I’d be wary of calling him guilty by association. Maybe when he realized who he was really hanging out with he was so horrified and disgusted that he just had to get involved and do something to fight back?

It’s governments that are responsible for a lack of housing: local governments through zoning policy. The homeowners in a given city are politically engaged and they vote to protect their own investment in real estate. Call it NIMBYism if you like but homeowners are never going to voluntarily agree to have their house go down in price. Doing so could put their mortgage underwater and result in losing their home and becoming homeless.

Japan does not have this issue to nearly the same extent because they have structured their governments differently. Zoning laws are set by the national government, not the local one, so problems like this can (and have been) set at the national level.

For other countries to solve their housing problem Japan style would require the national government to take power away from the local governments (and in the case of the US, this would put the federal government in a fight with state governments). It would be an extremely messy fight and probably not work out.

That’s legit though. I’m talking about the people who buy jeans that are pre-worn, with big holes and cuts in them from the store!

You can sell out on anything, no matter how unpopular it is, if you don’t make enough of them. How many of these things did they actually make?

I think most of those voters vote based on who they identify with, not based on policy arguments. Trying to sway those voters with better messaging is a lost cause if they see your candidate as a career politician whom they cannot relate to.

Some other thoughts: a lot of people talking about ignorant voters but not much said about the disastrous state of education in the US, the lack of affordability, nor the ill-preparedness for work of degree-holders. Countless people in the US have degrees that don’t fit their job!

Yeah I don’t understand shabby fashion at all. I mean if I’m wearing clothing that’s full of holes it’s because I’m too cheap and lazy to buy new clothes.

The situation isn’t comparable. The majority of Jews in Israel are not European (or from anywhere else), they’re native Israeli and they trace their roots to Israel back for millennia.

The problem is not that Israelis want to live there. They have a right to live there. The problem is that they’re depriving Palestinians of their right to live there instead of seeking peaceful coexistence.

Yeah honestly. The Google ad-based search system created a set of incentives that just destroyed the internet! I miss the days when people created their own fun little quirky websites like Ian’s Shoelace Site. That used to be every site on the internet!

It’s called Plenty of Fish! I thought it was a fishing site?!