Mid 30s Aussie living the the US. Yes I can drive a manual, yes I do drive a manual and yes I think it should be mandatory for 100% of learning drivers regardless of whether they plan to daily drive an automatic or manual when licensed.

The quality of driving here is considerably worse here than what I’ve experienced in Australia or Europe and I’m convinced requiring people to drive in a machine that forces them to consider the next ~100m leads to higher quality, more mindful drivers.

Sure, it’s not unethical for a kid to accept (necessary) help to survive, though it is to vote for or otherwise institute a society where that is necessary. The point the article is attempting to make is social commentary to draw attention to the fact that increasingly the lottery of inheritance is the only means of owning a home.

The first step to resolving the issue is identifying it. Nobody likes the implication that their success is not earned, by making that uncomfortable point the author is attempting to cause people to support change to correct this trend.

Yes, it’s bad news. That’s the point of the article, to draw attention to a bad societal trend, it’s social commentary. Identifying a problem is the first step to solving it.

What’s wrong with that?

Doesn’t it seem a little unfair if ones ability to own land is dictated by the lottery of what their parents have achieved?

This could be the beginning of a slow slide back towards feudalism and lords with no social mobility for the lower classes.

You came across as super patronizing so I responded the same. It’s not that big of a thing man, chill out.

Which… gets back to cable. A decade or so ago? Pretty much everything WAS in one spot for about a hundred bucks a month. Get premium cable to get most channels and then spend extra for HBO or sports or whatever. And comcast and verizon both had a lot of VODs available too. Many of which didn’t even have ads. And the rest? you DVR it and then fast forward through the ads when they show up (… which is better than hulu). REALLY like movies? Get cinemax too.

You’re projecting an American perspective, but I suspect you’re talking to an Australian.

Cable in Australia has always been considerably more expensive than in the USA, and includes considerably less content. Except for movies, it was also never available adfree. It was changing in the last 5 years when I left the country, but it wasn’t even close to competing with the likes of Netflix on price or service and I don’t think there was any ad free option (despite the dramatically higher cost to consumer) - there was a whole media oligarch conspiracy to sink the national broadband upgrade because they knew they had the market cornered with their monopoly and streaming would disrupt that.

You can eat and not pay attention with a manual transmission, I don’t know why we’d pretend you can’t. If you’re just on the highway cruising both are just going to be in one gear all the time.

I never claimed you couldn’t eat and drive a manual. I said that people who claim autos are better because they make it easier to choose to drive distracted (alternative phrasing - who choose to drive like a reckless asshole) shouldn’t be on the road.

Either way, the problem is that people have to drive even if they don’t want to engage. The popularity of automatic transmissions proves that (to most Americans at least) cars are an appliance and something people do because they have to. Fuck cars.

Well, yeah, that’s always been the case. There are some enthusiasts sure, but for the most part a car is seen as a more convenient bus. But people riding the bus seldom choose to behave dangerously while commuting, there’s something about the mentality of these people (choosing to drive distracted) that is at odds with normal, acceptable behavior

You don’t need to assure me of the blatantly obvious. My point wasn’t that you can’t eat and drive manual at the same time, it was that all these people claim automatic is a better transmission on the basis it facilitates their choice to drive distracted shouldn’t be on the road. I didn’t see a single person saying “oh I like driving manual better because it makes it easier for me to be an irresponsible road user”.

All of these people responding that they prefer auto so they can eat or otherwise not pay attention in the car are the best (only?) argument for why everyone should drive manual.

Whatever your transmission preference is, if you’re not engaged in driving you shouldn’t be on the road!

I’ve never seen or heard of this but I’m skeptical that there is any speed hump design that wouldn’t be a negative for emergency services, increase wear and tear to vehicles that cross them and that wouldn’t be less of an impact to lifted chassis vehicles. These problems are avoided by the other, better solutions so why are humps even a part of the conversation at all?

Speed bumps are the worst possible solution, they often mean if you’re in a conventional car you have to come to a near complete stop and if you’re in a large SUV you can cross at 20mph. This reinforces the trend away from conventional cars to higher ride height vehicles which is a disaster for road safety (especially pedestrian and cyclist safety).

They do successfully slow down the flow of traffic (and also cause traffic to follow alternative paths, at least until speed bumps are saturated in the area) but it fucks up emergency vehicle access and damages cars (increases wear and tear). The other road design solutions (more narrow roads, inclusion of roundabouts, addition of choke points etc) all are equally as effective as humps at reducing speeders and diverting traffic away from roads (in some cases they are better) and have none of the negative consequences, speed humps should never be used imo.

A policy like this would apply to the entire market. All landlords have vacancies at least occasionally, due to renovations or bad luck.

Wouldn’t it only apply to the local market? A lot of people, particularly higher earning white collar workers have the ability to demand a work from home policy. Could they not move further away to cooler markets if their commute is eliminated or reduced to only a few days per week? Surely that would put downwards pressure on the inflated local market, moreso if a progressive tax system is implemented (eg tax rates increase % after value increases by a certain threshold).

It won’t affect a tenant’s ability to pay more, but a policy that increases ownership costs across the board means that there won’t be cheaper alternatives in the competition, so the tenant will need to either find a way to pay the increase or they’ll have to leave to a cheaper market. The highest rent the market can bear will go up if it’s not possible to compete any further on lower prices.

Unless I’m grossly misunderstanding how land tax works, it won’t evenly apply across the board (even a flat % tax would be a higher burden for more expensive properties). This would drive people towards constructing cheaper housing as the bottom falls out of the top end of the market, which in turn would make housing cheaper for owner occupiers in those cheaper markets. Isn’t that the desired outcome?

Credit card companies spend a considerable amount of time and money trying to work out how high they can optimize these merchant fee rates. A credit card charge is painstakingly optimized to maximize profits. Often credit card companies pay a portion of these fees because the competitive market will not shoulder the burden - customers will move to a cheaper credit card, which is why cards with high fees often try to entice customers with rewards programs).

Without the ability to influence demand, the seller can either eat the cost or remove themselves from the market, my question is how does increasing the tax move the needle on demand knowing that any rational acting landlord is already acting to maximize their return on investment? Are you suggesting that they’ll copy credit cards and increase rates but offer some bonus program to increase demand? I’m not convinced that would work.

…increasing taxes on rental units just increases everyone’s rent…

Can you explain this to me? Surely a landlord charges the highest rent that the market can provide. Why would taxing the landlord increase the Tennant’s ability or willingness to pay a higher rent?

So a less efficient and more complicated land tax? Is there any benefit to this compared to just taxing based on the value?

To take real estate from notifications (is it somehow a benefit to Google to add scroll interactions?). I’m not sure what the endgame is but the only other thing it achieves is making them always trigger when you’re holding the phone to your ear, which no matter how tinfoil I get I can’t see any potential motivator for that. It’s pure bad design, for the life of me I can’t work it out.

Money isn’t an investment, it’s a currency. Of course it’s a bad investment and investing in forex is barely a better investment than crypto (purely because there’s less risk of a sovereign currency devaluing to 0).

Investing in capital, like stocks, property, equipment etc does not require someone to lose money for the capital owner to profit. If I invest in a stock, each year I’m paid a dividend based on the profits of that organisation - no losers required. I could later sell that stock at the exact price I paid for it and come away with profit from those dividends. What determines whether it’s a good or bad investment, is the ratio of profit to the capital owner compared to cost of the asset. Crypto generates 0 profit, so it has 0 value as a capital investment.

Money has value insofar as governments use it to collect tax - so long as there’s a tax obligation, there’s a mandated demand for that currency and it has some value. Between different currencies, the value is determined based upon the demand for that currency, which is essentially tied to how much business is done in that currency (eg if a country sells goods in its own currency, demand for that currency goes up and so does it’s value).

This is not the same for crypto, there are no governments collecting tax with it so it does not have induced demand. The value of crypto is 100% speculative, which is fine for something that is used as currency, but imo a terrible vehicle for investment.

The two differences you listed improve traffic flow and safety massively!

Driver education is often more strict depending on country (I’m thinking Scandinavian countries and Germany), unsurprisingly this makes a big difference.

Traveling faster is a bit of a moot point. If people drive faster and rate of incidents and road toll are lower, surely that proves that travel speed isn’t the problem in the US.

But really, the drink driving culture in America is terrifying. The state of Texas has a similar population to Australia (where I’m from), 9,560 people died on the road in Q1 2022 in texas. Australia had just under 2000 FOR THE WHOLE YEAR! Both places have similar speed limits that are considerably slower than Europe, so I don’t think it would be honest to try and say the low speed limits cause deaths. My best guess would be that drink driving is enforced at 0.05 in Australia compared to 0.08 in Texas. On top of this, Texas only enforces if officers have a cause for lawful detainment, which is a high threshold to cross compared to random breath tests common where I’m from.

It’s incorrect to think of most road laws as being in place for safety, instead recognize that it’s largely a tax by another name. It is never safe to drive 20mph below prevailing traffic, regardless of what the sign on the side of the road instructs.

To avoid fines, pay attention and try to avoid routes where there are often cops collecting a toll, especially during quieter times when you’re one of a smaller number of commuters (and more likely to be the sucker who gets pinged). If you’re white, congratulations, you’re way less likely to be the unlucky party who gets pinged.