Would argue for getting rid of SNAP and replacing it with a convoluted system where poor people could get free food but they had to spend hours hunting for just the right coupons to exchange? I would hope not. It might help the poor, but would be a really crappy way of doing so.
Free parking certainly might help the poor a teensy bit. But it's an incredibly bad way of doing so that comes with all kind of other bad side effects.
If helping the poor is our goal, that is not a good way of doing so. You're better off charging a market rate for parking and then taking that money and giving it to poor people.
The solution to poor people not having enough money is to give them more money (if you really want to help them).
It's not to make random consumer goods like parking free for all. If you do this, most of the goods will be used by people who are not poor, so it's very inefficient at helping you achieve your goal of helping poor people.
In addition, many poor people won't want the thing you are making free. In the case of parking that could be because they don't own a car, so this plan doesn't help a portion of the population you are trying to help. Even more inefficient!
When people think we should have free parking to help the poor, it's mostly just status quo bias at work. Most people would never say that we should make bread free. Or that we should make milk free. Parking isn't any different.
Brockman is off the board but not fired. Which is weird right? You'd think if he was involved in whatever the really bad thing is then he would be fired.
1) Note that I indicated that the 20% increase was a real increase and not a nominal one. That means that to the extent that household expenses have increased, it's because households are using their newfound wealth to purchase more/better stuff! That's not a hollowing out of the middle class, that's a prospering one.
2) Household debt has declined significantly over the past 15 years:
Fair point about Canadian law being different than US law. For the < 5% of Stripe employees there, that does appear to be true. Though I would again point to my 2nd bullet point:
- There is no evidence that Stripe isn't paying severance when firing for performance (I'd be shocked if they aren't)
Yup. Which goes back to the housing problem. Under building of housing country wide (and even more so in major cities) is IMHO one of the root causes of many many many of the problems we see in America today.
There are plenty of landowners that want to build. The issue is that NIMBYs have largely captured the city government and zoning restrictions have made new building mostly illegal. We jut need a government that legalizes new construction.
If NYC politics serves property developers first, then it probably wouldn't be illegal for property developers to develop new property in the vast majority of the city.
The former is bad, for all the reasons I described. The latter is good!