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Housing standards should be negotiated between landlord and tenant, no zoning, density, or unrelated occupancy laws are needed and the ones we have only contribute to further homelessness and other manifestations of human need.
Exactly! Do you know how many homeowners with a basement or a garage (in an underwater house) could use the extra income from renting that space? Talk about creating homes for the homeless instantly.
I live in an area where just one block east, the city of Gardena rezoned all the R-1s to R-3s. In less than 20 years nearly all of those former dumps were transformed into modern rental units. On the "nicer side" of town, one block west in Torrance, all the homes are still 50s style boxes with bad stucco. It's living proof that current zoning laws are stuck in the post war era and need to be changed/loosened.
There are some great creative zoning going on. Those old style walk-ups over a commercial space is a fantastic way of making use of square footage, cheaply.
It was never designed to support a family, but more and more people are trying to support families on minimum wage jobs, due largely to economic decline and downward mobility, which this country is showing itself incapable to coping with intelligently. It seems obvious to me that the solution lies not in artificially mandating a higher minimum wage, but in reducing the excessive regulation which makes the existing minimum wage so hard to live on.
Is there a limit to what a corporation or a mom and pop business should be expected to pay employees?
Can We Pay a Minimum Wage That Makes Everyone Rich? - Bloomberg
Last week, fast-food workers staged a one-day strike in 60 U.S. cities to demand a minimum wage of $15 an hour, more than double the current federal minimum of $7.25. The nationwide effort, “Fight for 15,” was organized by the Service Employees International Union.
I think $15 per hour is reasonable, but the economic shock to the system would be a problem.
One of the few issues I'm very non-Libertarian on is this: Laissez-faire capitalism does not work. It's certainly a bad thing for government to get over-involved in how businesses do what they do, but zero government regulation leads to terrible things and we've already seen it back in the Industrial Revolution. People working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week all for crappy pay that was only enough to live on if everyone in the family worked. No breaks or lunches. Businesses locking the doors to make sure everyone keeps working.
I would take the current value of $15 per hour and tie it directly to inflation. Spend the next 10 to 15 years gradually getting minimum wage up to that $15 per hour rate, then just leave it tied to inflation. That's enough money to actually live on. You can't actually survive on minimum wage right now and with added taxes and expenses for everything under the sun, the current minimum wage just doesn't cut anymore.
The nice thing about tying it all to inflation: You don't have to keep going to war in Congress trying to figure out how much it costs to live, if minimum wage should be enough to live on, etc. It would more or less take care of itself. And instead of needing to subsidize people working for minimum wage, they could just take care of themselves. The government wastes the money tagged for welfare like crazy. Better to just put the money in the pockets of the people and let them take care of themselves IMHO. Enough of all the hundred and one ways of getting government subsidies. Give the people enough money to do it for themselves and start getting rid of all the wasteful government programs.
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