@ConservaMuse Is it some enormous problem if there are a few thousand unusually wealthy Chinese people out there that can decide to move to the US in their 20s if they want to?
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MHendi
8.9K posts
I am curious what the fix for Chinese birth tourism is, if not an alteration to birthright citizenship.
Scott Greenfield@ScottGreenfield
You can't hate the Constitution of the United States this much and pretend you're a patriot. The Constitution *is* the United States of America, and Trump hates it.
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@JacobLarkey @conorsen That’s not that weird outside of, like, NYC and SF. You can buy a nice townhouse in Philly for the same price as one in downtown Bryan Mawr (maybe not one block from Rittenhouse square or whatever, but like three or four blocks…).
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@conorsen I’ve lived in Atlanta for 7 years and I still can’t believe that the townhouses in Alpharetta go for the same or more than basically the same ones in town.
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This piece from @mattyglesias makes me wonder if there’s a difference in perspective between an Alpharetta and a DC townhouse buyer, just less familiarity with multi-generational housing cycles of aging and renewal and more focus on the now:
Matthew Zeitlin@MattZeitlin
here's a theory i'm throwing out for Why New Buildings Look Like That: due to zillow (and instagram), people are just way more aware of interior finishes than they used to be
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@Lormif1 @mnolangray They already had a home, we should be subsidizing people just having extra homes for some reason?
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Am I meant to feel pity for someone who inherited a $2 million asset? It sounds like she won the lottery. Sell it and move on!
Realtor.com@realtordotcom
When Willa Staats and her brother inherited their family's East Austin home and adjacent lot, they expected a windfall. Instead, they were hit with a $48,000 property tax bill, nearly 90% higher than what their father had paid and more than half of Staats' salary. As a longtime homeowner, their father had benefited from a homestead exemption capping annual tax increases at 10%. But when the property passed to his heirs, the taxable value reset to market rate, right at the peak of Austin's pandemic-era boom.
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@realtordotcom “I have simply inherited too much money” is not as sympathy generating as some people seem to think it is?
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When Willa Staats and her brother inherited their family's East Austin home and adjacent lot, they expected a windfall. Instead, they were hit with a $48,000 property tax bill, nearly 90% higher than what their father had paid and more than half of Staats' salary. As a longtime homeowner, their father had benefited from a homestead exemption capping annual tax increases at 10%. But when the property passed to his heirs, the taxable value reset to market rate, right at the peak of Austin's pandemic-era boom.
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@Ramonmaislen @jasondweinman @mattyglesias @JewishWonk Congrats on your war I guess, I’ll stick with the allies that follow our lead on things. The Philippines may be led by thugs half the time but at least we know they’re not going to start freelancing in the Spratlys to try to get us to bomb Beijing for them.
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@MHendi35 @jasondweinman @mattyglesias @JewishWonk Which treaty did Israel undermine? JCPOA? Iran undermined the JCPOA and anyone that fails to grasp what a problem Iran is for the entirety of MENA is blind. There’s no future for MENA with IRCG destabilizing multiple countries.
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The problem with this argument, which Matt would rate higher if he were actively involved in Jewish life, is that animus towards Israel is a permission structure for bigotry, harassment, and assault against American Jews.
It amounts to throwing us under the bus for votes.
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
As someone who absolutely fears the left's growing power, I think the smart play is for moderate Dems to go on Piker's show and agree with him that Israel is bad and then stick to their guns on other moderate stuff.
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@jasondweinman @Ramonmaislen @mattyglesias @JewishWonk The problem with this argument is that if you want people to accept it you actually have to be a democracy. We have plenty of allies that aren’t, but they tend to bring something more concrete to the table (and don’t, like, deliberately undermine regional treaties we negotiate).
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@Ramonmaislen @mattyglesias @JewishWonk Non-military technologies as well. Having a stable liberal democracy in MENA. Another country to bear the brunt of global Jihad…
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@politicalmath In Italy people weren’t allowed to leave their apartments, in NYC I went for long walks every day and stopped at a store whenever I wanted. People have convinced themselves of things that never happened.
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This just flat out isn't true. Blue states had substantially more draconian lockdowns than most of Europe.
Europe also had *much* better vaccine policy while, here in the US, the Biden admin told YouTube to censor videos of US scientists saying that we should follow European recommendations
Jason Furman@jasonfurman
I agree with these. But am curious how it compares to Europe. They had much, much more draconian lockdowns. But did they not have the same vacillation and hypocrisy that we had? Is the backlash more or less there than here? Pointers to writing on this most welcome.
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@mattyglesias @MattZeitlin And obviously some people do! People are building a 5 million dollar “Tuscan” houses. My grandparents’ retirement community had frills out the ying yang, but it was for well to do old people in central PA (and the developer is now putting up a fake SoHo loft version for boomers).
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@mattyglesias @MattZeitlin Right but ornamentation isn’t high class now so you’re spending more money to look nouveau riche at best.
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Jeanne Dielman can win the Sight & Sound poll but profit-seeking businesses are going to keep giving us Jurassic Park sequels, kid-focused cartoons, and a new Avengers movie.
Record companies aren’t releasing stuff that sounds like Trout Mask Replica.
Matthew Zeitlin@MattZeitlin
I find the “architects have weird taste” explanation for why buildings look like that to only be so convincing. Artists and intellectuals can have non-standard taste but buildings are bought by developers and governments and big companies and indirectly by non-artist people
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@MattZeitlin @mattyglesias I assume that’s just whatever is cost effective ? There are plenty of Hadid and/or Stern apartment buildings that have gone up in the last few years and neither of those look like the things people complain about that have cheap cladding because brick or glass orbs are expensive.
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@MHendi35 @mattyglesias Ok but what about apartment buildings? A lot of those aren’t even “weird” in an arty way, they just look meh
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@MattZeitlin Most sold paintings are Kinkade nonsense and most construction is faux colonial (or Spanish) SFHs to the extent it's anything. But JPM isn't picking either of those for their new HQ (and you absolutely do find the odd zillion dollar fake Second Empire thing in both categories).
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I find the “architects have weird taste” explanation for why buildings look like that to only be so convincing. Artists and intellectuals can have non-standard taste but buildings are bought by developers and governments and big companies and indirectly by non-artist people
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@polypocketknife I feel like the real reason is that larger outdoor malls were all built in the last 20 years but the mall pictured is like 50 years old so the outdoor malls are in the better current locations. There are indoor malls that are doing fine, we just don't talk about them.
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why are malls like this always struggling (or surviving by pivoting to be exclusively for rich people) but outdoor shopping centers seem to be doing fine?
#1 trinity santos defender@bespinderella
went to a movie theater in the mall today and this is what it looked like when we came out in the 90s/00s this place would have been packed to the rafters on a saturday afternoon, now the community is fighting to keep them from turning it into a huge data center depressing
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@MattZeitlin Lifting the FAR cap in NYC is starting to have some impact.
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has any blue state passed a housing bill that led to increased housing production
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Yes please, happy to name it Trump Station if he does this
Brigid Bergin@brigidbergin
SCOOP: Trump weighs moving Madison Square Garden for Penn Station rebuild, “as a New York native, President Trump is personally invested in revitalizing New York Penn Station.” WH spoxe By @ramseykhalifeh gothamist.com/news/trump-wei… via @gothamist
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@upstatefederlst The house on the left is clearly fake colonial from 1987 or something, that brick is a half inch think facade, the windows are crappy and small, you can tell the ceilings are low from here. Nostalgia for Toll Brothers slop is going to kill me.
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I'm sorry, but watching a bunch of new construction go up around me, it all looks cheap. I watched the house on the left get knocked down and replaced with the one on the right and Left looks like it would have stood for 100 years while Right...... doesn't.
Bit Paine ⚡️@BitPaine
PSA: NEVER buy a house from a boomer. Wait for prices to fall, and/or buy new construction, which typically leads price declines. Housing materials, appliances, and architecture have advanced a lot since the boomers bought their McMansions for a strawberry.
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The it no longer becomes a "contribution" to one's own Social Security "account", it is just a tax on wages to fund a Govt funded social welfare program for the elderly.
That's NOT was SS was designed to be.
Fuck You I Quit@fuckyouiquit
Every dollar earned below $184,500 a year has a Social Security tax of 12.4%. Everything after that cap is exempt. If we lift this cap on the wealthiest earners, Social Security would be fully funded till 2070. The cap should not exist.
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@amkorchak I mean, that's just obviously untrue. If you have a 20 year lease that's an asset that can be inherited if it has time remaining on its term. Some businesses have 99 year leases.
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A LEASE is not a DEED and can’t be inherited. Instead the unconstitutional rent stabilization scheme allows for succession
Xoxo@chicfryrice
Is it not weird in NYC you can inherit rent stabilized apartments?
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@Cbusaaron @Job601 @HeerJeet How many Senators would have voted for Bernie’s healthcare plan? 20? Maybe?
Everyone knows we don’t hold presidential candidates to that standard.
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Obama in particular deserves more criticism. He ran on codifying Roe and had for a time 60 Senate seats.
Briahna Joy Gray@briebriejoy
Very weird to blame Jezebel and not Obama and Biden: The two presidents who could've codified it and didn't!
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