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evancox100

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As a US worker that regularly interfaces with colleagues in various EU/UK sites, I am not at all surprised by the discrepancy.

Edit: Elaborating… in my experience entire countries will be on holiday for up to a month at a time, while the US offices are chugging along. (And this by and large isn’t true the opposite direction, except for Thanksgiving week.)

I’m not saying it is good or bad either way, but the US prioritizes work far more than other OECD / developed countries.

I mean, the actual material living conditions in the West Bank might be better, but don’t the Gazans at least have some form of sovereignty over their land? My understanding is that there is no real independent West Bank Palestinian government that exercises security over the land and the people on it. At least not in favor of the Palestinians.

If Heinz is the only supplier of baked beans, that is literally just a monopoly. In that case you have a monopoly problem, not an inflation problem.

Do you all not have private label brands? I’ve never been in a UK grocery store but it is hard for me to fathom that you would only have one brand of baked beans, given it is a food regularly consumed in the UK (or so I’m led to understand by the abomination that is beans and toast).

Why would they have offered him ANY deal? (Do we know they did?) All the co-conspirators agreed to testify, and it was a slam dunk case. He could have plead guilty of his own conscience, of course, but no reason for the prosecution to offer any incentives in this case.

The appearance of figure 1 is due to the majority of counties being at / near sea level. Suppose we take as true that there is a direct link between altitude and some other phenomenon, for example rates of altitude sickness. If 90% of the counties are near sea level, with some variation, you would only see increased altitude sickness in the 10% highest counties. The graph would look similar to what you see here.

I certainly agree that Boston and Massachusetts should reduce, or ideally eliminate, their restrictions on what housing can be built and where.

The benefit of doing that instead is it would help approximately 1000 times the number of people than raising Harvard grad student pay would.

It's worth noting that Harvard grad students are the ones getting attention here, and not the average person getting squeezed by rent. Are you going to whack-a-mole every single employer in the Boston MSA to pay at least $60k? Even if you did this, the increased pay would just go to inflated housing costs.

The underlying problem is a scarcity of housing, you can't fix that by giving people (in aggregate) more money. It will just bid up the cost of the scarce good.

And none of this really affects whether or not grad students should be encouraged to apply for whatever government benefits they are eligible for. Harvard doesn't control where the federal government sets the income cutoffs for benefits.

Nevertheless I'm sure highlighting this is a good way to grab attention.

There are a lot of comparisons to Walmart having employees on food stamps, but I think it's worth pointing out that if you are paying federal minimum wage $7.25/hour, that is just $15,080 annually at 40 hours / week * 52 weeks. It is quite shockingly low.

Harvard's minimum pay is almost 3x that amount. If we assume a 40 hour work week, it comes out to $19.23/hour. That is well within the range for what most advocacy groups are calling a living wage. For example, this site pegs it at $18/hour for Suffolk county in Massachusetts: https://livingwageforus.org/tier-i-certification/

Why is it disgusting? Do you think Harvard should tell them NOT to apply for food stamps?

At the current minimum annual salary of $40k, a single student wouldn't be eligible for SNAP amyways, the income threshold for a household size of 1 is $29,160.

You'd need a household size of at least 3 to be eligible, with total household income under $49k. So you, a spouse and 1 child, or you and two children, etc.

That may be the case, but just as an example, elite progressive opinion seems to have shifted to a nonsensical "pro-gun control, anti-arresting people for gun crimes".

? I was just responding to the immediate reply that I wouldn't feel the same if the government had done something traumatic to me, when actually they have and I do. My past trauma is not justifying anything, but it does inform my thinking.

I am anti-cruelty and suffering, but it is not always cruel to force someone to do something they don't want to do, and it is not always kind to give them what they want.

If the choice is between them getting back on their feet but having to put the dog up for adoption (which is what I meant, not executing the dog on the spot), vs being stuck indefinitely homeless, I know which one I'm picking.

And again, I don't think "dogs" are the main impediment to homeless rehabilitation, the whole discussion is a sideshow. It was an illustrative example about well meaning intentions gone awry.

You're making a lot of assumptions about what traumatic situations I may or may not have been in. Maybe it is because I have been through some shit that I realize sometimes we have to do "mean" things to people, sometimes for their own good but often for the good of those around them.

> application of coercive force (which is what makes a government a government) must be avoided at any and all cost

I think this statement is eminently reasonable. Although a monopoly on coercive force is one important defining feature of government, I think it's desirable to have its minimization as the highest priority. Moreover, I think in the US our baseline for appropriate levels of coercive force is far too high.

Agree to disagree. I think coercive force should applied where appropriate, not avoided at any and all cost (a very strong qualifier). For instance, releasing defendants with GPS monitors prior to trial, and then arresting them and holding them in jail if they violate the terms of the release.

Meanwhile, coercive force in the form of escalating fines and, eventually, imprisonment, is applied to people who would dare to build apartments on their own land and then rent them to others. Where is the outcry over that? It is truly a tragedy of our own making.

For real though, if you are reading this, are a YIMBY, and are a person of means, why not try to generate a test case for this? Have someone set up a tent encampment on their own private lot and force the case. How can it possibly be legal to set up a tent in a public right of way, and not on your own property?