This argument never made sense to me. Why would greedy companies voluntarily pay for something they don’t need just to support some “greater good” of keeping the economy afloat? It means reduced profits yet the “contribution” of each individual company is just drop in the bucket.
I would move as far as possible from the job site. 2 hours one way on a train watching Netflix, 4 hours work, 2 hours relax on the train. That would be nice.
Currently you work 8 hours + 1.5 hours commute. With this you’d work 6.5 hours + 1.5 hour commute, so you’d have 1.5 extra hour for chores or whatever.
If you use train/bus for commuting, you can even sleep there :-)
I would just move temporarily, and after probation period move far away. Surely they can’t fire me because my living situation changed and had to move…
As part of his Labor Day message to workers in the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday re-upped his call for the establishment of a 20% cut to the workweek with no loss in pay—an idea he said is “not radical” given the enormous productivity gains over recent decades that have resulted in massive profits for...
In Europe, 4 weeks is the absolute minimum, many countries have higher mandated minimums and people get often extra on top. There are many things wrong in Europe, but the vacation policy is decent.
I have same kind of reaction, just in the opposite direction. I’m fine with campaigning for higher salaries, I’m fine with campaigning for shorter work week, but I’m allergic to the combination of both, because it’s usually accompanied by claims that the productivity won’t go down as a result, which is simply delusional.
It’s pretty much given that the pension system of many countries will collapse, so young people are paying into a system which they either won’t be able to use or will be heavily disadvantaged. IMHO the pension system should be (at least partially) privatized, but it’s of course too late, damage is done.
Income is taxed too heavily and wealth too little. These days it’s pretty much impossible to buy a house for many families even though the population doesn’t grow and new houses are being built. You can’t amass wealth with work, only woth inheritance.
Some worker protection laws should be weakened, specifically laying off people is often pretty much impossible which makes people allocation inefficient and companies conservative.
I think laws need to be changed to make owning (not building) real estate unattractive as an investment. Something like wealth tax (every year you pay X% of the property value) aimed at real sector specifically, with very progressive structure / exceptions for single homeowners.
That should help in a lot of cases. Then it also depends on the demographic development - many places will actually see drop in the population in the coming decades, that should make housing cheaper. Areas with growing population - there it may not be possible to stop the price increase completely.
The only way I see around this is a really aggressive cap on rent. Like, once a rent is established, it can never be raised, for any reason, ever again
We have something like that in my city. The rents grow, but are bound to the inflation. The dynamic is similar - the old contracts are vastly cheaper than the new contracts. That has several downsides:
young families can’t afford good apartments, since they will need to tap the new-contract market which is expensive
old people have nice large apartments for very little money. Sounds good at first, but then you often have situations where a single 80-year-old has a 100 m^2 apartment in the downtown, while a young 4 member family is in a 60 m^2 while paying more money. Even more perversely, the 80-year-old can’t move out, because even the downsized apartments are more expensive than their old contract.
old contracts become a form of property in itself and are sold on “black market”, inherited etc.
because old contracts are so cheap, they are not let go even if the apartment is not needed at the moment. So apartments are often empty, waiting for the kids to grow up, or used only occasionally (the family has a house outside the city and only occasionally spends time in the city).
you’re heavily disincentivized to move (to be closer to your work, family, get a bigger apartment for growing family etc.) because your old contract would get cancelled, and you will need to get a much more expensive new one
Taxing property doesn’t really work, because landlords just pass those taxes on to their tenants.
Perhaps. But the renting business would get way more risky, since you need to pay those X% of the value whether you have a vacancy or not. I expect this would disincentivize the rental providers and would a) stop buying and b) sell a lot of their properties, both leading to a significant drop of the prices on the market.
Most people are renting housing not because they like the lifestyle, but because they can’t afford to buy their own. If you make buying housing affordable (mortgage is what they pay for rent), then the actual number of people who really need to rent as opposed to own is pretty small and could be covered by some kind of social/city provided housing.
Ok, so the rent goes up by 500, what happens next? The demand is somewhat elastic, so it shrinks, there will be more vacancies which will become deadly to property renters who might prefer to exit the business.
The other thing is that rent is already controlled in many places, so the landlords can’t actually increase it.
[EU] How many months savings do you consider enough?
As the title says I am trying to see where people stand on this. Obviously this is all personal preference. But that is what I am after....
Return to the office? These workers quit instead. ( news.yahoo.com )
And buried in the middle of the article:...
Bosses and workers still can’t agree on whether the commute is part of the work day, and it’s creating a $578 billion productivity problem ( fortune.com )
Wreck the economy because it only works for the billionaire class. ( i.imgur.com )
Bernie Sanders Champions 32-Hour Work Week With No Loss in Pay ( www.commondreams.org )
As part of his Labor Day message to workers in the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday re-upped his call for the establishment of a 20% cut to the workweek with no loss in pay—an idea he said is “not radical” given the enormous productivity gains over recent decades that have resulted in massive profits for...
Do you think we will ever have affordable housing again in our lifetime?
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/3560407...