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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • They have nothing to advocate for because they got everything they wanted a long time ago with the dismantling of the public trust and all the tax cuts. Killing Roe was a lark they only did for PR value but hey they got that too.

    I wish people would realize that US politics isn’t a marketplace of ideas. It’s not about competing philosophies. There are some dug in motherfuckers who live only to consolidate their own power and wealth further and further.

    It’s impossible to win a debate with an opponent who doesn’t even put forth an argument. Something something you just get dirty wrestling a pig and the pig enjoys the romp.

    In a word: we can take our country and future from these assholes, or let them keep it. They don’t share.













  • I can’t speak to other markets but in California, the housing bubble is in part supported by investment from around the world. Chinese and Russian nouveau rich are buying homes in CA because it’s a safe place to keep their money relative to their other options. They might even just leave them empty and watch them appreciate. It’s disgusting, when people are struggling like hell just to live.

    Perhaps the state could regulate this and ban international purchases or empty homes but I highly doubt it since the horse has left the barn decades ago and this would deeply impact many rich people, and those people have influence. It would also tank the home values of many average Americans, which would be deeply unpopular as many of those folks are banking on taking that value with them to Mexico or Ecuador to retire on. So this regulation would be bad for the rich and unpopular at large. It would help the young and the poor, the two chronically underrepresented groups.

    So unless we can change the entire world order, I don’t see this wholly going away. Can we make it better? I think so. We need more supply, and it needs to be high density and low cost. Those are not insurmountable. But right now, private developers and the government don’t have what it takes to do anything.

    I know someone who works for a low income housing non profit and they manage 8 big apartment buildings that their non profit built or bought and they operate them as homes for low income people. They are funded by philanthropists large and small as well as some public money.

    If we could find a way to direct more money to such things, we could make a real impact. Perhaps a wealth tax that goes directly to such housing.

    But even then, it’s like MediCal - it will only help those in abject poverty. It wont help my cousin who is making $125k and still can’t afford to buy a home. Middle class will never get help, basically, and this is why you see them moving elsewhere.



  • There have definitely been periods when polls were quite skewed because they were conducted by phone and they over-represented people with landlines. I guess because it’s harder to get a “phone book” of cell numbers. This skewed actual outcomes of the polls.

    I think they still have similar issues. They probably underrepresent people who change phones often or just don’t use the telephone to communicate. Sometimes they’re conducted online and recruited over email. There are all different ways that that can skew more to one type of person.

    And when they say they have such and such a confidence interval, that does not mean they are that confident they’ve controlled for all the biases. It’s just simple statistics math about sample sizes.

    I think we have seen very clearly in recent presidential elections how unreliable polls are. Not only do people answer them differently than they fill out ballots, there just isn’t a perfect way to be sure you’re polling people who will actually vote.