GUNTER: No surprise Edmonton has soured on Sohi, council - "Leger found that of the 15 issues most important to Edmonton voters, bike lanes, transit and battling climate change were at the bottom of the list, ahead of only “other.” Yet those are three of council’s biggest obsessions. Housing affordability is Edmontonians top concern. Council and the mayor pay a lot of attention to that, too. But when regular voters say “housing affordability,” they mean their own ability to afford housing. When council and the bureaucrats use the same term, they almost always seem to mean “social housing” – affordable homes from the homeless and poor. Edmontonians’ second greatest concern is property taxes, which doesn’t concern a single member of the current council at all. All 13 members, Mayor Sohi and the 12 councillors, voted unanimously to raise property taxes this year by 8.9 per cent. And that’s the rise only if the value of your home rose by the average amount in the city. Our home’s value happened to rise by about five per cent above average, so our property taxes are going up 14 per cent – in one year!... Homelessness is the No. 3 concern of voters. Yet, frankly, if the majority on council had their lefty wish, I would bet homelessness would be declared a human right and encampments would never be dismantled."
The Atlantic on X - "If gentrification has a sound, it’s silence. Xochitl Gonzalez on why the rich love quiet so much, and what it means for everyone else:"
pagliacci the hated 🌝 on X - "you can always tell who was actually poor and who's just an Ivy League shitlib LARPing because the latter romanticizes aspects of poverty that real poor people desperately want to escape. when they think "noisy neighborhood," their mind conjures up some abuela playing tropipop out her breezy open window while she makes empanadas as a table of Chinese men laugh and play Mahjong on the street -- literal Hollywood movie shit. in reality, the noise of poverty is the woman next door screaming while she's getting beaten up by her drunk boyfriend, a schizo man shouting obscenities outside of your apartment window, and the blaring siren of ambulances coming to collect yet another overdose."
Erich Hartmann on X - "Excessive /unavoidable noise causes major problems: increased stress, sleep issues, reduced quality of life, decreased performance, and longer term cognitive impairment, mental health issues and perpetuates negative social behavior. Why should "poor" people have to suffer this?"
Eric S. Raymond on X - "I think this article is best understood as an attempt to invent a novel category of grievance for the author to feel victimized about, so he can first feel virtuous and then crybully others."
David Santa Carla 🦇 on X - "Rich people don’t yell at the movie screens. 🍿"
Steve Sailer on X - "Because rich people tend to have longer, more complicated trains of thought (which is one of the reasons they are richer) that are more easily interrupted by random noise blaring? For example, why did Proust work in a cork-lined room?"
Clay on X - "Everybody loves quiet, especially once you get out of your early 20s. Rich people are the only ones able to pay to get away from it. Perhaps working class people deserve peacefulness too."
samizdata on X - "Enforcing laws instead of coddling criminals might help."
ライオン Lion on X - "Why are poor people so noisy? Why is a quiet neighborhood a privilege that only the rich can afford?"
Zarathustra on X - "Schopenhauer “On Noise” is required reading 1/2"
Clifton Duncan on X - "Until you've lived in a neighborhood where residents blast reggaeton from their hatchback at 2am on a weekday don't lecture me about wanting peace and quiet"
Why Financial Confessionals Go Viral - The Atlantic (aka $350,000 a Year, and Just Getting By) - "The hypothetical couple were making $350,000 a year and just getting by, their income “barely” qualifying them as middle-class. Their budget, posted in September, showed how they “survived” in a city like San Francisco, spending more than $50,000 a year on child care and preschool, nearly $50,000 a year on their mortgage, and hefty amounts on vacations, entertainment, and a weekly date night—even as they saved for retirement and college in tax-advantaged accounts... Perhaps you recall the law professor making $250,000 a year who accused Barack Obama of squeezing him dry back in 2010. Or the marketing intern making it in New York on $25 an hour with hefty subsidies from her parents and grandparents (she was, as she put it, #blessed). Or the two lawyers earning $500,000 a year and “scraping by,” unable to save... people’s perceptions of what it means to be “rich” have stratified. In surveys, individuals making less than $25,000 say that making $293,000 a year makes you rich. People with incomes over $120,000 say something more like half a million dollars... Dogen, for his part, believes that saving needs to hurt to work. “Anybody who has gotten braces or who has lifted weights understands this concept,” he says. “If the amount of money you’re saving each month doesn’t hurt a little, you’re not saving enough.”"
Capitalism has failed. People just don't make enough money
Woman left with $150 every fortnight despite having household income of $180,000 - "A TikToker has left people divided after saying she can't afford 'self-care', despite having a combined household income of $180,000... The mom questioned how people are still able to get their 'nails, hair, lashes [and] brows done all the time' noting she and her partner have 'a bigger income' but have a 'strict budget' so they can 'save for a house' by July 2025. "In order to do that, I only have $150 spending money per fortnight," she continued. However, the TikToker said nails cost about '$100 every four weeks' and her hair costs her '$200 every eight weeks'. Her lash lift tint, brow lamination, sculpt and dye 'all at once' works out at '$170 a fortnight'. In total, the cost of the 'self care' for a month comes to a whopping $370."
"Even if young people actually *could* get on the housing ladder by foregoing coffee, holidays, netflix, brunches, books... why should we have to? why should we have to forego the lovely small things that make life bearable just to feel like we have somewhere stable to live?"
We are being far too soft on incompetent teachers – and the militant unions that indulge them - "I don’t know what’s more demoralising. The evidence that primary schools still haven’t returned to pre-Covid standards across reading, writing and maths, or the response to these figures from teaching unions and our newly installed education minister. Most people would consider it imperative that schools bring attainment in these three core disciplines back to 2019 levels. Not so the headteachers’ union NAHT, whose general secretary weaponised this news to push for the “purpose of statutory assessments” to be “reconsidered”. Meanwhile, Labour’s schools minister Catherine McKinnell lamented that “despite the brilliance of our teachers ... too many pupils ... are not meeting the expected standard”. But surely this “brilliance” ought to be called into question. In what other scenario would we dissociate the quality of the service from the experience of the customer? For years, education was the positive story the Tories could tell. Britain was rising up the Pisa rankings. Free schools, under Michael Gove’s supervision, were flourishing. Former schools minister Nick Gibb’s phonics revolution was paying stellar dividends. Almost none of this was achieved with the help and support of our benighted “educators”. Teaching unions vociferously opposed Gove’s reforms. At every level of education, from nursery to postgrad, they have argued against assessment and accountability, with the stock response that they damage “mental health”. They would prefer there was no monitoring at all, with children denied the benefits – the structure, motivation and reward – of exams. Many of the problems with our education system, from staffing shortages to pupil attainment, stem from decisions pushed with maniacal fervour by union chiefs. They expect all teachers must have completed a PGCE, even though mature entrants may have relevant skills, then complain of shortages. They were among the main stumbling blocks to reopening schools in the summer of 2020, the effects of which are clearly being felt today. Yet our collective sympathy for teachers is near-boundless. We are constantly told of excessive workloads, burnout, poor pay, long hours, bad management, disruptive pupils and aggressive parents. The most dedicated, patient and passionate of our teachers may have some legitimate grievances. But the education narrative is strikingly one-sided. Few criticise the unions, even though the largest among them is now run by a hard-Left former activist who once proclaimed that strikes were about “taking back control from a brutally racist state”. Teacher pensions – where employer contributions are roughly three times the average in the private sector – are seldom mentioned. Too many educators subscribe to the “something for nothing” culture which now underpins much of Britain’s public sector. When walkouts were staged months after normal schooling resumed post-pandemic, and teachers were offered £1,000 and a 4.3 per cent pay rise, there was no quo for the taxpayer’s quid. There was no promise of better results. And herein lies the most depressing aspect of our attitude towards education – worse even than the dearth of choice for parents and the militant unions. It’s that, for all the evidence of the damage wrought by lockdown on children, their needs are still deprioritised. The Tories put teachers before pupils during Covid. Under Labour, the danger is that the sector will be run solely for the producers at the expense of the consumer."
YOU SAID IT: Never been about the kids - "When 51 per cent of our education budget is being spent on teachers’ salaries, you know something is wrong. It would be one thing if our kids were coming out of school educated and exceeding provincial standards, but they’re not, so we as taxpayers aren’t getting our money’s worth. Every time they threaten to go on strike, the unions spout the same mantra: “It’s for our kids.” Seems they have been taking lessons from the Liberals: if you say something loud enough and long enough and make that your talking point, we will believe you. It’s never been about the kids. It’s about teachers’ salaries, their overly generous pensions and their several weeks of holidays. Looking at the average salaries they’re making, it’s not like they’re hard done by. If any cuts are to be made, may I suggest they start there? If they truly care, then they wouldn’t have a problem with a pay cut or a freeze. After all, it’s about the children, isn’t it? There are good teachers out there, but at this point I’d say their unions are the problem. They have become very political and very radical. It’s time for a change."
Meme - "Anarchists when the one optometrist in their village won't trade them a pair of glasses in exchange for poetry about being gay"
Ginny Roth: Housing is going through a supply-side revolution. Can we do the same for childcare? - "Governments—often local—pile on regulations and restrictions. They say these restrictions will protect society and initially, they don’t seem to do much harm. At the same time, some people (often wealthy) realize these restrictions can help them because maybe they have a vested interest the restrictions protect. But still, as a result, people don’t have the thing that they need, especially low-income people, so governments feel the need to respond. They can’t remove the restrictions—they’re protecting society after all! Also, the beneficiaries of the protections wouldn’t like it. And anyway, it would be hard. Meanwhile, borrowing is cheap. Like, really cheap. So, governments decide to throw some cash at the problem. At first, people get excited. Maybe one of these new programs means they’ll finally be able to get that thing they can’t get. In fact, as the money pours out, more people realize they want the thing and might be able to reach it with the cash boost. The problem is, that thing they want? There isn’t more of it available. Even if it’s paid for, it just doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, governments keep adding new regulations and restrictions. Demand goes up. Supply goes down. But it doesn’t stop there. People whose job it is to find business opportunities spot one. After all, where there’s high demand and low supply, there’s value. So private equity swoops in. They also use cheap debt to buy up what little is left of that thing people want so much of since they know they can ask a lot for it and won’t face competitive pressure to charge less. And who can blame them? It’s their job. Meanwhile, other governments try to benefit politically from appearing to solve the problem, so they throw in more cash too. Joint announcements ensue, only to be followed weeks later by news stories pointing out that there still isn’t enough of the thing people want, and that every day, more people want it. Finally, in the midst of all of this, as cash drives up demand, and regulation drives down supply, and you think things can’t possibly be made worse, every month, more and more people come to Canada. And what do those people want? In fact, what do they need? That’s right, the very same thing everyone else wants, and of which there is not enough. And now, relatively speaking, even less... The carbon tax and other input costs that make food more expensive, development charges, municipal zoning requirements, and provincial licensing red tape all stand in the way of entrepreneurs trying to build and grow childcare centres, and labour regulations and credentialization make it impossible to find enough staff. It was bad enough before the Trudeau Liberals launched their ten-dollar-a-day childcare program, otherwise known as Canada Wide Early Learning and Child Care. Then it got worse. CWELCC manages to both increase demand and supress supply by redistributing the money Canadians pay in taxes (including low-income people) to subsidize the cost of childcare spots down to ten dollars a day, not just for low-income people, but for everyone, even the wealthiest Canadians. The regressive, demand-jacking economic program would be bad enough on its own. But on top of that, the program design (different depending on how negotiations went with each province), worsens the disincentive for small businesspeople to create centres and add more spaces. Childcare entrepreneurs, most of them women, report being berated by municipal civil servants for their profit-seeking motives and business choices, many of them forced to turn away countless families who will never make it off the endless waitlists, some of them opting out of the program altogether. Some provinces and municipalities have been better than others. Alberta, for instance, has more choice and flexibility in its model, presumably influenced by the success of its education system which allows market forces to match supply with demand. Regardless, the principles of the federal program mean shortages persist across the country. And the non-profit sector hasn’t helped, too often dogmatic about service delivery, insisting that non-profit centres are inherently better than for-profit businesses and advocating to bake that preference into program design, inevitably suppressing supply and exacerbating access issues which, ironically, hurt the low-income people who can’t afford alternatives the most... perhaps the lowest hanging fruit, governments could look at the credentialization of childcare labour—labour shortages being the biggest driver of supply shortages—and ask themselves why Early Childhood Educator, a designation that didn’t even exist in Ontario until 2007, is the pinnacle of quality care. No parent I know is an ECE, no grandparent, no loving neighbour, not even my own children’s caregiver (Marry Poppins in the flesh)."
Left wingers don't like good outcomes - they hate profit and are unable to imagine that a non-profit outcome could be worse, because they have zero sum thinking: someone profiting means someone must be being exploited
Meme - Hot Takes Nobody Asked For: "hot take: you shouldn't ask for a ten percent raise unless you're upgrading yourself, doing ten percent more work and creating ten percent more profits for the company. /j that applies to some of us but it doesn't often apply to these folks."
Andrew Hilary @AndrewHilaryUS: "Hot Take: Landlords should not be able to increase rent unless they are upgrading the apartment."
Left wingers think all inflation is "greed" after all
No surprise there's a Palestinian flag. Left wing beliefs usually come in a package
wanye on X - "I have spent the last few weekends preparing an apt for rent. The “landlords don’t do anything” discourse is another manifestation of the particularly modern delusion that stuff just happens, that apartments are just magically there to be consumed. People are so disconnected from physical reality that they’ve actually forgotten how it works.
“Everybody is conservative about what they know best” is partly explained by the fact that once you’ve actually done something it pierces the illusion that that thing just happens all by itself. Suddenly you see clearly that that thing requires dramatic intervention on the part of real, breathing beings. It’s a kind of Gell-Mann amnesia that people can realize this in one domain and continue believing that it’s not the case in all the others."
Woman homeless as tenants refuse to leave her new house - "After a sudden layoff forced her to sell her Mississauga home last December, Ayesha Asghar scrambled what little savings and severance she had left to buy a modest two-storey townhome in east Hamilton. “I wanted to rebuild my life,” said the 36-year-old, a casualty of last year’s sweeping tech sector layoffs. “I couldn’t afford mortgage payments after losing my job and Hamilton was an opportunity to downsize, regroup myself and focus on rebuilding my life and career.” The move-in date was June 6. Asghar is now living out of her car. Her home is occupied by a handful of tenants she says have refused to leave her Ellis Avenue townhome, despite being issued N12 eviction notices more than 80 days before she took ownership of the property. The dispute — part of a broader provincewide trend in recent years — has seen Asghar go from young homeowner to homeless landlord virtually overnight, with no recourse but to wait for a hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) on Aug. 27. Beyond refusing to leave, Asghar claims the tenants have yet to pay rent or utility bills, and caused significant damage to the property, including leaving “piles and piles” of garbage in its front yard. Meanwhile, she’s still obligated to make mortgage payments. “It’s dehumanizing,” said the still-jobless Asghar, her voice breaking. “I can’t tell you how many panic attacks I’ve had recently.” At the townhome early Thursday afternoon — where music could be heard from around the corner and piles of belongings, from bikes and an office chair to bed frames and a loveseat, could be seen on its narrow front yard — tenant Kimberly Sheffield said it’s within her rights as a tenant to remain there. Sheffield said she was never served with an N12 eviction notice and said she has paid her rent up to April 1. She alleged Asghar wants to renovate the property to bring in new tenants and jack up rent. “I’m not going to leave just because she bought a house,” she said. “I know my rights as a tenant. I don’t think somebody who buys a house can just kick people out onto the street.” Asked if she was aware the person who bought the home is now homeless and living out of her car, Sheffield said: “No, she’s not. And if she is, well, hey, at least she’s in a better situation than me and can afford a car.”... A recent inspection of the townhome — conducted by a property management company Asghar “had to hire just to deal with the tenants because they became so difficult and unreasonable” — found interior damages exceeding $17,000, with photos showing graffiti scribbled on most of its walls, window screens missing, clutter and debris throughout, and soiled floors and stairs. Hamilton’s fire department, also in attendance at the June 12 inspection, ordered Asghar to install new smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors after they had been removed... As part of the sale agreement, the previous owner agreed to issue the tenants eviction notices March 12 because a buyer intended to move in, according to Asghar, who has kept copious records documenting all of the efforts she’s made to prepare for her case. Asghar said she was informed by the seller’s realtor the tenants had agreed to vacate the property by May 31. That never happened... “I know how difficult it is to find a home,” she said. “It would be one thing if these tenants told me on the closing date that, ‘We know you’re supposed to move in, but can we have another month to find a place?’ I get that. But these people are refusing to leave period.” Kayla Andrade, president of Ontario Landlords Watch, said the checks and balances in place at the LTB become an issue when tenants — the people who those laws are meant to protect — begin abusing the system. “Even though (Asghar) has a hearing coming up, the tenants have many loopholes where they can stretch this process out as long as they want,” said Andrade, who has supported disputing landlords and tenants for more than a decade. Indeed, it can take months after an eviction notice is issued just to get a hearing — and longer if that hearing is delayed or the tenant files more appeals. It’s an ordeal Andrade said has forced many Ontario landlords, who can be stuck for months with non-paying tenants and a mortgage as the LTB struggles to manage a backlog of applications, to leave local real estate altogether. “You look at the cost of housing as one thing and the interest rates as another, but they’re getting out because of the lack of protection for them at the Landlord and Tenant Board,” Andrade said, adding disputes like Asghar’s are becoming increasingly common. She pointed to a case last year of a Hamilton couple who bought a home and, after its tenants refused to leave, parked their RV in the driveway as a sign of protest. “Why are we holding the (LTB) down with applications that don’t need to be heard by an adjudicator? We have a lot more important factors that need to be dealt with by the (LTB).”"
All landlords are bastards. She deserves to go bankrupt!
Homeowner gets hearing expedited as tenants refuse to leave - "Ayesha Asghar has finally caught a break. After a Spectator story June 25 profiled her overnight transition from young homeowner to homeless landlord, the 36-year-old says she’s now been granted an expedited eviction hearing from the Landlord and Tenant board that will sooner determine the fate of tenants who refuse to leave her recently bought east Hamilton townhome. “Instead of waiting two months, it’s now down to a month, so that’s definitely a little better,” Asghar said of the eviction hearing, which has been moved from Aug. 27 to July 29. “But it all depends on how the hearing goes. If I get the decision right away, then I still have to wait 30 to 60 days for the board to issue an order and then for the sheriff to enforce that order.”... A tenant doesn’t “have to” leave a home that’s under new ownership, noted paralegal Andrew Choubeta, who specializes in landlord-tenant issues. While Ontario law permits landlords to evict a tenant on behalf of a buyer insofar as the latter or one of their family members intends to occupy the home, Choubeta said “the tenant can push the matter to a tribunal hearing and essentially challenge the purchaser’s ability to move into that unit.”"
@DRJessieNYC 🇵🇸 on X - "We really have to ackownledge that “not enough time to read” is part of the THEFT built into capitalism."
Swann Marcus on X - "People will watch 7 hours of Netflix a day and spend the rest of their free time on twitter and then claim they didn't read War and Peace because of capitalist exploitation"
Brianna Wu on X - "Post something that mildly annoys you below, and I will find a way to blame it on capitalism."
Meme - Alexander @datepsych: "In addition to lower SES individuals having more leisure time, they also spend their leisure time in different ways. For example, despite it being free and health-promoting (and thus being a good financial decision in multiple ways), poorer individuals don’t go running much. In fact they do most sport or exercise activity less. They do however spend more time watching TV, relaxing, socializing with friends, gambling, playing games, and using recreational drugs."
"Income distributions in Americans' pastimes"
"You might expect poorer people to do cheap, healthy hobbies that don't incur additional financial costs if we all made good and reasonable decisions. Instead, poverty is associated with expensive vices."
We're going to be told about the cognitive load of poverty, even though that does not replicate
Meme - Chris Freiman @cafreiman: "Capitalism has provided us with plenty of time to read"
"Estimated Trend in the Lifetime Distribution of Discretionary Time, 1880-2040
Activity 1880 1995
Lifetime Discretionary Hours 225,900 298,500
Lifetime Work Hours 182,100 122,400
Lifetime Leisure Hours 43,800 176,100
Source: Fogel (2000)
Notes: Discretionary hours exclude hours used for sleep, meals and hygiene. Work hours include paid work, travel to and from work, and household chores."
Meme - "New Study Reveals That People Who Make Good Decisions Have an Unfair Advantage"
Book Excerpt: How Mike Harris got Ontarians off welfare and back to work - "Enriched benefits, rising costs amid a deep recession and more than 1.3-million Ontarians on welfare. Those were the realities for the Progressive Conservatives when they were elected in 1995... In his manifesto, the “Common Sense Revolution,” Mike Harris promised to cut benefits, which were high relative to other Canadian provinces, to bring in work or work-training requirements for welfare recipients and to enhance welfare verification. In 1997, the government launched a transformation, creating new programs to help people get back to work. These restored the principle of social assistance as a temporary stopgap rather than a long-term income substitution. This structure is still mostly in place nearly 25 years later, including benefit levels that have not shifted materially since. At the time, much of the attention was paid to the budgetary impetus. Ontario was running large deficits, and social assistance spending represented more than 10 per cent of total expenditures. Yet the Progressive Conservatives were not merely motivated by fiscal considerations. They saw a connection between work and dignity."
No wonder left wingers hate him so much
Will Canada's biggest city legislate a maximum temperature in apartments? - "Selvasegar is part of a coalition of tenant and environmental advocacy organizations, backed by seniors' and disability rights groups, who are demanding Toronto bring in a maximum temperature bylaw. Similar to the way landlords must keep units heated when it's cold, the coalition wants the city to legislate protections to keep residences no warmer than 26 degrees when outdoor temperatures increase."
When rents rise, it will be the fault of greedy landlords and proof that capitalism has failed
Meme - Mike @mikeinspace: "Anyone who says, "but they have insurance" has obviously...
- never dealt with an insurance company before;
- has no idea how deductibles work;
- don't understand the opportunity cost of lost time;
Have no concern for others' trauma."
Not to mention, left wingers don't understand that premiums must rise to cover payouts
