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this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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It's not the money, it's the cost of labor and materials driving up costs. I paid under 200k for my house just 6 years ago. You can't even buy the raw materials to build a similar sized house for that.
So it's the money then...
It's not the lack of money. raising taxes wont lower the cost of raw materials.
But we'd have money to pay for those raw materials.
The article is about affordable housing, not subsidized housing. If it costs 300K to build a house these days the builder is going to try to sell it for more than that.
Ok then raise waiges so that 300k house is affordable.
It's all about money.
Feel free to make yourself more valuable to demand higher wages. That's what most of us homeowners have done. Raising the minimum wage from $15 to $20 isn't going to help anyone buy a 300K house.
So because I don't have a skill you deem valuable I must starve and labor for the rest of my life just to survive?
The median wage in Canada (https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/foreign-workers/median-wage.html) (54k /year pre taxed in ON 42k /year post tax) bairly covers basic cost of living (https://www.savvynewcanadians.com/cost-of-living-canada/) (31k /year though this could be higher based on city,and I don't know how much to trust this source, though it seems accurate based on my expenses).
Rather than focusing on yourself, if you raise everyone else up, making living easier for all, you too will benefit from it. (Infrastructure, social security, public transportation....)
You can do whatever you want. If you want to wait for a mandated higher minimum wage, yeah you are going to labor just to survive for your entire life.
It's not about mandated wage increases, it's about people like you and me running or voting for representatives that will pass bills that over all decrease the gap between cost of living and income. This can be achieved through many avenues, wether through taxation, regulation, or subsidies.
Taxing the rich will increase tax revenue that can be used to subside material costs of a house (there for decreasing building costs). Charging higher taxes for non primary residents and or corporate purchases will reduce the cost of homes, allowing those who need a roof over their head opportunity to buy, rather than tho who just wanna pad their portfolio.
Regulating the pay gape between the highest and lowest payed employees (including stock options) will increase overall wages for all (except the few that already make more than their worth), making a 300k house affordable.
I guess I just don't have faith in government solving problems and wouldn't want to get other people's hopes up.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
You are a more generous person than me. Government officials do nothing, but I'm hesitant to call them "good".
Then government should be the builder.
Not everything needs to whored out to the private sector.
Because government run projects are well known for being cost effective and cheaper than private sector?
Actually, yes. They can be.
Much of the overrun that you hear of in, eg, the US and Canada is because of cost-plus contracts negotiated with the private sector. It's been a very, very long since we've seen purely public offerings.
I'd also challenge someone who says "the private sector is more effective". I get the impression they've never worked at private company larger than a neighbourhood coffee shop. I've worked a F50 companies; trust me, they can piss money away and blow through deadlines like it's nobody's business. Try to do an ERP conversion some day.
Also to tack on, you only hear about the projects that blow their budget, because they are the problem projects. You don't hear about the ≈75% of projects that come in "on time*" and under budget, because that's the baseline of what is expected.
*For varying definitions of "on time."
I don't know what a ERP conversion is but it sounds yucky. I double my fee when contracting designs for the government, and engineers who can't cut it end up taking government jobs. Unless the entire culture of government workers change, in my opinion, you have described a fever dream.