Annoying Connoisseurs Make Things Better for the Rest of Us You may not like coffee guys but you like the coffee, guys. What happened? Snobs happened. Nerds happened. Connoisseurs happened. For good and for bad. Here are two ways to think about it. (Freddie deBoer)
A telecom giant's secret world of low-income housing Eviction warnings, poverty and how wealthy firms quietly control swaths of affordable housing in the Halifax area (CBC)
Liberal budget underestimates size of federal deficits, will lead to decades of higher debt: PBO The Liberal government’s 2021 budget underestimates the likely size of federal deficits by about $5.6-billion a year and puts Ottawa on a long-term path of higher debt, says Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux. (Globe and Mail)
Red-hot lumber prices ease pressure on Trudeau to reach softwood deal with U.S. In the two decades until 2020, Canadian forest companies shed capacity and jobs faster than a champion lumberjack could saw through a sturdy Western white pine. Once the country’s dominant resource industry, the forest products sector shrank dramatically as newsprint consumption crumbled and the 2008 U.S. housing crash took a chainsaw to lumber prices. (Globe and Mail)
The Chip Shortage Keeps Getting Worse. Why Can’t We Just Make More? Shortages of semiconductors are battering automakers and tech giants, raising alarm bells from Washington to Brussels to Beijing. The crunch has raised a fundamental question for policymakers, customers and investors: Why can’t we just make more chips? There is both a simple answer and a complicated one. The simple version is that making chips is incredibly difficult—and getting tougher. The more complicated answer is that it takes years to build semiconductor fabrication facilities and billions of dollars. (Bloomberg)
How Covid Has Reshaped Real Estate From New York to Singapore The retreat from major cities has been the pandemic’s big real-estate story — but that doesn’t mean metropolitan house prices have suddenly got cheap. From New York to London to Sydney, ultra-low interest rates and vast government fiscal support have limited distressed sales. Still, apartment rents have plummeted and suburban bidding wars have erupted as millions of workers have learned they can work from anywhere. (Bloomberg)
Everyone wants to buy a home. That means you might end up renting one. Most recently, the pandemic and the premium that it put on private indoor and outdoor space has driven demand and prices. But like many things, this was an existing trend that the pandemic merely accelerated, and it has its roots in a confluence of factors, from an aging millennial population to an influx of private equity. The home sales boom means you might end up renting America’s high home prices could turn us into a nation of renters. (Vox)
China Is a Paper Dragon: China’s language and behavior is assertive and provocative, for sure. China’s power is rising, yes. Its behavior at home and abroad is becoming more oppressive and more brutal; that’s also tragically true. But as Americans muster the courage and will to face Chinese realities, that reckoning needs also to appreciate the tremendous capabilities of this country, and the very real limits besetting China: a fast-aging population, massive internal indebtedness, and a regime whose worsening repression suggests its declining popularity. U.S. policy makers should look to the future with a little more confidence and a lot more trust in trade, markets, and the superior potential of a free people. (The Atlantic)
100 Best Sitcoms of All Time From family stories to band-of-misfits hangouts, classic rom-coms to workplace mockumentaries, cringe comedies to antihero showcases, and some shows that defy definition, these are the hundred series that have made us laugh, think, occasionally cry, and laugh all over again. (Rolling Stone)
Supportive housing at Mount Edwards has not destroyed its neighbourhood, four years later As plans are implemented across the CRD to house people, can the integration of Mount Edwards be used as a template? (Capital Daily)
Finding it Hard to Hire? Try Raising Your Wages Capitalism is an excellent system for creating wealth and getting products and services to where they are most wanted/needed; however, in its unfettered form, it also gave us child labor and slavery. Hence, this is not a market failure, but rather, what we are witnessing is the failure of the political and regulatory systems to create the appropriate minimum wage. Once they do, Capital will become more efficient, Businesses will innovate, automate, and find mays to make higher wages work. So too will Labor adapt — becoming more productive, better educated and more skillful over time. Wages have lagged just about every measure over the past 40 years: CPI Inflation, Health care ands education costs, productivity, corporate profits, C Suite compensation, even the number of billionaires seems to be growing faster than wager. Want to hire qualified candidates who will fill jobs, generate revenue, create profits, and lower your overall cost structure? Perhaps you should consider offering higher starting wages.
