It’s not a sidewalk. It’s a railroad track for the VTA train in San Jose. FSD has no idea it’s not a drivable area. Guess what other technology Tesla has shunned that would’ve completely eliminated this issue? HD maps.
The author clearly has never cleaned toilets for a living, yet waxes philosophical, completely missing the point on why public services are kneecapped in this country.
Public services are kneecapped in this country because non-white people use them.
Same reason why we defunded public universities (imposing the student loan system) just as agitation was enabling women and people of color equal access.
I don’t like public services because every time I have ever used public services, even extremely (excessively) overfunded ones in liberal coastal US cities, they have had mediocre to extremely shitty quality from the perspective of the consumer.
Services aren’t supposed to be jobs programs. I like privatization as a rule. It has nothing to do with racism, it has to do with an intense dislike of being fleeced by politicians.
I've seen plenty of shitty (sorry!) privatized toilets at various events and locations. They are rarely directly "paid" - more like the event holder rents them and provides them free of charge - but the privatization aspect hasn't guaranteed me some magical clean toilet experience.
Sometimes us Americans just reveal ourselves to be selfish and... again... shitty.
Maybe they should be. What's more demeaning, being told you're not good enough for any jobs so we'll pay you to stay out of the way, or being told you're not good enough for any other jobs but here's a job that still needs to be done and you can do it?
The article linked blames stabilization, but fails to account for many other factors: the almost required 12-15% broker fee on move-in, the year long leases that never go month to month. Moving in NYC is a larger burden on the tenant than most other cities, and that makes it harder as a tenant to move and keep the housing market dynamic.
It seems like there's a lot of missing analysis in this article rather than just a jump to conclusions, blaming tenant rights, and calling it a day.
All of the things you named have the same effect: Making the rental market less dynamic. They all probably have a synergistic effect on making it harder to move, which adds to the vicious cycle.
I was going to mention this too. Absurd broker fees in NYC are a major disincentive for me to move to a new apartment. I calculate my rent by amortizing the broker fee across the months I live in the apartment. The longer I live in a place, the cheaper it gets.
If the owner renting the apartment goes through a real estate broker, that broker charges some fee for their services (showing the apartment, etc.). In NYC, the fee is often paid by the incoming tenant. The fee, from what I've seen, ranges from 1 month's rent to 15% of annual rent (12 * .15 = 1.8 month's rent). If you're renting a $3000/month place with a 15% broker fee, you owe the broker $5400 up front when you sign the lease.
Brokers and sites that I've found claim you'll pay a broker one way or the other: if the owner pays the broker, then the owner increases the rent to cover the cost. If you find a "No fee" apartment (a designation that anyone who's rented in NYC knows, and it has a special status and banner on https://streeteasy.com/) then your rent is increased to match the market anyway.
Even if it's true that as a renter you pay for brokers no matter what, it's the deceit in advertising in NYC that irritates me. Brokers happily list "$3000/month" rent, and you have to email them to find out what their fee is. If you amortize the fee across a 12-month lease, that "$3000/month" might actually be $3250/month (1 month broker fee) or $3450/month (15% broker fee).
I suppose my question should have been "what the hell is a broker", because I have never heard of such a practice! It's difficult for me to imagine what value such a middleman could conceivably add. Thank you for the explanation.
There are roughly 190k practicing dentists in the US [1]. There are approximately 2.2 physicians per 1000 people in Poland and 2.5 physicians per 1000 people in the USA [2]. There are 38M people in Poland and 319M people in the USA [3].
Starting with the same density, (190k / 319M) * 38M, we would get 22.5k dentists in Poland. We know there are slightly fewer physicians per capita in Poland though. So let's take 22.5k * (2.2 / 2.5) and we get roughly 20k dentists in Poland.
Actually I think it's just a difference in definitions. You were looking at practicing dentists, while the number I quoted was licensed dentists. If I'm interpreting the numbers correctly, there are only 13088 dentists actually practicing dentistry (I don't speak polish, so I'm not sure if the difference is explained in the report). I'm also not sure how the world bank data is derived.
And doing even more analysis, there were 87687 practicing doctors (not including dentists) in Poland in 2014, i.e. 2.3 per capita, which is close enough to that it could have been World Bank's data (which isn't available for 2014). Comparing those numbers to the US it just seems that Poland has a smaller dentist/doctor ration than the US.
