Have you ever spent time in a middle eastern country and been visibly "out"? (I'm assuming you're saying this in reference to existing somewhere on the lgbtq spectrum)
If the answer is no, but you have spent time in America, then I think this is a strange comment.
XP sp1 and 2 were more or less the same as me with an updated UI and non existent 64 bit. However flawed vista was, it added an actual tangible benefit for 7 to further improve on.
I'd argue 7 was the last windows os that could be described as "better" in some way than what came before (which most, even the ones we remember as "bad" at the time, did offer some real step forward which isn't true for 8/10/11).
Rock n roll train by AC/DC
Poland is one of the largest militaries in NATO and have a special hatred of Russia. I imagine alongside the UK and France, Russia has nukes aimed at Poland already.
They are plenty threatening already, though obviously adding nukes, even if American controlled, exacerbates things.
The "speculative investors removing housing stock to drive up costs" folks tend to be corporately owned and industry coordinated properties that deliberately keep units open above the clearing rate, in hopes of driving up the prevailing cost of new housing.
This is dependant on the market (the post didn't say where they are), but I understand is true in the US.
In Australia, the speculation is driven by individuals who get incredible tax incentives if their income is above a certain level. Because of this, the housing market is distorted to the point where housing values are detached from rent potential, with all the value being driven by capital gains and tax offsets. This further leads to a situation where it's often more economically viable to leave a house empty (and therefore not have to maintain the property or deal with tenants) while the value grows and the tax is written down.
Dude he's losing money year on year and capital gains carry it through to make it profitable longer term. The problems isn't "landlords make a profit", the problem is "speculative investors are removing housing stock driving up costs".
Through that lense this guy is no saint.
Because he has unrealized capital gains - in yearly income/expenditure their losing money but big picture, when they sell, they profit.
In Australia, rental returns are paltry (less than 2%) compared to any other investment, but steep tax concessions on and insane capital growth (often higher than 6% annually) incentivises speculative investment in real estate.. This is what's driving up the cost of housing to the cartoonist levels they currently are in. It's not unusual for these speculators to not even bother with tenants, because like op suggests they often lose money maintaining the property, it's cheaper to speculate and maybe renovate immediately before selling.
The problem has nothing to do with landlords and everything to do with speculators going for capital gains. Greedy landlords can be a problem where there are no rentals protections, but that can easily be resolved with regulation.
What do you think "math" is?
Ironically my argument for both housing and healthcare is 'why spend more of my taxes denying (healthcare or homes) when they could more cheaply provide"
Policing the homeless is expensive. Government protections required for American health cartels cost a fortune. It's amazing that the less human option is also the less economically sensible. What an amazing scam.
And I think it's nearly universally acknowledged that ceding to the government the power to decide how its individual citizens should live their lives is a terrible idea. If we were talking about almost anything else, there would be an uproar.
Marijuana among many other drugs are illegal in New Zealand with no uproar. How is that different than cigarettes?
If you're saying it's tyranny to prevent people from taking actions, that the majority feel shouldn't be allowed, that drive up healthcare costs then that's one thing. However if your position on this is based on a liberal ideal of people being allowed to do what they want, then it should surely equally apply to the taxpayers (particularly if they are majority voters) who don't want to pay for the decisions of others. Either way that is government intervention restricting individuals freedom.
I think it's not right to say "the governments money" as if an administrative body that is beholden to the voters has true autonomy over how it's spent - that is the populations money and should be their choice on how it's spent. One can argue it's immoral to refuse migrants access to the country and healthcare but that isn't accepted as justification for open borders. I also don't understand, assuming cigarettes are some special case different than immigration where morality should trump democracy, why it's more valid to say this taxpayer control over how their money is spent should be restricted based on your moral judgement compared to someone else's moral judgement who's claim is cigarettes are immoral (for whatever their chosen reason).
The claim of smokers dying younger and therefore costing less is something I didn't consider and is an interesting point (that very well could prove true). But even if you discredit the taxpayer funded health argument, there's moral arguments around selling addictive substances, human pain caused by premature death and sickness etc. that could just as readily be made as any argument based around individual freedoms. Why should your claims on what's moral have precedence over someone else's?
This is a dumb comment, to millions even being allowed in school is a privilege. source