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Live commented on the article |Urban redevelopment is big business. One of the biggest busnesses there is.
Just ask Obama's support base. -
Live commented on the article |
I should have said "no safe rentals exist". There might be rentals available for those rents, but they are typically studios or fleabag hotels in bad neighborhoods that cater to the kinds of people who rip off seniors and working people.
Sure, the displaced can move to the suburbs but there they will need cars and also they are far away from ther jobs and often pensions. They may try to commute an hour or two hours by public transportation each way, but that is unreliable and difficult, especially at any tmes other than 9-5 rush hour. and they will often lose their jobs. So twenty years or more of working towards a pension at age 65 is wasted. -
Live commented on the article |
Urban displacements can occur to middle class people too. Rents as a whole have risen in many urban areas as gas prices rose. They almost never go down. Many urban areas have rent stabilization laws, meaning that market rate rents are sometimes two or even three times what a long term renter pays. For example, in (insert city here) a renter who has lived there ten years may pay $1000 for a one bedroom apartment because of rent laws, but a new tenant in the same building may pay $2000. The same apartment sold as a condo might fetch $400,000
This is the cause of a lot of grief for tenants because the landlords often will do terrible things to harass tenants into leavng and the laws generally do nothing to stop them. Also, the tenants will never be able to rent again in those cities because no rentals exist. They ofte dont driver or have cars, and they dont have the kind of credit and savings needed to buy.
Often they die. -
Live commented on the article |
Sheila, the Obama campaign supports the insurance industry and their 1/3 cut.
They can never go back on their promises to the healthcare cartel. That is the one thing that is non-negotiable for them. They would be betraying their financial base.
If we wanted FUNCTIONING universal healthcare, we should have voted for that other candidate. The one whose name starts with an "H". -
Live commented on the article |
I think that it is naive to think that the economy is going to get significantly better within the first Obama term. The conditions that existed at the end of WWII that propelled the emergence and prosperity of the American middle class were a historical anomaly. The rest of the world has rebuilt, the US economy is also now fully mature and also technology is fulfilling its promise of making repetitive factory work a thing of the past. What that means is that we will need to accept that employment will depend on a world class education and skills. Why pretend that unemployment is due to laziness and punish those who are unluckily old or sick or lack education in the 'right' schools?
Its time, Tim, for universal health care of globally superior quality NOW, not after some economic miracle that will probably never come.
Obama seems to have given away the store on the bailout, which would pay for EIGHT universal healthcare plans.
Its the least he can do for the other 90% of us after that. Healthcare for everybody, not just the healthiest 4/5 of us.
Obama's current plan, to be implemented in 2012, four years from now, would leave a huge number of people, those with chronic illnesses, those who really need insurance, out. And it would still price healthcare by risk, allowing companies to 'resciss' people who have claims when they get sick, retroactively. -
Live commented on the article |
I have read that slavery during the Roman Empire and the feudal period (until the Black Death made serf labor scarce and the Industrial revolution briefly made human labor much more valuable) was not racially based, it was the punishment for losing wars or going into debt. I see many forces pushing us towards a new, nonracial sort of new feudalism. Technology is replacing people rapidly in scriptable jobs. I fear that "human trafficking" as you put it may become the norm as jobs dry up globally. I hope not. What can we do to prevent this without sinking into even worse traps.. I think controlled introduction of inefficiencies in desirable places could save us and provide a clear path to sustainability.
We must not be allowed to become a Third World World! -
Live commented on the article |Its all of our responsibility to at least try our best to understand and live with one another. I am reluctant to say this but the entire concept of the nation-state is largely a 20th century invention. The real differences between human cultures are shrinking and there is already a sort of international youth culture that really sees national borders as somewhat irrelevant. The real differences, as science fiction authors have been telling us for some time, are between SPECIES and dare I say it, planets.
The more we learn about animals, the smarter we realize they are. We are not so different from them that we can morally say they are apart, that they don't feel emotion or pain. That they could not evolve to the level we are at as well, given a chance to.
Look a few thousand years in the future and we may well share our "world" with many other real races and cultures, some of Earthly origin (if it is still habitable) some perhaps not.
Or we may have annihilated ourselves over.. bread, water, air.
If we only all could see the earth from space we would realize how fragile and precious this life we have all been GIVEN BY GOD and this jewel of a planet WE MUST PRESERVE FOR ALL is. -
Live commented on the article |
There is a large diaspora of American expats living in places like Dubai, China, Korea, Western Europe, etc.
The amount they are asked to assimilate varies. I don't think that the real reason the US allows immigration is political, I think its often the same reason it is elsewhere, economic.
For example,the US doesn't want to spend the money we should on schools, so we allow well educated foreigners to come here (often to pay full tuition at colleges - subsidizing poor Americans) instead. Then we allow them to stay. Their math and science skills are often far better than those of many American students. We could educate our own or hire from within but Americans would have more options and so they would be more expensive.
The reason Chinese companies sometimes hire Americans is because they want expertise they can't find locally right now.
Maybe in five or six years they will, but they can't now.
Economies are driven by inequalities. Buy low, sell high.
Why else would American companies be in places like El Salvador? -
Live commented on the article |We need innovative solutions to fight homelessness. The NIMBY syndrome is a huge enemy of affordable housing. We need the equivalent of small, secure, containerized dwellings that are owned by their residents. Perhaps we could apportion urban space vertically, and create mass -produced foldable dwellings in which the electric and gas, network and CTV connections are all modlular and prewired. They could be brought to the buildings site (which would look like those modern parking garages that stack cars) and could be unfolded and inserted into locking bolts.
This would avoid the problem of toxic moldy substandard housing. It also would avoid the pod hotel look.
Residents could own their homes, not spend huge amounts of money paying the mortgages off for absentee landlords. -
Live commented on the article |DARPA is pouring billions of dollars into a system that will allow doctors and surgeons to work via the Internet II fiber optic network. Why do corporate persons have the freedom to hire overseas and natural people not? Natural persons should have medical centers where human patients can go and be treated by doctors anywhere in the world via teledildonics, uh telepresence. Just like a farmer in Iowa who hires a worker in India to drive his tractors via GPS and web cams, a patient should be able to get a laraposcopic operation done via the net.
Dental care too.
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