Unfortunately, finding a cheap place to live in San Francisco is a near-impossibility. For example, I found no rental listings under $800/month during a recent Zillow search and just six listing under $1000/month (5 of which were teeny studios)…On the same day as my San Francisco Zillow search, I checked out the rental market in Houston and this is what I found: 504 results for rentals up to $1000/month and 136 results for up to $800/month.
I belong to a local debate club. Members exchange views on various political and cultural topics, mostly online since Covid although we’ll be resuming in-person meetups this year. Below is a recent email exchange among a few of our members…
The Houston Homeless Count found 3,223 persons experiencing homelessness on the day of its 2022 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, or approximately one out of 1,916 residents… San Francisco’s Homeless Count of 2022 found 7,754 individuals experiencing homelessness. With a population of 815,201 (2021), that would be a homelessness rate of approximately one out of 105 residents.
Something to ponder: is achieving some of the Moral Good now better than achieving more of the Moral Good later? Given that increasingly later is increasingly uncertain, at what point of later/uncertainty should one just say “screw it” and commit to action? (The answer, as always: it depends).
It appears that most of this wealth is wrapped up in bonds, stocks and businesses, where it helps fund the country’s public and private investment and operations. If the federal government were to implement a wealth tax, rich folks would likely have to take money out of their holdings and businesses to pay the tax. Ideally, the holdings and businesses would not lose value as a result.
Wealth is your overall financial picture, including all your assets. Assets can be considered anything of value that can be converted into cash, including things like cash itself, real estate holdings, investments, and personal property. According to the Federal Reserve, as of September 30, 2022, the combined assets of US households and nonprofit organizations were worth about $162.5 trillion - $54.8 trillion in non-financial assets (e.g., housing, land, machinery, vehicles) and $107.7 trillion in financial assets. Here’s the Fed’s breakdown of financial assets…
And I got to thinking…tax rates are a poor indicator of what US households actually pay in taxes. Economists know this…
The biggest threat to biodiversity is loss of habitat. Agriculture is the main driver of habitat loss on the planet and a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change will reduce agricultural productivity unless crops become more resilient. GM crops require less land and are more resilient than conventional and organic crops.
In other words, if carrots and sticks change the behavior, then the person has at least some control over the behavior, which is another way of saying: if one is able to engage in goal-directed behavior (e.g. approach carrot, avoid stick), one is responsible to some degree for one’s actions and the outcomes of those actions…That’s where “stigma” comes in. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “stigma in the context of health is the negative association between a person or group of people who share certain characteristics and a specific disease, including mental illness”. And per the voluminous literature on stigma, a common stigmatizing stereotype associated with mental health disorders such as drug addiction is that people are responsible for their condition.
Moral hazard is a situation where individuals have an incentive to increase their exposure to risk because they do not bear the full costs of that risk. I’m guessing a possible moral hazard associated with needle exchange programs is that these programs would lead to greater drug abuse by reducing the perceived risks of needles. And with opioids, more drug abuse would mean a higher likelihood of death by overdose.
President Clinton eventually signed the the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, but he never submitted it to the Senate for ratification. That’s because the Senate had already made it crystal clear that the vote would not go well: just two years before the Senate has passed a resolution 95-0 telling Mr. Clinton not to sign any treaty that committed the US to cut emissions without also requiring undeveloped countries to do so.
To quote the New York Times: “Since then, similar comprehensive research has been blocked, in part by tenants’ advocates who believe the findings would be “politicized” and become a referendum on rent control…”
According to John Kelly of Mashed Radish , the word “hassle” may have originated from a blend of words that represent small, intense repeated actions, such as haggle and tussle or harass and hustle. To call something a hassle is to say it requires an annoying amount of time and energy while engaged in a series of small, intense actions. For example…
“Accepted theories are the best explanations available so far for how the world works. They have been thoroughly tested, are supported by multiple lines of evidence, and have proved useful in generating explanations and opening up new areas for research. However, science is always a work in progress, and even theories change.” - How Science Works.
“The simplified, linear description of the scientific method implies that science concludes … but in reality, scientific conclusions are always revisable if warranted by the evidence. Scientific investigations are often ongoing, raising new questions even as old ones are answered.” — Excerpt from How Science Works (my italics).
Perceived control also influences how people feel when exposed to others who are "higher" than them on some metric. Studies on social comparison have found that "upward comparison" (comparing oneself to "higher" others) was "debilitating only when accompanied by low perceived control".
“When inequality loses its association with hope and instead becomes interpreted as a signal of a rigged society, higher inequality relates to lower well-being.” - Buttrick, N. R., S. J. Heintzelman, et al. (2017). Inequality and well-being.
The California legislature recently passed Assembly Bill (AB) 2098, which would “designate the dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19’ as unprofessional conduct”. AB2098 has been signed by the governor and is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2023. Here are some excerpts from the new law…
The first thing I noticed was that CCDH conflated “disinformation” and “misinformation”. Standard definitions distinguish them: disinformation is deliberate and malicious, whereas misinformation does not imply an intention to deceive, being simply false or inaccurate information.
I want to know about studies that are reassuring as well as alarming. I don’t need to be a true believer unwilling to question articles of the faith to be very worried about climate change. So why should anyone else?