Let's talk about dogs. You want to raise your kid to not be terrified of dogs, but dogs kill and main a lot of kids every year. So you have two choices. First, any time a dog comes near your kid, you can shout, "Stay away from that dog! They're dangerous and could kill you!" Or you could explain to them that dogs can be dangerous. They're tough, they have sharp teeth and strong jaws, and some are taught to be particularly dangerous for a variety of reasons. You should be wary when you meet a new dog, and should watch for signs that the dog is friendly or not, and approach it in stages if you want to be friends with it, while being wary that things can change quickly.
One says all dogs are bad, the other says any dog could be bad, and you shouldn't assume differently before they make their intentions clear. One demonizes dogs, the other promotes due caution. Neither one gives the dog the benefit of the doubt, but one does leave the door open for the dog to be friendly.
Your statement makes no sense. Think of the classical personal rights metaphor, “Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.” In more abstract terms, your rights should be uninpinged until such point that they impinge on my rights, premised by the agreement that our rights are equal otherwise.
Now let’s look at state’s rights. If state’s are required to allow slavery, that is giving more rights to the states that have slavery than it is to the states that don’t. If slavery are required to not allow slavery, that is giving more rights to the states that don’t have slavery. The stance that best reflects state’s rights as being equal unless they impinge on the other states is to allow those who want slavery to have it and to allow those states that don’t want slavery to abolish it. From a practical standpoint, that also means that bringing your slaves to a state that abolishes slavery frees them, otherwise the laws from your state have greater authority than the laws of the state you are actually operating in, which doesn’t meet the basis of equal unless they impinge. That also means if your slaves escape to a free state, it is your responsibility and not the free state’s to stop them from entering that state, and certainly returning them isn’t an obligation since that would violate their law that no person can be enslaved.
As has been pointed out previously, this was the state of things until a federal law was enacted to reduce the rights of the states who opposed slavery, which wasn’t enforced adequately (in the opinion of the slave-holding states).
So, if you want to use the fig leaf of the Civil War being about state’s rights, then the only way that makes sense is if the seceeding states wanted states to have fewer rights, not more. Of course, there is also the option of denying reality and saying whatever makes you feel best, facts and logic be damned.
I’m not sure where you think the money goes, but buying munitions from American companies and shipping them elsewhere doesn’t take money out of the country. Moreover, this is probably a handy way to get rid of old military stockpiles. “Here, have these last-gen rockets. They cost $x. Meanwhile, we will buy current-gen rockets for $x for ourselves. And now we can (rightly) say we donated $x to the war.”
Whoops, didn’t see this was for Israel. While I don’t agree with their stance, the financial principles still apply.
There are three mistakes you’re making in those two statements, and an indication that you made a fourth.
What makes you think false advertising or doctoring food with cheap filler is an exclusively American thing? I gave two before, here’s another that is both more recent and not in America: Chinese Milk Scandal.
Why would you assume the people buying bread with sawdust knew it had sawdust in it? Do you suppose it was listed in the ingredients, or do you imagine the people who are buying the cheapest bread they can find have the time, means, or knowledge to determine their food is in fact doctored?
You pose questions like it’s unlikely that something would ever happen when being provided with knowledge that that thing did in fact happen. At this point I can only assume you’re trolling or willfully ignorant.
They were the people who said you couldn’t sell bread with sawdust in it, or lie about your bread having sawdust in it. Which is what America dealt with before regulations.
Other fun considerations are things like phossy jaw, a fatal condition caused by companies forgoing safety at a cost of 1% of their revenue, until regulations were imposed.
Certainly, there is a such thing as too much regulation, but too little is also demonstrably bad.
I have rarely seen deregulation where money is to be made working out well for the average person. Feel free to look up the history of the FDA for a taste of what unregulated markets can look like. That said, yes, changing regulations for urban planning will be necessary to have a meaningful impact on the housing problem, and yes, most politicians have very good financial reasons to not let that happen.
For as long as I’ve been alive, one of the lines I’ve heard is that real estate is always a sound investment. There have also been land taxes for that entire time, most of them being land value taxes. The evidence suggests that the most common form of land value tax, which does not consider how many residential properties an entity owns, is not doing much, if anything, to disincentivize purchasing residential properties as an investment.
I’m sorry, I misread your post, and completely missed the last line (it was a long day). I thought you were arguing against this suggestion.
I agree, taxes aren’t a huge part of the solution, and incentivizing high-density housing (as well as making them more palatable)is a bigger part of it.
This is basic economics, supply and demand. Reducing demand will affect prices, and incentivizing not having vacant properties will increase supply.
This is not the complete solution, but it will have some effect. And thinking there is a single complete solution is as wrong as thinking that the suggestions in this article are that complete solution.