Cal
@SimpGanassi
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Economist. YIMBY. Trade Unionist. Tweets mostly policy, F1, shitposts, cool data & Mushroom the cat. He/him 💖💜💙
Greenwich, London
Joined April 2012
When I talk to MMT fans in the UK I find that they like it because it does something really common. It takes something simple and makes it more complicated so that they feel clever and feel like they have a special insiders view of things.
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it is kind of nuts that we managed to crack getting from london to new york in less than 4 hours in 1976 and now it takes double that! 50 years ago!
Mitterand’s France was Xi-pilled…before Xi. Very sad that Europe pursued the banking, tourism and infinity high street latte economy instead of this after the Cold War. A lost future.
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People tweet the view from Greenwich Park when the docks were closed in the early 80s and unironically say it’s better than today. They’re mad frankly
To think that this used to be derelict industrial land. Now it’s home to 10,000s of people, and workplaces for over 100,000 workers.
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Like many other British Christmas customs it’s an invented tradition popularised by Charles Dickens that only became universal in the 1930s. Real traditional Brits eat goose
Times story today that this Christmas is set to be the first one in history where a majority of Britons don’t eat turkey for lunch. Utter woke nonsense. Sincerely hope Reform’s next manifesto addresses this crisis.
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The GDP per capita of Isengard was certainly higher when it was populated by one immortal wizard than when it was filled with a bunch of Uruk Hai.
GDP is not everything. For instance, this is the exact moment when Isengard's GDP Began to skyrocket:
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In Britain we have an unusual cultural practice. It’s called ‘following the signs’ which is a bit difficult to translate but roughly means ‘looking where you are going and reading things that are posted on walls’.
Visiting Paris really makes you realize how much of "Western culture" is just French culture...
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London air is noticeably worse tonight from a few firework displays, I dread to think how bad air pollution was when every home was burning coal 24/7
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The UK doesn't need to be great to be attractive. All it needs to do is sort out the basics ─ housing, transport, crime, etc ─ and avoid another bout of idiot populism in government. That alone would make it a pretty balmy place for most. It's all eminently achievable.
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This is another symptom of Britain's housing crisis ─ you end up with these big luxury cars parked outside Victorian terraces that would have been solidly working-class or lower-middle-class neighbourhoods when they were built.
Northfield Road W13 What better car to buy, when you live on a tiny Victorian street, than an SUV......
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It takes longer and costs more, but the US still builds remarkable things at a pretty steady clip.
yeah imagine living among the remnants of a superior civilization
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This has been the norm for ages my first rental in London in 2016 was a “three bed” - aka a two bed flat with another bed in what should have been the living room. Galley kitchen too so no communal space at all. The student accommodation I moved out of was more spacious
Homes without lounges now a reality for renters
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The year is 1998. You are being tasked with guessing the economic fortunes of Poland, Estonia, Argentina, and Venezuela over the next 25 years. Who would’ve guessed correctly?!
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People outside of real estate don't realize that construction is already efficient. You can build a stick-frame house in a few weeks. You can build a 500-unit apartment building in less than a year. What takes a long time is everything before construction starts.
I think housing/real estate is going to be a terrible asset for the next 20 years as AI/automation makes building homes insanely easy/efficient. Pair this with a falling birthrate, and the demand for homes relative to supply will massively shrink. NFA.
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4.4x? Wait what? 7.7x in England, 11x in London..
US housing affordability has never been worse: The US home price-to-income ratio is now up to a record 4.4x. This means the average single-family home now costs over 4 TIMES what the median household earns. This has even surpassed the 2006 Housing Bubble peak of 4.1x. The
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I don’t think I’ve ever been more right about anything in my life
This take may look silly in six months but I’m starting to feel we aren’t talking enough about the possibility of even more extreme political fragmentation. Like Labour and Conservative on under 40% combined territory
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