LoveCanada @ LoveCanada @lemmy.ca

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Mined diamonds have always been a con job. DeBeers has captured the entire market and the promoted the idea that for some reason a guy should spend about 3 months income to buy a rock that isnt even rare. Heck, there are hundreds of them on drilling bits. But they had effective advertising and there was no competition so they convinced millions of people to shell out big dollars for a very common polished rock. Its about time there was some rationality and people refuse to spend that kind of money anymore.

ps If you want to know the true "value" of a diamond try taking it to a pawn shop. Sure, your "appraisal" from the jewelry store says its $5,000. The pawn shop says, I'll give ya $45 bucks and a free Pepsi.

Do they not have historical and religious connections to the land of Israel with roots dating back thousands of years?

They were occupants of that land before and during the same time as the Arabs.

I dunno but they did. Probably so the Nazis wouldn't hunt them down and exterminate them all like they tried to do in the 40s?

Why shouldnt they have their own country?

Someone explain this to me: https://iris.org.il/images/israel-and-arab-world.gif

All the countries in yellow are Arab.

The little tiny slice in the middle in blue is Jewish and in that blue even the West Bank and Gaza are part of that blue island and are mostly occupied by the Arabs.

And these Arab nations believe that the Israel should not belong to the Jews and some (strongly) believe they should be wiped off the earth.

Why? Why is not the 99% of that land that belongs to the Arabs not enough for them?

Where are the Jews supposed to go?

You are not performing a charity by “allowing” someone to live, literally below you, for $1280/mo. Had “mom and pops” not over invested into the market then perhaps that person could afford an apartment, a condo, or even a starter home.

And therein lies the fallacy. Why do you think there is SO much demand for housing in Canada and so little building? We WERE a nation of 32 million just 20 years years ago. Now we are a nation of 40 million. So 8 million people came here seeking housing and yet we've barely been able to build fast enough to keep up with PAST immigration rates let alone the current rates on steroids. What happens when 8 million NEW people are seeking housing when there is already a shortage for the 32 million who already lived here? And you think its mom and pops who raised prices?

How about building costs? When I did my first contractor hired renovation only about 15 years ago, the general contractors were quoting rates about 240 a sq ft. So if you wanted a modest 1200 sq ft bungalow you were looking at 228,000 for building costs. Now they quote about 320 a sq ft in my city. So the same house is now 384,000 to build. And thats just the main floor, the basement is extra as is the cost of the lot.

So where is that extra 160,000 for building costs going? Well, if you look at the most profitable companies on the stock exchange, guess who's in the top twenty? Good ol Home Depot. Right up there with the Walmarts, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. Because building supplies have skyrocketed and they are pocketing massive margins.

The demand was also pushed hard due to historically low interest rates hovering some as low as 1.5% in 2020. But now, just 5 years later the rates have tripled to 4.5%. Which means a mortgage on a 700k house WAS $2800 but now that same mortgage will cost a landlord $3900, over 1000 a month more.

1. Incredible demand due to massive over immigration rates 2) Massive profit taking by building supply companies 3) Rapidly rising mortgage rates which is massive profit taking by the banks. And you think rent is expensive because mom and pops started renting out a basement or a second home? Nope. We have very little control of the forces that create demand and take massive profits from us.

Im not providing a charity. I run a business and I provide safe warm comfortable housing for a VERY reasonable cost to people who never have to worry about interest rates, building supply costs, or how to fix the broken fridge or the leak in the window. And if I sold my house there's no way my renters could afford to buy it, therefore Im going to continue to provide their housing as a service just like any other service.

By the way theres nothing stopping any renter group from starting and building a coop. All it takes is initiative and organization. From forty years of observation, Ive noted that renters would rather protest about their landlords than get off their butts and actually be proactive. Thats not mom and pops fault.

I must bow to your superior logic and debate tactics :)

squatting on an asset How is an asset that I had to save up 50,000 dollars to pay and that I pay 4000 a year in taxes on "squatting"

There are many people who dont want to buy a house who rent, eg university students, couples who just started living together, separated and going through a divorce, employees on a temporary work assignment, those would rather invest in stocks rather than buy, people with no interest in home maintenance, etc) So who should they rent from? From a corporate body that needs to pay for a CEO, an office staff, a maintenance crew, a legal department AND still makes a profit to pay shareholders on top of all of that.

Or just me? Who does all of those jobs for a lot less overhead? Which is why mom and pops are necessary. We rent the lowest cost housing in the market, typically basement suites. Corporations dont invest in basement suites. So where do the low income renters move?

Explain how Im "squatting" by renting out a basement suite for 1280 when the average rental for a one bed apartment in my city is 1600 and to BUY the house would take 4000 a month.

worse housing conditions if that’s all they can afford.

You just called more affordable housing 'worse'. And you think I have flawed logic? Ok then.

You also seem to think we're leaches. Pretty obviously bigoted, which explains why you dont believe in logic or empirical data. But you do you my friend. Good luck with that attitude.

No I said the advantage is free market demand pricing for rentals and housing, not the failed rent control system of ON and BC. Thats not pro landlord nor pro tenant, it follows the market. I have raised rent when demand was high and I have lowered rent and offered incentives when demand was low. Its superior to rent control because when LL's in ON and BC get a meager 1 or 2% they never want to give that up because they are already falling behind market pricing within a few years. It works. And its better. Which is why people are moving here in droves. You are entitled to your opinion but the data CLEARLY supports my point of view. People dont move for WORSE housing conditions.

Empirical means statistically verifiable verifiable by observation not just an theory. I dont what part of that is hard for you to understand. The stats dont lie.

Heres another: Average house price in AB: 495,000. Average house price in ON: 852,000. Not hard to see why people are moving.

There isn't really a petro boom this time either. Oil and gas is doing fine but its not going crazy and booming like it was 20 years ago. We actually have fairly high unemployment of 7% considering the mass influx, but thats not stopping people from coming here. They're coming because ON and BC are completely unaffordable now and AB has some great advantages not the least of which is no provincial sales tax.

The "affordable housing crisis" in AB is no different than the "affordable housing crisis" across Canada. And the fact is that housing outside our two major centers is quite a bit BETTER than most provinces. My friend just bought a house for 199k last year in a mid size town here and I just got very lucky and bought one two days ago as a rental in a small rural town for 65k. You cant get much more affordable than a 2 bedroom house with a massive lot for 65k ANYWHERE in Canada.

And our landlord tenant laws are quite fair. Yes there are some distinct advantages for landlords compared to ON but we also have plenty of cases of LL's being taken to the RTDRS and getting judgments against them too. All in all its a pretty balanced system. If it wasn't people would be flooding OUT of AB to other provinces. They're not. People moving here with a net interprovincial increase for the last few years means empirically that renters see this is a better place to live.

Check out the net interprovincial migration stats: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710002201 We import nearly as many new people as Ontario does except we're a province of 5 million and they are 16 million, so proportionally our immigration is the highest in Canada, three times higher than Ontario. People dont move for WORSE housing conditions.

You're talking about rent manipulation by a corporate landlord. Those of us 'mom and pop' landlords have no desire to get people in a place and then jack the rate only to have to replace them again the next year. Stability, even if rent is slightly below market rent, is FAR more desirable and much more beneficial financially. Tenants moving out incurs our biggest expenses and costs, so no one wants to make that happen and one month of a unit sitting empty waiting for a new tenant easily wipes out any increase in rent so we generally avoid that as much as possible.

There's a happy medium where both tenant and landlord are happy and I find that to be when rents are 50 to 80 under fair market rent. If tenants know they're getting a decent deal and that moving is likely to not only cost them moving costs PLUS higher rent, they'll stay around, which works for both of us. Through in some advantages like allowing pets with no additional fees and they'll stay a LONG time.

It doesnt get abused because you can post a 24 hr notice but there's a very good chance it will get ignored which means you still have to go to RTDRS to get an actual court order for eviction which isn't likely to happen in less than two weeks at best. But its still far faster than ON's LTB by a mile.

It obviously and empirically is. We dont have a housing crisis in Alberta. Our landlord tenant board actually works. And we dont have renoviction issues that need legislation to fix. Rents are MUCH more reasonable than Ontario. And we have had a massive influx of new residents from ON and BC, the two provinces with strong rent control, because our system is far better for both tenants and landlords.

Another legislation trying to fix a very broken rental ecosystem in Ontario. Problem #1 is rent control. If ON adopted AB's model they wouldn't have these issues -

What does AB do differently? We DONT have rent control, the rent is controlled by supply and demand as it should be. The only restriction is that a LL cant raise the rent more than once in a 365 day period, but there is no limit on how much it can be raised unless its obviously punitive. Eg 100 a month raise is acceptable, 1000 a month is obviously punitive and likely to be disallowed by our Residential Tenancy Dispute Resolution Service, a quasi judicial body that unlike ON's LTB is NOT broken and is NOT inundated with so many cases that its failing under its own weight. Here, a LL can evict a tenant who refuses to pay in less than a month. None of this 6 month wait baloney and then two postponements as the tenant games the system and continues to destroy the property. In AB if there is proof of wilful vandalism the eviction period is 24 hours. We dont put up with that bs.

What does demand pricing mean? It means when demand is way up, as it has been in the last 3 years in Calgary, a LL can raise the rent to whatever the market will bear. It ALSO means that when demand cools as it has in the last few months, that rents DROP in relation to demand. Overall rents have dropped almost 10% year over year.

This takes away the problem of a LL knowing that their rental is underpriced by hundreds of dollars a month and resorting to shady renoviction tactics to try and raise it. Demand pricing works and it works well.

All rent control does is create temporary solutions for tenants that eventually frustrate landlords and cause issues. Free market supply and demand is a far superior system. And for those on the bottom end of income we still have some subsidized housing and low income housing so they're not completely priced out although admittedly there will always be more demand for low income housing than the province can supply.

Whether you sell it or not, that doesnt change the fact that you have invested a great deal of money into it, therefore it is an investment. Its status in your life has nothing to do with whether you plan on making a profit on it or not, its merely the definition of investing money.

Its crazy what people can do in a moment of rage. I grew up in a small prairie town that had nearly zero violence and then one day a guy decided to cut down some very old oak trees that were a windbreak for a rural property. The tree owner argued with him but he insisted he had permission to remove them. The owner, a normally very gentle guy, went in the house got his gun and shot the tree cutter to death. He did years in the penitentiary for it. Good church going man who destroyed his own life and caused his family a great deal of grief over 5 minutes of uncontrolled rage.

We definitely are. We dont need the press or the BofC to tell us when we are, we can see the signs - car prices are starting to drop. 'Toys' like motorcycles and boats arent selling or are selling for far less than they were last year and there is a flood of them on the market. Fast food places have started to advertise 'value priced' meals again in the $5 and $6 range instead of the $15 they've been gouging us for since covid. The thrift stores are busier than ever. People are actually buying groceries at the Dollar Store. Food banks are overwhelmed. The recession is here, they just dont want to say the 'r' word.

I saw some of the clips (cause I havent sailed the high seas in awhile) but what I saw was in the category of "holy shit, I cant believe they did that" in their mockery of Trump. I mean its one thing to insinuate President Small Hands is, uh, tiny where it matters, but a very realistic looking Dirty Don with his miniature manhood was hilariously over the edge. Incredibly brave considering Mr. Micro loves to sue anyone or everyone who offends his overblown ego, but I think the boys know that in the court of public opinion a suit against a very popular comedy team isn't going to go well for Donnie.

Between this episode and Powell cutting him off at the knees in a live interview, the Orange Turd hasn't had a very good week. I dont think even the lovely Ms Leavitt can save his ass this time.