look at healthcare systems in the world most
| performance metrics improve with more regulation but not
| less. But lets forget about being data-driven when
| ideological purity is at stake.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I don't have any real issue with regulations _per se_ but
| with people claiming that a _highly_ regulated market is
| 'free market'.
|
| I'm actually quite happy with my socialized health care
| aside from the last time I went to the emergency room
| they sent me home to die and when I came back a day later
| they were rapidly pulling out faulty body parts before I
| did indeed die. Well, then there's the Phoenix VA death
| list scandal.
|
| I know I shouldn't complain as it not like I risked life
| and limb in service of my country and earned it as a
| direct result of military service or anything.
| TimPC wrote:
| My issue is less with what we call the individual markets
| in the experiment. It's more with looking at healthcare
| across a large data set of countries and finding a
| general trend that more regulations lead to better cost
| structures and better health outcomes for the population
| and then somehow jumping to the conclusion we need no
| regulation for everything to work. That's just
| inconsistent with empirical reality and it's one of these
| purely ideological fantasy-land claims.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I would very much like to see a study from a credible
| source who came to this conclusion based on a survey of
| different health care systems.
|
| What I believe is more likely is people looking at the
| _kind_ of regulations being used and concluding that the
| correlation between good and bad regulations can be
| directly tied to the profit motives behind said
| regulations. A purely state run health care system has
| zero incentive to impose regulations that seek to raise
| costs and hurt competitors because, by definition, there
| is no completion. A purely private health care system has
| a lot of incentive to regulate the amount of doctors (to
| keep wages high) or make reporting costs extremely high
| to push out the smaller hospitals and increase their
| market share &etc.
|
| I suspect that reality falls somewhere in the middle no
| matter what system you look at and everyone wants to
| argue from the extremes (or accuse someone else as being
| an extremist as you so helpfully demonstrated) so there
| is no real dialog for trying to fix anything.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > healthcare systems in the world most performance
| metrics improve with more regulation but not less
|
| This claim is almost always because american lifetime
| expectancies are bad. But thats because Americans are
| unhealthy, not because our healthcare is bad. Do you have
| a different reason to make this claim?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "Americans are unhealthy" is an outcome of a bad
| healthcare system, not an excuse for it.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| No. It is the outcome of a culture that values
| individualism to a toxic level and has accepted decisions
| that make your life shorter as normal. Really very little
| to do with healthcare at all. Americans dont value their
| lifespan like others do but apparently that means our
| healthcare is bad? Like there are plenty of things to
| complain about with our healthcare why choose something
| that isnt even true.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I have 100% government provided healthcare (aside from
| dental) and I won't go see a doctor unless I'm literally
| going to die or want them to pull cancer off my arm. My
| diet would probably horrify you. Healthy as a horse
| except for another bit of suspected skin cancer I need to
| get checked out.
| mistermann wrote:
| The failure is not so much in central planning as it is in
| human cognition, across the board in every single person
| involved, operationally or in observance.
|
| If we do not try to not fail, then we should not be
| surprised when we always fail.
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WLJwTJ7uGPA5Qphbp/trying-
| to-...
| Ragnarork wrote:
| > So the question is how do you allocate that supply?
|
| To adress this specific question for Paris, they put an upper
| limit on your income to rent specific housing with lower rent.
|
| I'll scale down your caricature of an example though, the
| offers you can see are usually 15% to 20% under market price,
| not 75% like you seem to imply.
|
| Not exactly sure what is your point otherwise, the difference
| in terms of giving someone an apartment with a lower market
| rent vs. giving that money outright will eventually lead to the
| same thing, except that the former is also a way to curb the
| very high rent inflation (among other things), and results _in
| both cases_ in a significant increase in purchasing power, at a
| given income.
|
| > If we realized that with a system like this we're giving 1
| out of 1k eligible people the equivalent of a 30k a year
| transfer
|
| This is not equivalent because giving someone that money
| doesn't mean they'll chose to live inside Paris, and this is a
| measure that goes beyond financial support. It's also a city
| policy aimed at achieving a specific population distribution.
| bko wrote:
| > This is not equivalent because giving someone that money
| doesn't mean they'll chose to live inside Paris, and this is
| a measure that goes beyond financial support.It's also a city
| policy aimed at achieving a specific population distribution.
|
| I don't know, I would prefer the autonomy to choose where I
| live and how I spend my money. Why don't we afford the same
| respect to people that are less well off? Why do we want to
| essentially force them to live somewhere expensive when they
| would prefer to use that money elsewhere? They're not some
| pawn you can use to feel good about yourself. "Oh look at all
| these people from different cultures that live here". They're
| human beings
| TimPC wrote:
| I think it's totally fair that a program designed to
| support people of a certain income living in Paris requires
| those people to live in Paris. If you want autonomy you can
| have it, just don't take the money/apartment. This feels
| like a cake and eat it to attitude. Government is totally
| allowed to have aims and reasons behind programs. Having
| low income people live in Paris ensures there are people
| available who can do work that can't afford to pay high
| wages. This is important to having a vibrant city and
| something reasonable for a government to aim for. If people
| could just take the money and screw off to anywhere in the
| country, then we'd effectively see people take a
| $30,000/year subsidy and go somewhere they could live
| entirely on that without working, which would accomplish
| very much the opposite of what the whole program was trying
| to do.
| Ragnarork wrote:
| This doesn't force anyone's hand. If people don't want to
| live in Paris, that's their choice. No one is kidnapping
| them and shoving them in these apartments.
|
| On the other hand, if they want to, they have an avenue to
| do this (and it's still going to be difficult, supply isn't
| nearly as plenty as the private market), even if they don't
| have the income needed to find housing in the same area
| otherwise.
|
| > They're not some pawn you can use to feel good about
| yourself
|
| That's not the reason Paris is doing this. There are
| benefits to encouraging diversity, among which fighting
| against getthoisation/communitarianism and prejudices,
| things that France has quite a poor records with in the
| last 50 years, and that had direct consequences on society
| cohesion.
| bko wrote:
| Let's not use euphemisms. You're encouraging a certain
| racial and identity makeup of a city. It's literally the
| same policies that led to ghettoization. I don't want
| (often unelected) bureaucrats to put their finger on the
| scale on who can live in an area. It's not wrong because
| it was used to exclude [group] from certain areas, it's
| wrong on principle. And if we allow that power to the
| state, there's no reason it won't be used by someone with
| ideals that don't align with yours
| Ragnarork wrote:
| First things first, we're talking about income-based
| public housing attribution. Not racial. Although if
| policies in the past means ethnic minorities have been
| disadvantaged all other things considered, then that will
| overlap, but as a consequence, not by design.
|
| Secondly, Paris' policies are decided by the mayor of
| Paris and the city council, and they're elected (mayor
| directly, city council semi-directly). Not by "unelected
| bureaucrats".
|
| Then your comment makes no sense. Policies favoring
| social diversity are the exact same policies that led to
| getthoisation? Do we agree on what getthoisation means?
| Because those two things are exclusive.
|
| You say you don't want bureaucrats to put their finger on
| the scale of who can live in an area, that's your
| opinion. But if you're saying this should be purely left
| to supply and demand, then somewhat it _is_ still a
| (non-)decision to put the finger on the scale, at one
| extremity, and it will have a certain outcome. Whether
| this outcome is good or bad will be a matter of opinion
| in certain cases, but not in others, e.g. what impact
| this has on the local economy for example, whether this
| leads to a more or less appeased society, and so on.
| BWStearns wrote:
| > Why don't we afford the same respect to people that are
| less well off?
|
| This has to be facetious. They're perfectly free to go live
| in the country or move to Italy. I've never seen a
| desirable apartment I couldn't afford and then thought to
| myself how much I'm being respected by not being able to
| live there.
|
| And with regard to the last point, no one is suggesting
| this as a means to have some peasant zoo in the city, a
| city needs a labor force. If you price out everyone who
| isn't a dev or a financier then you're not going to have a
| lot of the things that make a city nice. To some degree
| this is a subsidy for employers, because otherwise they'd
| need to pay more for their employees to afford living
| nearby.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > To adress this specific question for Paris, they put an
| upper limit on your income to rent specific housing with
| lower rent.
|
| Why would you ever want to incentive people to not earn more
| money? Stay poor and we'll give you a house - sounds like a
| bribe.
| redandblack wrote:
| Market prices rarely (almost never) consider externalities -
| situations like this where it is a societal decision, it is
| difficult to define what we want, much less define a objective
| function that the market prices can optimize on.
|
| Case in point - congestion pricing
|
| I prefer excess housing / school / living infra which is
| subsidized by the society
| eclipsetheworld wrote:
| Allocating public housing could be done through an auction
| system. Bidders would submit offers for annual rent. The
| surplus, after deducting costs, could then be allocated to
| buying or building additional housing for this program.
| Alternatively, it could be used directly to subsidize rent for
| low-income individuals.
|
| In the end, this would solve the allocation problem while
| maximizing the available public housing. It would take a couple
| of years or decades to reach an equilibrium state I guess.
|
| I'm probably missing something obvious here. Can somebody point
| out my mistake?
| bko wrote:
| You've literally described a market system.
|
| A developer charges as much as they can for their rental
| units. If profitable they take that surplus and build new
| units up until the point that the marginal cost of providing
| an apartment is equal to the marginal revenue for renting
| such a unit. This isn't due to benevolence but how you
| maximize profit. The developer also pays taxes which pays for
| public services
|
| So yes, I am in favor of this system.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| The problem with this so called 'market system' is it
| allows people to chose their neighbors through bidding only
| on properties they know the poors can't afford.
|
| If the French wanted citizens to have the freedom of
| (dis)association they would have written it into their
| constitution.
| throwaway63467 wrote:
| It doesn't take much to destroy a city with money, I can see it
| happen in a few cities in Europe now. Foreign money, mostly
| from non EU countries like Russia keeps pouring in raising the
| market value until no local can afford renting or owning an
| apartment anymore. Look at places like Sylt or some nicer towns
| in Switzerland or France, they basically got overrun by rich
| a**holes buying everything they could. Boggles my mind why
| people think it's fair that local families compete with shady
| millionaires for living space.
| rafaelero wrote:
| Local families are the ones getting rich by having their
| houses surge in price. And they are probably also the reason
| why new houses are not being built.
| schneems wrote:
| If the goal is to have a diverse economic mix of people to live
| in a city center, then let the results speak for themselves. If
| another city has the same goal and can achieve a better result
| with less resources then that's worth considering.
|
| The "they haven't thought this through all the way" mantra
| you've espoused might be true. Also maybe you've not thought it
| all the way through. Maybe that has been tried and doesn't work
| well for reasons. For example if you increase the flow of money
| into a market without increasing supply, prices tend to rise
| and the wealthier will absorb the rise better than the poorer.
| As you've helpfully pointed out, there are knock-on effects,
| however those effects don't just apply to one side.
|
| So that's why I advocate for aligning and judging success on
| the goal and comparing like to like.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| When someone rents a small apartment in the center of Paris for
| 4k on the private market in all likeliness they're paying more
| than 3k of pure rent profit to the owner.
|
| The rent can be levied by the owner however the owner actually
| did not provide any of the investment or labor required to give
| the apartment the value it has. The apartment has value not
| because of anything inside the apartment or the building. It
| has value due to its location, something that the owner has no
| control over and did not spend a single penny to make more
| attractive.
|
| This is obviously a huge inefficiency in the economy. Why
| should someone profit from the attractiveness of a location
| they haven't actually built? This is a positive externality.
|
| Part of the solution of our huge housing crisis across most
| developed cities is obviously that there should just be more
| housing. This would bring prices down overall. However, new
| construction is extremely difficult, and that is due the in
| part to lobbies of wealthy owners which seek to keep prices
| high by maintaining scarcity.
|
| Turning private rent housing into public housing is a good way
| to eliminate the economic inefficiency of rent in that one case
| and it also drives the price of nearby housing down too, as the
| private market has to compete with the public offering.
| its_ethan wrote:
| > It has value due to its location, something that the owner
| has no control over and did not spend a single penny to make
| more attractive
|
| To be fair, the owner is paying property taxes - which do go
| towards improving the location.
|
| > The apartment has value not because of anything inside the
| apartment or the building.
|
| I think you'll find, in basically any city, that the quality
| of a building does correlate to it's rent price or value.
| You'll also find that owners do invest in increasing the
| quality of their buildings, which does improve the value or
| "niceness" of the location. If this wasn't true,
| gentrification couldn't exist.
|
| > Why should someone profit from the attractiveness of a
| location they haven't actually built?
|
| If you're claiming that since no real identifiable person or
| group "built" the attractiveness of a location, and that
| therefore no one should get to profit from it, you'd be
| seriously tampering with the signal that the natural markets
| supply/demand provides in the form of rental prices. That's
| going to lead to some significant "economic inefficiencies"
| for the area in the medium to long term.
| dugmartin wrote:
| You've left out a few things the landlord does and the risks
| they assume (at least here in the USA, I'm not sure about
| Paris): - mortgage costs - property
| taxes - insurance - utilities - repairs
| - maintenance - savings for large future capital
| outlays (new roof, furnace, etc) - renters not paying
| - empty rental units - loss of investment
| opportunities of the capital locked up in the building
| - possible loss of all income due to fire, etc - 34
| other things I'll leave out
|
| It may look like landlords have it easy but as a former
| commercial landlord I can tell you it is not easy at all.
| bombcar wrote:
| Landlords (in the USA at least) are wildly subsidizing
| renters, because they're so hungry for the appreciation
| benefits.
|
| You can test this anywhere the rental prices are below
| about 1% of the purchase price.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| _" A city, if it's only made up of poor people, is a disaster,"
| said Mr. Apparu, who now works for a property developer. "And if
| it's only made up of rich people, it's not much better."_
|
| From a human+social position, I strongly agree with this. The
| value of social benevolence isn't limited to the direct
| beneficiaries and has positive impacts beyond the economics.
| greyman wrote:
| But that literally never happens, each city contains both rich
| and poor people.
| kome wrote:
| it's not benevolence, it also makes economic sense. who does
| the menial job anyway? you should keep them close. if they will
| go to live far, their cost will increase, or their cost in time
| of traffic and pollution.
| bedobi wrote:
| The Mayor of Paris has bigger balls any other Mayor except maybe
| Barcelona
|
| ...and they're both women! The confidence to make radical,
| meaningful changes for the better of the people and tell the
| opposition to get stuffed... I wish all politicians had that.
| nindalf wrote:
| > I wish all politicians had that.
|
| Even the politicians you disagree with? So for example, AfD in
| Germany making the radical, meaningful change for the better of
| the German people by removing non-Germans from Germany ... and
| telling you to get stuffed ... you'd love that presumably?
|
| What you love is this policy. Don't confuse that with the
| method, which you clearly wouldn't like if the shoe was on the
| other foot.
| arlort wrote:
| Either I missed the part where the article mentioned the
| policy in paris being unconstitutional or that equivalence is
| overly-exaggerated at best
| baud147258 wrote:
| it's mostly continuing the policies from the previous mayor...
| (who was male, but I don't see the relation).
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| NY is a mess of policy failure and rampant corruption in the
| implementation of these policies, policies which have for decades
| been championed by the NY Times, frequently by naive portrayals
| of policies in Western European countries like this one. Once
| imported at 5 times the cost and half the quality these become
| irrevocable subsidies for well connected landlords and
| administrators. The city needs to get basic things like sewage,
| security, and transit working before plowing any more money into
| subsidized housing.
| darby_eight wrote:
| > security
|
| Oh come on, the NYPD swallowed 5 billion in public funds, the
| most of any city on earth. Crime is near an all-time low. Hell,
| they could probably slash half that budget without causing the
| crime sprees the NY post implies could happen at any time. This
| is the worst excuse to avoid funding subsidized housing when
| the latter would probably have a greater impact on whether
| people were desperate enough to turn to crime. Saying NY needs
| to be more secure is just fear mongering at this point.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| This is simply not true.
|
| > they could probably slash half that budget without causing
| the crime sprees
|
| You're living in a world painted by your politics and
| oblivious to reality. I plan to return to the city someday if
| things improve, but things are horrible now and not moving in
| the right direction.
| cm2187 wrote:
| > _One quarter of residents in the French capital now live in
| government-owned housing, part of an aggressive effort to keep
| lower-income Parisians -- and their businesses -- in the city._
|
| I think they meant _"...and their votes "_
| tetris11 wrote:
| expand?
| eschulz wrote:
| The article mentions a woman who wept with joy when she
| received a "steal" of a lease for a new government owned
| building, and the article mentions that certain political
| parties have made this program a priority. Perhaps this woman
| will support such political parties with her vote in future
| elections.
| cm2187 wrote:
| The socialists who control the city have a majority but not a
| structural one (Paris was voting conservative for a long
| time). The gentrification of Paris would normally deplete
| their electorate, so you can see their efforts to buy prime
| real estate at high price to convert it to social housing as
| a very expensive vote-buying exercise.
| teloli wrote:
| Or perhaps they try to do what socialists are supposed to
| be doing, namely giving the people a place where they can
| live.
| maeln wrote:
| Not the same guy, but if a class of people have to move out
| of the city because they are being priced-out, they will not
| vote in this city anymore (but in their new city in the
| suburb), shifting the current political balance. The current
| Paris mayor is from the Parti Socialiste (left-wing /
| moderate left-wing - for France), and may get a lot of their
| vote from the working class people living in Parisian social
| housing. Therefor, they have an active interest in keeping
| them within the city.
|
| The political theory is true but I have no idea if the people
| living in social housing do vote more for the current mayor
| though. So it is just theory.
| arlort wrote:
| They're saying it's done as an electoral bribe so that the
| people who benefit from this policy will vote for the party
| who did it
| ketzo wrote:
| People always say this like a gotcha, but aren't politicians
| _supposed_ to do stuff that they think people will vote for?
| ekianjo wrote:
| there are laws against giving financial incentives to
| voters... but they have been long forgotten
| wheybags wrote:
| No, I want my politicians to declare what they want to do,
| and then I choose which one I agree with. I do not want them
| to get elected, then try to do what people want. That's
| backwards.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Haven't they advocated for public housing and people voted
| them because of it?
| cm2187 wrote:
| Only if it is good for the country, otherwise it is at best
| demagogy, at worst corruption. And in this case borderline
| with gerrymandering (not by pushing constituency limits but
| by engineering a change in demographics).
| redserk wrote:
| Since when is encouraging people to be priced out "good for
| the country"?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Politicians aren't supposed to manipulate the voters set by
| moving people around by decree.
|
| That said, city planning is a complex thing so there's no
| easy answer to whether they are doing this.
| marcusverus wrote:
| > aren't politicians supposed to do stuff that they think
| people will vote for?
|
| This is generally true, but there is a line beyond which this
| becomes problematic.
|
| Surely you wouldn't support explicit vote buying, where a
| politician promised to repay voters with public cash after
| the election! If such a scheme were permitted, democracy
| would quickly cease to become a marketplace for ideas. It
| would devolve into a patronage system. Most of us would
| immediately recognize such a scheme as dangerous and question
| the legitimacy of any so-called democratic government whose
| majority was bought in such a manner. Do you agree that this
| would be a problem?
|
| Why would this cease to be a problem if the kickbacks were
| paid in-kind, and only made available to the poor?
| dangus wrote:
| This article reminded me of a thought I've often had: that the
| USA is a great place to live for the upper middle class and
| above, but it's one of the worst wealthy countries to live in
| when you're poor.
|
| From the context of the USA it seems downright amazing to see a
| society where public housing isn't automatically assumed to be a
| number of bad things: taxpayer waste, crime haven, and antiquated
| disrepair.
|
| The benefits of the tenant management system also seems like it's
| good for everyone in society. Our daily surroundings really
| shouldn't be a race to the highest bidder for high-rent tenants
| like McDonald's to come in, underpay employees, and poison local
| residents with junk food. The approach to the city as a public
| landlord being selective and building a neighborhood through
| balancing available goods and services seems incredibly
| desirable.
|
| In the US this is all inverted the wrong way: the wealthy
| neighborhoods are the only ones that can keep chains like
| McDonald's and Walmart out, walkability and positive urban fabric
| is a luxury amenity for the few (e.g., NYC, Miami, and Chicago's
| best neighborhoods), and the wealthy are the ones that are
| subsidized instead of those who are low income or middle class.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| >Our daily surroundings really shouldn't be a race to the
| highest bidder for high-rent tenants like McDonald's to come
| in, underpay employees, and poison local residents with junk
| food.
|
| A good term I heard for this was "strip mine society".
| TimPC wrote:
| I think the big issue is it's a lot harder to start social
| housing in 2024 when you have extremely limited historical
| action on it. But in general a city buying real estate is a
| hedge on real estate prices increasing in that city, which can
| be extremely useful for city budgets if you have any costs
| associate with housing some portion of the population. Most
| cities of a certain size find they can't function without some
| amount of social housing: the free market prices out entire
| occupations that cities need. Even someone as non-essential as
| a Barista is actually quite important in that many of the
| people in NYC want to be able to buy coffee. But you aren't
| going to get Starbucks to pay the $20+ /hour needed for them to
| rent within a reasonable commute of where they live.
|
| There are also questions about how much of out of control rents
| employers are responsible for and should bear the cost of, and
| how much it is the cities fault. To the degree to which rental
| prices are high because of politician supported NIMBYism it
| seems fairer for city budgets to bear those costs than third
| parties.
| bombcar wrote:
| The other option is to greatly improve transportation where
| you can live 50 miles outside the city and still get to work
| in under 30 minutes.
|
| This is very hard to do as you need exceptionally fast trains
| and well developed feeder lines.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I've often suspected third world countries stay "third world"
| because being rich in a poor country makes it a great place to
| live?
|
| (just as the second world countries which bordered the first
| seem to have done better than their ideological cores, it seems
| to me that first world countries which bordered the second have
| also done better)
| jart wrote:
| Poison? More like extremely nutritious and very cheap. Maybe
| too nutritious. Thanks to modern technology, even the poorest
| among us can afford to look like King Henry VIII. Would you
| take that privilege away from them?
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| Boutique shops and artisinal fares aren't what poor immigrants
| to the USA are looking for. Being poor in the USA already means
| you're better off than you'd be in most of those "wealthy
| countries'" in income. The bottom 10% in the US have a life
| index on par with or better than the top 10% in most European
| countries. The lowest 20% in America consume like an average
| person in a wealthy European country. Meanwhile my cousin is a
| third generation German and still gets called Auslander by her
| teachers (who get to decide for her which academic future she's
| allowed to have).
|
| Every poor immigrant family I know from around the early 2000s,
| ourselves included, now _owns_ at least one house. Their kids
| went to college, people started businesses.
|
| Also if you haven't seen chains in <wealthy European city> pay
| less attention to McDonald's and more attention to luxury
| clothing brands. Trust me, unlike Subways, you won't be seeing
| Europe's poor in any of these places. And for what it's worth,
| Paris is swarming with homelessness, including that of small
| children. The fact you see the opposite written in the New York
| Times should be a clue that they've got a reason to skew that
| reality otherwise.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >The bottom 10% in the US have a life index on par with or
| better than the top 10% in most European countries.
|
| Not convinced.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/01/astonis
| h...
|
| Also: Reported by Le Monde covering a study of GDP per
| Capita:
|
| > Italy is just ahead of Mississippi, the poorest of the 50
| states, while France is between Idaho and Arkansas,
| respectively 48th and 49th. Germany doesn't save face: It
| lies between Oklahoma and Maine (38th and 39th). This topic
| is muted in France - immediately met with counter-arguments
| about life expectancy, junk food, inequality, etc.
|
| Love that last bit predicting OP's stereotype.
|
| https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2023/09/04/the-
| gdp...
| bombcar wrote:
| In the USA the government does things like this by subsidies to
| private people and businesses (section 8 housing is somewhat
| similar and is paid to landlords).
|
| If the government wants to do this, they really should cut out
| the middle man and do it directly - purchase the building at
| something akin to fair market value and manage it themselves
| going forward.
| patwolf wrote:
| > Every Thursday, Jacques Baudrier, the Paris city councilor in
| charge of housing, scrolls through the list of properties being
| exchanged by sellers and buyers on the private market. With some
| exceptions, the city has the legal right to pre-empt the sale of
| a building, buy the property and convert it to public housing.
|
| What are the mechanics of how this works? If I agree to buy a
| property for a million dollars, does the city get a chance to
| match that price?
| drdo wrote:
| Yes, that's pretty much how it works. The city has the right to
| become the buyer for the specified price for any property sale.
| baud147258 wrote:
| > What are the mechanics of how this works? If I agree to buy a
| property for a million dollars, does the city get a chance to
| match that price?
|
| there's a French wiki page on this:
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_pr%C3%A9emption_urbai...
|
| But basically, yes, the city has 2 months to match the price.
| The city can also offer a lower price, which can be refused (so
| no sale at all) or can be argued in front of a special judge,
| who'd rule if the price offered by the city is acceptable,
| depending on the local housing market.
|
| It's not a rule that's specific to Paris, but which is
| applicable in most French cities.
| bertjk wrote:
| So does this mean that every sale of any building can take at
| least two months?
| mratsim wrote:
| They always take two months at the very minimum as well
| because buyers as to go to many banks or a loan broker. You
| have notaries involved and right to step away from a sale,
| no question asked for 10 days iirc.
| orwin wrote:
| Not any, only old buildings built after a certain date. And
| two month to sell a building in France? It's fast.
| willyt wrote:
| 2 months would be an ultra fast completion in the UK. I
| think when I bought my house it took 3 months, when I
| bought some land, cash purchase, it took more like 6
| months.
| estebank wrote:
| I've seen the process to purchase a place in both France
| and California. The former can take the significant part of
| a year, the later a matter of days.
| baud147258 wrote:
| From the experience of a few friends who've bought
| appartments these last years, two months would be the
| minimum here in France.
| thope wrote:
| No, pre-empt here means you don't have a word, the town
| (commune) has priority and you can't make an offer
| Ragnarork wrote:
| Basically, if your property is eligible for preemption, you
| have to declare that you intend to sell (at the price you wish)
| to the city, which can then tell you that
|
| - they don't intend to buy, in which case you can proceed with
| the sale
|
| - they buy at the price you've set
|
| - they make a counter-offer, which you have the right to refuse
| but then you also renounce to sell
|
| If there's a dispute on the price (especially in the third
| case), a tribunal will decide the eventual price, "based on the
| recent sale prices of similar properties".
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I tend to lean lefty, but this scheme makes me understand why
| libertarians want less government
|
| How much my home is worth should not be capped by whatever
| government thinks. That's bs
|
| If government is counter offering all of my neighbors and
| they are accepting it, then I am screwed. I either accept the
| government counter offer or I go to tribunal who will cite
| all of the government's recent purchases from my neighbors to
| set the price at something very close to that anyways
|
| And if I don't like it, I'm legally not allowed to sell?
|
| Ridiculous
|
| Even if you don't think houses should be infinitely
| appreciating assets, which I don't, your asset worth should
| still be as valuable as someone is willing to pay for them,
| not controlled by a cartel style government
| JBorrow wrote:
| Whether you like it or not the government does tell you how
| much your house is worth through monetary policy.
| Ragnarork wrote:
| > I go to tribunal who will cite all of the government's
| recent purchases from my neighbors
|
| That's an assumption on your part. Both the owner and the
| city can mount a legal case as to why their price is the
| correct one. In practice, this is often done by comparison
| with other properties in the same area and with the same
| characteristics. The judge also gets to visit the actual
| property to have its own perspective on it. Both the owner
| and the city have access to the same data when it comes to
| properties sold and bought, and must establish their cases
| based on concrete notarial deeds.
|
| There are indeed cases where the city makes a counter-
| proposal with a price that is significantly lower than
| market rates, but you have court rulings that reject these
| and side with the owner. I don't think it's perfect, but
| it's not one-sided like you describe.
|
| It can be frustrating, but eventually the city is not just
| a bunch of houses piled up in a completely decentralized
| way, and the preemption right, which has exceptions, for
| example properties recently built cannot be preempted, and
| which isn't automatic, i.e. there are multiple recourses
| for owners, is there so that the city has some leeway to
| conduct policy with regards to housing.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| But the market is completely distorted because the
| government is close to a monopsony. Especially if they
| "preempt" an entire neighborhood. There's no private
| sales to point the tribunal to in that case so they have
| utter control over the price
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| Should land -- a scare, limited resource -- be a private or
| public asset? I believe you're coming at this from the
| former perspective. But, it's worthwhile to ask this
| question so that we can understand why it could make sense
| to give the public a say in how land is allocated and used.
|
| Also, I'd like to point out that when you say:
|
| > I tend to lean lefty, but this scheme makes me understand
| why libertarians want less government
|
| It's quite easy to replace `government` with `a large
| private company` in your hypothetical:
|
| > If ~government~ a large private company is counter
| offering all of my neighbors and they are accepting it,
| then I am screwed. I either accept the ~government~ large
| private company's counter offer or ~I go to tribunal who
| will cite all of the government's recent purchases from my
| neighbors to set the price at something very close to that
| anyways~
|
| With, of course, the downside that there's no system-level
| recourse when the large private company uses its power to
| either: - undercut your "market value" of your home and
| force you to sell - or make living in your home terrible
| due to it successfully buying up and controlling all of the
| land _surrounding_ your home
|
| Both lead to what you are saying you don't like -- some
| _external_ actor coming in and controlling "how much [your]
| home is worth."
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > It's quite easy to replace `government` with `a large
| private company` in your hypothetical:
|
| Yeah that's kind of my point!
|
| This would very obviously be predatory if it were a real
| estate conglomerate, which is something government should
| protect people from, not actually just become
| themselves!!
|
| > Should land -- a scare, limited resource -- be a
| private or public asset? I believe you're coming at this
| from the former perspective
|
| This is completely irrelevant to the topic, because in
| this case we are talking about a situation where land is
| being treated as a private asset, and a government is
| acting like a private real estate conglomerate
|
| You can challenge it on grounds of what "should" be, but
| that's an entirely different discussion
| creaturemachine wrote:
| This isn't some government rug-pull on your idyllic picket-
| fenced suburban house. You might find housing to be
| different in other parts of the world.
| locallost wrote:
| That's what libertarians want until it's time to use
| eminent domain to build a freeway so they can exercise
| their freedoms. Then it's fine to cap your property value
| to something else because you can always prop the goal of
| progress as very important. But if you want to prop
| something else, dare I say something left leaning,
| something they're not interested in, then it's outrageous.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > How much my home is worth should not be capped by
| whatever government thinks
|
| What's your take on anti-price-gauging laws? Should the
| government "cap" the price of food and bottled water after
| a natural disaster, or should the seller determine how much
| it's worth, as determined by supply & demand?
| agucova wrote:
| Now I'm curious about what's _your_ take on them
| sangnoir wrote:
| I'm generally _not_ against the existence /enforcement of
| price smoothing laws (over time - as the intention with
| anti-price-gauging laws, or across the market, with
| market comparisons). I think it strikes a good balance
| when bridging the macro to the micro.
| pjc50 wrote:
| You've misunderstood. You can choose what your sale price
| is. You may or may not clear the market (find a buyer) at
| that price. But, if you do, you may have to sell to the
| government. You choose the price but not the buyer.
|
| Paris property remains extremely expensive.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Based on the parent comment, I don't think I've
| misunderstood
|
| "if your property is eligible for preemption, you have to
| declare that you intend to sell (at the price you wish)
| to the city, which can then tell you that [list of
| options here]"
|
| It seemed like the city has right of first refusal. If
| they make a counter offer you are then either obligated
| to accept their offer, or go to tribunal, or not sell
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's essentially the same as a
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_first_refusal
| adolph wrote:
| > the city has the legal right to pre-empt the sale of a
| building, buy the property and convert it to public housing
|
| Sounds like every property sale is a political calculation
| ready for grease.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| My understanding is that excise taxation is generally agreed upon
| as the preferred method for governments to manipulate the market,
| both because it incurs fewer deadweight losses and because it
| tends to actually work better.
|
| So, what if we get rid of all these complicated rent control and
| rent freezes and affordable housing schemes, and instead just
| implement a rent tax, to be paid by the landlord, and make it
| progressive? I don't know exactly how it should scale; you
| wouldn't want it to be just by rent because that would have a
| regressive impact on families who have kids, because they need
| more space and more space naturally costs more. Maybe price per
| square foot?
|
| At least in my city this would probably also reduce real estate
| prices in general, because a huge source of demand for houses is
| actually real estate speculators who buy up houses and then put
| them on the market as rental units. I gather, based on one
| conversation with an acquaintance who had been a realtor but was
| looking to pivot into this line of business, is that a lot of
| what's fueling that is, in effect, not-exactly-loopholes in US
| and local housing, lending and tax laws - many of which are
| ostensibly aimed at making housing more affordable - that allow
| people with sufficient resources to financially engineer together
| a speculative source of income while externalizing all the risk
| onto everyone but themselves.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Most demand for houses is from people. Most price increases are
| due to a lack of supply that exceeds population growth. Most
| lack of supply is caused by it being illegal to build higher /
| more dense, and a variety of other rules and regulations.
|
| Landlords are for the most part capitalizing on these broader
| market / regulatory trends.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| I don't understand the downvotes. I honestly think what that
| is saying is true in a black and white way.
|
| Grandparent says: "get rid of all these complicated rent
| control and rent freezes and affordable housing scheme..."
|
| I think this is fertile for discussion. Rent freezes didn't
| work in Argentina (extreme example), my opinion is they don't
| work anywhere. But oversupply does reduce prices, as happened
| with evergrande in China.
|
| IMO interest in not having an oversupply bursting a bubble is
| precisely what parent is talking about.
|
| Again, in a very absolute way of looking at life.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Compare and contrast with Paraguay where you can build
| whatever you want whenever and there is an ample supply of
| housing and very little in rental returns.
|
| Argentina is a great example. That said rent is also cheap
| in Buenos Aires. But I think that is due to the economy
| rather than rent control.
|
| You're right in that affordable housing in any real sense
| would be MASSIVELY unpopular with voters. You'd be looking
| at cutting values in half to reach 2000s levels of
| affordability or 75% to get to 1970s levels.
| bombcar wrote:
| The best that can be done is freezing house prices
| nominally (or close to it) and then let inflation take
| over as supply increases.
|
| People are really bad at working out constant dollars and
| have loans, as long as the nominal value is steady or
| going up slightly, they don't really care if the absolute
| value has dropped because of inflation.
| kbolino wrote:
| What mechanisms would be effective at controlling asset
| prices under inflationary monetary regimes?
| HenriTEL wrote:
| No, price increase is mostly due to inflation trends. When
| there is an inflation trend the house market follows, for
| example in London, after the start of the war in Ukraine
| things like gas and gasoline price went up which created a
| legit price increase for products that depends on those. But
| we've also seen an increase in rent. And that's because
| estate agents knew that since there was an inflation trend
| people were expecting to pay more. So the whole market went
| up with no significant change in supply and demand.
| tmnvix wrote:
| > Most price increases are due to a lack of supply that
| exceeds population growth.
|
| Citation definitely needed.
|
| In my opinion, cheap credit (i.e. low interest rates) is the
| primary culprit. It has created an awful lot of 'artificial
| demand' for properties as investments as opposed to demand
| for properties to be used as homes. In most markets I look
| at, the proportion of underutilised properties has been
| rising (second homes, short term rentals, land banking, etc).
|
| Here in NZ the sharp rise in interest rates caused a sudden
| and significant increase in homes available for sale and
| homes available to rent. Where did they come from?
| jeffbee wrote:
| People who don't understand market pricing are against rent
| taxes because they think landlords can pass them through.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| And people who don't understand supply and demand think rent
| taxes are a solution to a lack of housing stock.
| corford wrote:
| Not everyone agrees there's a shortage:
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-
| of-...
|
| A few choice paras (if people don't read the full article):
|
| "The forthcoming general election is once again likely to
| be dominated by claims about a housing shortage and a dire
| need to build more homes. Housebuilding is an article of
| faith across the political spectrum. The evidence, however,
| does not support this thinking. Quite the reverse. Over the
| last 25 years, there has not just been a constant surplus
| of homes per household, but the ratio has been modestly
| growing while our living situations have been getting so
| much worse. In London, as the Conservative Home blog notes,
| there is a terrible housing crisis "even though its
| population is roughly the same as it was 70 years ago",
| when the city was still extensively bomb-damaged by the
| second world war."
|
| "The supply issue continues to dominate the discourse
| despite the US having more homes per capita than at any
| point in its history, and the UK's homes-per-capita ratio
| actually exceeds the US's."
|
| "In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
| Development countries, the UK has roughly the average
| number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019.
| We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands,
| Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many
| more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the
| Czech Republic."
| everforward wrote:
| That argument presumes that housing is consumed the same
| way it was 70 years ago, and that the location of the
| housing is irrelevant.
|
| I know lots of places where there are empty, cheap
| houses. They're not close to any good jobs, the only
| Internet they have is 3G, and the schools suck because
| the county is poor (because no one wants to live there).
|
| I also suspect housing consumption per-capita is up as
| people move out younger and marry later. Especially in
| population centers.
|
| I'm not sure what they're pointing to as the reason for
| housing prices if it's not supply and demand.
| bombcar wrote:
| And you either have to make the "cheap places" more
| desirable (which raises their prices, but lowers pressure
| elsewhere) or you have to build more housing in the
| desirable areas.
|
| You also have the issue that if someone _does_ have a
| house, no matter what kind of house, it 's a hassle and a
| half to move, so you have to provide some pretty darn
| strong incentives to get people to move.
|
| My house ain't great, but I'd need something like $10-20k
| to consider moving to a nearly identical or even somewhat
| better house, just because of the costs and hassle
| associated with moving.
| corford wrote:
| I think the main argument they are making is that
| affordability is less a demand/supply issue and more a
| tax policy issue. Implication being: if you cap rental
| income, you'll see a fall in private landlords but not
| necessarily less housing stock than if there were no rent
| controls.
|
| >I'm not sure what they're pointing to as the reason for
| housing prices if it's not supply and demand.
|
| They are saying the uncapped rental market makes housing
| as an asset class extremely profitable i.e. simple supply
| & demand argument is not strong enough alone to be the
| only driver.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >as people move out younger and marry later
|
| What data do you have of people moving out younger?
| Everything I've seen is that younger generations are
| stuck living at their parent's house.
| bombcar wrote:
| Housing per capita may not be the best measurement, if
| households are changing. What may have been two parents
| and some kids in one house after the war may now be two
| separate households because of divorce, etc.
| pas wrote:
| how could/would they not?
|
| everything is paid by the renters, and if the price is not
| high enough (to turn a risk-weighted profit) it will be
| removed from the market.
|
| (if there's a high enough vacancy tax and/or security costs
| against squatting, then eventually it will be sold. which is
| a one time boon for the market, but it ends up crowding out
| new developments for a while, and altogether this just leads
| to crazy waitlists and the usual discrimination.)
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't know anything about the French rental homes market
| but in the USA there's ample headroom in lessor profits to
| take a haircut without triggering the second-order effect
| that you hypothesized. Landlord income as a share of GDP
| (again, in the USA) stands at a post-War high, having
| increased 15x from its low around 1990.
|
| Landlords have a huge and largely unearned cashflow and the
| thing about taxes is it's best to try to raise them where
| the money is.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Rental supply is fixed in the short term. Therefore
| landlords have no pricing power unless they are colluding
| assuming theyre trying to maximize profit and not giving
| tenants a deal. Landlord goal is to rent every unit for
| maximum amount, that means renters set the price by
| competing with each other.
| chaorace wrote:
| Kind of the same deal as rent control in a lot of ways,
| right? What you get is a short-term suppression of market
| rates that slowly get internalized by the supply-side
| until prices more/less return to the original equilibrium
| adolph wrote:
| > People who don't understand market pricing are against rent
| taxes because they think landlords can pass them through.
|
| If all rents are taxed, what is the market mechanism to avoid
| pass though?
|
| It seems as if a more fair approach would be to increase tax
| rates on income from rents. That way a rentier would not
| defer maintenance, the costs of which would be deducted from
| income and not taxed, as opposed to front-loading the tax to
| the rent transaction and thus encouraging deferred
| maintenance to preserve income.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The problem -- again, in America -- is that residential
| rents are by far the largest component of unreported
| income. Exemptions mean nothing to petty criminals who are
| already not effectively taxed.
|
| The market mechanism that precludes tax pass-through is the
| price is already set as high as the market will bear. If
| landlords could raise the rent to pass through a new tax
| then they would have done so already without the tax.
| dv_dt wrote:
| There are failures of excise taxation to address the problem,
| in part due to political objections and blocks to taxation in
| the first place, while there are very long running examples of
| quality public housing making a competitive check on excess
| private rents in city markets.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The problem with taxing rent is you have to ask: do you also
| tax the "imputed rent" of owner-occupiers?
|
| It's politically difficult to do so, but if you don't you end
| up with an even bigger barrier to mobility and entry to the
| property class as you have to pay more until you can save up
| for a deposit.
|
| (I don't think you can make the tax incidence on renters zero)
| alexb_ wrote:
| You've re-invented Land Value Tax, which absolutely 100% should
| be everywhere.
| mebazaa wrote:
| As a Parisian, who is generally angry at the city's housing
| policy (build taller!), I find the public housing of the past few
| years to be a great achievement. In general, public housing sits
| on the outer edges of Paris, but the city has been agressive in
| reconverting buildings in posher neighborhoods. It doesn't really
| lead to reduced rent (because no additional supply), but it
| decreases social segregation. That alone is critical to keep a
| city alive.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > but it decreases social segregation. That alone is critical
| to keep a city alive.
|
| I agree that is a net boon to society. I think the cross drift
| of ideas is a net positive, the human interaction can create
| more opportunities for those that have less, I don't think it
| reduces inequality meaningfully and I'm not suggesting that was
| a goal only that my prior statements might lead one to believe
| it does, but I've seen far more segregated cities be without
| many services during an infrastructure failure, because the
| people doing those services didn't live there.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Paris needs a new center. Like many other cities, build more
| places where people want to flock so you get pressure off the
| center.
|
| Most new developments are in dead areas because nobody wants to
| spend time surrounded by ugly, bland and functional
| architecture.
| lou1306 wrote:
| The problem is, when you are competing with the center of
| Paris, it is pretty hard to build a compelling alternative.
| Say what you will about the streets being loud, chaotic and
| dirty, the area between the II, III, V and VI arrondissements
| (Latin quarter, Pantheon, Beaubourg, Jardin du Luxembourg,
| Tuilleries, Notre Dame, Place des Vosges) is still just
| swell.
| mebazaa wrote:
| Yeah, and also you have the problem of job location. The
| regional government says they want to make the Paris area
| more "polycentric", but there's a limit to that if jobs are
| heavily concentrated in one area. We are racing to open
| more subway lines, and that will surely help, but at some
| point, raw distance will remain a bottleneck.
| Ragnarork wrote:
| This reminds of the project that aimed at creating a new
| business/commercial complex south-east of Paris in Noisy-
| Le-Grand. A real estate promoter had a big project, and a
| metro line was designed, then built, but the real estate
| project went into bankruptcy and never got out of the
| ground.[0]
|
| The metro line was completed, inaugurated, but never
| opened to the public, and eventually mothballed. For
| quite a while, it was rumored that they operated trains
| once a month to keep the system working and maintained,
| not sure up until when.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noisy-le-Grand_Metro
| Pyrodogg wrote:
| The Tim Traveller channel on YouTube did a couple videos
| about this [1] and [2]. The station was open for a brief
| time for some public tours before being redeveloped. He
| also links to some archival footage from 1997 showing it
| in motion [3].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWxESIzJhCU [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGIz_zwoALU [3]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMHW9cEAO78
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| It's not a problem in the sense that nowadays we know how
| to make it. It's a question of money and political build.
| More housing, more offices, make it pleasent, connect it,
| etc.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Seems like governments could lead the charge by building
| new government facilities in an alternate location, which
| is created with a solid plan for incorporating public
| transport, housing, event spaces, and retail.
|
| Its entirely possible to build a new city from the ground
| up. And starting with a clean slate allows planners to
| design with the next 10,20,30,50 years of growth in mind.
| It's very difficult to scale a city effectively without a
| long-term city plan.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Do you live in one of these places?
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| > build taller
|
| As someone who lives in an area with plenty of high-density
| residential buildings, I can attest that this is a perfect
| recipe for creating congested cities with such intense light
| and noise pollution.
| rsynnott wrote:
| It can certainly cause light issues, but I'm not sure why it
| would cause _congestion_?
| dv_dt wrote:
| It causes congestion if the city refuses to invest in
| public transportation - which is more a problem in US
| cities - though some European cities could be behind on
| keeping up with changes to different degrees
| rsynnott wrote:
| Oh, right, I see, yeah. Would not generally be an issue
| in Paris, I would've thought, at least not towards the
| centre.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| You'd be mistaken. Public transit is extremely crowded in
| the centre during rush hour.
|
| For example, two regional lines (RER B and D) need to
| share a tunnel in the middle of the city. They've been
| investigating digging another one for a long time, but,
| AFAIK. they haven't found an economical way of doing so.
| The solution is to try to move people to other lines, but
| those are already very crowded and I'm not aware of any
| project to build a new line inside of the city limits.
| rayiner wrote:
| Congestion is a problem even in cities with excellent
| public transportation. Have you ever been on the Tokyo
| subway at 8:30 am?
| dv_dt wrote:
| Yes, it always a balance of factors in the system, but
| what you're talking about is a higher threshold of
| capacity already. They've built up to higher rise density
| in Tokyo and are already managing much higher people
| movement in core higher density areas than the edges of
| Paris.
| bragr wrote:
| Ultimately you have more people coming and going from each
| building, which means more people on the streets, and more
| demand for all utilities and public services. Building up
| doesn't build out those other things. That's why you have
| things like Air Rights in NYC to limit building.
| rcpt wrote:
| People aren't very noisy. Cars are
| kcorbitt wrote:
| I don't know... I lived in Barcelona for two years
| recently and had pretty bad luck. In addition to one-off
| incidents, some consistent noise issues we had:
|
| - The Pakistani restaurant below our apartment would
| regularly host receptions/weddings until 2-3am. The
| sendoff typically involved groups of 20-30 people banging
| large drums loudly and singing as the happy couple walked
| out and were driven away.
|
| - We had a neighborhood drunk who frequently (multiple
| times a week) would wander down the street singing
| Flamenco-style ballads about his unfortunate love life.
| My assumption was that the ex he was singing to lived on
| the street? Anyway, he had quite a voice and was great at
| projecting.
|
| - The building behind us was shorter than ours and our
| rear balcony faced their rooftop. In the summer one of
| the apartments there would semi-regularly hold parties
| until 1am.
|
| Cars were an occasional issue too, but people were a much
| bigger problem in that particular neighborhood. That
| said, I've also lived in dense neighborhoods with none of
| those problems, so maybe better norms/regulations are the
| answer... but existing noise ordinances in the US are
| rarely enforced.
|
| Beyond the noise issues though I did enjoy the
| convenience/amenities that a dense neighborhood provides!
| hackeraccount wrote:
| recently moved half a mile further out from city center
| and can attest to all of this. Hookah bar in my case was
| blaring music at 1AM. People in various states of
| inebriation shouting to each other outside my bedroom
| window.
|
| There's less car traffic too but that was such a
| background noise that I hardly noticed it. Though
| truthfully the first week or so at the new place I was
| conscious of it's absence.
| digging wrote:
| Theoretically all those interactions breach the social
| contract and could be acted upon by making complaints.
| However, someone loudly driving a multi-ton car down your
| road is _always_ "okay".
|
| Also... I live in a low-density urban neighborhood
| currently and it's the loudest place I've ever lived.
| _Mostly_ it 's road noise, but also one of my neighbors
| parties 12+ hours every weekend playing music very
| loudly. Some people are just loud, but cars make
| _everybody_ loud.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > However, someone loudly driving a multi-ton car down
| your road is _always_ "okay".
|
| Cars with fart pipes installed are the same kind of
| violation. Modern cars with functioning mufflers or
| electric powertrains... aren't actually that loud.
| digging wrote:
| > Modern cars with functioning mufflers or electric
| powertrains... aren't actually that loud.
|
| Until their tires hit asphalt. Cars have to go _very_
| slowly for the engine to be louder than the tires, and
| that noise is a function of weight, and electric cars are
| heavier than equivalent ICE cars.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Most of the sound from a modern car with a functioning
| muffler is wind noise. You can barely hear the tires
| unless you're standing right next to it.
|
| "Electric cars are heavier" is some silly nonsense where
| people went looking for something to complain about. You
| can make an electric car as light as you want, with the
| trade off that it implies making the battery smaller and
| reducing range. But the Model 3 has a ~300 mile range and
| weighs the same as the average car.
| digging wrote:
| > Most of the sound from a modern car with a functioning
| muffler is wind noise
|
| What? Like wind hitting the extremely aerodynamic surface
| of the car designed specifically not to catch the wind? I
| have never heard or read this in my life - it is widely
| known that tires-on-pavement is the biggest contributor
| of car noise. That roar you hear standing a quarter mile
| from a busy highway is not wind, it's the tires.
|
| > "Electric cars are heavier" is some silly nonsense
| where people went looking for something to complain
| about. You can make an electric car as light as you want,
| with the trade off that it implies making the battery
| smaller and reducing range.
|
| Again, this contradicts everything I've read and/or is
| just willfully ignorant. You can't make EVs superlight by
| stripping down the body, for example. The battery is
| _the_ heavy part and while they may get more mass-
| efficient over time EVs are now and for the foreseeable
| future strictly heavier than same-size ICE cars.
|
| EVs aren't the savior of the environment, public transit
| is. EVs are better than ICE cars in most ways, but for
| noise _all_ cars are a problem and EVs are worse.
| mactrey wrote:
| As you note, no two dense neighborhoods are the same.
| Those experiences would be rare in Tokyo or Kuala Lumpur.
| I would say that cultural norms dominate density when it
| comes to explaining late-night partying.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| I have never met a car that had a fight with her spouse
| that woke up the whole block at 3AM
| Jensson wrote:
| You need better walls, aren't there standards that
| apartment walls need to be sound proof?
| bombcar wrote:
| Remember that in the US at least, many dense buildings
| are incredibly old, from before soundproofing and such
| was really common.
|
| Living in a 1900s building in Brooklyn is vastly
| different from living in a 2020 building in Manhattan.
| romafirst3 wrote:
| Cars get into wrecks all the time :) Seriously though we
| just normalise it. If there is a car accident on your
| street everyone is awake. How about cop cars and
| ambulances racing by sirens blaring at all hours. People
| blast horns way louder than anyone will shout.
| lelandfe wrote:
| NYC started making certain streets pedestrian-only during
| COVID. The silence was astonishing.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| More people in a smaller area?
|
| Congestion doesn't just refer to car traffic
|
| Edit: think about crowded grocery stores and restaurants.
| Think community spaces like parks and libraries being
| packed all the time. Think about never being able to stop
| and get a coffee without waiting in a long line. Congestion
| underlipton wrote:
| I would imagine that the answer would be to open more
| shops. Obviously, to avoid a NYC-like situation, you
| would have to bust the CRE cartels that keep retail
| square-footage absurdly expensive. Parks and libraries
| are harder... though building taller does tend to allow
| for more open land space.
| stefs wrote:
| paris proper is already one of the densest areas in the
| world (and definitely in europe). when i lived there i
| wouldn't have noticed any problems with crowded grocery
| stores or community spaces compared to the comparatively
| low-density city i currently live in.
|
| there definitely were a lot more people in the streets,
| other cities feel deserted in comparison.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > i wouldn't have noticed any problems with crowded
| grocery stores or community spaces
|
| There are so many of them. Every block seemed to have
| grocers and a small park.
|
| Where I am it's a massive supermarket every 5km, not a
| small one every 200m. You can shop different when it's
| less hassle to go.
| bombcar wrote:
| Delivery also lets you have more smaller stores carrying
| the 80% you need regularly, and the 20% that is less
| common can come via delivery in a day or two.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I guess one person's congestion is another person's
| lively and bustling city?
| Jensson wrote:
| > Think community spaces like parks and libraries being
| packed all the time.
|
| They aren't, with dense housing there is so much room for
| parks that they are everywhere. I live in such a place,
| you go out and you mostly hear birds chirping, not
| people, it is a cheap suburb with high rise apartments
| next to public transit and everything you need in
| walkable distance including hospital and government
| services and hardware stores.
|
| Dense housing means there is more room for everything
| else, not less, so everything is less crowded. Birds
| singing outside of my windows is the main noise pollution
| where I live.
| kazinator wrote:
| That's only true if we hold the population constant, and
| get everyone to scrunch together onto smaller lots built
| taller.
|
| The main aim of density is to turn cities of a million
| into cities of ten million, not to just stick with a
| million and have birds chirping in parks everywhere you
| go.
| not2b wrote:
| No, the aim is to have that one million people occupy a
| smaller area, so that there's more space for parks, open
| space, farms, etc.
| kazinator wrote:
| Sorry, which density advocacy groups have this nice idea
| as their literal goal?
|
| Density is the population of a metropolitan area divided
| by its total area. Not population divided by the
| footprint area of residential lots. Density advocacy is
| all about accommodating population influx; it is really
| burgeoning population advocacy.
| jisaacstone wrote:
| Every group I know of that actually advocates for density
| does have this as their goal. It is a bit odd that the
| external reputation is that they do not, to the point
| that parallel orgs sometimes appear advocating for pretty
| much the same things but "with more emphasis on
| livability" or similar.
| kazinator wrote:
| Really? Is this documented somewhere? What is the typical
| proposal for how they plan to keep the population
| constant, after creating all that space? I've not heard
| of this. It's always about how many more millions of
| people could live here if we rearranged things.
|
| I've never heard of a density advocacy group being
| opposed to population growth. Density advocacy is
| practically synonymous with at least acceptance (if not
| advocacy) of urban population growth. Population growth
| is in fact like a sacred cow. You must never blame any
| urban problems on population growth; the cause is always
| not enough vertical build.
|
| Is there any example of a density anywhere going on
| record that the metropolis in this local neck of the
| woods should somehow say no to more people, rather than
| building more?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > What is the typical proposal for how they plan to keep
| the population constant, after creating all that space?
|
| Have other metropolitan areas do the same so there is no
| net migration.
|
| > Is there any example of a density anywhere going on
| record that the metropolis in this local neck of the
| woods should somehow say no to more people, rather than
| building more?
|
| There is a difference between refusing new people and
| having population growth as a goal. People exist, they
| have to live somewhere, increasing density increases the
| housing stock and gives them somewhere to live.
|
| If one city is hostile to giving them somewhere to live
| and another isn't, people might move from the hostile
| place to the amiable place. But the solution to this is
| obviously to make the other city less hostile, not to
| make sure that all cities are maximally hostile.
| verisimi wrote:
| > think about crowded grocery stores and restaurants.
| Think community spaces like parks and libraries being
| packed all the time. Think about never being able to stop
| and get a coffee without waiting in a long line.
|
| It also changes behaviour. People are under stress all
| the time. It's not a nice or natural way to live. But it
| is easier to govern people.
| digging wrote:
| ...This is the state of people living under car-
| dependency, not dense urbanism supported by public
| transit and walkable areas. _Car_ noises stress people
| out, make them irritable, impact their health. Driving in
| traffic makes people angry /furious/insane (literally -
| it is not sane to pull a gun on someone driving past you
| but it happens). Prioritizing parking and roads is a
| colossal misuse of land which causes crowded public
| spaces; imagine if every parking lot was an additional
| market or park.
| verisimi wrote:
| But, they are closing roads making them one way etc, that
| creates the traffic problem. It's bad governance -
| creating pain to allow government to administer the
| preordained 'solution' - no cars!
|
| Moving to car less city is the goal, but, as others note,
| the infrastructure is not there. So you're just pushing
| cars out... with no real answers being provided.
|
| How is that good government?
|
| And the roads you call mismanagement are already there!
| Removing them, deteriorating their use is what's new...
| digging wrote:
| This has nothing to do with my comment or what I was
| replying to, which was a comment about crowded public
| spaces.
| triceratops wrote:
| > People are under stress all the time. It's not a nice
| or natural way to live
|
| You might be thinking of packed slums in a developing
| country.
|
| > But it is easier to govern people.
|
| Ah yes, like the French, a famously docile people who
| never, ever rise up against their government.
| orwin wrote:
| We just like to be vocal and share our disagreements
| publicly. It used to force a bit of honesty (it's not
| working much right now)
| itronitron wrote:
| Mixed use zoning solves that as businesses (grocery
| stores, cafes, pharmacies, etc.) are able to locate
| closer to people.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > think about crowded grocery stores and restaurants.
| Think community spaces like parks and libraries being
| packed all the time. Think about never being able to stop
| and get a coffee without waiting in a long line.
| Congestion
|
| That depends on supply and demand, not simply demand.
| More people attract, open and staff more shops, etc. It's
| easier to find a restaurant in a major city than a quiet
| rural town.
| brailsafe wrote:
| This seems like a fundamentally suburban perspective, and
| I don't mean that to be an insult, it's just what all of
| my small home town family members and friends think, and
| it overwhelmingly and ironically relates to the real
| traffic congestion they actually experience coupled with
| the hypothetical imagined congestion they pre-emptively
| avoid exposure to by driving instead of getting on the
| train.
|
| Not that there's _no_ foot traffic congestion or lines,
| but it's the same thing that happens in a case where
| there's only one Starbucks in a sprawling suburb or
| business district at lunch time.
|
| A high density area is likewise it's own complex economy
| and system that seeks balance, when there's too many
| people in one area, you just go somewhere else or enjoy
| or compete with it. That's partly why Tokyo is
| simultaneously the most populated city on earth and one
| of the most quiet, clean, and least congested places I've
| visited.
|
| In my sparsely populated city that sprawls, it's
| extremely noisy, dusty, time consuming to get around, the
| infrastructure is failing, and I rarely bump into anyone
| I know, because people are only visible at the beginning
| and end of their journey. Meanwhile here in Vancouver I
| often run into people I know multiple times per day
| because we're in the same spaces, or I can go somewhere
| else and not see anyone just like any other place.
| mlrtime wrote:
| >Tokyo is simultaneously the most populated city on earth
| and one of the most quiet, clean, and least congested
| places I've visited.
|
| Sorry, no this is culture. The same virtues exist in
| Japanese suburbs, nothing to do with a city.
| hollerith wrote:
| The higher the density, the more vehicles get in each
| others way.
|
| If your reply is that the vehicles are not needed because
| everyone can just walk: it takes more energy and more
| carbon emissions to walk a mile than it takes to drive a
| vehicle a mile -- and that's before we get to transporting
| things other than people. (Growing food is very energy
| intensive; walking burns food.)
| simonw wrote:
| "it takes more energy and more carbon emissions to walk a
| mile than it takes to drive a vehicle a mile"
|
| I've never heard that before, can you expand on that?
| everforward wrote:
| I wouldnt be completely surprised if it were true, though
| I lack the background and willpower to try to get an
| actual answer lol.
|
| My thought process is that food also implies some level
| of driving (delivering pesticides/fertilizer, driving
| crops away), the fertilizers are fossil-fuel derived, and
| if you count the sun it takes to grow crops to eat (or
| worse, as feed for meat).
|
| The whole chain is pretty inefficient, too. Crops are
| pretty good at converting sunlight to stored energy, but
| animals and us are bad at retrieving that stored energy.
| The losses compound if we're eating meat.
|
| Walking isn't a particularly efficient method of movement
| either, to my understanding.
|
| The energy gets a bit spurious though. One could argue
| that if we're going to count sunlight going into the
| crops, we should do the same for the sunlight that raised
| the dinos so they could become oil.
|
| I also would wager that starts and stops would impact
| this heavily. The human weighs a lot less so they can
| accelerate/decelerate much cheaper. The car would have a
| better edge on a long, straight mile with no stops.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| A human walking is absurdly efficient, as anyone who's
| ever tried to outrun a bad diet can tell you. Running or
| walking a mile burns ~100 extra calories relative to
| sitting on your couch. Unless you're putting active
| effort into not doing so, most diets fluctuate by far
| more than that.
| hollerith wrote:
| Sure, but it is also true that food that is healthy for
| people is an absurdly expensive form of energy compared
| to gasoline.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| If we make free the largest costs of gas, greenhouse gas
| emissions.
| hollerith wrote:
| I don't remember where I heard it, only that it was an
| expert on agriculture saying it.
|
| The easiest way to see that it is plausible is to note
| that only 400 years ago, something like 90% of all human
| labor went into growing food, which is the way
| agricultural societies had always been everywhere. The
| way society was able reduce that to the 5% or so it is
| today was to use fossil fuels. The first big reduction
| came with the mechanization of textile production,
| freeing the food-growers from the need to make their own
| yarn and weave it into fabric to make clothes with. The
| tractor was of course also responsible for a drastic
| reduction in human labor as input to food-growing. Also,
| the replacement of horses with trucks for transportation
| of food from the farm to the nearest rail head or port or
| river (and transportation of inputs like fertilizer to
| the farm) meant that the food-growers could concentrate
| on growing food for people now that horses were much less
| needed.
|
| It's not just the extra calories needed to walk as
| opposed to rest or to watch television: it's the fact
| that a single person in a delivery truck can do the work
| of a dozen people who have to do the deliveries on foot,
| and keeping one person alive and productive costs only
| one twelfth as much as keeping a dozen alive and
| productive -- even if no one walks anywhere or does any
| exercise. Sometimes for example in order to remain alive
| and productive, one of the dozen will need to visit a
| doctor. The doctor requires food to stay alive and
| productive. Doctors don't live forever and so need to be
| replaced, and that is an expensive process in part
| because medical students need food and lots of other
| energy-requiring things to stay alive and able to learn
| (and to grow from babies to people mature enough to go to
| medical school).
|
| My guess is that that analysis continues to hold even if
| the dozen delivery workers can take public transportation
| as well as walk although maybe we have to replace "dozen"
| with "six".
|
| I'm not saying that restricting vehicles in Paris is a
| bad move: I'm just saying that the effects on, e.g.,
| carbon emission is not _obviously_ good and that the
| planners who chose (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H
| aussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...) to devote a large
| fraction of the area of cities to make it easy for
| vehicle traffic to flow were not just stupid benighted
| fools or evil people bent on making life worse for
| everyone.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| When people suggest that we reduce the number of cars
| driven, they are generally not talking about reducing
| commercial delivery vehicles [1]. Obviously our
| civilization depends on moving essential stuff around,
| and we need to do continue doing that, albeit with a
| electrified fleet of trucks/vans. The problem is with
| private cars, electric or internal combustion.
|
| [1] Excluding Uber style car-based food delivery
| services.
| hollerith wrote:
| OK, but some people here are asserting that the more
| urban density, the better, and neglecting to consider
| that if the density gets high enough, the commercial
| delivery vehicles are stuck in traffic most of the time
| _or_ the residents of the city refrain from buying things
| that would enhance their lives if it weren 't so
| expensive or tedious to move things around the city.
| hirsin wrote:
| Which is why if you've ever lived far outside the city,
| you're tired of people from the city coming out to visit
| you to buy all the stuff they can't get in the city.
|
| Oh, no, it's the other way round, mostly. It's easier to
| deliver a quantity and variety of goods to a dense area
| than the sticks. Which is why "go shopping" is a
| suggestion for people going to NYC, not Tucson.
| bezier-curve wrote:
| > it takes more energy and more carbon emissions to walk
| a mile than it takes to drive a vehicle a mile
|
| Do you have a source for this? Sounds questionable.
| fnord123 wrote:
| It's false. People will not go into suspend mode when not
| walking; they still burn calories. A very large person
| would burn about 130 calories walking a mile. i.e. one
| large latte. And most people who are this large are not
| at risk of a caloric deficit by burning an extra 130
| calories.
| ramblenode wrote:
| I agree that OP's assertion sounds dubious (especially
| considering the entire supply chain) but calories are a
| measure of energy, not CO2. You need to know the rate of
| CO2 emitted per kcal.
| hollerith wrote:
| I'm not claiming that the CO2 exhaled by people is
| relevant. I'm claiming that growing food requires
| significant energy inputs unless you want to go back to
| the world where most human labor went into growing food.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| A single mile, no.
|
| 100 miles? That seems very likely. That happens far
| quicker for the energy leaking heat machine sitting in
| the seat.
|
| So, while maybe the theme of the statement is correct?
| scott_w wrote:
| It's simply not.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Humans are INSANELY efficient at walking. That's why
| walking and running are terrible ways to lose weight.
| itishappy wrote:
| About 2x as efficient as a Model 3.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transp
| ort
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Yeah well I'm not exactly 4000 pounds or going 60mph hah
| resonantjacket5 wrote:
| The problem that this is the wrong measure to use
| emissions per mile, when it's really about emissions per
| trip.
|
| A car flying down the freeway uses less emissions per
| mile, but if one is traveling 50 miles versus just
| walking to down the block the former is using a lot more
| emissions even if it is more efficient per mile.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| High density is what enables mass rail transportation,
| which is much more efficient than personal vehicles.
| bombcar wrote:
| Mass rail is most efficient when it's full.
|
| https://afdc.energy.gov/conserve/public_transportation.ht
| ml - a full car gets amazingly close to a average train
| (USA).
|
| And this is seen in that trains are most common where
| they can be mostly full.
|
| What's scary about that is how quickly busses just get
| outclassed - they have to be as big as their biggest
| loads, but they're usually empty.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| How often do you see a full car? Average vehicle
| occupancy is 1.67, and has been for years.
| bombcar wrote:
| Quite often! But usually in the mirror/kid cam, because
| I'm driving the family somewhere.
| scott_w wrote:
| This is simply abject nonsense. I know the research you
| obliquely referenced and it assumes you specifically fuel
| that movement by eating beef burgers. And even that's on
| shaky ground.
|
| You can use your eyes to instantly observe that car
| drivers are not reducing their caloric intake to
| compensate for the fact that they "save" that energy by
| not walking.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| A 155lb human burns 177kcal when walking at 2.5mph[1], so
| that's 71kcal per mile
|
| There are 340kcal in 100g of wholemeal wheat flour[2], so
| walking one mile takes around 21g of wheat
|
| Wheat flour creates carbon emissions of 0.80 kg CO2e/kg
| [3], so walking one mile creates carbon emissions of 170
| g CO2e
|
| Driving a vehicle powered by gasoline produces tailpipe
| emissions of around 400g per mile [4]
|
| [1] https://www.healthline.com/health/calories-burned-
| walking#Wa... [2]
| https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/health-promotion-
| knowl... [3]
| https://apps.carboncloud.com/climatehub/product-
| reports/id/9... [4]
| https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-
| emissions-t...
| leereeves wrote:
| Don't forget that the person would be burning calories
| even if they weren't walking.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| The figure for calories consumed when walking is _excess_
| calories consumed (compared to sitting still)
| leereeves wrote:
| Are you sure? It doesn't say that.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| I am sure. Think about it for a minute and you'll see why
| leereeves wrote:
| I don't. Could you explain what you mean?
|
| Here's what I found: the formula given in the article is
| "calories burned = BMR x METs/24 x hour"
|
| But the METs for lying quietly is 1. The author certainly
| forgot to subtract 1 from METs in that equation, and
| could easily have also forgotten to do so when
| calculating the given numbers.
|
| https://pacompendium.com/inactivity/
| circlefavshape wrote:
| It just wouldn't make any sense to tell people "you burn
| X calories when walking/running/whatever for an hour" if
| they had to subtract their base metabolic rate from the
| number.
| leereeves wrote:
| I agree it _should_ state the excess calories burned. I
| think the author probably misunderstood the formula.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| However if the calories from your walk come from beef ...
|
| 100g of beef gives you 217 kcal [1], so you need 33g of
| beef for your walk
|
| Carbon cost for beef is 99.48 kg CO2e/kg [2]
|
| So walking one mile fueled by beef creates ~3.3kg of
| carbon emissions, over 8 times what would be emitted if
| you drove
|
| [1]
| https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/beef#nutrition
| [2]
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201677/greenhouse-
| gas-e...
| circlefavshape wrote:
| Oh and it turns out the carbon footprint for beef varies
| significantly by where the beef is raised. Average carbon
| footprint per 1kg of beef in the EU is 22.1 kg CO2e [1],
| so if you're in the EU your beef-fueled 1 mile walk emits
| ~730g of CO2e, a little under twice what you'd have
| emitted if you drove
|
| [1] https://www.thebeefsite.com/news/33676/uk-beef-
| carbon-footpr...
| scott_w wrote:
| Except the only people who eat that much beef are
| certainly not walking anywhere so it's a fun "statistic"
| that has no basis in reality.
| mactrey wrote:
| A car driver could easily eat the same amount of food as
| a walker, the extra calories would be stored as fat. This
| also ignores upfront CO2 output from assembling and
| delivering the car and increased CO2 output from
| maintaining car infrastructure vs. pedestrian
| infrastructure. Not to mention numerous other
| externalities.
| digging wrote:
| Light pollution is relatively easily solved, there's just not
| much will to do so. Noise pollution is best solved by
| reducing car-dependency which is a non-starter in most North
| American cities; I can't speak for Europe but I understand
| Paris to have undertaken a serious revolution in purging cars
| within the past decade.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > I understand Paris to have undertaken a serious
| revolution in purging cars within the past decade.
|
| The issue is that they have mainly increased the friction
| of using cars in the city (reducing lanes, restricting
| parking, converting avenues to one-way) all the while the
| public transit enhancements are running late, and whatever
| lines were already there saw a drop in service quality.
|
| So increasing density would require a major improvement in
| public transit. Note, however, that the city of Paris
| proper already has one of the highest densities in the
| world.
| digging wrote:
| That is unfortunate but realistically there's never going
| to be a political overhaul of that scale where all moves
| are perfectly synced. As long as they're actually working
| on the transit enhancements it seems completely
| acceptable to me (in the abstract; I'm not a Parisian)
| testingParisGPE wrote:
| Paris is building a lot of transit enhancements right
| now.
| Aromasin wrote:
| The same is happening in the UK. They've made car travel
| harder without making public transport any better
| (outside of London), which has just lowered the average
| person's productivity rather than making any headway into
| tackling the core issue of people getting from A to B
| quicker, cheaper, with less pollution.
|
| They put in some heavy traffic restrictions in my local
| city of Oxford by closing off residential roads, forcing
| all traffic down "arterial" roads instead and putting
| parking restrictions all over the place. A year later,
| there are no fewer cars on the road or increased public
| transport usage; some local studies by the university
| confirmed that. People just spend more time stuck in
| traffic travelling longer distances.
|
| It's like having a person with an injured leg and a
| missing one. Instead of giving the person a prosthesis to
| remove the load, they've just lopped the other off
| altogether, leaving them to crawl from place to place
| instead of hobble.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| ' making public transport any better (outside of London)'
| is not really under the government's control until after
| the local electorate agrees to it.
|
| So it's a moot point when only one decision pathway can
| actually be budged by more then a few inches.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I feel like the best way to make getting from A to B
| quicker is for A and B to be closer together. Which makes
| walking or biking more practical and you don't have to
| spend as much money on public transit.
| bombcar wrote:
| A and B being closer works for cars, too.
|
| A 15 minute walk is 2 minutes by car, five by bike.
| mpweiher wrote:
| > [car travel harder without making public transport
| better]
|
| Erm aren't you forgetting something?
|
| London just quadrupled its bicycle network. That seems
| like a massive improvement to me. When I lived there,
| biking was...let's be kind and say "less than ideal".
| Last time I visited I was amazed by the improvement, with
| protected two-way bike lanes right on the Thames and much
| more.
|
| https://momentummag.com/london-just-quadrupled-its-
| bicycle-n...
| tom_ wrote:
| The comment specifically excludes London, as it works
| differently from the rest of the UK.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Since when have bicycles been public transport?
| 8note wrote:
| This doesn't sound right?
|
| If you increase density, you should be avoiding the need
| to improve public transit, as more people will be closer
| to their destination than it's worth driving to.
|
| For the same population increase, less density means
| people have to travel farther to get to their
| destination. More people travelling farther necessitates
| more public transit
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Suppose that you have a grid-like road network across an
| area of 100 square miles, where intersecting roads go
| north-south and east-west and roads are half a mile
| apart. If you want to get from one corner of the square
| to the adjacent one, you have to travel 10 miles. If
| there are a million people doing this, you have ten
| million vehicle miles.
|
| Now suppose you compress this many people into an area of
| 25 square miles, where the roads are still half a mile
| apart. Now the distance along one of the edges is 5 miles
| and the same million people only have to travel 5 million
| miles. But now instead of having 400 miles of roads
| (10/0.5 * 10 on each axis), you have 100 miles of roads
| (5/0.5 * 5 * 2), so each road has twice as many cars, or
| each bus has to carry twice as many passengers or
| whatever.
|
| This is why mass transit works in cities and not in the
| suburbs. In a city you have enough passengers to fill the
| bus or subway car, in the suburbs you don't. But if you
| increase the density without putting in any mass transit,
| you just get more traffic.
|
| On the other hand, the people who say we can't increase
| density until we build mass transit are full of crap. You
| can add a bus route in a day, you just buy a bus and hire
| a driver. In urban areas subways are generally more
| efficient, and those take time to build, but you can run
| a bus until the subway is built. It's no excuse to hold
| up housing construction.
| dublinben wrote:
| You can't assume that the number of cars is a constant
| though. As point A and point B become farther apart, car
| usage goes up. When they become closer together, car
| usage scales down.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| But as point A and point B become closer together, it
| takes less time to get there by car and then people do it
| more often. Unless traffic congestion eats the time
| savings, implying that there is high traffic congestion.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a finite number of trips people can practically
| do - just because they live next door to work doesn't
| mean they'll commute more than twice each day (close
| enough people will return for home for lunch perhaps).
|
| As traffic and travel times lessen, people _do_ travel
| further and more, but only to a point.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| But who was contending otherwise? You don't need it to be
| _infinite_ , to be a problem all it has to do is not
| allow the reduction in driving because now distances are
| shorter and sometimes people can walk to not exceed the
| increase in density because now four times as many people
| are in the same area. Which it might not have done even
| without this, depending on how much more often shorter
| distances cause people to walk.
| dublinben wrote:
| Cities are populated by people, not cars. As point A and
| point B become closer, people are less likely to drive.
|
| If your mailbox is attached to your house, you can lean
| out your front door to get your mail. If your mailbox is
| at the end of your 20 foot driveway, you take a few steps
| to get your mail. If you live on a farm, and your mailbox
| is down a several hundred yard driveway, you might hop in
| your side-by-side UTV. If your mail goes to a Post Office
| Box in town, you might hop in your truck and pick it up
| while running errands.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| If you make something more efficient, people often use
| more of it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
|
| If things that had been a 10 minute drive become a 5
| minute drive, now they're worth it when before they
| weren't. You go to the shop instead of waiting 2 days for
| Amazon. You go to the shop you like more instead of the
| one you like less even though the lesser one is closer,
| because now the difference isn't as big.
| mpweiher wrote:
| > [increase friction for cars...no improvement to public
| transport]
|
| Hmm...aren't you forgetting something?
|
| Last I checked, Paris had a veritable bicycling
| revolution.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Paris
|
| _Le Plan velo de Paris (2015-2020)_ doubled bicycle
| lanes to 1000km and increased ridership (apparently
| already high?) by 50% or more.
|
| The current plan is to add another 180km and make Paris
| 100% cyclable.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Sure, if you live in the city proper.
|
| But what that doesn't mention: the bike sharing schemes
| are hit-and-miss. I usually commute each way a good hour
| before rush-hour traffic, so I have a good probability of
| finding a usable bike. But during rush hour? Fat chance.
|
| Oh, you're going to point out that there's a scheme
| helping you purchase your own bike? Indeed. What are you
| going to do with it, though? At home, you may be able to
| find a spot to park in your flat (it's not my case). You
| wanna leave it outside? Sure, go ahead, if you don't care
| about finding it in one piece in the morning. Ditto for
| the other end of your commute.
|
| There's also the fact that bike sharing schemes only work
| in Paris proper and adjacent towns. If you want to
| commute in from further away [0], you better be ready to
| ride in traffic and have your own bike, assuming you
| don't live _that_ far. If you 're lucky enough to live in
| one of the places served by the new metro, it's still not
| ready (but should be real soon now - fingers crossed).
|
| So sure, having more dedicated bike lanes (and some of
| the new ones are actually physically separate from car
| lanes) is great. Although sometimes the layout is...
| puzzling? Bike lanes switching from the left to the right
| side of the roads, narrow two-way lanes (Bd Sebastopol),
| etc.
|
| But I wouldn't exactly call it a "revolution" in
| practice. My commute goes from the east to the northwest
| of the city, around 7 km. Of these, only around 1 km is a
| bike lane separate from the traffic. And it's
| ridiculously narrow. Bonus points for it being painted
| with a slippery paint for some reason (look up Boulevard
| Magenta). The rest is half on bike lanes shared with a
| bus, the other half on regular roads with no bike lane at
| all.
|
| ---
|
| [0] Don't forget that Paris proper is home to ~2M people,
| while the Paris Region has ~12M.
| mrpopo wrote:
| Safe (locked) bike parks are popping up everywhere in
| Paris
| CalRobert wrote:
| For what it's worth, I got a folding bike (a Brompton) to
| address the storage issues you cite.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| One reason I don't get a bike here in Seattle is because
| bike theft is just way too common, and I have no way to
| secure it in my house (not enclosed garage, no space
| inside to keep it). It is funny, because they have better
| infrastructure now, but the theft problem (and lack of
| police/government care for the problem) means less people
| are actually riding bikes here.
| harimau777 wrote:
| How do people deal with being sweaty at work? Do offices
| generally have showers?
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| You wear wicking clothing, don't ride too hard and change
| into work clothes in the office bathroom.
| twelve40 wrote:
| they don't; it's just not practical. You have to be
| relatively fit and energetic to do it every day, have no
| chores like kids pickup, have extra time on your hands,
| the weather has to be perfect - no rain or god forbid
| snow. This only works for a particular segment of working
| people out there.
| Zamiel_Snawley wrote:
| The Dutch beg to differ[0].
|
| Over a third of Dutch people cycle as their most frequent
| mode of transport. Over a quarter of all trips are on a
| bike. 49% of primary school students and 75% of secondary
| school students cycle to school.
|
| Cycling has been a national priority for the Dutch, like
| the automobile has a been a priority for much of the rest
| of the developed world.
|
| With e-bikes, fitness and terrain are less relevant than
| ever. Unsafe(car dominated) bike routes are the number
| one obstacle to increased cycling.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It helps that the Netherlands is mostly flat and has
| pretty good weather for it (I guess rain is kind of an
| issue). They also have awesome infrastructure and don't
| just expect cars to do the right thing (they actually
| design and redesign roads to make biking safe).
| bouzouk wrote:
| I live in Paris, I have 2 small kids, and I don't have
| much time on my hands (founder). I go to work (5km) by
| bike every day, whether it rains, snows, or worse ;)
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It depends on the climate. If you live in California or
| west coast outside of rainy seasons, there really isn't
| much of a problem unless you have a huge hill to climb on
| the way to work. Actually, that was my problem in
| Lausanne (3D town, I road up the hill every morning, and
| would be a bit sweaty, but I had my own office so I
| didn't care).
|
| Riding worked for a particular phase of my life, now it
| doesn't, since I have a kid to take care of and the bike
| theft problem has gotten out of control in my locale.
| javiramos wrote:
| ebike
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Paris is mostly flat. As long as you aren't racing to
| work, sweat shouldn't be an issue.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Isn't La Defense on a hill? I remember the escalators
| going up to it and down from it, anyways.
| retinaros wrote:
| it is not flat at all
| marsRoverDev wrote:
| The purging has really picked up pace in the last couple of
| years, and I think a major highlight will be the upcoming
| cleansing of Place de la Concorde.
| andrepd wrote:
| Both the fight against car dependency and the housing
| policy in TFA have been spearheaded by the current mayor,
| Anne Hidalgo
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Hear hear! Anytime someone argues something like "I could
| never give up my car and live in a city! They're so noisy!"
| I feel like a version of that Goose meme. "NOISY FROM
| WHAT?"
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > "NOISY FROM WHAT?"
|
| Sirens, people yelling, loud music, construction, etc.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Credentials: Lived in NYC for 10+ years
|
| Sirens: valid. But those suckers are usually attached to
| vehicles
|
| People yelling: not often in my experience. And the usual
| offender when someone is yelling, it's some doofus in a
| car yelling at some other doofus in a car.
|
| Loud music: not often in my experience. And the usual
| offender when there _is_ loud music, it 's some doofus
| playing loud music in their car.
|
| Construction: valid
|
| But the single most frequent / annoying loud sound: car
| horns. Constantly.
| bombcar wrote:
| It varies by area; I remember staying in Brooklyn with a
| friend and being a few floors up the traffic noise was
| minimal (constant), few horns, but it seemed an emergency
| vehicle went by every few minutes.
|
| Most of what I remember of European cities, too, when
| anywhere near the denser parts.
|
| Part of "city noise" is dependent where you're living,
| and how new it is. Close, cramped, older building with
| people arguing above and below and beside you? Not fun.
| Newer building with excellent soundproofing? Nowhere near
| as bad.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Sirens: valid. But those suckers are usually attached
| to vehicles
|
| But they're attached to emergency vehicles. The fire
| department is not going to wait for the bus when
| responding to a fire, so you can't actually get rid of
| this by installing mass transit, and then its prevalence
| is proportional to density.
|
| > People yelling: not often in my experience. And the
| usual offender when someone is yelling, it's some doofus
| in a car yelling at some other doofus in a car.
|
| > Loud music: not often in my experience. And the usual
| offender when there _is_ loud music, it 's some doofus
| playing loud music in their car.
|
| If people are usually in cars then the people making
| noise will usually be in cars. But it's not as if they're
| going to stop having business disputes or lovers'
| quarrels or whatever it is this time just because they're
| on foot.
|
| And whether loud music is a problem depends primarily on
| who your neighbors are. In a city you'll have a lot of
| them and you don't get to choose who they are.
|
| > car horns
|
| Ironically this doesn't happen in the suburbs because
| there are more roads and parking per car, and thereby
| fewer traffic disputes and no need to summon someone from
| a building immediately instead of parking and going
| inside. So you're now equally making the case for cities
| to have wider roads and more parking.
| mlrtime wrote:
| I'm not going to argue the point that cars aren't loud
| they are!
|
| However, in Manhattan the city is still very loud with 0
| cars. Meaning in the middle of the night in midtown, not
| a single car, the city itself hums with a constant noise
| that is not healthy.
|
| Witnessed this during covid when I didn't see a car for
| hours on a typically busy midtown avenue, but the city is
| still very very loud compared to a suburban setting.
|
| So, we get rid of all cars, then what? You still live in
| a noisy city. No thanks.
|
| Credentials: 5 years in midtown, 15 years downtown
| Manhattan.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Thankfully Paris was also super super super smart & has
| rapidly developed dedicated bike infrastructure that is
| incredibly popular & nice to use. It rapidly reduces the need
| for cars for many many people.
|
| They also are restricting the use of cars in their city
| center, which will help force de-car'ing for casual use &
| make people take efficient less demanding forms of transit.
|
| This should help keep congestion & din from being
| aggravating!
| dionidium wrote:
| > As someone who lives in an area with plenty of high-density
| residential buildings
|
| And yet you live there, which means, presumably, that _it 's
| your best option_ relative to the alternatives. People should
| be allowed to choose living arrangements that meet their most
| critical needs, even if they also find reasons to complain
| about aspects of those arrangements that are self-evidently
| less important to them.
| s_dev wrote:
| France already has some of the most densely populated cities
| in the world, Paris is #32. French cities feel less congested
| than the likes of US cities because it has better cycling
| infrastructure and public transport options. High population
| density is not a cure for the bias car infrastructure imposes
| on a city. So your recipe will need to take more in to
| account than just density.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popul.
| ..
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| How does that linked Wikipedia page not contain any cities
| in China, which in my experience are more dense than just
| about anywhere else in the world?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| one is that Chinese "city" boundaries also generally
| include a lot of rural land, mountains, etc. Chongqing is
| the size of Austria.
|
| The other is that while the buildings are certainly tall,
| China also does a lot of "tower-in-the-park" style
| development where the plazas and landscaping in between
| tall buildings decrease overall density.
| maattdd wrote:
| What is your experience ? China cities are noticeably
| less dense than other cities in Asia (Manilla, Delhi..)
| or even Paris
| resolutebat wrote:
| Most of Manila is an endless sprawl low-rise housing and
| single-story slums, with a few areas of high-rise
| buildings (Makati, BGC, etc). In the average large
| Chinese city, more or less all the housing is high-rise.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| how much of that housing is occupied vs investment, and
| how large are the apartments? slums get quite packed.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| But why are French cities so densely populated? The country
| is twice the size of the UK with roughly the same
| population.
| gxs wrote:
| This is a huge problem with housing in general that is mostly
| ignored.
|
| Let people build 4 units where today it's zone for 1, and if
| you disagree, you're an out of touch racist/classist/luddite
| who is just not a visionary and can't embrace the future.
|
| Surely nothing bad is going to happen when you take a
| subdivision with 30 homes and take just 10 of those and turn
| them into quadplexes.
|
| 30 homes might approximate something like 60 cars and 60
| children.
|
| Now instead of 30 homes, you have 20 + 10*4 = 60 homes.
|
| You're now asking infrastructure that hasn't been touched
| since the 60s to accommodate nearly twice as many people. And
| I get that not every new unit will also have 2 children, but
| some will and it no doubt leads to a net increase.
|
| Where as before the road leading out your development had to
| accommodate 50 cars in the morning commute, now it has to
| handle more than 100. And this is just a minor inconvenience.
|
| The real issues arise when you've doubled the amount of
| school children, but the number of teachers hires or
| classrooms built hasn't increased, and let's not even talk
| about teacher salaries.
|
| Then there are utilities and other public services (first
| responders, etc.)
|
| This was just one small subdivision with 30 homes, now
| imagine this happening across multiple parts of town at once
| and you can see the problem.
|
| All that is to say, I've never been against building more
| housing (omg build up! it's so easy!), what I'm against is
| building more housing without proportional investments
| everywhere else.
|
| It's a hard problem to solve, I admit it, but that's my whole
| point. It's hard, you can't just build more housing and call
| it a day.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Maybe the reason people accuse you of being
| "racist/classist/luddite" is because you're fearmongering,
| and they suspect these talking points are just a cover for
| looking out for your financial interest (keep increasing
| property prices), or keeping your community free from
| "others" or something.
|
| Why is this fearmongering? Because your figures are wildly,
| wildly out of touch with reality. If you legalize
| quadplexes by right, you're _not_ going to magically see a
| doubling of housing, there just aren 't that many people!
| That is completely made up bullshit. Fast growing place
| have growth rates in the low single digits, like 2%/a, not
| 50%. Growth projections for fast growing regions like the
| Toronto area have 50% growth projections on the scale of
| _decades_. But "If we legalize quadplexes, our 100 home
| with turn into 102 home next years and there'll be one
| extra car" just doesn't have the same zing and it's hard to
| keep the housing crisis going with realistic complaints.
| gxs wrote:
| How is this fearmongering?
|
| I can just as easily accuse you of moral righteousness,
| it's not a cover for anything, it's what's happening and
| with neither you nor I citing sources, it's just your
| word against mine.
|
| Even then, come up with whatever cutesy numbers you want
| regarding housing, there are concrete numbers to point to
| for the side effects. Depressed teacher salaries is a
| well known issue. Overcrowding in schools is a real
| issue. Congestion and lack of public transportation is a
| real issue.
|
| You can argue causality all you want, but if you leave
| out suddenly overpopulating areas as part of your
| equation, it's already flawed.
|
| Lastly, you didn't read what I said.
|
| I said it's fine to build more housing provides it comes
| with equal investments in infrastructure. You
| conveniently glossed over this fact because your solution
| of building taller still doesn't address it. So no, build
| taller isn't the only solution.
|
| Again, reread what I said. I'm not against building more
| housing. Do you understand that? Again, I am not against
| building more housing.
|
| All for building out public transportation, all for doing
| that is required to build more housing.
|
| So either you take a slow and moderate approach to
| building more housing, which is fine, and will allow
| other infrastructure more time to catch up, or you make
| these investments up front with your larger scale
| development, as long as it's addressed it's all I'm
| saying.
|
| Not sure what you're so up in arms about.
| Aspos wrote:
| It is not a hard problem to solve and was/is being solved
| all around the world. If a developer is building not 60
| homes but 6000 homes then they can be tasked to build a
| school, a few kindergartens, a fire station, cafes, grocery
| shop, a few bus stops and plenty of individual and communal
| parking spaces.
|
| Going from single family homes to quadplexes does not solve
| the problem, build taller!
| pjc50 wrote:
| > 30 homes might approximate something like 60 cars and 60
| children.
|
| > Now instead of 30 homes, you have 20 + 10*4 = 60 homes.
|
| Not building the houses doesn't make the people go away.
| What ends up happening is they have to commute in from
| somewhere else, and
|
| > the road leading out your development had to accommodate
| 50 cars in the morning commute, now it has to handle more
| than 100
|
| happens in a different road.
|
| (sure, in the long run people learn not to have children in
| the West because living space is scarce, and your "doubled
| the amount of school children" problem goes away)
| ketralnis wrote:
| As someone who lives in an area with plenty of high-density
| residential buildings, I can attest that I love it and I wish
| there were more American cities that were an option for my
| lifestyle.
| ipaddr wrote:
| America is filled with high rises. Where are you from?
| harimau777 wrote:
| What do you mean? In my experience outside of the few
| major cities (New York, LA, etc.) there are only high
| rises in the very downtown of large cities.
| em-bee wrote:
| i don't remember any high rises outside of downtown in LA
| either.
|
| and most of those downtown high rises in most cities are
| office buildings. New York is really the exception.
| jorvi wrote:
| Cool cool, except the situation is dire and people need a
| roof over their head. Other priorities can wait.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > congested cities with such intense light and noise
| pollution
|
| I'm not sure how you mean that. Obviously you know that many
| people love cities with lots of tall buildings, NYC being the
| obvious US example. Clearly you don't like them, but are you
| saying the busy-ness is inherently bad? If you don't like it,
| can you leave? Usually, that's an expensive place to live.
| carabiner wrote:
| Part of the draw of a city is bustling night life. You don't
| move to Manhattan for dark skies.
| CalRobert wrote:
| What is making the noise?
| justinator wrote:
| It's literally been dubbed the City of Light and the highest
| density cities in France already. It's not even close.
| enaaem wrote:
| Cities aren't loud. Cars are.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Cars are very loud, Cities are still loud with 0 cars.
|
| Source: Manhattan, NYC
| asimovfan wrote:
| Building taller means people see the sky less. In my home city
| that is the case and you definitely dont want that. Where ive
| been living the last few years, no building is above 3 stories
| and its wonderful.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Not necessarily.
|
| There's a big difference between building a tall building
| with a large uniform floorplate that takes up much of a block
| and a tall building that is thin, only taking up a tiny slice
| of a block, and thus allowing sunlight to pass through.
|
| For this reason gloomy Vancouver for a long time mandated
| point towers, for the purpose of maximizing light.
|
| Paris' status quo of uniform 6 story streetwalls could
| arguably let in _less_ light than a mixed amount of much
| taller _thinner_ towers on 3 story podiums.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Most of New York has 10-15 floors buildings with wide
| streets. Light and fresh air isn't a problem. But you can't
| really widen Paris street and the uniformity of the
| architecture is what makes it a beautiful city. Tourists
| aren't flocking to Paris to take pictures of some boring
| glass and concrete buildings.
| charles_f wrote:
| Building taller is the equivalent of building more lanes. The
| main problem with housing shortage and infrastructure
| congestion in Paris is that everything is centralized and
| concentrated on Paris, and thus everyone want to be there
| amelius wrote:
| > but it decreases social segregation. That alone is critical
| to keep a city alive.
|
| So rich people need poor/middle-class people to keep cities
| alive?
|
| Maybe they should start charging for that ...
| joelfried wrote:
| > Maybe they should start charging for that ...
|
| Let's call it "taxes".
| bombcar wrote:
| It's effectively doing just that - tax the entire city (which
| taxes are usually mainly paid by the richer people) and use
| the taxes to subsidize poor people.
|
| So since rich people need baristas to serve them Starbucks,
| tax them to enable the barista to live near where she works.
|
| It should work.
| rayiner wrote:
| > So since rich people need baristas to serve them
| Starbucks, tax them to enable the barista to live near
| where she works.
|
| That's a good characterization of what's happening. But is
| subsidizing people to be service workers for wealthy
| Parisians a good public policy and good use of public
| funds?
| kelipso wrote:
| Everyone needs service workers. Even service workers need
| service workers.
| bombcar wrote:
| My service workers have service workers who go to the
| market FOR them!
|
| Wait, that's actually what we have now.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _But is subsidizing people to be service workers for
| wealthy Parisians a good public policy and good use of
| public funds?_
|
| Given that each of us is allotted exactly 8,760 hours in
| a year: Is it good public policy to force non-wealthy
| people to spend so many more of those hours in commuting
| than those who can afford to live closer to their jobs?
|
| I live in a small, separately-incorporated city, a few
| minutes from downtown Houston, that has become
| increasingly wealthy. For several decades, the affordable
| bungalows built in the years following 1930s have been
| torn down and replaced by big houses. (Yes, my wife and I
| did that to build our house, more than 35 years ago.)
| Nowadays, though, many _really_ big single-family homes
| are being put up on what used to be two-, three-, and
| four single-house lots. I get disgruntled every time we
| walk by one of those giant houses, because every one of
| them is, in effect, forcing two or more less-wealthy
| families to live further away -- they 're hoarding the
| space.
|
| (My own thought is that for big, space-hoarding houses
| like that, property taxes should be progressive, so that
| such a house might be taxed at 2X, 3X, 4X, 10X the per-
| foot rate of houses on smaller lots.)
| rayiner wrote:
| > Given that each of us is allotted exactly 8,760 hours
| in a year: Is it good public policy to force non-wealthy
| people to spend so many more of those hours in commuting
| than those who can afford to live closer to their jobs?
|
| Wouldn't it be better to direct public policy and funding
| to helping create jobs elsewhere and leave the wealthy
| urban people make their own coffee?
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _Wouldn 't it be better to direct public policy and
| funding to helping create jobs elsewhere and leave the
| wealthy urban people make their own coffee?_
|
| That's certainly worth exploring too. But there's a
| reason I no longer mow my own lawn nor do my own auto
| maintenance: I flatter myself that I'm now more
| productive for the larger community when I do work that
| uses the skills I've spent years developing.
| closeparen wrote:
| If we are going to develop the state capacity to override
| inexorable forces of nature, like the productivity and
| desirability of the metropole over the hinterlands, might
| I suggest we first give the people a good show by turning
| off gravity? Bring the Mediterranean climate to Chicago?
| Maybe do something about climate change?
| closeparen wrote:
| California perspective: rich people _could_ meet their
| needs for workers /artists/etc by liberalizing the
| market, but this would cost them property value and eat
| into the market rents they're collecting. Favoring
| income-restricted housing allows them to address the same
| objectives without this blowback.
|
| The cost of the necessary subsidy is calibrated to fall
| on grubby new-money high earners, so it is effectively
| free for the long-established propertied class who don't
| need much taxable income & locked in their property taxes
| long ago.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Income-restricted housing isn't sustainable, nor is it
| very accessible (you either win the lottery and have it,
| or you are stuck in a very long line).
|
| Liberalizing the market doesn't always work, even in the
| most dense economic liberal cities, the best environment
| for sustainable affordable housing is depopulation or
| some sort of recession or economic stagnation.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Rich people need to keep encountering not-rich people, rather
| than just live in a rich-person bubble. They _need_ that,
| whether or not they _want_ that.
| amelius wrote:
| Of course, because what does it mean to be rich if you
| can't show it off to poorer people.
|
| Note, by the way, that this inflicts real psychological
| damage, and perhaps we could also make the case that this
| should be financially compensated.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Not at all. The rich need it to maintain some humanity
| and empathy, not to boost their ego.
| bombcar wrote:
| Depending on what you mean by "rich" they're already
| insulated entirely, no matter where they live.
|
| It's much easier to make sure middle and upper middle class
| people interact with the poor and such, but once you're
| rich enough to hire an assistant, you're rich enough to
| avoid most anything you don't want to deal with.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > build taller
|
| Paris is already among the densest places on earth.
|
| The problem comes from the excessive centralization of
| practically everything France has, in Paris, leading to an
| overpopulation of the entire _Ile de France_ region, which
| drive prices in Paris itself to the roof.
| cm2187 wrote:
| You seem to neglect the cost of it. The city is nearly
| bankrupt, parisians will pay for this with high taxes for a
| very long time.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > parisians will pay for this with high taxes for a very long
| time
|
| Is that a bad thing?
| cm2187 wrote:
| I guess not for the people who think they are entitled to
| the rest of the population subsidising their lifestyle.
| itishappy wrote:
| So, everybody? It's a city. Last I checked Paris was not
| full of homesteads and organic farms.
| othello wrote:
| We are already the densest OECD city by quite a margin! (22,000
| per sqkm in the inner 20 district, twice that of Manhanttan and
| 3 times that of Tokyo - and still 8,600 in the Petite Couronne,
| which includes 8 million people)
| alecthomas wrote:
| Manhattan has a population density of 28,154 per sqkm
| according to Wikipedia?
| presentation wrote:
| Don't necessarily need to build taller, if transit (not bad in
| Paris already) is brought up to Tokyo levels (meaning an order
| of magnitude greater than anywhere else) then you just build
| densely outwards. Tokyo has far higher population but is mostly
| low-rise. A city like Paris has the bones for this.
| retinaros wrote:
| impossible to brong it to tokyo level. our people are not
| educated like japanese people. add the strikes, the frequent
| infrastructure issues and we will never reach tokyo levels.
| also since covid transportation is worse since they figured
| out they could make more money cramping up less trains
| retinaros wrote:
| it is already one of the densest cities on earth.. dont build
| within paris but modernize its suburbs and create more centers
| there. the public housing is actually adding social segregation
| as it is edging out middle class and now paris is segregated
| between ultra rich and poor people working to serve the rich
| ones
| alienicecream wrote:
| But it hasn't stayed Paris, it's overrun with North African
| "migrants". Why put a bald faced lie on it?
| Deprogrammer9 wrote:
| If the USA didn't endlessly fund war then maybe they could invest
| in their cities & infrastructure more. Probably not going to
| happen anytime soon by the looks of things.
| detourdog wrote:
| What is interesting is that after WW2 Europe had to rebuild and
| the USA was left with a great industrial machine that had a
| capacity that outstripped demand.
| derelicta wrote:
| The Empire needs to wage war in order to expand its reach and
| thus sell its goods there/exploit the local labour, otherwise
| it falls.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I would absolutely love for European countries to pay the true
| cost of their defense so I can drive on nice roads and children
| could be taught by people who make a decent wage.
|
| Probably not going to happen anytime soon by the looks of
| things.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| https://archive.is/wx7yj
| thuuuomas wrote:
| Why was this headline changed in such an editorializing way?
| "Mixed society" is a loaded term not present in the original
| headline.
| lucaspfeifer wrote:
| What do you find 'loaded' about the phrase 'mixed society'? It
| is more descriptive than the meaningless phrase in the original
| headline: "How Does Paris Stay Paris?".
| brainwad wrote:
| Possibly because it presumes Paris is 'mixed', but actually
| the city of Paris is notably better off than the surrounding
| suburbs, especially the ones on the north/east. This has some
| good maps: https://medium.com/perspective-critique/the-
| geography-of-ine...
| mp05 wrote:
| Can't help but be reminded of this classic:
|
| THE VILLAS AT KENNYS HOUSE
|
| The most sought after address in all of South park for only
| the very privileged few. You can take in the views from the
| deck spa and enjoy the mixed Sodosopa culture. Also,
| featuring a private fitness center, clubhouse and so much
| more. Welcome home.
|
| https://southpark.cc.com/w/index.php/The_Villas_at_Kennys_Ho.
| ..
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Yup this makes no sense. Note that the original is also wrong:
| _" How does Paris stays Paris..."_.
|
| To me Paris is _not_ Paris at all anymore.
|
| The government is in damage control before the olympic games
| and shall try to hide that Paris is not Paris anymore but Paris
| honestly became a sad thing to see.
|
| There are many tourists having an actual shock and it can be
| really bad: if I'm not mistaken japanese even have a hotline
| they can call if they're in shock when they discover the
| shithole that Paris as become as opposed to the rosy picture of
| Paris that is painted abroad.
| rsynnott wrote:
| But, I mean... Paris was _never_ that fantasy version of
| Paris, or anything like it? Though arguably it's a lot more
| like it today than it was, say, a century ago, or two
| centuries.
| ljsprague wrote:
| I'm going to guess Paris had more actual Frenchmen in it
| one or two centuries ago.
| 93po wrote:
| Paris syndrome is fairly over-hyped. From wiki:
|
| "Although the BBC reported in 2006 that the Japanese embassy
| in Paris had a "24-hour hotline for those suffering from
| severe culture shock",[4] the Japanese embassy
| states[clarification needed] no such hotline
| exists[clarification needed].[9][10] Also in 2006, Miyuki
| Kusama, of the Japanese embassy in Paris, told The Guardian
| "There are around 20 cases a year of the syndrome and it has
| been happening for several years", and that the embassy had
| repatriated at least four Japanese citizens that year.[11]"
|
| Out of a million people who are Japanese that visit Paris
| every year, a dozen of them having shock at the reality of
| the city isn't that noteworthy honestly, and I imagine there
| are more Americans that do this than Japanese people.
| kelipso wrote:
| A dozen of them having shock at the reality of the city
| _and call the Japanese embassy_. Don 't know about you but
| it would take me way more than culture shock to call my
| embassy when I'm traveling.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Out of a million people who are Japanese that visit Paris
| every year
|
| That's a staggering number of people! Almost 1% of all
| Japanese people visit Paris every year?
| Jensson wrote:
| Looks about right, if you look at pre-covid numbers. Post
| covid Germany still had 60k visitors per month from
| Japan, and covid slashed tourism by around 80%.
|
| https://www.tourism.jp/en/tourism-
| database/stats/outbound/
| jimbokun wrote:
| I went to Paris on vacation last year, and there was garbage
| piled head high on the sidewalks and multiple riots in the
| city protesting the pension changes while we were there.
|
| We had a wonderful time.
|
| The riots are scheduled ahead of time, so we knew where and
| when to avoid. The garbage was not pleasant. But did not stop
| us from enjoying awesome cultural and culinary and sight
| seeing experiences.
|
| From what I can tell, this Paris has always been Paris. It's
| always been rich versus poor, often far more violently than
| what I describe.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Could be due to HN title's limit? For example, I tried to
| submit a story with this title - _Google blocks man's email
| account over nude childhood photo; Gujarat HC issues notice to
| firm_ - but it exceeds HN 's title word limit. So I had to edit
| it to - _Google blocks email account over nude toddler photo;
| Court issues notice to firm_ (
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39756841 ) to fit it
| within the word limit. Now, I get the use of "toddler" instead
| of "childhood" in the title does cause a slight loss of
| context, but it's the closest match I could think of to retain
| most of the headline as HN guidelines demand. So the
| "editorialising" could just be as simple as us trying to be
| "editors" on HN to meet its guidelines, rather than politics.
| (Also, I didn't find the term offensive and feel the submitted
| title is much better than the actual title on the article).
| lode wrote:
| It looks like the New York Times changed it. The title in the
| <title> tag is the same as this post, in the article header
| they changed it.
| ahoy wrote:
| The title of this post is taken from the linked page's title
| element. It's likely that the NYT changed the headline on the
| page after publication but did not update the title element to
| match. Happens all the time
| Fripplebubby wrote:
| I think it's a direct translation of the French phrase "mixite
| sociale" mentioned in the article, I bet the connotations are
| slightly different in English than in French.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Before the invention of the elevator, buildings were more
| naturally mixed-use: shops (and stables?) on the ground floor,
| posh tenants on the first, all the way up to artists and baristas
| in their garrets under the roof.
|
| By democratising travel within a building, ironically the
| elevator made it possible to have neighbourhoods for which
| service workers had to commute primarily from the outside along
| the x and y axes, not merely within the neighbourhood along the
| z.
| bedobi wrote:
| this makes zero sense, plenty of cities with housing built
| mostly after the invention of the elevator that have mixed use
| neighborhoods with tall, low and medium height buildings alike
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Yes, and those cities also presumably don't have the problem
| of segregated neighbourhoods. (also those cities don't tend
| to occur in my Old Country, but perhaps they've made progress
| there since I've been gone? Protip: never attempt to live in
| a "city" which is younger than you are. _Survivre plutot que
| vivre_ )
|
| All I was claiming is that the elevator is necessary but not
| sufficient: monocultural neighbourhoods were much less likely
| to arise back when number of flights of stairs put a
| significant natural gradient on the price point of each
| buildable unit.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > all the way up to artists and baristas in their garrets under
| the roof.
|
| I don't think there was any significant crossover between lifts
| not existing and _baristas_ existing. For a start, lifts
| predate proper espresso machines.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Good point; please substitute the appropriate word for the
| service worker who doles out glasses of wine from behind a
| zinc counter. (or did zinc also postdate lifts?)
| rsynnott wrote:
| Zinc counters feel very much an early 20th century thing to
| me. Like, I'm sure they had zinc in the 19th century, but
| it's hard to imagine that bars were made out of it.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Apparently the bars (les zincs) did exist in the XIX, but
| were mostly shiny and not necessarily zinc-plated. (more
| that zinc, like AI now, was the cool thing then)
|
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc#Histoire
|
| > _L 'utilisation du zinc pour le zincage du fer ... a
| permis l'essor de l'architecture de fer, ainsi les halles
| centrales de Paris, le palais de l'industrie, les
| nombreux theatres et gares monumentales de chemin de fer
| entre 1860 et 1880._
|
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc#Lexicographie
|
| > _Dans les annees 1873 a 1876, les ecrivains francais
| consignant l 'expression populaire, aussi bien Zola que
| Huysmans, nomment zinc la surface propre des bars anglais
| ou le revetement brillant des comptoirs souvent etames ou
| cuivres, plus rarement zingues._
|
| ... which puts them, if preceding, nearly contemporaneous
| with elevators. (but copper bartops must have been a
| thing earlier?)
| hokkos wrote:
| The reality of this housing policies is that it is currently
| bankrupting the city of Paris with a skyrocketing debt and
| growing local taxes. They spent enormous sum of money to buy old
| buildings at the historical peak of their price, buildings ill-
| fitted to house poor wide families and sometimes in very
| expansive neighborhood where they have to travel far to get
| access to cheaper groceries. Also the delta between the low rent
| and the theoretical market rate for the housing is insane, this
| is equivalent to several thousand euros in untaxed shadow income,
| all from randomness or special favor. All with the goal to
| transform 40% of the housing in socialised ones, this is a power
| grab of the mayor to assure them votes for the future and has
| always been the strategy of the communist towns surrounding
| Paris.
| digging wrote:
| I love how "giving poor people comfort" is always actually a
| "power grab."
|
| I'm sure it does have political benefits for the mayor, but
| that's also _a natural outcome of good policy_. (Not the only
| one; often good policy actually has horrible backlash.)
|
| This comment could be expressing some true ideas but I don't
| find it trustworthy.
| its_ethan wrote:
| There's a line somewhere where "giving poor people comfort"
| goes from providing good and useful social services to
| essentially a bribe. Where that line is varies based on who
| you ask - for some it's student debt cancellation (a US
| thing), for others it's $1000+ subsidies for housing, other
| people may not see any service the government provides as a
| "bribe" of any sort.
|
| Caring about these bribes/"power grabs" is important (even if
| this guys comment strikes you as trollish). Just because you
| agree with a social service to benefit some group doesn't
| mean that the people in power won't abuse their power in the
| future. They might abuse their support by holding these
| social services (or "comforts") hostage. Once you have people
| who have adapted to living in their subsidized housing (which
| can/will happen quickly) you open the door for political
| leaders to say "you must vote for me or tolerate my bad
| behavior or else this goes away".
|
| Even if the method by which "this goes away" is that the
| opposing political group would be the one to remove the
| social service, it's something that needs to be considered.
| To circle back, if you do something that is considered beyond
| the line of "comfort for poor people" and is seen as a "power
| grab" by enough people - you're more likely to have the
| opposition emboldened to eventually remove that service.
| digging wrote:
| > There's a line somewhere where "giving poor people
| comfort" goes from providing good and useful social
| services to essentially a bribe.
|
| I'm not sure I agree. Like giving out literal tons of candy
| and soda would be a political bribe but I wouldn't count it
| as "comfort"; it's poison. If you do think it's in the same
| category, I guess that would be my line - the aid should
| not be obviously harmful.
|
| > you open the door for political leaders to say "you must
| vote for me or tolerate my bad behavior or else this goes
| away" ... Even if the method by which "this goes away" is
| that the opposing political group would be the one to
| remove the social service
|
| But that's true of literally everything a government does,
| isn't it? It's the nature of power being centralized that
| if one person can force a change, their replacement can
| undo it. Even if the 1st person is completely earnest and
| never makes such a statement it is implicitly part of the
| process and people will make their votes with that
| expectation.
| its_ethan wrote:
| You are free to not agree that giving housing subsidies
| is not crossing the line into bribe territory. I would
| say it's important for you to understand that for many
| people, there is a line. Your example of unlimited candy
| and soda as being a bribe is a bit odd, but also seems
| demonstrative to me that your thinking on this is further
| to an extreme than you might realize.
|
| And yes - this is true of everything the government does.
| That's why it's an important thing to consider when the
| government promises to do something or provide a service.
| It can go away at any time, and people who became reliant
| on it will suffer it's loss.
|
| That's why I'm saying it's really important to consider
| that for some people, certain policies can cross a line
| for what feels fair or what feels like a political bribe.
| Like I said, you're free to disagree with where that line
| is, but pretending it doesn't exist (or just writing off
| anyone on the other side of it) is a sure fire way to
| bring about consequences that just might be worse than
| what was originally happening.
| digging wrote:
| I'm not pretending people don't have their own lines, but
| I think they're fundamentally wrong to say the line
| exists within the space of "doing unequivocally good
| things for poor people [which admittedly may have
| negative downstream effects, as do all actions]"
|
| > That's why it's an important thing to consider when the
| government promises to do something or provide a service.
| It can go away at any time, and people who became reliant
| on it will suffer it's loss.
|
| Sure, it's something to think about, but it's not a
| realistic impediment to enacting a good policy. If the
| worst thing you can say about a policy is that "it might
| end, and that would be bad" you should do that policy.
| Besides, government programs tend to get
| institutionalized and are often much harder to undo than
| to do.
| webkike wrote:
| Can you provide some sources on the Paris city's budget and
| debt? I couldn't find anything on it. France's debt looks
| roughly linear, which I imagine would support Paris a lot
| conradfr wrote:
| https://cloudfront-eu-
| central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/lep...
| its_ethan wrote:
| This is maybe interesting or useful:
| https://www.worlddata.info/europe/france/debt.php
|
| It's a comparison of the debt per capita of France compared
| to the rest of the EU (in USD). It looks to me like France
| started to take on more debt per person around 2007/08 and as
| recently as 2022 had $13k more debt/capita than the EU, or
| +40% more debt per citizen.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Editorialized title. Just seems like virtue signaling to me.
| Unless anyone has a reason that it isn't?
|
| I was recently in Paris, the comments here are a touch different
| in tone than the Parisians I talked to.
| 6bb32646d83d wrote:
| Unfortunately it means it's extremely hard to live in Paris if
| you're middle class.
|
| If you're upper middle class/rich, you can rent/buy. If you're
| poor, you get a chance to get public housing. If you're middle
| class, too bad for you.
| jajko wrote:
| You can put this on whole France, this is general approach at
| least for past few decades.
|
| Ultra rich easily bypass all those populist moves to 'tax
| rich', poor have sometimes unreasonable protections (ie you can
| just stop paying rent, give big FU to the owner, change locks
| and maybe, theoretically after 6 months of courts he can evict
| you on his costs, while you trash the place into nothing
| without any recourse - some real cases of friends living
| there).
|
| Its outright the worst possible place in whole Europe to be
| rich (again, those ultra rich are off the quite corrupt system,
| just check all (super)yachts in whole Cote d'Azur), government
| goes after you like a rabid dog, inheritance tax is easily 40%.
| All the bankers I've talked to (not professionally, I am just a
| normal guy) advised against any investment in that country
| before you cross ultra high net worth line, then all this
| disappears.
|
| Yet absolutely nobody strikes against this corruption and
| unfairness, middle class just buckles up and continues, at
| least whats left of it.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Its outright the worst possible place in whole Europe to be
| rich
|
| I guess it's a good thing Europe has free movement! They are
| free to be rich in Amsterdam, Berlin or Brussels. If the
| wealth is generated in France, then they should put up with
| the French inconveniences.
| rastignack wrote:
| Don't worry I'm upper middle class and roughly 75% of my
| salary goes straight to taxes while everything that's state
| provided (schools, hospitals, security, infrastructure)
| just collapses.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| In France? How when the top tax rate is 45%?
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's the same everywhere in the developed world. If you are
| too poor you are taken care of through social programs(even in
| the USA), if you are rich you take care of yourself but if you
| are middle class you will have to fight for this privilege
| everyday.
|
| It goes the same for the social norms. If you are poor you can
| have a trashy sex life and say whatever you like, if you are
| rich you also can have a trashy sex life and say whatever you
| like but if you are middle class you must have stable
| monogamous relationship with somebody of similar background and
| age(you can't just have sex with anyone between 18 and 80 and
| throw a scene, unlike the rich and the poor) and watch your
| mouth.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| The poor get a chance but not a very good one.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Wowow, the rich have had it tough since the 90s (only the
| French born before 1988 or so will understand the video)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1N3WXZ_1LM
| locallost wrote:
| Is it that much different from anywhere else in that regard?
| The fact the poorer people get something, doesn't mean they
| lose something. I'd guess on average despite higher cost of
| living, they wouldn't trade places.
| yardie wrote:
| I'm middle class and lived in Paris. I had rich friends and
| poor friends. My rich friends owned flats that occupied entire
| floors of a building. My poor friends got whatever social
| housing was available. And my middle class friends rented or
| bought a place in the suburbs with more space. We owned, a
| relatively small by American standards 55sqm, 3F, flat in the
| city center. My middle class friends could also rent the same
| size flat on their salaries but none of them wanted to. They
| liked their space and garden.
|
| Their is give and take to everything in life. I don't think
| it's hard to live in Paris if you're in the middle class, but
| you certainly won't feel middle class doing it.
| HenriTEL wrote:
| With 2 children you'll need about 65sqm. Hopefully the
| nursery is cheap compared to other cities - _cough_ London-
| but it adds up. Basically you need to be in the upper middle
| class for a decent life with children in Paris.
| mlrtime wrote:
| No middle class family in America has a family in 600 sq
| feet.
|
| You'd be hard pressed to even find this outside of a few
| areas in NYC.
| retinaros wrote:
| highly doubt the last decade has been a nice time to be
| middle class in paros. salaries unlike us major cities never
| rose and real instate kept increasing. average is 10k sqm
| which requires you to at minimum make over 100k/year to have
| a 40sqm flat not in top paris estate
|
| give us more data to understand if you define yourself as
| middle class. salary, rent, wealth beside salary. thanks.
| olivierduval wrote:
| The article is quite... disappointing for a french Parisian.
|
| Let's make things clear: so called "mixed society" is actually a
| mix of "friends of the Mayor and allies" and poor-enough people
| that will vote for the so-called socialist Mayor. It's not about
| having a philosophical or idealogical view of society, only a
| practical view of election (a kind of "gerrymanding" if this
| concept is more understandable for US).
|
| There has been frequent scandals with ministers still using "low
| income" housing for themselves or families. The article starts
| with the interview of some Ms Vallery-Radot, and that uncommon
| name prompted me to look on internet and wonder if she is related
| to the https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vallery-Radot which was
| until the 2000 ... State Advisor.
|
| So please... do not think that Paris is some kind of wonderful
| place where intelligent and humanistic leaders are working for
| the good of the french society as an example to the world. It's
| just usual political shady business, nepotism (and you'll see by
| yourself that the results will be bad during the Olympics for
| example)
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| By American standards, these would be eminently "intelligent
| and humanistic leaders." NYC is ran by a crooked cop, who is
| under investigation for taking bribes from Turkey, while
| slashing the budget for schools and libraries so he can give
| more money to his "constantly defrauding the government" police
| gang. LA is such a wildly corrupt city, it's hard to pick where
| to start, but several city council members were just caught on
| tape trying to explicitly screw over renters, rig an election
| against one of their left wing opponents, all while making
| racist comments to boot. The city also takes in billions in tax
| revenue for "affordable housing" schemes that go almost
| entirely to lining the pockets of cronies and party insiders
| through various fronts and nonprofits.
| smeej wrote:
| > The program has allowed Mr. Chaillou and his wife to raise
| their two boys in the city. But he knows that the future of
| social housing will always face at least one big challenge: "The
| problem is that once you get in, you never want to leave."
|
| I think this is the reason so many in the U.S. are skeptical
| of/resistant to such plans. Why work your butt off for 10 years
| to get to a place where you _can_ afford a nice dwelling if you
| can also wait 10 years, working but not pushing yourself, and
| someone else will pay for it for you? And then once you have it,
| there 's even _less_ incentive to try to "move up" from there,
| because there's now a cliff in front of you. You have to make the
| whole jump in one go, because if you only take incremental steps,
| you lose eligibility for your subsidies.
|
| American culture doesn't like to think about how much of
| "success" is down to luck. As often as possible, we want to think
| it's earned. The idea of trying to make up for some of the luck
| factor by taking some from those with more and giving it to those
| with less is almost instinctively repugnant, even if it might
| lead to higher quality of life for everyone involved.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| > instinctively repugnant
|
| To some.
|
| In very-red areas that I have relatives, they're happy to do a
| food drive, make donations, help pay for weddings or funerals,
| or show up to help repair houses. When you have 100 cousins and
| 10 brothers, this is a viable option.
|
| They frequent each others businesses, work on interconnected
| industries, and in general help out however they can.
|
| It's not instinctively repugnant to _help_ , or to _give_ ,
| it's instinctively repugnant to give _outside their community_.
| That seems a more fundamental problem with tax-rich /give-poor
| mentality. These folks make tons of charitable donations in
| money, in kind, and in time, but oppose wealth redistribution.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I think it is most repugnant when you are working really hard
| and (very slowly) building your life up.
|
| It was really easy to be charitable when I was young and
| working meaningless jobs for $15/hr and I had my whole life
| ahead, and it will probably be easy when I am retired and no
| longer feel the strain of 50/hr workweeks.
|
| For now though it is brutal watching taxes eat huge chunks of
| your income so they can spend flagrantly.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The hidden issue here is the effort of people with means to
| shape their community by expelling or excluding people they
| don't want to help. Then their voluntary donations etc only
| help those whom they want to help.
|
| Well-known examples in the U.S. include the use of legal
| covenants, red lining, Jim Crow laws, and sometimes blatant
| intimidation to shape who can own which property where. Such
| changes persist for decades because of the illiquidity of
| property in general and the compounding effect of wealth
| discrepancies.
|
| So "outside their communities" is not a neutral, or purely
| geographic concept. Communities don't just happen, they are
| intentionally constructed.
|
| U.S. governments, in contrast, are ostensibly bound by the
| republican concept generally and the 14th Amendment
| specifically, to provide protection and service equally. Even
| if the citizens in question don't fit the preferred local
| definition of "who we want to help."
|
| Edit add: I'm posting this because I think it helps clarify
| why some folks want government programs to exist to address
| social problems, as opposed to just counting on voluntary aid
| to solve it all.
|
| I don't want to leave the impression that I think government
| programs are perfect or without flaws. I actually agree with
| the comments above that point out how means-tested programs
| can create incentives to "stand pat" and not try for
| incremental improvements. It's policy problem that is well
| known but hard to fix.
| mortify wrote:
| > to provide protection and service equally
|
| That is what the law says. It is not what they do.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| > Communities don't just happen, they are intentionally
| constructed.
|
| I, personally, agree with your informative pseudo-rebuttal
| (it's polite and impartial so not really anti-them).
|
| However, the philosophical difference is that
|
| > they are intentionally constructed
|
| is precisely the point, they might say.
|
| I've come to realize, after spending time with them and
| reading "righteous mind", that the difference is so
| fundamental it requires a lot more power to cross divides
| than I have. I simply have to recognize the right and good
| intent in what they do, rather than denigrate it as "not
| enough" or "in the slightly wrong direction even if
| enough".
|
| I imagine a world in which they decline to pay, and
| therefore to receive, benefits from wealth redistribution,
| and urbanites who are highly paid like ourselves subsidize
| other urbanites who are not. I also realize this world
| would have "rural" covens of uber rich, and so it will not
| be more just.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > _by taking some from those with more and giving it to those
| with less_ is almost instinctively repugnant
|
| I think the first part of this statement is crucial to the
| full meaning. It is not about charity[0]. It is about
| redistribution of wealth by force is repugnant.
|
| [0] This 2022 reports states US is #3 in charity (giving).
| https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-
| resea...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Ah yes, the famous "actually americans donate a lot"
| nonsense. That report is based on SELF REPORTED donations.
|
| IE, giving Joel Olstein $10k to help him buy a new private
| jet is considered "charitable giving" and is also
| considered more charitable than if you just chat up the
| Asylum family that was just settled next door and help them
| get integrated into the local community to help them
| network and find work and friends, despite being way more
| impactful to human beings than that fucking grifter.
|
| That "research" will also consider donating to, say, an
| anti-abortion group or an explicitly anti-gay group as
| "donations", as long as you, the questionee, consider them
| to be.
|
| Also, being self reported with zero verification of any
| kind, Americans might just lie more about how much they
| "give".
|
| The IRS publishes statistics about claimed charitable
| giving. 2020 tax filers claimed about $150 million in
| charitable giving if I am reading the report correctly, so
| less than two dollars per American. That is definitely an
| undercount since most people who make small contributions
| do not itemize their taxes and probably don't report their
| charitable giving, but even that number will be tainted by
| a person "donating" their money to a charitable
| organization that they 100% control.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| You're ranting incoherently. Americans give the most to
| non-religious organizations and charities by a wide
| margin (both individuals, corporations, and the
| government).
|
| For instance, the US government allocates $7 billion+
| annually to the UN World Food Programme [1]. The next
| biggest donor? $1.7 billion. It's not even close.
|
| And no, $150 million in claimed charitable giving in 2020
| is provably false. One ultra-rich individual alone is
| enough to top that figure.
|
| P.S: I'm not an American.
| callalex wrote:
| Except for their gay cousin, their atheist cousin, their
| trans cousin, their mixed-race cousin...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >In very-red areas that I have relatives, they're happy to do
| a food drive, make donations, help pay for weddings or
| funerals, or show up to help repair houses
|
| Unless you are gay, trans, not the right kind of christian,
| have mental issues, are progressive in any way, are willing
| at all to contradict their absurd views of reality, want
| cheaper electricity through green energy, want any form of
| public transit, their family member has beef with you, you
| dared to question the authority of the local PD, you dare to
| question that drag queens are a threat, you think maybe gun
| control could have prevented the local school shooting or
| that the PD in that town could have done better and should be
| fired.
|
| The belief that actually rural people are really nice and
| altruistic is just laughable. Having grown up with them, they
| will only help you if you are the "right kind" of person, IE,
| if you are useful or beneficial to them. My white, catholic,
| french mom in a city of 9000 was completely ostracized,
| despite knowing every single family, and being a very
| generous and nice person, because she didn't have the right
| last name.
|
| Insular rural communities are all about local tyrannies, and
| local cliques, and if for ANY reason, no matter how tenuous
| or bullshit or even made up, you WILL be excluded if the
| local popular club doesn't like you. It's basically high
| school, which makes sense when you remember most rural
| communities are entirely made up of people who didn't do
| anything past high school and basically have not grown beyond
| that as people.
|
| >It's not instinctively repugnant to help, or to give, it's
| instinctively repugnant to give outside their community.
|
| These are the same concepts. Being unwilling to help outside
| your community IS being unwilling to help.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Agreed. As David Harvey says, "wealth redistribution is the
| lowest form of socialism". I suspect he would say that mutual
| aid is the highest, and counter to many common narratives in
| our society rural conservatives are very pro mutual aid. I
| would speculate that it's primarily wealthy conservatives who
| own and influence the media that really drive the narratives
| against other forms of wealth redistribution, while poorer
| conservatives are more in favor of social safety nets.
| slibhb wrote:
| > American culture doesn't like to think about how much of
| "success" is down to luck. As often as possible, we want to
| think it's earned. The idea of trying to make up for some of
| the luck factor by taking some from those with more and giving
| it to those with less is almost instinctively repugnant, even
| if it might lead to higher quality of life for everyone
| involved.
|
| The US is in the ballpark of other OECD countries in terms of
| social expenditure: https://www.compareyourcountry.org/social-
| expenditure
| Aunche wrote:
| The US government actually spends more per capita on
| healthcare than the UK or Japan despite it not being
| universal. We're terribly inefficient with its social
| spending because have politics is so adversarial and nobody
| is interested in doing any due diligence.
| staringback wrote:
| > We're terribly inefficient with its social spending
| because have politics is so adversarial and nobody is
| interested in doing any due diligence.
|
| And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the United States
| having a very unhealthy population and pays doctors the
| highest salaries in the world.
| chaorace wrote:
| Chicken, meet egg.
| tmnvix wrote:
| I ordered one of each on Amazon. I'll let you know...
| mlrtime wrote:
| 8% of healthcare spending is salaries, is that your
| smoking gun?
| underlipton wrote:
| >Why work your butt off for 10 years to get to a place where
| you can afford a nice dwelling if you can also wait 10 years,
| working but not pushing yourself, and someone else will pay for
| it for you?
|
| Why would I have a problem with this if the "someone else" is a
| robot? Though I suppose, for the past 2-3 decades, it's been
| more like, "a worker whose productivity has been GREATLY
| increased by the advent if the Information Age." (I can see how
| the worker might be put off by that, but they also have the
| option of grabbing me and a few other people meeting witht he
| boss, and saying, "We're each going to do a small portion of my
| tasks, you're going to pay us the same as you used to, or
| nothing is going to get done at all.")
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| I'm so glad I left the USA and moved to The Netherlands. Public
| housing in NL isn't perfect, but the one thing I really really
| do not miss is listening to my fellow Americans share their
| opinions on the subject.
| mlrtime wrote:
| And you still get to pay US taxes assuming you are a US
| citizen.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > American culture doesn't like to think about how much of
| "success" is down to luck
|
| Think it's more surprising how little of it is down to luck.
| Even working slightly harder reaps rewards quickly that
| outweigh the extra work.
|
| It's most just most people are not even putting in the minimum.
| bombcar wrote:
| Luck controls the biggest swings in some cases, but diligent
| hard work covers for quite a bit of the small changes.
|
| Some people are just really bad at diligent hard work and
| lack the self control needed. The question is how to handle
| that without causing other issues.
| smeej wrote:
| I think this only looks true on a local level. It's easy to
| see why Jimmy pulls ahead of Johnny when Jimmy's working more
| diligently, but they're starting from a fairly even playing
| field.
|
| A lot of the big cards are just dealt to you. Your parents,
| your skin, your religion, your school, your intelligence,
| your health, the neighborhood you grow up in--these things
| have a _huge_ impact on what you do or don 't have to
| overcome once you're old enough to take responsibility for
| your choices, and you don't get to pick them at the start.
| They have an outsized impact on what you even believe to be
| possible, never mind what you think is normal.
| username332211 wrote:
| Is it me or are you going into the "You're no better than
| me. You are just lucky to have been taught good work ethic
| by your parents" territory?
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > And then once you have it, there's even less incentive to try
| to "move up" from there, because there's now a cliff in front
| of you. You have to make the whole jump in one go, because if
| you only take incremental steps, you lose eligibility for your
| subsidies.
|
| I don't know about other places, but I think this is a major
| issue in France. Many things stop altogether if you get above a
| certain limit of income. So many people end up working for
| minimum wage, because if they got 1 EUR more, they start
| "qualifying" for more taxes, lose access to social programs,
| etc.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is much easier to deal with in "money payments" (you
| just make sure that every dollar extra you earn doesn't
| "cost" you more than fifty cents by having graduated wind
| down of payments) but can be much harder with things like
| programs that give you actual things, like housing or food.
|
| It can still be implemented (not by saying "if you make more
| money, you'll only get 29 days a month of this house" but
| making the cash subsidy for the housing explicit and able to
| be wound down) but it really has to be thought through.
|
| You really want some way for lower income people to move to
| middle income without having to give up their neighborhood,
| friends, everything. But if the neighborhood is entirely
| "working poor" and "filthy rich" you can't.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I completely agree. But somehow, I can't shake off the
| feeling that the unbelievable complexity in all things tax-
| related (and I include social programs therein) is a
| feature and not a bug (as in, it's intentional).
| everforward wrote:
| People also don't like it because it in effect means the
| government is competing against you for property using your own
| money.
|
| I.e. if the government buys up 10% of the posh neighborhood to
| add cheap housing, the number of posh units goes down 10% and
| you paid for the taxes to make that happen.
|
| So you're paying taxes to give someone else the thing you want,
| and make it harder for you to get that thing in the future.
| Then you hear about some corruption scandal where the
| government was overpaying...
|
| I think American culture has a weird fetish for fairness. We'll
| do something that makes everyone worse off because at least
| it's distributed evenly. Admitting that success has a large
| luck component would mean admitting that the system isn't and
| cannot be made fair, and I just don't think that's an idea
| people can tolerate.
|
| How does our justice system function if it admits that
| defendants in bad situations are there because they're unlucky
| instead of bad people? How do we justify income inequality if
| we admit those at the top were lucky and that it would be a
| different set of people in an alternate universe? Basically our
| whole society is built on the idea that the system is fair and
| everyone is where they deserve to be because of choices they've
| made.
| bloppe wrote:
| Fairness is not the same thing as equality, and most people
| appreciate that.
| tmnvix wrote:
| > the government is competing against you for property using
| your own money
|
| Unless you somehow have an income source that doesn't rely on
| any taxpayer funded infrastructure whatsoever, it's a bit
| disingenuous to call it 'your own money'. As an example, if
| your city pays for a big new park on your block and this
| increases the value of your property, is that increase really
| yours?
|
| The whole issue of taxation is so much more complicated than
| '100% of my income is mine and any tax is essentially theft'.
| Much better to argue about taxation in terms of fairness in
| my opinion. In terms of fairness, property owners do much
| better out of the whole equation than it might first seem as
| every public improvement amounts to a tax refund in the form
| of increased property value. The poor might get obvious
| refunds or entitlements, but I wouldn't be surprised if they
| are not equivalent.
|
| In the above circumstance, the people with the most
| legitimate gripe are people paying a decent amount of income
| tax while owning no property and so missing out on both types
| of 'refund'.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I'm not sure how you connect the first paragraph with the
| second.
|
| > American culture doesn't like to think about how much of
| "success" is down to luck. [...] The idea of trying to make up
| for some of the luck factor by taking some from those with more
| and giving it to those with less is almost instinctively
| repugnant, even if it might lead to higher quality of life for
| everyone involved.
|
| I don't find charitable giving repugnant. I donate myself, even
| when there is no tax benefit to be gained. I don't find
| conservative and prudently managed social safety nets repugnant
| either (by prudent, I have in mind social safety nets that are
| by design meant to help people get out of poverty, not become
| dependent on such a system by creating incentives to remain
| effectively poor). I also recognize that the common good does
| require more than just money (and I do recognize a common good,
| unlike weird, sociopathic hyperindividualists). And in times of
| _crisis_ , I recognize that a rigid notion of private property
| is opposed to the common good; private property exists, after
| all, _for the sake of the common good_. If I had a warehouse of
| food during a famine, I would not view people taking amounts of
| food from that warehouse to allow them to survive as theft.
|
| What I do find repugnant is what _seems_ like the insinuation
| that my luck somehow means that others are entitled to what I
| have received through luck[0], and that my claim to such wealth
| is suspect. If I win the lottery, the notion that there is
| something unclean about receiving that wealth or bequeathing it
| to my children, because I was lucky, and others weren 't, or
| else I'm a bad person, is preposterous. It reeks of envy. So,
| unless I've earned something, others can just take it? I have
| no right to it? But they have a right to it? Unless I've earned
| something, I must feel insecure about having it? No, actually.
| If I have received something through luck, through gift,
| through merit, and I have done so without criminality, it is
| mine.
|
| Now, if I did win the lottery, I would certainly give to
| charity. And if a competent state taxed me in a reasonable way
| to fund programs that genuine help lift the poor out of
| poverty, I have no issue _in principle_. And I would claim,
| that those who have surplus wealth beyond what is needed to
| fully support themselves and their families do well to use that
| surplus to aid the poor (the poor, mind you, not those who can
| make it on their own). I simply reject the notion that others
| can or should force me to do so. And when I have the freedom to
| decide on my own, I have the freedom to allocate money
| prudently.
|
| [0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1116.htm
| cheriot wrote:
| We don't have to define basic necessities as "success". We can
| all have them.
| itishappy wrote:
| This is the main reason I'm drawn to Universal Basic Income
| (UBI). Give _everybody_ a subsidy, regardless of their
| situation, and the cliff problem vanishes. If you never take
| away the subsidy, then there 's _always_ an incentive to
| improve.
| makerdiety wrote:
| Diversity needs the precondition of liberal democratic welfare
| support? Therefore, eliminate public goods like public housing to
| destroy diversity. Since diversity positively correlates to large
| populations and the tragedy of the commons.
| rayiner wrote:
| I wonder how many of those poor immigrants who live in this
| public housing to serve wealthy Parisians would prefer to live in
| something like an American suburb if they could get jobs there.
| retinaros wrote:
| all of them
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| Probably none. I'd much prefer to be poor in Paris than
| America.
|
| https://homelessdeathscount.org/ (arrogent domain given it's a
| USA count) https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/dying-on-the-
| streets-franc...
|
| Even adjusted for population size, we're still talking 2-3x the
| death rate if homeless.
|
| > Acolin notes that France has roughly as many social housing
| dwellings as the United States, despite having less than one-
| fifth the population.
|
| https://www.sightline.org/2021/07/26/yes-other-places-do-hou...
|
| Social spending in France is the highest in the world, which
| has a dramatically larger effect on poor immigrants.
|
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/social-spending-highe...
|
| In France, these immigrants woild also have access to public
| healthcare, meaning they'd get 70-100% back on most medical
| appointments and reimbursement for prescription medications.
| There are many other social benefits too. It's also much more
| likely to be closer to their country of origin than the US, in
| the event they want and are able to return at some point.
|
| I'm not trying to be rude, but why do you think a poor
| immigrant would have it better in the US than France? I can't
| think of a single reason.
| freddealmeida wrote:
| Who is paying for all this?
| sylware wrote:
| Singapore? 80% of public housing? true?
| javier_e06 wrote:
| Hong Kong has some is highest skyscrapers next to housing that
| rents cages for people to sleep in:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedspace_apartment People live in
| the same neighborhood and there is a cruelty factor of
| understanding and accepting that in your city poor people live in
| cages. And people in the US live in tents. At least nobody
| profits from that.
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| Public housing is terrible - why should the government steal my
| money (income tax) to pay to house criminals and drug dealers
| nearby which devalues my property and endangers my life and
| family?
|
| We just need a true Free Market - let people build and invest how
| they want, where they want. And ensure that everyone has a stake
| in the property they own and the area they live in.
| epolanski wrote:
| Because as a society we progress at the pace our weakest
| progress.
|
| We don't say China moved ahead because the rich got richer, but
| because it lifted hundred of millions from poverty.
|
| And if anything, a poor social net tends to create more
| dangers, not less.
|
| When people have no roof, no jobs, no help, they will turn into
| criminals. Hell if I need to eat, or worse, I need to feed my
| family, I could not care less about becoming a criminal too.
| Zero.
|
| I've seen the dystopia of private neighborhoods with gates and
| security, the ghettos, the crumbling neighborhoods, endless
| tents anywhere you look in many major US cities.
|
| We don't want this in Europe.
|
| I'd rather pay more taxes that help the weakest, not just taxes
| to punish them and send them to jail. A society with more
| desperate people makes my life worse, not better just because I
| can find a more isolated/secure prison where I can avoid
| looking at them.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >We don't say China moved ahead because the rich got richer,
| but because it lifted hundred of millions from poverty.
|
| I was under the impression the poor in China moved ahead due
| to working, not because the Chinese government subsidized
| their housing or other basics. Although, the Chinese
| government did subsidize their ability to find and get to
| work via huge infrastructure projects.
| epolanski wrote:
| China has always had planned housing welfare, it was the
| only way of building houses for decades.
|
| Liberalized housing started in the 90s along the rest, but
| planned housing projects have kept existing and had huge
| budgets till the late 2010s. Even today around one in
| twenty development housing projects is still state funded.
|
| Anyway, I was mostly talking about them as a society
| lifting more and more of the weakest. And yes, building
| houses has been a major contributor of this obviously as
| well as a stimulus for the economy.
| bedobi wrote:
| why should the government steal my money (income tax) to pay to
| subsidize you driving around in and parking your private
| automobile, for every trip, everywhere, including in dense
| urban environments?
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