Comments by "TheSuperappelflap" (@TheSuperappelflap) on "Why California Has So Many Problems" video.

  1. Funny, I live in the Netherlands and our housing market has the exact same problems. And the government response is almost exactly the same. They keep spouting rhetoric about building more housing. We have 8 million homes for 18 million people. Thats 2,25 person per home, and most of those homes are single family houses that can easily house 4 people. Lack of housing is not the problem. Neoliberal government deregulating the housing market, reducing what in America would be section 8 subsidized housing for the poor, international investment mainly from other EU countries, and the government selling out to the private sector, with local governments preferring to sell plots of land to real estate developers that build 600K+ each luxury apartment complexes and villas to get a bigger profit margin instead of building affordable housing, are some of the problems I can name. Oh and besides the foreign investors, guess who owns most of our real estate? The banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and of course old money. They are now talking about changing laws to force farmers to sell their land to build more villas for the rich and powerful to buy so that we peasants can pay rent for the rest of our lives. Im emigrating.
    10
  2. I dont want more apartments around my house either, Im already surrounded by them and it ruins the view and small town atmosphere. And the traffic has gotten much worse. Traffic jams in and out of town every day. The government didnt build more roads when they approved those apartment complexes. They didnt build more parking either. I dont own a car, but when people come over, they cant even park near my house. The problem isnt that there arent enough apartment complexes. The problem is overpopulation, and lack of utilization of single family homes. Most houses that can house 4 people have 1 or 2 people in them because people dont live together anymore.
    4
  3. "5 roommates" "want to work in entertainment" "we understand its expensive" yeah no shit you have 5 roommates and you could have a 4 bedroom house to yourself in ID. but i guess you really dont like farm life so you do you. i know what i'd pick though if i was unlucky enough to be born in america.
    3
  4.  @wreckim  I guess its great, if you are rich and you dont give a shit about other people while professing to be social, progressive and liberal. me personally, i wouldnt be able to look in the mirror or sleep at night if i said i liked living in a place like that. and sadly, i do live in a place much like california. unlike you though, im getting the fuck out asap.
    2
  5. My grandparents bought a house for the equivalent of around 10 to 15 thousand USD in the 60s. It is currently worth about 400K USD equivalent. Welcome to Holland. You Americans think you have it so bad, you dont know shit, its gonna get much worse.
    1
  6. The real problem is the geography. Its simply not economically feasible to go and live in a place that is in the middle of nowhere globally, is extremely expensive to import or export anything to, has an arid climate and rapidly dwindling aquifers due to overly intensive farming, and doesnt have much to redeem it in terms of natural resources now that the gold and oil have mostly dried up. If I import something from the east coast of the USA to Europe its already very expensive. And thats not on me because I can literally see the smoke from the largest harbour on the continent from my house. Importing something from the west coast of the USA would be even more expensive. Importing something from China costs me 1 euro in shipping compared to the 20 to 50 euro it costs to import a single item from the States. To make California work it would need to become an autarky that is completely capable of supplying its own needs, without relying on global trade, because you cant compete in that market. That would mean being self sufficient in production of water, food, electricity, fuel, clothes, etc. I dont think its going to work. As a side note, American states are far more integrated than European states. Theyre not comparable. European countries are basically sovereign nations, except we have 1 European parliament that makes laws and policies that nations implement on either a voluntarily or obligatory basis, depending on the type of regulation. And there is a supreme court that can overrule national courts in case the EU laws are being violated, or human rights are being violated, or in cases of corruption and unfair competition through illegal tax exemptions, and technical stuff like that. Oh, and we have the European central bank that sets rent targets for banks. Now, I know those things also apply to the US, except for the human rights part because you guys dont recognize those, but your states have far more integration than that. Each of these nations in Europe has their own army, their own foreign policy, and their own completely independent finance ministries. If France wants to bomb Syria, or fuck around with economic policies in Africa, they dont need permission from the EU government to do that. If some country wants to implement disastrous fiscal policies that destroy their economy for decades to come (looking at you Greece) there is no mechanism to reign in control until they default on their loans and the wealthy northern nations have to bail them out. We dont have an FBI or CIA that is a federal organisation, each country has its own national police force and intelligence agencies, which cooperate, or dont, at their own leasure. You could say Interpol would be our equivalent to the FBI but Interpol is a global organisation, not a European one. States in the EU are also allowed to secede at will, as the UK has recently done. States are also free to have their own currency or join the euro. We have always had our own independent electricity and fuel production and only recently have started to integrate our grids so that we can use solar power from Spain when the sun is shining there and hydro power from Norway when the snow melts. And you cant ignore the language issue, every EU decree has to be published in something like 28 officially recognized languages, and nobody wants to switch their entire culture and education system to English, except for the Dutch of course, because we were already doing that anyway to increase access to international markets and increase appeal for our universities and companies for English speakers. The federal government in the USA has far more control over the states, or to put it in other terms, states rights in Europe are far less limited than in the US. We just got around to implementing a federal border control agency because the boat "refugee" thing is getting out of hand. And people are talking about integrating into one European army, one finance ministry and one foreign affairs ministry. But so far the people advocating for this are a progressive minority, and the majority of people in each member state is conservative about further integration. In order to justify further integration, a referendum would need to be held in each state so that people can vote on the matter, and so far every time there is such a vote, the answer is basically: "No, thanks, and leave us alone". Its been tried multiple times. Whereas in the US, the country is set up from the start as a federal state and not as a collective of federal states.
    1
  7. It doesnt mean shit if tech multinationals are headquartered in your state if they dont pay taxes and most of their workers are remote, probably not even based in the US, and not paying income tax there either.
    1
  8.  crowmob-yo6ry  unfair? you dragged the world into am economic crisis in 08 that cost my family hundreds of thousands because of your failure to regulate your financial industry. you dragged my country into iraq and afghanistan into two illegal wars that caused decades of destruction and misery as well as many lives of our soldiers. even today your country is causing immense harm to european society. our hatred is anything but unfair. the marshall plan was several generations ago. you have done nothing but harm here my lifetime.
    1
  9. Because you were. The USA is the only western country that I would describe as third world.
    1
  10. Correction about Scotland: Scotland is the only state in the UK that has a net export surplus. The only reason that it receives more from the English treasury than it pays in taxes, is that the English treasury prints money and runs at a massive deficit. They would literally be better off alone, their country could actually be profitable, and England never will be.
    1
  11. my man actually went with "the ends justify the means"
    1
  12. Another correction, when accounting for GDP (PPP) the EU is actually a larger economy than the US, second after China. Which makes sense because we have 100 million more people and most countries here have a higher standard of living than most states in the US. The US GDP without accounting for PPP is massively inflated for many economic reasons that would be a nice topic for a video.
    1
  13. Yes, gated communities and private security companies.
    1
  14.  @saelkyl  Incorrect. What you’re saying is the official government narrative. In reality most of the nitrogen comes from pig farms, not from cows. But the government wants to pass laws enabling them to force farmers to sell their land so they can sell it to housing project developers. Pig farms don’t take up a lot of land. Cow farms do. That’s why those farmers are being targeted. It’s always about the money.
    1