Category: entitlement generation

Taxing Measures

entitlement generation Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing nannystate 18 Comments

Boston is certainly not the first city to hit the wall of declining commercial property values, and it won’t be the last. The cheering was widespread when everyone worked from home during the pandemic, but now that many of those jobs have disappeared and downtowns are filling up with the homeless, there’s simply not enough commercial tenants left to fill the gap.

A recent report by the Boston Policy Institute found the city may lose $1.4 billion in tax revenue over the next five years due to empty office spaces. Boston could also face a recurring shortfall of about $500 million each year after that first half-decade, the report found.

In a sane world, the solution would be to cut spending and align it with revenue. But in the insane Keynesian universe, the “solution” is to tax the remaining commercial property owners even harder than they already are. I can’t imagine any negative consequences arising from that, can you?

The measure would give the city the flexibility to temporarily shift more of the property tax levy onto commercial and industrial property owners. If approved, new tax rates would only go into effect if commercial valuations come in low as expected, Wu said.

The Children Are Our Future

AI Children R Our Future entitlement generation 21 Comments

And that’s why I’m shopping online for the best cold weather survival tents.

Students tend to turn to ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence tool, when faced with increased academic workload and time constraints, according to new research published in the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. The study also reveals a concerning trend: reliance on ChatGPT is linked to procrastination, memory loss, and a decline in academic performance. These findings shed light on the role of generative AI in education, suggesting both its widespread use and potential drawbacks.

Who Exactly Is The April Fool?

Drain The Swamp entitlement generation The Libranos 41 Comments

Canadian taxpayers.

National Post- On April 1, Canadian MPs will earn world’s second-highest salary for elected officials

MPs will get an $8,500 raise on April 1, increasing the base salary to $203,100, ranking only behind the U.S. in political salaries

h/t LC Bennett for the link from the comments below

Mail & Guardian- No perks for Swedish MPs

Without official cars or private drivers, Swedish ministers and MPs travel in crowded buses and trains, just like the citizens they represent. Without any right to parliamentary immunity, they can be tried in a court of law like any other person. With no private secretaries at the door, their bare-bones parliamentary offices are as small as 8m2.

“Seems like only yesterday, I’d get a blank cassette…”

entitlement generation 27 Comments

James Lileks;

You see tweets like the neuroscientist’s all the time from the young and the baffled, the generation who grew up with the internet all around them like a benevolent god who asked nothing of them except watching five seconds of an ad before the video starts.

When you like drove from one state to another state, how did you know where to go??? Were there like signs or things?

I’d sit in the truck with a tape recorder.

Follow the Xience

entitlement generation Science You Might Be A Liberal 21 Comments

At Frontiers in Psychology, it seems that users on X are now part of the peer review process.

On January 4th, the paper “Meta-analysis: On average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average,” was accepted to the journal. That same day, the abstract was published with the notice that the “final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.”

Soon thereafter, the paper went viral, quickly accruing over 54,000 views, wide discussion on X and Reddit, and coverage in popular media (including RCS). It garnered this attention for its intriguing yet simultaneously obvious finding: over the past 80 years, as a far greater proportion of North Americans attended college, the average IQ of college undergraduates dropped from around 120 to 102, just slightly above the average of 100.

As the authors, Bob Uttl, a psychologist and faculty member at Mount Royal University, and his students Victoria Violo and Lacey Gibson, noted, “The decline in students’ IQ is a necessary consequence of increasing educational attainment over the last 80 years. Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s.” College students no longer come solely from the ranks of the highly intelligent and privileged, they come from all corners of society. Uttl and his colleagues noted that this has implications. For example, academic standards and curricula might have to be adjusted. Moreover, employers can’t assume that applicants with university degrees are more capable or smarter than those without degrees.

A little over a month after Uttl, Violo, and Gibson’s paper was accepted and the abstract published, they were abruptly notified by email that it was rejected. They were apprised that Specialty Chief Editor Eddy Davelaar, a Professor of Psychology and Applied Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of London, overrode the three peer reviewers who approved the paper and even his own handling editor. His reasons were subsequently forwarded to Uttl and his colleagues.

Compliance Costs

Cronies entitlement generation nannystate 14 Comments

If I were a Minnesotan, supposedly I would sleep at lot easier at night knowing that the state was ready to protect me from all those unscrupulous house painters out there.

The legislation, which was posted online February 15, would restrict the “sale of certain solvent-based paint materials to licensees; [establish] a paint contractor board; [and require] licensing for paint contractors and journeyworker painters.”

So regardless of their motivations, Minnesota lawmakers are at best offering an immoral “solution” to a problem that doesn’t exist. At worst, they are weaponizing the law to benefit special interests.

Une Patiente, S’il Vous Plait!

entitlement generation I, Napoleon nannystate Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough 16 Comments

I’m not surprised that the doctor lost patience with this woman, but a Quebec regulatory body views that as a perfectly good reason to discipline him. As per the Jordan Peterson controversy, I expect he’ll have no recourse to the courts.

The doctor said he had never prescribed hormones to someone who wanted to “transform into a gentleman.” He then brought up concerns that the hormone would lead to aggressive behaviour and changes in character, something the patient said was just a stereotype.

During the consultation, doctor and patient started arguing, with the patient reminding the doctor that he is a trans man, and the doctor responding that he is “genetically female” and noting that as far as being a trans man: “That is in your brain.”

Welfare Mentality

entitlement generation Gradually Then Suddenly 33 Comments

Manitoba has not seen itself as a “can-do” province for decades now, with voters seeming to prefer the passivity of a “have-not” attitude instead. That same outlook has predictably infected the City of Winnipeg as well. One supposes that the main response to the city’s budgetary woes will be to go cap in hand to the province…who will predictably go cap in hand to the Feds. In the meantime, expect infrastructure to continue to crumble and crime to soar.

An accelerated regional road renewal program, funded by the federal government, has come to an end, so there will be less work done on road repairs, he said.

There is also no new money to transition Winnipeg Transit’s bus fleet to zero-emission buses, beyond what council has already committed to, nor to add more buses to the fleet.

Last month, the city released a budget projection that estimated Winnipeg would overspend its budget by $3.1 million, based on financial data from the end of September.

At the same time, the city must replenish a rainy-day fund that was nearly emptied during the pandemic.

Ponzi Finance

Children R Our Future entitlement generation nannystate 29 Comments

It’s by no means unexpected, but 2024 is going to bring some tax hikes for Canadians when it comes to funding their retirement. Or, more accurately, funding the retirement of people a lot younger than you. But that’s what socialized pensions are all about. You pay more, and “others” get the proceeds.

Anyone who has paid into CPP since 2019 will receive higher benefits, but the full effects will take decades to materialize, so  the youngest workers stand to gain the most. People retiring 40 years from now will see their income go up by more than 50 per cent compared to the current pension beneficiaries.

What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?

Children R Our Future entitlement generation If Women Ran The World Khmer Noir 21 Comments

NY Post;

Harvard cleared its president Claudine Gay of plagiarism before it even investigated whether her academic work was copied, The Post reveals today.

In a threatening legal letter to The Post in late October, the college called allegations that she lifted other academics’ work “demonstrably false,” and said all her works were “cited and properly credited.”

Days later Gay herself asked for an investigation and Harvard tore up its own rules to ask outside experts to review her work, saying it had to avoid a conflict of interest.

And the experts then found she did need to make multiple corrections to her academic record.

The bare-knuckled law firm Harvard employed to try to keep the plagiarism allegations from ever coming to light told The Post it would sue for “immense” damages.

Harvard never revealed an investigation had been launched as the lawyers put pressure on The Post to kill its reporting.

But more than a month later, on December 12 Harvard said Gay had been investigated by its top governing body and was correcting two academic journals, to acknowledge where her work had really come from — meaning the claim it was “properly credited” was false.

As if being a smug anti-Semite wasn’t reason enough to fire her.

Harvard then took plagiarism seriously — and in one way still does, disciplining dozens of students every year for this gravest of academic sins. Even transgressions falling short of plagiarism could still constitute “misuse of sources,” for which a year’s probation and suspension from participation in extracurricular activities were the usual response. Plagiarists, meanwhile — those who had lifted someone else’s language without quotation marks or citation — were bounced from the college for a year, during which time they were required to work at a nonacademic job (no year-long backpacking trip) and refrain from visiting Cambridge. They would be readmitted after submitting a statement that examined their original misdeed and reflected on it.

Maybe there’s an explanation after all.

And still more.

Polling for Dollars

entitlement generation nannystate Subsidy Fraud Boy 33 Comments

It shouldn’t surprise anyone who financed this opinion poll. The questions are absolutely geared to reinforce the prevailing narrative. It’s not much different from “elections” in the Soviet Union in which the communist party candidate would get 98% of the votes.

92% of Canadians agree they feel confident in the food safety and animal welfare standards used in dairy, chicken, turkey and egg farming in Canada because of supply management. 94% of Canadians also prefer their dairy, eggs, chicken, and turkey products to be produced locally and in Canada under supply management.

Housing Micromanagement

entitlement generation nannystate New Rules 49 Comments

I often wonder if conservative parties are all that different from their opposition. Witholding federal funding in order to browbeat civic governments into changing their housing policies to meet arbitrary targets sounds a lot like central planning. You could just drop federal housing subsidies altogether, repeal federal building codes and put an end to zero percent interest rates, but someone clearly thinks that this won’t buy enough votes.

Require big, unaffordable cities to build more homes and speed up the rate at which they build homes every year to meet our housing targets. Cities must increase the number of homes built by 15% each year and then 15% on top of the previous target every single year (it compounds). If targets are missed, cities will have to catch up in the following years and build even more homes, or a percentage of their federal funding will be withheld, equivalent to the percentage they missed their target by.

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