Mad Wack posted:

some goon linked this sketchy rear end shadowstats site as a place to get a more real number

IAMKOREA posted:

my mom teaches pre-k and my wife taught 4th grade and for 'snack' they get all this awesome stuff since michelle obama started her deal. my wife used to bring weird poo poo like little plastic bags full of seaweed home all the time - when i was a kid we got poo poo like brownies or peanut butter wafers, probably like most people reading this forum. but the absolute best was last christmas. we were all home for christmas, and my mom had like 30 bags of lemons in the fridge. we asked, what are those? 'oh, they were the kids snack last friday, they didn't eat any'. my brother was like 'um well maybe they are sweet?' and took a big bit out of one... his lips puckered, he spat it out, 'thats the most sour lemon i've ever tasted'.

but yeah thank god the kids don't have full fat milk anymore

https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/sustainability-transitions/drivers-of-change/growth-without-economic-growth posted:

Briefing - Growth without Economic Growth

Key Messages posted:

• The ongoing ‘Great Acceleration’ [1] in loss of biodiversity, climate change, pollution and loss of natural capital is tightly coupled to economic activities and economic growth.
  
• Full decoupling of economic growth and resource consumption may not be possible.
  
• Doughnut economics, post-growth and degrowth are alternatives to mainstream conceptions of economic growth that offer valuable insights.
  
• The European Green Deal and other political initiatives for a sustainable future require not only technological change but also changes in consumption and social practices.
  
• Growth is culturally, politically and institutionally ingrained. Change requires us to address these barriers democratically. The various communities that live simply offer inspiration for social innovation.
  

Growth and narratives for change

The world is undergoing rapid change. Numerous drivers of change interact in a highly complex interplay of human needs, desires, activities and technologies (EEA, 2020) and contribute to the Great Acceleration in human consumption and environmental degradation. Human civilisation is currently profoundly unsustainable.

These dynamics have to change. Governments, scientists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) worldwide are coming together to try to devise new ideas, policies, blueprints and narratives. This narrative is part of a series called ‘Narratives for change’ published by the EEA. It presents alternative perspectives on economic growth and human progress and explores the diversity of ideas needed to transform our society towards sustainability goals and fulfil the ambitions of the European Green Deal.

By building on the insights of EEA reports on drivers of change and sustainability transitions (EEA, 2017, 2019a, 2019b, 2020), this briefing explores alternative ideas about growth and progress with the aim of broadening the sustainability debate. This comes at a crucial time for the EU, which faces urgent challenges and opportunities associated with fundamental change. The EU has achieved unprecedented levels of prosperity and well-being in recent decades, and its social, health and environmental standards rank among the highest in the world (EEA, 2019c).

Maintaining this position does not have to depend on economic growth. Could the European Green Deal, for example, become a catalyst for EU citizens to create a society that consumes less and grows in other than material dimensions?

As global decoupling of economic growth and resource consumption is not happening, real creativity is called for: how can society develop and grow in quality (e.g. purpose, solidarity, empathy), rather than in quantity (e.g. material standards of living), in a more equitable way? What are we willing to renounce in order to meet our sustainability ambitions?

Global-scale, long-lasting and absolute decoupling may not be possible

Globally, growth has not been decoupled from resource consumption and environmental pressures and is not likely to become so (Parrique et al., 2019; Hickel and Kallis, 2020; Wiedmann et al., 2020). The global material footprint, gross domestic product (GDP) and greenhouse gases emissions have increased rapidly over time, and strongly correlate (Figure 1). While population growth was the leading cause of increasing consumption from 1970 to 2000, the emergence of a global affluent middle class has been the stronger driver since the turn of the century (Panel, 2019; Wiedmann et al., 2020). Furthermore, technological development has so far been associated with increased consumption rather than the reverse.

Europe consumes more and contributes more to environmental degradation than other regions, and Europe’s prospects of reaching its environmental policy objectives for 2020, 2030 and 2050 are poor (EEA, 2019c). Several of Europe’s environmental footprints exceed the planetary boundaries (Sala et al., 2020; EEA/FOEN, 2020).

Figure 1. Relative change in main global economic and environmental indicators from 1970 to 2018



High-level policies (e.g. the European Green Deal and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs) propose decoupling of economic growth and resource use as a solution. However, scientific debates on the possibility of decoupling date back to the 19th century and there is still no consensus. Recent studies, such as Hickel and Kallis (2020) and Parrique et al. (2019), find no evidence of absolute decoupling between growth and environmental degradation having taken place on a global scale.

While some EU countries achieved a reduction in some forms of pollution between 1995 and the mid-2010s (e.g. acidification, eutrophication, greenhouse gas emissions), the decoupling between growth and environmental footprints (e.g. water, materials, energy and greenhouse gases) associated with EU consumption patterns is often relative and varies between countries (Sanyé-Mengual et al., 2019; NTNU, 2020).

Such changes are associated with a combination of factors (see EEA, 2020). These include structural economic change, which led to the outsourcing of significant shares of energy-intensive activities to non-EU countries and the financialisation of EU economies (Kovacic et al., 2018). An absolute reduction of environmental pressures and impacts would require fundamental transformations to a different type of economy and society — instead of incremental efficiency gains within established production and consumption systems.

100 % circularity is impossible

If economic growth cannot be decoupled from resource use, can the use of existing resources be extended within the economy? Circular economy policies aim to improve waste management and induce responsible production and consumption cultures. The circular economy, however, may not deliver the transformation to sustainability if circularity measures fuel a growth strategy that leads to increased material consumption. An economy downsized to match the material input that it can recycle would be a very slow economy (Kovacic et al., 2019a).

The concept of ‘circular economy’ suggests that material resources could be increasingly sourced from within the economy, reducing environmental impact by increasing the reuse and recycling of materials. However, this socio-technical ‘imaginary’ has a limited potential for sustainability, as revealed by biophysical analysis (Kovacic et al., 2019a). In fact, at the scale of the whole economy only around 12% of the material input was being recycled in the EU-27 in 2019 (Eurostat, 2020). Given current product design and waste management technologies, recycling rates of materials such as plastics, paper, glass and metals can — and should — be greatly increased in line with EU policy ambitions. However, overall, recyclable material remains a meagre portion of material throughput.

The low potential for circularity is because a very large share of primary material throughput is composed of (1) energy carriers, which are degraded through use as explained by the laws of thermodynamics and cannot be recycled, and (2) construction materials, which are added to the building stock, which is recycled over much longer periods (Figure 2). This can be interpreted in the light of Tainter’s (1988) study of the collapse of complex societies: as complexity increases, there are diminishing marginal returns on improvements in problem-solving; hence, improvements at the local scale have a very small impact on the overall system.

Moreover, high throughput and low rates of recycling appear to be conditions for high productivity (Hall and Klitgaard, 2012). Advanced societies require high throughputs of energy and materials to maintain their organisational complexity (Tainter and Patzek, 2012). What these insights point to is the need to rethink and reframe societal notions of progress in broader terms than consumption.

Figure 2. Schematic representation of limits of circularity in the EU-27, 2019

Note: The figures in brackets (top) indicate the share of a given category of material of total processed material and refer to year 2014. The figures for recycling (bottom) indicate the share of recycling in each category and refer to year 2019. The category ‘Metals’ also includes associated extractive wastes.


Historically, modern states embraced economic thought that focused on economic growth and conceptualised social and environmental problems as externalities. As a result, growth is culturally, politically and institutionally ingrained. Worldwide, the legitimacy of governments cannot be separated from their ability to deliver economic growth and provide employment.

However, recent decades have seen a variety of initiatives to ‘rethink economics’ (including the movement with that name, Rethinking Economics, 2020) and develop theoretical perspectives that combine attention to the legitimate needs of the present human population with the need for a transformation to a sustainable future. Ecomodernist thought [2] promotes ‘green growth’ through scientific and technological progress.

Other scholarly fields and social movements went beyond the idea of green growth (Wiedmann et al., 2020) and proposed concepts like “doughnut economics” (Raworth, 2017) and “degrowth” (Demaria et al., 2013), which are outlined in Table 1.

Table 1. Alternative schools of thought about growth


Similarly, radical perspectives are offered by fields such as transition studies, post-normal science, ecological economics and resilience studies. The EEA (2017) summarised this literature and noted: The challenge in coming years will be to bring these insights into mainstream policy processes and consider how they can be operationalised effectively in support of Europe’s sustainability objectives.

Social, political and technological innovation is called for to translate alternative ideas about growth into new ways of living. Inspiration is also to be found in very old traditions. Ernst Schumacher’s (1973) slogan ‘Small is beautiful!’ had deep roots in oriental as well as occidental thought.

There is a range of religious, spiritual and secular communities that are less materialistic, consume less and seek lifestyles simpler than that of mainstream society. The so-called ‘plain people’ (e.g. the Amish and the Quakers) practise simple living as part of their religious identity. In ecovillages, the simpler lifestyle is connected to environmentalism (GEN Europe, 2020). Countless internet communities are devoted to simple living to increase quality of life, reduce personal stress and reduce environmental pressures. Among the schools of thought on growth, the degrowth movements are particularly interested in simple living.


Europe’s fundamental values are not materialistic

In liberal societies, a multiplicity of values is cherished. The European heritage is much richer than material consumption. The fundamental values of the EU are human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law, and they cannot be reduced to or substituted by an increase in GDP. If there are limits to economic growth and to the current trajectory (i.e. ‘plan A’), plan B to achieve sustainability is to innovate lifestyles, communities and societies that consume less and yet are attractive to everybody and not only individuals with an environmental, spiritual or ideological interest.

Plan B is extremely challenging. Economic growth is highly correlated with health and well being indicators, such as life expectancy and education. Thanks to economic growth, the portion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty, as defined by the poverty line of USD 1.90 a day, fell from 36% in 1990 to 10% in 2015 (World Bank, 2020b). In terms of doughnut economics, it is possible that the doughnut between basic human needs and planetary boundaries is very thin (O’Neill et al., 2018). However, economic growth has not contributed to decreasing inequality, either between or within countries (Piketty, 2013).

Although Europe remains home to the most equal societies globally (EC, 2017), inequalities have nonetheless been rising too, albeit at a slower rate than in other regions. Moreover, there is a risk that younger people in Europe today could be less well off than their parents, as a result of high unemployment levels among young people (EC, 2017). It may be that plan B also has to be considered in order to leave nobody behind, particularly the most vulnerable in the population.

Old and new narratives about the need for a universal basic income, an idea that is supported by nearly two thirds of Europeans (Lam, 2016) and calls for reduced working hours, are nowadays brought more prominently to the fore. These measures are suggested as possible ways to resolve gender biases and the unequal distribution of working time across society (De Spiegelaere and Piasna, 2017), as well as limiting the impacts of the growth in precarious and insecure work in Europe.

While the planet is finite in its biophysical sense, infinite growth in human existential values, such as beauty, love, and kindness, as well as in ethics, may be possible. Society is currently experiencing limits to growth because it is locked into defining growth in terms of economic activities and material consumption. The imperative of economic growth is culturally, politically and institutionally ingrained. As emphasised by Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans (EC, 2019), however, the need for transformative change, amplified and accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic, calls for a profound rethinking of our activities in the light of sustainability.

What could be achieved in terms of human progress if the European Green Deal is implemented with the specific purpose of inspiring European citizens, communities and enterprises to create innovative social practices that have little or no environmental impacts yet still aim for societal and personal growth?

Nice and hot piss posted:

Houses which are valued at 400k will be a million by the end of the year. And they won't go down because nothing goes down in this world!

Fame Douglas posted:

Bitcorn and ~*~The Market~*~ haven't really correlated in the past, can't imagine it being a harbinger of anything but Cryptocurrency being extra stupid and speculative.

quote:

In the mid-20XX, the ongoing global economic crisis, fueled by continued political instability in the US and Europe, contributing to increasing volatility in the financial markets, led to the sudden catastrophic collapse of the Canadian, and in general, the North American banking system. This immediately rendered Canadian currency worthless, triggered super-inflation of the US dollar, and all trade and economic activity promptly shifted to the Chinese Yuan or crypto-currencies (a la Bitcoin). Crippled economically, Canada was bought under the financial oversight of the North American Economic Zone, which positioned Canada as a kind of protectorate of a larger US-based economic bloc. From this point onward, the majority of economic activity became centralized on Canada's already densely urbanized population, with smaller rural and remote communities being essentially cut off. Without a local economic lifeline many of these communities had become dependent on for their continued existence, most rural or remote communities became hollowed out, as people fled to urban areas in search of greater economic stability.

Centrist Committee posted:

cool journal entry

Brunch Covidian posted:

GameStop trading halted; shares up 1000%. This is because more people sold short on it than shares even exist, requiring institutional investors to buy the underlying stock to hedge, driving the price up further, attracting even more short sellers, etc etc etc. Currently, the stock is over subscribe to shorts; short sellers hold contracts for over 109% of its outstanding shares. People think it's such a sure bet to crash that they've created a scarcity of shares and an increase in price.

It's a doomed company, there isn't even any kind of plan for a future of viability, but this perverse feedback loop of short selling has caused it to go full on dutch tulip.

Totally normal market

Clark Nova posted:

is it actually going to crash this time around or is venture capital just going to buy up all the housing and make everyone renters?

Mr Hootington posted:

I can't believe a bunch of you jumped in lmao

Danger posted:

I guess it’s a testament to global finance how quickly the thread about how finance capital is destroying the world turned into a day treading thread

Centrist Committee posted:

if it’s about how you have money to speculate on the stock market and cryptocurrencies then yeah that would be cool. there are a ton of forums outside of cspam for the kind of thing.

Rutibex posted:

even a single percentage fall in canadin housing prices would be the boomer apocalypse

anime was right posted:

do it i dont loving care anymore

quote:

Saudi Aramco hints at future yuan bonds in potential coup for China
DUBAI -- Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state-controlled oil company, has raised the possibility of floating yuan-denominated bonds, a move that would mark a significant departure in a traditionally dollar-dominated industry.

A prospectus issued this month by the world's largest oil company stated that renminbi notes "may be issued" under its bond program, though Aramco provided no details about the timing or scale of such an offering. The document laid out risks involved in a float of yuan notes, including liquidity concerns and the currency's limited availability outside China.

The provision underscores both Asia's growing importance to Aramco from a business perspective, as a high-demand market, and oil-producing countries' deepening financial relationships with Beijing.

Because oil transactions are usually settled in dollars, many oil-producing nations have pegged their own currencies to the greenback.

China, seeking to promote international use of the yuan, has made cultivating the "petroyuan" a central part of its currency strategy, establishing a market for yuan-denominated crude oil futures in Shanghai.

An issuance of yuan bonds by Aramco would give the currency's stature a substantial boost, as well as diversify funding sources for Aramco and the Saudi government, which owns the vast majority of the company.

Aramco on Tuesday raised $8 billion in its first foreign-currency bond issue since 2019, apparently denominated entirely in dollars. The funds are expected to go toward paying the generous dividends promised to investors to attract them to Aramco's stock market debut last year.

Market players have raised concerns about the company's swelling debt, and a source familiar with the situation said this offering got a much smaller response than last year's float.

quote:

China is sounding the alarm about a global market bubble
Hong Kong (CNN Business)One of China's most powerful financial officials is sounding the alarm over a bubble in global markets.

Guo Shuqing, the Communist Party boss at the People's Bank of China, told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday that confidence in Chinese markets could be hit by volatility around the world.

"We are really afraid the bubble for foreign financial assets will burst someday," said Guo, who is also chairman of China's Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission

Guo's warning follows concerns expressed elsewhere that bubble-like behavior is spreading through financial markets. Wall Street banks have been fielding questions from clients about whether the runaway equity boom will be followed by a crash resembling the bursting of the dot-com bubble burst 21 years ago.

Investors, hedge fund managers and former central banking officials have all expressed concerns too, as Wall Street trades near record highs even as the United States continues to grapple with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

Guo echoed such fears, adding that the rallies in US and European markets don't reflect the underlying economic challenges facing both regions as they try to recover from the brutal pandemic recession.

"Such [a] bubble bust could trigger substantial foreign capital inflow to China," wrote analysts at Mizuho Bank in a research note, adding that the regulator said he would study "effective measures" to encourage the free flow of capital while avoiding shocks to financial markets. A huge rush of funds into China could destabilize the world's second biggest economy by rapidly inflating its currency, assets and prices.

The Chinese banking leader also said he's worried about whether China's property sector is at risk of volatility too — an issue that analysts say implies that the country may be ready to tighten its purse strings. President Xi Jinping told an economic conference late last year that the country needs to stabilize the property market in 2021, and Beijing has already taken some measures to do that. In December, regulators issued rules intended to limit lending to the property sector.

Local governments in China, meanwhile, have stepped up measures since the start of this year to cool the market down, including by restricting purchases and reining in developers.

Guo's remarks shook markets in the region. The Shanghai Composite (SHCOM) and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index (HSI) were both trending upward before Guo's speech, building on Wall Street's rally Monday. But both indexes reversed course soon after. Shanghai's benchmark was down 1.2%, while the Hang Seng fell 1.3%.

Other indexes in the region also fell: Australia's S&P/ASX 200 slumped 0.4%, while Japan's Nikkei 225 (N225) dropped 0.9%. South Korea's Kospi (KOSPI) was the outlier, trading up 1% after markets there were closed Monday for a holiday.

"This indicates how sensitive markets are to policy accommodation being taken away," wrote Stephen Innes, Chief Global Markets Strategist at Axi, in a Tuesday note. "It also highlights that central banks will run at different speeds in pulling away from last year's crisis."

Guo's comments also reflect concerns from Beijing about the risk that rising debt poses to the economy. Property loans accounted for nearly 30% of total loans issued in yuan by the end of 2020, according to central bank data.

And some in China have already been suggesting that it's time for the country to taper fiscal and monetary support — including former finance minister Lou Jinwei, who in December said that a "gradual exit" from loose policy will help stabilize and eventually reduce China's debt ratio.

China spent hundreds of billions of dollars last year in a bid to shore up the country's economy after the pandemic hit. Its efforts to spur activity — including through major infrastructure projects and by offering cash handouts to stimulate spending among citizens — appeared to pay off, as the economy grew 2.3% last year.

Now the country is looking to keep that momentum going while measuring how much monetary support will actually be needed. It's also balancing the recovery with a plan to ensure that some 40% of its population receives Covid-19 vaccines by the end of June — a number that amounts to more than half a billion people.

Centrist Committee posted:

I think oxsnard is just a markov bot hooked up to a market ticker and set to post at random intervals

JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:

gently caress the moon

the 2016 lover posted:

it is in fact difficult to ethically consume under capitalism but i think these people are just talking about sandwiches

"i think the lettuce is somewhat too soggy" "whats it like to live without principles" lmfao

Ocean Book posted:

I’m pretty sure the development of agriculture (on a scale to support civilization) was triggered by the glaciers retreating 10,000 ago (start of the quaternary interglacial period) which can explain the simultaneous development across disparate populations.

”Too Smart for Our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind – Pages 89-91” posted:

The food crisis in prehistory

Archaeological evidence suggests that during the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic eras in general (40,000–10,000 bp), though perhaps not in Europe for certain periods, the size of the human population increased dramatically. This period of population growth was followed by the horticultural revolution. As regards why the horticultural revolution began just at that time, or at all, archaeological evidence further suggests that food production developed in response to problems caused by the undue success of the huntergatherers, whose rate of food extraction came to exceed the carrying capacity of the environment.320 As expressed by Cohen, “population growth and population pressure are essentially ubiquitous in the archaeological record and can readily be perceived as leading to economic and technological growth culminating in the origins of agriculture.” It also suggests that, in keeping with Sahlins’ remarks regarding the Hadza, some people resisted the introduction of horticulture for centuries after first making its acquaintance.321 Here we have archaeological confirmation both of Martin’s overkill hypothesis and of the view of technological change as being reactionary rather than opportunistic.

In keeping with the new view in anthropology, according to Cohen:

quote:

The record appears to show that human populations on each continent first concentrated fairly heavily on the exploitation of large mammalian fauna – a prized but scarce resource – and then shifted gradually toward broader spectrum economies geared to more plentiful but less palatable resources. In each case, domestication techniques were then focused on plant species chosen not for their palatability but for their ability to provide large quantities of storable calories or storable protein in close proximity to human settlements.

Never before had the total number of humans been so great. And it was roughly at this time that the first wave of modern-human geographic expansion ceased. Hunters and gatherers had fully occupied those portions of the globe which would support their lifestyle with reasonable ease. They were forced to become increasingly eclectic in their food gathering, and to concentrate on foods lower on the food chain and of high areal density. In the period between about 9000 and 2000 bp populations throughout the world had to adjust to further increases in population not by increasing those resources which they preferred to eat, but those which responded well to human attention and could be made to produce the greatest number of edible calories per unit land. In Mexico, “as in the Middle East, domestication appears to have involved, not choice resources, but low priority foods which were used extensively only after the range of the diet had been broadened to include a number of other items.”322 And in South America:

quote:

Defying conventional wisdom, mummy studies revealed that when Andean civilization shifted to agriculture, health did not improve but declined. Hunter-gatherers were not stricken with many of the illnesses that plagued their descendants, and early cultures had a child-mortality rate roughly half that of later populations. As nomadic groups settled into sedentary societies, sanitation problems led to an increase in tuberculosis, pneumonia, and intestinal parasites.

That horticulture was not developed in an opportunistic or entrepreneurial spirit is further supported by Cohen’s looking at the phenomenon from another angle: “It … seems to me very unlikely,” he says, “that a human population would have settled down near a field of wild wheat for the dubious pleasure of harvesting, threshing, and grinding the grain and eating the gruel year-round, thus forgoing some of the other portions of their diet.”323 And since the time of the horticultural revolution, according to Cohen, “rather than stabilizing at some optimum level or ‘carrying capacity,’ the human population as an aggregate has grown continuously, requiring more or less continuous redefinition of the ecology of the species as a whole.” In the case of humans, thanks to our adaptability/intelligence, we have often been able to create new niches for ourselves, which other species, including to a large extent non-sapiens humans, can or could do only through speciation.324 The need continuously to acquire a new – and/or broader – niche is a condition we have imposed on ourselves by our own activities. Thus we may say that on the new view in archaeology, the adoption of agriculture is basically the result of population pressure; and technological advance has essentially been the result not of our seeking a better life, but of people’s simply trying to survive.

While we have suggested above that modern hunter-gatherers have been in ecological equilibrium with their environments, this cannot be said of Palaeolithic modern humans. As Cohen says, the process of ecological adjustment on the part of human populations has been a continuous one, and the archaeological data imply that we must break away from our assumption that human cultures are inherently stable systems until jostled by some ‘outside event.’325 The lifestyle of humans living at the beginning of the Mesolithic period can be said to be similar to or perhaps even essentially the same as that of modern hunter-gatherers such as the Hadza. However, many of those societies began successively using more sophisticated technology. Modern hunter-gatherer societies, on the other hand, have not developed technologically nor grown in population since that time. (Note that virtually all such societies are in tropical areas, moreover such areas as where technological development in the form of horticulture would not provide an advantage.) Furthermore, the technology they do use does not involve the exploitation of non-renewable resources. (The same can apply to long-lived simple horticultural societies.) In this way the lifestyle during the Mesolithic might have stabilised without population growth, despite the prior permanent eradication of important sources of food. In this case such an elimination of non-renewable resources may have meant a smaller subsequent population however.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Found my old reference: "The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein

PawParole posted:

everything is red including VIX

Fame Douglas posted:

No one reads huge effortposts by clearly mentally ill posters on here, though.

net work error posted:

Can we get that edited so that it's Jay's head instead

Archduke Frantz Fanon posted:

Mad Wack posted:

nah, things will just get shitter and people will adjust - think soviet collapse

Jel Shaker posted:

i would just like to add that the smart tv i bought last year is full of ads , despite me paying the “full” price

Real hurthling! posted:

in 08 the obama thread got like 3-4 pages posted per minute and LF was struggling to slay the last ron paul believer and claim their safe space as the cradle of anti dnd posting. it was an era of hope and delusion and i do not remember posting about number as much as posting about how funny the user name butt cord was

Archduke Frantz Fanon posted:

*tugs teh buttcord*

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

im dying because my uninspected roof collapsed on me while i was asleep

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

it's not just vancouver that is like this anymore

bagual posted:

thanks friend!

holy poo poo cereals and vegetable oil is the basis for the global poor's diet, never heard of the association between food prices and global revolt but it sort of makes sense i guess?



number (of deaths by starvation) go up

"Douglas Todd: Canadian real-estate market better for foreign investors than locals, admits housing secretary posted:

Canadians can be grateful Ottawa’s parliamentary secretary for housing isn’t afraid of saying what’s on his mind in front of a microphone.

Liberal apparatchiks must be going squirrely after loquacious MP Adam Vaughan inadvertently outed what has been the party’s real scheme on housing for six years — pushing a policy that only worsens extreme unaffordability in cities like Toronto and Vancouver.

Vaughan, who is also the Liberal MP for Spadina–Fort York, acknowledged in a rare display of federal government candor that Canada has become “a very safe market for foreign investment.”

But, Vaughan added, it is “not a great market for Canadians looking for choices around housing.”

Without blinking, Vaughan went on to tell TV Ontario host Steve Paikin that attracting foreign capital is the key to building more housing supply in Canada.

“We have a very good system of foreign investment creating a lot of new housing in Canada as we add immigrants and grow the population,” said Vaughan, a former Toronto city councillor who is now parliamentary secretary for families, children, social development and housing.

Whatever is going on in Vaughn’s heart, the reality is the Liberals’ housing strategy is privileging foreign investors and directing billions to Canada’s politically powerful development lobby at the same time it’s drastically undermining local families who have been waiting for an opening into owning.

Ron Butler, a prominent Canadian mortgage provider and real-estate analyst, says a few housing-policy observers have been complaining about this unspoken Liberal policy for years. Developers and their allies have often shut them down by labelling them xenophobic.

“The influx of foreign money started small, then grew. At first the government denied it, calling anyone who pointed it out as racist. By the time it was ridiculously obvious, it was easier to turn it into a policy,” said Butler, who has been spoken highly of by Evan Siddall, who was until recently head of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Fuelled by the way Ottawa has been printing money, handing out pandemic benefits at a globally record rate and offering extremely low interest rates, house prices in Greater Toronto, Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley have gone up 20 to 25 per cent since COVID-19 hit a year ago.

Last fall, Vancouver ranked as the second most unaffordable city out of 100 major metropolises in the English-speaking world and beyond, according to Demographia. Toronto is fifth worst.

Given the parliamentary secretary’s talkative frame of mind during his extended interview, Vaughan did express concern for renters who want to get into what he called middle-class security through owning a home.
Article content

But it seemed Vaughan, and by extension the minister responsible for housing, Jean-Yves Duclos, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself, are far more worried about not alienating those who already own homes.

Vaughan argued it would be terrible to bring in any policy that could cause current homeowners to see “ten per cent of the equity in their home suddenly disappear overnight.”

Host Paikin couldn’t hide his shock at Vaughan’s priorities, as he tried to explain people outside the market need to see drops of 20 to 30 per cent.

Real-estate analyst John Pasalis said Vaughan’s admission that Canada’s housing market better serves foreign investors than locals flows from Ottawa’s own inflationary policies, which are designed to push housing prices higher to drive the economy.

When Vaughan admitted that Canada’s housing market is “driven by speculation” and that “it gets very tricky to curb speculation,” Pasalis said the housing secretary was ignoring what other countries have already done.

“I really don’t know what to say when our federal government admits that it has made housing in Canada better for foreign investors than for Canadians. Who are they serving? Clearly not Canadians,” said Pasalis, who has also recently praised by Siddall.

To take just one regional example, the price of a typical house on Vancouver’s west side has soared by more than $300,000 since early last year, largely due to Ottawa’s policies. The average price is $3.3 million.

Realtor David Hutchinson said high-end homes “are completely out of reach of even some of the highest paid locals on the west side of Vancouver,” where SFU housing analyst Andy Yan has said the only ones who can afford to buy are families with access to offshore wealth.

“I currently have four sets of buyers — three of them are highly paid professional couples and one is a local business owner, all with very good incomes — and these prices are even out of reach for them. Two of these have given up looking at all,” Hutchinson said.

It’s hard to figure out whether money going into Vancouver housing is foreign-sourced or not, Hutchinson said, especially since a buyer who is not a citizen, but is simply in Canada on permanent resident status, is not subject to B.C.’s 20 per cent foreign-buyers tax. “And foreign investors can easily purchase through a permanent resident.”

It’s important to keep in mind SFU policy analyst Josh Gordon’s definition of foreign ownership, which is “housing purchased primarily with income or wealth earned abroad and not taxed as income in Canada.” Gordon’s recent peer-reviewed paper says lack of connection between soaring housing prices and tepid local wages in Metro Vancouver is caused in large part by hidden foreign ownership.

The B.C. NDP have attempted to deal with foreign ownership by bringing in a non-resident buyers tax and the vacancy and speculation tax, which targets so-called ‘satellite” families in which the breadwinner earns most of their money outside Canada. They’re better than nothing, even with this current pandemic run-up in prices.

But don’t expect anything at all from the federal Liberals. Trudeau, during a 2019 campaign stop in B.C., promised to bring in a one per cent tax on all property purchases by “non-resident, non-Canadian” buyers. But not a peep has been raised since then about Trudeau’s promise to “ensure foreign speculation doesn’t make housing less affordable for Canadians.”

For that matter, we’re not getting policy updates on a similar campaign promise by the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh, who also two years ago said he wants to impose a nationwide 15 per cent tax on foreign ownership.

Many North Americans these days applaud New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for her leadership, including on housing. She banned foreign ownership in 2018. And, to reduce speculation, she has cut immigration and required new home buyers to have large down payments.

Ardern is a politician who has shown there are many things governments can do to rein in speculation in housing, particularly for young people. All it requires is the will.

Mr. Lobe posted:

Buy the dip

Shear Modulus posted:

JANET

my bony fealty posted:

the concept of living in a state that's not the sole global hegemon is going to psychically damage so many Americans in a bad bad way, we are not prepared for the next couple decades at aaallllll

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

Building codes hosed this up too, cities were built on dense first floor retail + apartments above and that's illegal now in most places.


You can't build like this in most of the country anymore.

anime was right posted:

create mandatory parking maximums baybe awooo

Toph Bei Fong posted:

Centrist Committee posted:

cnn’s front page is warning of impending gas shortages lol the 70s are back baby

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/27/business/summer-gasoline-shortage/index.html

Mr Hootington posted:

https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1387473917699403782?s=19

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Please be true