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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I see your confusion. They could have worded this better, but it’s two grants being split between eight nonprofit financial institutions. My understanding is these entities will lend that money to communities to do ongoing infrastructure projects. The goal is “turning $20 billion of public funds into $150 billion of public and private investment to maximize the impact of public funds.” I don’t know how that part works exactly, but to me that doesn’t sound like a handout. Of course I would hope they would be held responsible for any mismanagement.

    As for why they need to create a financial nework to do this: These kinds of projects can take many years and sometimes need ongoing financing. Apparently, when Obama tried to fund something like this, there was a lending bottleneck where I guess banks didn’t want to finance community infrastructure projects or something, so a lot of the funding just sat there until the grants expired. This is supposed to prevent that from happening.






  • If they know how many years they’ll hold the rights, that information should be given to the consumer, i.e., “you will have access to this media product for at least N years.” Then the consumer can make an informed decision (is $24.99 worth it to own a movie for 6 years? Etc). Otherwise it’s just a gamble. Everything else you can rent (cars, tools, equipment, venues, clothing, dumpsters) comes with very clear temporal terms. Imagine if rental car companies could remotely brick your rental car halfway through your vacation.



  • The earth is flat.

    If no one contradicts that statement or downvotes me or anything, someone might later come along and read it and believe it just because no one else disagreed. There are a lot of people who haven’t had a great education or don’t have critical thinking skills, or are actual children. When people just make claims with no discussion of the merit of those claims, how can the less educated figure out they’re not true? After all, if the host invited this hypothetical flat earther to be on their show, there must be something legit about them, right? They don’t just invite any rando person off the street onto their show, do they?


  • Just a PSA, the IRS recently instituted some kind of AI algorithm that is re-flagging a lot of things that have already been resolved… a friend got a bill for $1500 which they had earlier sent a letter of apology for. He doesn’t actually owe anything, it’s just the glitchy algorithm sending the old bill out again.

    If you don’t understand why you owe more, don’t just give up and pay it. The IRS can make mistakes too.





  • The thing is, whether or not an agent is a member of NAR, commissions have always been negotiable (maybe the real problem is that sellers don’t know this and don’t try to haggle). Agents could always choose to take less commission if they wanted to. But would you voluntarily take lower pay for no particular reason?

    This “agents can now charge less in commissions” is BS because they always could. It changes nothing.


  • An enormous chunk of housing sits unused and empty because real estate speculators want to rent them out at exorbitant prices rather than use it for it’s intended purpose of having a roof over people’s heads.

    If they are renting it out at exorbitant prices, then it’s not empty. If it’s empty, then they get zero money. You’re saying it’s both, which makes no sense. Interest rates and property taxes are both high right now. It costs investors money to hold empty property without renting it out. They don’t have to wait for people to pay inflated prices. The demand is already there.

    I’m all for more regulation, especially for developers and investors. Stiupulate that at least 50% of all new housing built be affordable. Give incentives to rehab old condemned properties. And stop letting AI algorithms determine rental prices.