Remember now, it's the GOP that's moved to the fringe

Swaye said:

UW_Doog_Bot said:

Swaye said:

GreenRiverGatorz said:

UW_Doog_Bot said:

creepycoug said:

SFGbob said:

UW_Doog_Bot said:

The dems spent 20 yrs radicalizing a generation by indoctrination in the public school system. That generation is now going to eat them.

I think one of the things pushing young folks to the left has been the cost of college and the debt many of these kids are incurring from their school expenses.

But you have to ask, who is running the schools? Who is making college so expensive? What is making housing so expensive in liberal run cities and states? It's not conservatives or conservative policies.

College Expense: I don't know for certain, but I've asked the same thing. I'm aware of a few things that must be drivers. For instance, most faculty get some kind of pension and they tend to have good healthcare coverage. Pensions, as even profitable corporations have found, are expensive af - a promise most wished they'd never made (see the many 8-K filings out there reporting pension transfer transactions numbering in the billions of $). Healthcare is everybody's million $ question. Professors don't make much money relative to their options, and so it seems these benefits have settled in as strongly market driven. It is a long and hard road to get a PhD, and not everyone has what it takes. These people tend to be expensive labor. The other thing that makes it expensive is the government and all the other sources of free money. Not everyone should or needs to go to college. Take the free money out of the equation, and I suspect the price would drop.

Liberal Run Cities: Again, I'm not the expert. But I would surmise that's it's almost entirely driven by good old fashioned supply and demand dynamics. SF, Seattle, Chicago, DC, Boston, Austin, LA, etc. are money towns. Commerce, capital formation, demand for expensive talent, etc. ... these things happen in those cities to a greater extent than they do elsewhere. I just got back from Indianapolis. Not as much going on there as there is here in Seattle, for example. I'm sure the liberal city councils and the extra taxes and fees and bullshit contribute to the expense, but I'm guessing it's a drop in the bucket relative to the main driver.

This, you can line up the surge in educational costs with the surge in federal money and student loans. Most of it has gone to administration. That's what happens when the government gets in business.

I actually think the driver for city pricing is just good old fashioned NIMBY-ism which spans both left and right. Cities where the supply of housing can't get built to accommodate the increase in demand have increasing prices. Everyone is for affordable housing when they are renting and against development once they own property.

Absolutely. Another thing that gets overlooked is the cultural shift to the city. Young, up and coming millenials and Gen Z'ers are choosing to spend their money to live in cities. I'm generalizing heavily, but wealthy boomers in contrast flocked to the suburbs, leaving the cities to stay relatively ungentrified and affordable. Seattle itself is a microcosm of this. If Microsoft were starting today, they wouldn't put their HQ in a sleepy Seattle suburb, they'd pull an Amazon and build their own urban neighborhood.

Agree hard in DC. In my day, ILTCIMD, when you hit it big and got your first good paying job in your late 20's to early 30's, you headed for a nice 3K square foot house in the burbs so your new wife could schlep the kids (in a few years when they got old enough) to idyllic soccer fields in whatever SUV was cool and you could maintain your lawn and chat with neighbors over a beer with nary the sound of a car horn or ambulance for miles and miles in any direction. This was only 20 years ago.

Now, all the mid 20's to early 30's people I work with who are earning good coin are putting huge down payments on brick front townhouses right in the thick of the city in Alexandria, Arlington, Dupont Circle and the better areas of DC. The thought of living in the suburbs is like dying to them. They are sending their kids to overcrowded schools, and listening to traffic and ambulances all day and night with nary a yard to manicure in sight. This, to them, is nirvana. They live two blocks from a Crossfit Gym, one block from a Starbucks, and right next door to a Trader Joe's. Them and 15,000 other people in a 6 block radius. Pure millennial bliss.

Fucking weird how much this shit has changed.

Weird how black flight can make whyte peeple comfortable in cities again.

No but seriously, urban crime being way fucking down has yugely helped gentrification occur.

You are probably right. I live out near horse farms. As far from all that shit in the city as possible. It is dumbfounding to me people would want to raise kids in the city. "Look little Katie, that homeless man is pissing on the street right in front of us. That's called a penis Katie. Isn't taking in all this plight great Katie?"

At the same time, they think I am a lunatic for wanting to hear nothing outside. Nothing at all but birds and the occasional rabbit hopping across the back 40. Before I shoot it.