I think the opinion NYT is programming into their readers is that normal people owning the means of private transportation is bad. The particular facts or coherence of the argument is immaterial.
Just believe the opposite of whatever Pravda says and you’ll be a’ight.
I’m suspicious that most of the value in these systems comes from a small fraction of the effort and many technology jobs boil down to knowing you’re a huge cost center and putting on a performance to hide that.
Some of those who checked out never re-entered the productive economy. There seems to be a change in morale and motivation as well. The young professionals are paid way beyond their value just to get them on board.
I think credit deserves some blame. Schools charge the maximum they expect students to be able to pay, and when students have significant leverage through the bank, those costs rise with it. Very similar conditions in housing. I think administrative bloat is a consequence rather than a cause. Now that the faculty lounge has replaced the factory floor as a reliable voting demographic for you-know-who, I don’t think the subsidies and waste will stop anytime soon.
Every time I get cajoled into visiting my wife’s family out there my experience is just a long stream of internal “how do you live like this?” moments.
>Why is there a carcinogen warning on the rental car?
>Am I the only one bothered that an in-laws car was broken into in his own driveway in a residential zone in the middle of the day?
>Does nobody else see there’s a guy shooting a deuce on a bus stop?
>Did I really just spend 15 minutes in line for 6oz of soft serve ice cream?
>The first thing you discuss with your middle school class is pronouns? Not, like, here are the fire escapes? Or maybe, this is what we’re going to study?
>Why do all these 40-somethings dress like teenagers?
>Well, I guess no outdoor wedding photos… too much smoke… everything a few miles away is on fire.
>I guess there are just tents at basically every intersection. Huh.
>You’re paying 3K a month to live in a 60s era cracker box? Bummer. My mortgage is less than a third of that for twice the house and five times the land.
Permanent residents seem to have this defense mechanism where they just act like it isn’t happening. I’m pretty happy with flyover county. Given how easy remote work is now, I really don’t get why so many stay. Other than programming from the paid mouths in (info/e)ntertainment beating the drum of urbanization and ‘oh it’s just the zoning’
Monolithic Dome has been doing this for years. Precast concrete vaults are made very efficiently and can be used for this purpose with much better quality control. Neither are popular solutions.
Housing construction is pretty cheap. The materials are mass produced on thin margins and in the US we’ve insourced the cheapest labor available on the continent to put it together. If you’re really on a budget, you can get a pre-manufactured mobile home for very little. Even living in Soviet style concrete multi-family housing, like a human factory farm, is actually an option for most of us if we’re to move. People seem to avoid these choices when they have the option though.
I find it very conspicuous that in the commentary around this issue, finance and the market distortions they create never seem to get any blame.
Employers will just create superfluous titles so they don’t have to price-match.
My own opinion is that wages are completely unfair and never can be. Some people produce value several times their wage but it isn’t socially acceptable to pay someone with an important-sounding title minimum wage because of mediocre personal performance. It’s always safer to overpay your dead weight and underpay high-performers.
I think the opinion NYT is programming into their readers is that normal people owning the means of private transportation is bad. The particular facts or coherence of the argument is immaterial.
Just believe the opposite of whatever Pravda says and you’ll be a’ight.