• Corvus Nyx@beehaw.org
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    11 months ago

    You know what would go a long way? Make housing a shitty income source. Bring about heavy taxes on any additional livable property beyond the one you live in yourself. Ban all politicians from landlording - it’s a conflict of interest holding us all back. Ban corporations and foreign organizations from owning housing. You’d see a fire sale. Prices would plummet, and people who need housing would have a greater chance at it. Finally, get a fucking UBI going, and grow universal healthcare to include eye and dental care.

    Enough is goddamn enough. We know who the problem is and it isn’t immigrants, it’s well-off folks taking and hoarding more than they need using their much larger disposable income and connections to take advantage of the rest of us.

    There are solutions to making Canadian’s lives better, and they’ll take work and time to make happen, but this continuous pissing in the wind isn’t getting us anywhere. We can do this civilly with hard work, or we can get to a breaking point and do things like 1789 France. One way another, the bullshit has got to go.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      11 months ago

      There’s just not enough houses, though. Measurably. Banning landlords would be bad news for anyone who can’t afford a mortgage downpayment.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          11 months ago

          Like former office space or whatever? That’s not what OP said, but encouraging repurposing is an idea worth talking about.

          • BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca
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            11 months ago

            No, as in single family homes. If the building was expressly built with density in mind (think triplex and above) then it’s fine IMO. This reduces the land scarcity side of the equation, as well as incentivizes density.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          11 months ago

          Yeah, we could do a Castro and just nationalise all rentals, in theory. Growing a government department that plays the role of every landlord at once would be a big project, though, and of course it’s not politically viable at the moment. And we’d still have a housing shortage.

          • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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            11 months ago

            Not public housing, social housing. We could seed self-owning housing coops.

            • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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              11 months ago

              Same problem as with getting a mortgage, then. A lot of people don’t have the money to start or buy into such a thing.

    • EhForumUser@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Finally, get a fucking UBI going

      We did have UBI going. It set inflation in motion, as the naysayers always said it would, and we had to reel back.

      UBI doesn’t have have to cause inflation, but implementation has to be careful to ensure that. You can’t throw any random desk jockey at the job and expect sunshine and rainbows. Trouble is, those who have the right skills aren’t interested in doing the work. We don’t subscribe to slavery, so…

        • EhForumUser@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          Technically GMI, but we’ve always conflated the two. The study Ontario tired to conduct a few years ago, which was oft-referred to as a UBI study, was also GMI, not UBI, if you look at the implementation details. There are subtle differences, to be sure, but they probably don’t make much difference in practice. The conflation isn’t the result of them being radically different.

          Further, when you have unskilled people doing the work, as we do, it is likely they would be unaware of the difference. So what differences do exist, even where impactful, are ultimately immaterial in any practical sense. Call it UBI, GMI, GBI, MBI, or the many other names thrown out there, and you’ll get the same response every time: “You what? Oh, you want to give people money? Okay. Umm. I don’t know what that entails, but I’ll think of something!”

          • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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            11 months ago

            I never got a penny of it and I am living off 13k a year. It was “technically” not GMI or UBI. We have NEVER had GMI or UBI.

      • jatone@reddthat.com
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        11 months ago

        no it didn’t. saying CERB caused inflation ignores hand waves everything else going on in the world economy.

      • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        So CERB is the driver of inflation. Inflation that the entire world experienced. Holy fuck. Who knew Canada had so much economic power.