Separately, every institute or person that has published anything has an agenda; so the fact that this particular institute has a mission that you perceive to align with their words doesn't mean that their words are wrong. It is by definition an ad hominem fallacy.
I pointed out the authorship because this article is not actually the piece of news reporting it appears to be; it does not have anything useful to tell us about whether "Norway's wealth tax is backfiring", because it comes from an author whose ideological perspective presumes that it must. Perhaps the policy is a failure, perhaps it is not; we will need to look elsewhere to find out.
I'd love to be as tall and athletic as an NBA player. Perhaps a height tax is in order to more fairly redistribute people along the vertical dimension.
I'll own the snark (and point out that height is only non-transferable if you aren't trying hard enough, a la Harrison Bergeron), but my point stands. Life is full of situations where someone has it better off than someone else in whatever dimension you care to look at. I believe in equality of opportunity but not equality of outcome, which is what GP seemed to suggest in coveting the personal freedoms of a billionaire.
Substantially equal in terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? In equality before the law? In being judged not for the color of their skin, but the content of their character? Yes, and we should strive to make that even more so. Perfectly equal in all respects, including access to resources? Obviously not. If you define equality of opportunity as how many horseback riding lessons and unpaid internships a child is put through, then no, there is no such equality found in America or anywhere else in the world. Even the most egalitarian nations of the world in Scandinavia (the subject of this thread to begin with) have rich people and poor people.
A child of a poor single mother, Barack Obama, made his way to the highest office of the land (not to mention significant personal wealth), whereas a child of a billionaire, John du Pont, died in prison as a convicted murderer. Both had equal opportunities to make something of themselves in a cultural, legal, and economic framework that values the individual.
In this land of equality of opportunity, 93% of people born to parents in the bottom quintile of incomes ended up earning more than their parents, with 57% ending up in a higher quintile; and a full 60% of people born to parents in the top quintile of incomes ended up in a lower quintile[0].
Meanwhile, in Norway, famed for its egalitarian attitudes and highly redistributive policies, a higher percentage were able to climb out of the bottom quintile, but a similar percentage held on to their parents' top-quintile ranking[1]. The country has more billionaires per capita than the US, and still has a legally separate and privileged group of people, the monarchy, who by definition are unequal from the rest of the populace; and it's only a few generations removed from having legal privileges for the aristocracy.
> you got the benefits of the system, pay back into it
The "system" isn't the government, though it's easy to muddle that line, considering some developed countries have government spending that's over half of the GDP (with Norway sitting at around a fifth as of 2021); and the existence of a government that facilitates the "system", which is in reality the private activities of the people, does not make it that without that particular government the system will not exist at all.
Imagine a parent who tells a fully-grown child well into his adulthood that they have an ever-increasing claim on what the child produces by virtue of having given birth to and raised him. Does that not sound abusive? That's not the kind of relationship I want with my government. The government, or at least the American one, is meant to serve the people, not rule over them and allow the people to keep whatever scraps the government allows them to keep.
Every time you perform a service for somebody or make a widget for somebody -- basically any economic activity -- you are paying back into the system by fulfilling a demand that someone else has. And not just remunerative efforts: every time you pick up a cigarette butt off the street that you didn't smoke, or every time you watch someone else's kid for a night, or you volunteer at a local soup kitchen. Those are all ways that people pay back into the system.
Let's not make the mistake of thinking taxation is the only way, or even the most important and effective way. Many roles that are currently performed by government funded via taxation have only been that way very recently in human history, and I'm in no way convinced that this is either optimum or necessary.
>Imagine a parent who tells a fully-grown child well into his adulthood that they have an ever-increasing claim on what the child produces by virtue of having given birth to and raised him. Does that not sound abusive? That's not the kind of relationship I want with my government. The government, or at least the American one, is meant to serve the people, not rule over them and allow the people to keep whatever scraps the government allows them to keep.
Thank you for putting that into words, I’ve struggled to succinctly frame the unease that this way of thinking makes me feel.
> The tragedy is those who want to engage but can't. Due to registration requirements, ersatz poll taxes, difficulty of getting to and from poll sites or keeping tabs on the election calendar.
I hear about this every now and then, but is it an issue in any real number? Maybe the problem of the "difficulty of getting to and from poll sites", which I can see arising due to the nature of this country being large, spread out, and automobile-centric.
Even Georgia, which was recently under fire for so-called voter restriction laws, hands out voter ID cards for free or a non-driver state ID card for under $40 that lasts nearly a decade. I can only imagine that anyone who is unable to obtain one of those has much bigger problems than voting every few years.
Abbott, Paxton, and Patrick are the 3 horsemen of the "woke" apocalypse. They will do anything to prevent anyone who isn't an old, white, Xtian (those who profess to believe in Christ but do not follow his teachings) from voting, especially in Harris County.
> Maybe the problem of the "difficulty of getting to and from poll sites", which I can see arising due to the nature of this country being large, spread out, and automobile-centric.
It's not just distance and cost, but time. Someone working 3 jobs simply doesn't have time to stand in line for hours.
Nobody has time to stand in line for hours to vote. Not even retired people would do that!
> Someone working 3 jobs
According to the BLS[0], less than 5% of working-aged people hold more than one job, and presumably a fraction of that have three jobs. Surely society shouldn't optimize for a small minority of the population.
> doesn't have time to stand in line for hours
Data on this isn't great, but one source I found[1] puts a cursory total average across all states in 2020 at around 15 minutes, with the worst average wait time being Indiana at 42.1 minutes. It's confirmed by a 2020 academic paper[2] which puts the nationwide median at 14 minutes.
I can imagine that there are outliers who have to wait unpleasantly long, and that same paper referenced above indicates that people may have unequal voting wait times based on where they live. Ideally voting should be easy for all those eligible to vote.
Real estate isn't immune to the law of supply and demand, which mandate that you can only pick at most two out of size (or quality) of the housing unit, location (and the quality thereof), and price. Most places in the US are either affordable and boring or the other way around.
> soulless suburbs where there's literally nothing
This is a bit of a reductionist take on those younger people's part. You can have just as much fun at the TGI Friday's at your local strip mall as you can at the hippest restaurant no one else has ever heard of in Brooklyn. It's just a matter of who you spend that time with, and how you perceive that time, in the Stoic tradition.
Let me offer a counterpoint: I live in LA because it is home to the largest immigrant population in the US from the country where my parents were born. When I go to the grocery store, restaurants, concerts, festivals, etc. I am experiencing that cultural connection.
There’s numerous spaces I’ve been in where English is rarely spoken and it gives me the opportunity to maintain my language skills.
Do you think I could have that in generic suburbia?
I'm an immigrant myself, having moved around the US quite a bit and currently living in a part where there aren't very many people from my country of origin. I've never once considered proximity to a large community of people sharing my ethnic background as important in choosing where to live, but of course YMMV.
It's funny because I've always thought of LA as a conglomeration of suburbia, but perhaps you're referring to "generic suburbia" as one that's composed primarily of typical white Americans? Then naturally by definition you're not going to have the same kind of access to whichever cultural group that is missing from that town. But I disagree that those kinds of places are entirely devoid of "soul", as the GP put it. It'd be like criticizing Los Angeles (plurality Hispanic, approximately 0% Danish[0]), for not having Danish festivals and grocery stores, or Jackson, MS (roughly 80% black and less than half a percent Asian[1]) for not having enough authentic Asian restaurants.
Sure, there's an argument to be made that you can find representation of anything in a big enough city, and that holds in places like NYC or LA. But that's a truism.
LA is not Manhattan but it’s not a generic sunbelt city either. It’s comprised of dozens of neighborhoods and cities many of which are dense by any American standard (10000+ people/sq mi). A number of neighborhoods that were previously oriented around the yellow and red cars still have walkable “main streets” (albeit each of these main streets are individually difficult to reach without a car).
But that’s kind of beside the point. What I’m pushing back on is the notion that you can live anywhere in the US and it’s just as good as anywhere else so you might as well live wherever it’s cheapest.
It’s not about suburbs per se since Orange County is as suburban as it gets and also checks some of the boxes I mentioned (although I’d argue not as many as LA). It is also extremely expensive.
I don’t care for the “soul” argument since it’s vague. I just specified something that is personally important to me and justifies living in an very high COL city.
… You can have just as much fun at the TGI Friday's at your local strip mall as you can at the hippest restaurant…
Have you actually eaten at a TGIFridays? The food is awful. I suppose if the actual meal is completely secondary to your enjoyment of the experience, you might be right, but for me, eating out is as much for the food as the company.
In my early 20s I used to sit at the bar at TGIFridays 3-4 nights a week and play trivia with my girlfriend (now wife) and other friends. It was less than a 10 minute walk from our suburban condo and across the street from our work so we would have lots of coworkers stop in and hang out. I’d usually eat some of their shitty wings and fries but the experience was definitely hanging out, drinking, and playing trivia. I’d imagine this type of experience is common whether you live in suburbia or NYC.
> You can have just as much fun at the TGI Friday's at your local strip mall as you can at the hippest restaurant no one else has ever heard of in Brooklyn. It's just a matter of who you spend that time with, and how you perceive that time, in the Stoic tradition.
There is something fundamentally different about the cultural life in cities. The suburbs are actually "soulless" in comparison.
Worth pointing out that every Stoic I can think of was an upper-class city-dweller. Epicurus—Athens. Marcus Aurelius—Rome. Zeno of Citium—Athens again, but perhaps apocryphal. Seneca, Cicero, Epictetus—Rome again [0].
[0] I'm reminded now that Epictetus was not particularly wealthy, and did live an ascetic lifestyle. Perhaps the exception that makes the rule.
> You can have just as much fun at the TGI Friday's at your local strip mall as you can at the hippest restaurant no one else has ever heard of in Brooklyn. It's just a matter of who you spend that time with, and how you perceive that time, in the Stoic tradition.
It's not just about restaurants. I'm not going to be able to go to concerts or events. There will be no specialized stores. Even in the example you gave, many of these chains are absolutely terrible now. Going to a local place means better food. It's not all pretense.
As the saying goes: It's hard to have fun with dogshit in your mouth.
How often do people actually go to concerts or events? Why do I need specialized stores if I have the internet? Eating out is expensive and generally not good for you, calorie-wise.
Cities are fun, but people fail to realize that rural places are also pretty great. You just need to make your own fun, but you actually have the room (and money) to do so. I can go out in my yard and do archery, target shooting, etc. I live surrounded by woods and can go for a walk or just sit in there whenever I want...mosquitoes permitting. My house has room for any new hobby I want.
I will say that suburbs are probably the worst of both worlds, but I suppose you're closer to those concerts and better restaurants if you want.
Some people have little interest in those things. You've also really only listed solitary activities. Sure you can do some of these things "with people", but it's a far cry from more social activities.
To answer your first question: a lot. There's people that are very different from you, that really don't do well without these interactions. They expect to go out 1-3 times a week or at least monthly. Small area community events can be awkward if you aren't from town, don't know everyone, who all grew up together.
Yeah, you're buddy might come over now and then for target practice. However this is very different from social events city dwellers rely on.
That's true, but I'd argue those that go out monthly could easily live an hour or two from the city.
Don't get me wrong - if I were still single I'd probably move to a city, if only for the dating prospects. Once you have a family though and limited free time the pros and cons change a bit.
And what if you are not rich and you can't work for home? Would you spend hours per day commuting? That translates in loosing some years from your life.
classic hackernews shut-in that doesnt understand that people enjoy culture, i go to a concert/show at least once a month and they are the best things i spend my money on.
How does suburbia stop anyone from going to concerts? I live in a very suburban area and go to shows about once a month too. Sometimes those shows are downtown and sometimes they are in the burbs (sometimes the even further burbs).
Yeah, and depending on location, you might not even be that much further from the happening spots. In city it's like 20 min for me, vs. previously 30-40 minutes; sure it's both ways, but this isn't that crazy.
Also you have more people and diversity. If you hate your neighbor there's plenty of others. In a smaller society, if you don't get along with ~3-5 people your fucked.
That's fine and dandy, but most people probably don't approach anywhere near that regularity. I enjoy culture just fine, but I'm a busy father and I also enjoy my hobbies.
All I'm saying is that most people that act like rural areas have "nothing to do" probably don't do all that much regularly anyways - and there are simply different things to do. We live 5 minutes from a state park with great hiking and have two public beaches within 5 minutes as well.
I live in a suburb of a B-tier (at best) city, and have been to half a dozen concerts this year and at least two more coming up. Including several in objectively A-tier cities.
The idea that if you live in a suburb you can no longer go to concerts or events or "specialized stores" whatever that means, is just ridiculous.
I coined the phrase, and am now not so sure myself. It doesn't really need to be that special, either. If you live in a small area you'll have eg. 1-5 stores.
There will be a big box supermarket, a local one, and maybe some other wildcard option. Then there will be a couple local stores (hardware, outdoors, etc.). However, if you want anything specific or just don't like the shop, you have to go to a different city.
I don't know if you've lived in a small town, but this would include things like electronic. With no Best Buy or Circuit City, you were stuck with Walmart, or a local shop for almost twice the price.
It's true that fun and interesting cities would still command some kind of premium under more liberal permitting regimes, but that's not an excuse to be amplifying it artificially with policy.
> This is a bit of a reductionist take on those younger people's part. You can have just as much fun at the TGI Friday's at your local strip mall as you can at the hippest restaurant no one else has ever heard of in Brooklyn.
I'm one of those younger people. The main difference here is, "the hip" restaurant in Brooklyn will have vastly different food than a hip restaurant in SF. Can't say that about TGIFs
Trust are good and even needed for the producers. Just look at OPEC... It would be lot worse for them if they did not manage supply. Same goes for farmers if they can't control the sell price.
As it should be, as shaming has proven entirely ineffective, and long term, durable weight loss is extremely rare in any case. In my opinion, if people are overweight, they might as well try to deal with the issues while being happy than while being depressed.
I also think it's really important to separate "body positivity" from the much rarer (and false) instances of "obesity doesn't matter for health." I associate body positivity with things like "the Richard Simmons mindset", i.e. no matter what your weight is that getting up and moving/dancing can feel great and improve your health and your mood, or the "Michelle Obama mindset", that healthy eating should start with eating fruits and vegetables rather than focus on dieting.
A country making solar panels doesn't necessarily plan to use all of them.
It was an exports/services (consulting) play. "Skating where the puck will be" and all that—become the experts with plenty of production capacity before the market per se justifies it. IIRC they made similar efforts for other renewables, like wind power. Not sure how all that's going, but I know it was regarded by many as a good move, a couple decades back when they were investing in it all.
It does but at a greatly reduced output (5-20% of rated output depending on the thickness of the cloud cover). Partly cloudy weather leads to a very bumpy output graph.
I mean, of course, but is it really the best use of the limited resources of a nation? Germany isn't playing to its natural competitive advantage by pursuing solar, vs. someplace like Morocco. Nuclear would be a much better option, but we know how that ended up.
> many of them are literally a 10 minute bus ride to downtown
Is that 10-minute bus ride a pleasant experience on a daily basis? If you live in a quiet part of the city but must commute back and forth to downtown during which you run a non-negligible risk of a particular unpleasant encounter, then you don't gain a whole lot by being in that quiet part.
I'd wager that most rural places about the size of Vicksburg (~20k population) are "bad" in that same way. I'm sure there are a few exceptions, but none come to the top of my head.
I really wouldn't call Vicksburg rural, it is actually small town urban serving a county with around 50k people (outside of Vicksburg like in Bovina is rural, however). Also, Vicksburg is fairly close to Jackson (40 minute drive?), but we all know things are much better over there.
Separately, every institute or person that has published anything has an agenda; so the fact that this particular institute has a mission that you perceive to align with their words doesn't mean that their words are wrong. It is by definition an ad hominem fallacy.