Magic BroomCycle 🧹🚲

“We haven’t built enough housing in the Country for a long time.”
- Fed Chair Powell

Would you believe it’s acoustic?

"we don’t set different air quality standards or fire codes based on neighborhood. If density restrictions actually protected public health, we could identify a scientifically 'safe' density level and apply it uniformly citywide, as we would with any other health-related regulation."

My 3 story walk up apartment has 4 units per floor (8 above ground level). It has two wide exterior stairwells right next to each other. All 20 of us could evacuate down a single stair in 30 seconds. But we have two and I’m not even allowed to lock my bike up underneath the bonus staircase.

I didn’t disagree with you. It’s true that without safety regulations, the free market will provide dangerous and horrible housing, as pictured.

That’s why I said there has to be a balance between the free-wheeling unsafe 1800s and the frozen, unaffordable housing regulations of today.

They’re going to charge the price that the market allows them to.

And yes, landlords/owners can lobby to make building new housing harder and keep prices high, but they are also not going to want social housing built for the same reason. Either way we have to convince politicians not to listen.

So you agree it was affordable, you just disagree that it was housing. Fair enough.

Profit = sale price - cost.

Increasing the cost doesn’t increase your profit. You could increase the sale price by more than it cost, but if people will pay that higher price for the same good then why not just increase the price without increasing the cost?

It’s certainly a balance, but I think we can say the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. A lot of the restrictions in place are not keeping people any safer.

Because there’s not a free market for housing in NYC. Housing supply is artificially constrained by government intervention.

Preferences are forged from experience, not coded into our DNA. Is there a cultural preference for a house, a yard, and a white picket fence? Yes, but that could change fast if folks got a taste of good, affordable urban living.

Hard to say Americans prefer suburbs to urban environments when we don’t build any high quality urban environments.

To add context, $0.05 in 1906 is equivalent to $1.80 today. The current fare is $2.90.

The 5 cent fare would stay in place until 1948 (equivalent to $0.67 in 2025), when it was raised to 10 cents ($1.34).

This was also a fully elevated line, as the BRTC opened its 1st underground line in 1908.

Mamdani at least understands that free fare needs to be government funded. Critics can argue that money would be better spent on service improvements, but it is a budget-coherent strategy to provide free bus fares via subsidy.

Of course this dogmatic commitment to the 5 cent fare would eventually bankrupt the Subway. It was a rider-first policy, but it needed to be backed up with some other funding source or indexed to inflation for the long term health of the system.

There’s definitely a type of person who sees the housing market as only consisting of owner-occupied homes and refuses to accept a broader definition of supply.

Not necessarily what’s going on here but definitely a sentiment I’ve run into a lot.

I misread this as well. The left is two different colors associated with the Blue Jays (11 apart from each other). The right is Dodger blue, which is 1 number off from the top color on the left.

part of what gets me is the particular double-think involved in left-nimbyism. left nimbyism has been the dominant mode of thinking in urban governance for like fifty years, they won the war and achieved total control of policy, and they *still* think they're the plucky upstarts fighting The Man

HMS Captain Spice

Seems like it would not do well in a storm

More than anything, I want a system where rules are straightforward and predictable.

Having “fake” rules just teaches people that rules don’t matter.

Choose the rules you actually want and then actually enforce them.

Three designs for the new 8000 series DC metro cars. Option 1 is all steel with an oversized brown M. Option 2 has the traditional brown stripe with a smaller white M inside the stripe. Option 3 is the same as 2 but with the M in steel.

Not a huge fan of this redesign but I voted for option 3. @wmata.com

www.wmata.com/about/news/V...

Size is ok but lack of shade would be a problem for me (talking about the left pic, right is good)

I assume this is more expensive than some other options but this is so much nicer in terms of space and traditional form. Though this is also a much smaller building than the others, more missing middle than apartment block.

Interested to hear what people think about balconies re curb appeal. Some renters do put a premium on having some outdoor space-is that compatible? (I think it definitely is but want to hear what others think)

I often use it to reformat lists. Easy to drop a list of things in, not asking it to "think," very easy to see if errors were made in the output.

Love it for that but I've just described a $5 tool, not a $500b one.

@wmata.com unusually bumpy ride on car 7190 between Innovation center and Herndon at 5:12 pm

True, just saying it’s not the only thing that determines prices.

Technically a single company can supply as much as is demanded. And a few buyers or even one buyer can purchase enough quantity to sustain a market. The extent to which that distorts prices depends on elasticity, etc.

A lot of folks seem to think that competition is the primary issue in economics. In fact, monopolies/oligopolies are just one of the ways that markets can be distorted, and not even the most common one. Competition is not what determines prices, supply and demand are.

17 Key Variables That Determine UBI’s Inflationary Impact Will universal basic income cause inflation? Will the prices of everything rise? I get asked that all the time. Here's the deal about UBI and inflation: it all depends. Can UBI be inflationary? Sure,...

I'd say the most common response to universal basic income is some variant of "it will just increase prices!" In response, I frequently find myself explaining how it's not that simple, and there are many variables involved. So here's my summary of 17 of those variables to consider.