You might think that but you would be wrong.
What has happened is very limited construction, large population growth and a massive credit expansion, leading to a price spiral. Cost increases in housing almost all exclusively comes from increases in land prices. Building is relatively cheap.
The vast majority are living in housing that was built before the 35 year price rally, not a single subway station has been added during that entire period.
Some people, like my family, have won big and are now (dollar)multimillionaires, due to no effort of our own. Others, like people from out of town or their children are just fucked.
Ioper
1d ago
Inflation adjusted housing costs in Stockholm have risen +500% in the last 30 years, and its not like it was some thirdie shithole before.
Ioper
3d ago
Are they worse off? Queues are certainly good in some situations but I'm not sure that holds true for bus stops.
Ioper
4d ago
Yeah. A few years ago when I was very fit i threw out my lower back not doing dead-lifts but turning over in bed...
I'd like to note that to me this seems like mostly an Anglo problem, and more specifically an American one.
There are well written games and other types of media but they're increasingly, or even generally, produced elsewhere (or by people from elsewhere) despite most games being made in America.
Personally i think it's a combination of a pipeline problem and a cultural problem. Part of the pipeline problem is how much the industry have grown (the quality people are spread too thin) but also the general reputation of the industry. Who with talent and in their right mind would work in gamedev? Especially AAA?
It's kind of similar to online communities, once you reach a scarcity tipping point of quality people then why bother with something that doesn't pay? Especially when you're actively or passively selecting for bad people.
The culture part I'm sure you're all aware of.
Ioper
21d ago
Making up for lost time and brighter expectations of the future I'd imagine.
It's not like the war period was good to Sweden or free of stress and worry, Sweden was both economically depressed and cut off from much trade. It was the post war period with intact industry and great demand for both raw materials and goods that was good.
All status isn't relative to the people around you at a given moment but also to what people have previously experienced. If tides are rising quickly then almost everyone is going to be perceived as higher status than before.
Ioper
24d ago
That's the thing, I don't think it will. The art scene isn't driven by cost or even talent considerations (beyond a certain threshold).
For the things this will be viable for I don't think anyone gives a shit who is doing the composing and it employs a microscopic amount of people.
If you want to look at ai impact on employment i would look at some kind of cost competitive field that actually employs a lot of people, like animation.
I don't know. To me the vast majority of this seems like sarcastic jokes which I perceive as undermining the appeal of Islam to both westerners and middle eastern adherents. It makes islam both less mysterious, less serious and less scary. It isn't great for your religion when people wear it as a costume and make fun of it.
It seems similar to the early stages of how people secularised from Christianity in the west.
We had a major economic crisis in Sweden in the 90s and rebalanced our unsustainable social security system, which was previously thought inconceivable. It wasn't the end of the world. There is still fairly generous social security, pensions, our nation debt is down from 73% to 32% and taxes are down (probably unrealistic for the US...).
It can be done if a crisis gets bad enough, the insanity can stop.
Politicians usually do the right thing as soon as they've explored every other option. Not every country is Argentina.
Ioper
24d ago
The people I know that work in music (I've done so a bit myself too) don't really give a shit.
Composition was already a winner takes it all kind of thing and the vast majority of money is made through live performances. To the extent that this replaces anything I don't know anyone that has gotten paid anything meaningful for creating equivalent (or adjacent) audio slop.
We've talked about this previously but these kinds of jobs are not handed out on a merit or cost basis, and there is already an extreme oversupply of people capable of doing them.
I don't think this changes anything at all, but it is certainly interesting.
To turn it into a source of graft for the Trumps? Use the war to indebt the Ukrainians to his family personally.
He would only be spending American money, not his own, and he'd gain a source of graft as well as regain prestige. Furthermore, money would primarily flow from blue constituents to red ones.
Sounds perfect for Trump.
Scandinavia was horrifically riven by civil war and strife? Are we talking about pre-history here or are you referring to the vikings?
I'm not saying things were completely peaceful or that the people were peaceful but Scandinavia most certainly wasn't horrifically riven by civil war and strife. It was a bit below the norm regionally and mostly engaged in military adventurism and mercenary work elsewhere.
Ioper
21d ago
Everything is relative of course but there was rationing in Sweden during the war, even for basic things like food.
Ioper
1mo ago
The average American is more affluent than the average west European but how much depends on how you define both affluence and western Europe.
The more striking difference is the level of UMC pay, where Americans really and unequivocally are much better off than their European counterparts.
Ioper
1mo ago
Supporting Palestine and hating Palestinians aren't mutually exclusive positions. If I was Egypt and I hated Palestinians I would very much be pro Palestine because that means the Palestinians stay the fuck away and you have somewhere to expel palestinians in your land to.
I've always thought of this as a class issue. The educated class imparts the knowledge of which degrees are ok to their kids while the working class gets taken for a ride by the education industrial complex, ending up with useless or unfinished degrees, a bunch of debt, a sense of failure and missed earnings.
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