We don’t have to take the land, we just have to make it legal to build more residencies by taking away the impediments to building such as zoning laws and other local ordinances which drive up the cost of building.
Yes, a living wage would increase unemployment among the low skilled who are most at risk of homelessness. Depending on how it was implemented a universal health care system might do the same.
At which time the land will be snatched up by unscrupulous developers looking to spend as little as possible to sell for as much as possible. Where in your “solution” is a stipulation that the housing be sold to the less well off? BTW the idea of changing zoning laws and make some allowances to developers that promise to set aside some of the new houses and/or apartments for those less well off doesn’t usually work out: Either the developing stops after the condos are built, or the definition of what is “affordable housing” gets changed to something un-affordable.
Human beings plop into the world with everything they need to survive already belonging to someone else. If a person’s earning, negotiating, begging, charming or thieving skills aren’t up to snuff, what do people expect to happen to them?
::checks forum::
cite?
It’s easy to see why someone would assume that living-wage legislation would cause employers to simply hire fewer people. However, I think that’s not what has actually happened in the places where it’s been done.
Family, friends, charity … throw in “churches”, too, and you’ve got the magic formula wherein far-right extremists claim that health care for the poor can be taken care of, too, so not only is there no need to be homeless, there’s no need for universal health care either. Sadly, the real world is very different from right-wing fantasies.
No, they are not. Posts #39 and #40 address the facts on this.
Those zoning laws and ordinances often arise from NIMBYism that prevents affordable community housing from being built in established middle-class neighborhoods. The typical attitude is,“we support affordable housing projects and think they should be built, just not here.” It’s possible for these projects to be done badly and that has happened, but it’s also possible to create vibrant healthy neighborhoods of mixed economic tiers.
The first sentence is a typical right-wing meme for which there is no actual credible evidence, but it must be noted that the reality is complex so that with suitable assumptions and interpretations one could cobble together a case to support that claim. But factually and realistically, the impact on employment depends on the state of the economy and the amounts and timeframes over which minimum wage increases are mandated and other complex factors, and many if not most economists see a healthy minimum wage as a likely net benefit to the overall economy.
Your second sentence is even more bizarre and I have no idea how you link UHC with higher unemployment. Maybe you’re thinking of all those unproductive paper-pushers currently employed to process insurance claims who would become redundant. If so, we’d be better off having a sustainable cost-effective health care system and paying to retrain these people for useful honest jobs.
Yeah, right. George Carlin had a great bit about people asking him for money. “Who gave it to me? Nobody. I earned it. So why should I give it to you.”
If they get a job, they will lose it because the employer expects them to show up on time (My ride was late), do the work (I can’t life 5 pounds with my bad back) and get alone with people (I felt threatened when she looked at me).
Affordable housing is not separate from housing. What makes housing affordable is just like everything else, Supply and demand. If you expand supply more than demand then prices will go down. It doesn’t matter if the new construction is luxury condos or shotgun shacks. Seattle has some of the strictest building and zoning regulations and a 1 bedroom apartment is 40% over the national average. Houston has the loosest zoning in the country and a 1 bedroom apartment is 12% under the national average.
There is plentyof credible evidence if you are wiling to look. For example after the minimum wage was increased by a lot in American Samoa total employment went down 11% in the next six years and 58% in the most affected sector. The city of Seattle commissioned a studyto find out the effects of the minimum wage increase that found that there were 3.5 million fewer hours worked than before and the average low wage worker was worse off by 125 dollars a month. In Denmarkthose over 18 have a higher minimum wage than those under 18, because of this employment drops one third after the 18th birthday.
If you pay for UHC by putting a tax on employers like some have proposed then that would add to the cost of employing someone and increase structural employment.
I’m willing to look. What I’m not willing to do is regard specific accounts of extremely complex circumstances as definitive attributions of cause and effect. This article highlights some of the complexities and controversies surrounding the recent whopping 21% increase in the minimum wage in Ontario. There are certainly differences of opinion on how this will affect the economy and the welfare of small business, but most economists are optimistic.
So far the only thing I noticed is that the cost of my favorite chicken takeout has gone up by a dime or something. I sort of half-humorously complained to the girl about the price increase, and she quite forthrightly said it was due to the minimum wage increase. Of course these poor folk are being paid minimum wage, I just never thought about it – I actually felt bad that someone was not only being screwed by a minimum wage but had to publicly acknowledge it. I certainly have no problem paying the extra pittance for their benefit.
This is absolutely flat-out wrong. The reality is that UHC is a distinct advantage for the employer because instead of paying the outrageous costs of private health insurance, they benefit from a much less costly public plan that is heavily subsidized by the overall population – and as for taxes, corporate taxes in Canada have traditionally been significantly lower than in the US.
Often I think the problem is the society is built in a way that some people can’t fit in and fall by the wayside and in some cases become homeless, though if society developed another way they would do very well.
The thing is, there will always be some people left by the wayside no matter how Utopian things get. The goal is to make this number as small as possible, but also accept that it happens and deal with them humanely.
Unfortunately for the optimistic economists the results are already showing that there is nothing magical about Ontario that exempts them from supply and demand. ManyTim Hortons around Ontario have already cut benefits in response to the law. They are notthe only ones. In the first month of the increase there was a record59,000 jobs lost in Ontario.
QFT