To be fair, before Trump took over the party, the Republicans were generally considered to be in a death spiral.

The prevailing idea was that the party just didn’t have a future. Their brand was this basically an unappealing mix of boring religious people and self-professed ‘sensible’, common-sense stewards of the status quo. Looking at demographic trends at the time, they were trending towards irrelevance.

Then Trump took over and brought back the enthusiasm. They also started to court minority votes (Hispanics, Blacks) which tend to be very socially conservative. At the same time, the democrats slipped into the ‘boring status quo protectors’ role.

Hopefully the Dems wake up, but it might take a while.

Politics (especially among republicans) has become a bit religious, so it’s not really THAT different I guess

Just look at history though and you’ll see that most significant changes (both bad and good) happen abruptly and it’s often a bit messy.

Unfortunately it’s just the way that humans work

I don’t know anything about the campaign in Oregon, but most people are scared of things they aren’t familiar with.

Also I’m guessing neither party really supported this much, since they benefit from first-past-the-post.

Status-quo politics is dead, many major western parties just haven’t realized this yet. People want firmer political leadership that promises fundamental change and isn’t afraid of breaking things along the way.

It’s just fucking unfortunate that (in most countries) it’s only the far right who are ahead of the curve at realizing this.

Center to left parties need to reinvent themselves and focus less on pleasing everyone or fighting losing battles. They also need to present a much clearer vision.

Another reason is that Hispanics (like many minorities) are on average both more religious and more socially conservative than the general population.

This is 90% just a proxy for how their parents will vote.

Its only a very small portion of kids that age who are going to have substantially different views than their parents (not that they don’t exist!)

(Most) stocks represent partial ownership (read: control) of a company and most of their value is derived from that.

For an extreme example: if the stock price were to drop below the amount of money that could be made by just selling off all of the assets, then someone would (in principle) just buy all the shares, sell the assets and make a profit.

Each share represents a small bit of control over the company and their assets.

Personally I always always buy phones with two sim slots. It’s super practical if you travel semi-often.

Idk about apple, but basically all of the mid-range androids have this feature. I guess this is about the US though, so it’s probably Apple.

Yeah most of europe is waaaaay better when is comes to mobile plans compared to the US.

I don’t use use that much data, but my 8gb plan is just under €6 per month.

In the US, I had a plan like this for over $30…

I can’t check at the moment, but that sounds like something ‘Simply Perfection’ would be capable of.

It’s essentially an addon specifically for tweaking the appearance of gnome stuff.

Nothing is preventing a business from building parking spaces though. It’s just getting rid of the requirement to do so. It’s essentially a free-market approach.

I think there are bigger issues wherever you are, in that there doesn’t seem to be (enforced) parking laws. I see this pretty frequently in the Balkans, for instance.

The issue is basically that a lot of places people have this idea that, just because they own a car, they are entitled to a cheap/free place to park it. That type of incentive just leads to more and more people buying cars (and expecting a cheap place to park them) so it just makes the problem worse.

Trams are the best! I’ll go out of my way to take a tram over a bus any day

They are just so much smoother

It’s not colonialism to prefer one culture (or certain cultural traits) to another. In fact, it’s natural.

I’ve lived in a number of countries and each had their own distinct cultural norms. Each has had aspects which I perceived as either positive or negative.

Add it all together and I definitely have preferred certain cultures, not because they are “better” but because they more closely match my own preferences. Other people would prefer different cultural norms.

IPTV is generally for live TV channels rather than on-demand.

Yeah that’s what I mean… it would be good for society if prices went down, but it would also make a lot of people pissed off, so they intentionally dance around actual solutions in favor of shit like this.

I recently moved to Vienna and don’t qualify for the public housing (you need to have lived here for a certain amount of time)but the sheer amount of it (and relative quality) means that even in the private market, competition is much less.

Compared to other cities we have lived in, the rent is much lower and the quality much higher.

Something like 60% of the population lives in either public or subsidized housing!

It’s the perfect solution for the democrats because it sounds good but also won’t actually cause housing prices to go down, so homeowners won’t feel like they are ‘losing’ money.

Sure, here’s a paper which explores the effects.

Essentially, housing prices have hugely inflated (in much of the developed world) because demand is much higher than supply. Prices in the real-estate market are generally really reactive to changes in supply or demand because each ‘product’ is unique and limited, as well as being worth a lot of money so there is more pressure to maximize the potential gains.

This sort of plan increases the resources available to the demand side without increasing the supply side. This drives up prices since there are more potential buyers.

Anyone who couldn’t buy a house without such a program is being added the the pool of people competing for a limited supply of houses. It won’t increase supply because supply is heavily limited by other factors, most notably zoning.

It’s unfortunate, because the thought behind such a policy is admirable. It’s trying to make buying a house more fair and more easily achievable for a broad segment of the population that currently is effectively shut out from owning a home.

It definitely looks a lot like Toronto, but it’s been a while since I was there