If you broke the United States down into states you would find that many states are right up there with the European socialist paradises. If you compared the EU as a whole to the US, I'm willing to bet the elasticity is WAY better in the US. I tried finding this stat for the EU as a whole but it doesn't appear to exist. There are probably also states in the US where the elasticity is comparable to some former Soviet Bloc Eastern European countries with a litany of ongoing problems. It's almost as if comparing ethnically pure countries with a population of 5 million to the center of global immigration with a population of 330 million+ spread over an entire continent isn't a valid comparison...

That’s probably due in part to the fact that human labor’s share of income is shifting toward algorithms and intelligent machines that are increasingly doing the “work” (and of course these machines have owners). Get used to it.

It’s also partly due to the fact that the share of global income going to workers in the developing world is increasing, relative to workers in the developed world. Get used to that was well.

Basically, with advancements in technology and transportation (itself a form of technology), the price of labor isn’t simply driven by demand for and available supply of human labor. There are two substitutable inputs - machines and foreign labor. Wages won’t go up to the extent that it becomes more expensive than investing in automation. It’s already pretty clear that a $15 minimum wage would eliminate tens of thousands of fast food jobs, for instance - at that level, touchscreen ordering kiosks and burger-flipping robots become more cost efficient.

There has always been an element of this, at least since the Industrial Revolution, but you still needed weavers to run the looms. And it’s not a hypothetical either. In India, they still have human beings crushing rocks to make concrete, despite having the technology, because the economy is so inefficient and labor is so cheap that it doesn’t make sense to invest in machines. In Switzerland, you already order from a kiosk at McDonald’s and there are a lot fewer employees than in an American location.

Point is, I don’t think this should be mistaken for a temporary blip. Especially as more and more human jobs become possible to automate. This isn’t just manual labor - trading jobs are disappearing on Wall Street, too.

I'd like to get into an investment such as you describe. How did you know that the first $135k two flat just outside of Logan Square would be profitable, after spending money to renovate it?
When you say you spent 30 hours a week renovating it, how did you learn how to renovate an apartment building to proper code? Were you physically doing electrical work, plumbing work, installing windows, and chopping lumber? Or did you hire laborers?

Damn, you guys just aren't capable of not continuing off topic discussions on a thread, are you?

One of the easiest things in the world? All poor people in the US must be lazy dumbasses then. :rolleyes:

I grant you, yes, it's possible and easier than some other places in the world. But the fact that it doesn't happen all the time is empirical proof that it's not as easy as you think.

It definitely feels better to wash yourself clean of any potential negative externalities of your actions though. I know I do that every time I fly. Now THAT is one of the easiest things in the world to do.

Exactly, that comparison is garbage.

Plus, too many Americans at the bottom aren't even trying. I see them every day--my patients, who are practically all lower income. One after another after another able bodied people who want me to fill disability benefit and handicapped placard paperwork for them even though they truly don't qualify. I still fill them out--every single time.

I'm guessing I don't have any exposure to this population, though, and I live in a "bubble" right? :rolleyes:

^ Many are lazy, yes. Obviously not all, or even most.

I see them every day. I spend hours a day talking to them about their lives. I actually help them, too, but it pisses me off how our system gets taken advantage of. I certainly have more direct and personal access to this population than most people of my economic background.

Oh lord, please don't normalize Trump. He is NOT NORMAL. He is like no corrupt Democrat or Republican we've seen EVER. He colluded with a foreign power to win an election. He is a sexual predator who supports other sexual predators for office. He equates neo-nazis with protestors. He doesn't believe in the rule of law or the free press. Not normal. And not snarky. SCARY.

Otherwise, I couldn't agree more that Democrats have lost all credibility after Clinton, and racism in both parties has left behind people of color. What the Democratic party needs is a progressive wave to purge the neoliberals and replace them with defenders of social justice and stewards of planet earth.

"Loving the poor" is really just giving people the opportunity to get ahead with some basic essentials - affordable health care and college and equal opportunity under the law. Upward mobility is in fact the cornerstone of liberal democracy.

Since Reagan cut the highest marginal tax rate from 70% to 50% in 1981, and then to 28% by 1987(!), that cornerstone has eroded. So far from picking pockets, the GOP has actually sacrificed the public good for wealthy interests.

Whenever we drop the highest marginal tax rate and deregulate Wall Street, we witness massive inequality followed by some great economic shock: Great Depression, recession of early 90s, and the Great Recession. These were not natural corrections - they were a direct result of plutocratic policies - and so too is the rise of Trumpian fascism.

You're never going to have a system where anyone who has the desire and drive is guaranteed success. Some will win, some will fall flat on their face. On that we can agreed.

But I find it frustrating that you sort of discount and trivialize the experiences of us forumers who have done well for ourselves as random anecdotes. The simple fact is, most of the people I know that aren't 1%'s still do ok for themselves. But they chose professions and walks of life that were known to not be particularly lucrative. Whereas those of us who did climb into the top 1% made different life choices, and getting there was excruciatingly hard. And there was no guarantee of success.

Just like TUP, I became a doctor. On Friday nights when everyone else was chasing women, inhaling beer bongs, and generally dicking around and having fun, I sequestered myself in the library to study Organic chemistry. Every time I walked into a test, I felt like my life depended on it, and even getting a B+ would completely ruin my chances of getting into medical school. The thought of being ordinary was simply unacceptable. And here's the thing. Even after 14 years of college, medical school, internship, residency, and fellowship, it's not like I cashed in my golden ticket and was given a pile of cash. I still work my ass off, doing a complicated job where people lives depend on the care I provide.

But since you previously talked about Chicago public teachers, I'll tell you another story. My brother was a high school teacher in South Holland for a long time. And I will tell you, his college experience was very different than mine. He pretty much coasted on a beer keg throughout college. Smoking pot, screwing his girlfriend, and skipping class; taking 5 years to graduate from the University of Iowa with a C+ average. And in the end, he was still making something like 90k a year. Putting in a fraction of the effort I did.

Don't discount our personal stories as irrelevant anecdotes. Most people in the 1% are here because of life choices, intellect, hard work, and self reliance. If we don't achieve one of our goals, we blame ourselves. Unlike you, who always seems to blame the system. Those of us who made something of ourselves don't look at the system as a roadblock. We see it as a construct to be learned and channeled.

^Any Mods wanna mod that outburst?

I didn’t ignore anything. My entire post was “something that refutes” the YoY data. Real world experience. Discount it if you wish.

Why is this off topic conversation still going on?????

The BLS data is made up of real world experiences, so many real world experiences that they are able to get a sampling of the entire economy. To try and put your anecdotes on the same level is disingenuous at best.

Bring data and sources not anecdotes and stories. I have tried to cite every claim I've made in this discussion, those who disagree have not provided counter evidence just personal stories.

^ I literally just filled out a BLS survey last night asking about my employees and company reveune. The Feds start sending you mean letters if you don't respond to their survey, so I finally went through the brain damage of setting up an account on census.gov to answer their damn questions.

The first building I got was a frame 2 flat with illegal attic apartment. The outside (roof, windows, garage) was all brand new, but the inside hadn't been renovated since 1956. I moved into it and lived in the construction site while literally rehabbing it with my own hands. I did electric, drywall, tile, painting, plumbing, etc all by myself. I'd get home at 430, Chow down on some leftovers, and start working usually until 1 or 2 AM. I didn't have the money to pay the whole mortgage myself for very long so I had to move my ass along so I could start getting rent. I still live in that illegal apartment, but I've since duplexed it with the apartment below making it much more livabile, but I lived in an illegal studio attic apartment from 1956 for 7 years before I got a decent place myself.

Then I used the income from this property to get another 3 flat a few blocks away which I completely gutted. Took me the whole summer of 2012 to do, at this point I had a roommate who was unable to find a job living with me and he earned his keep by essentially being an indentured servent until he found a job. He was a friend of mine from college and put in a good 3 months of hard labor before he landed a job in his field of choice.

A lot of the early work I did was safe, but not necessarily to code. I now know code well and have learned it through experience and lots and lots of YouTube. The biggest bit of help I had was that my Dad was unemployed for about 5 years starting in 2008 and put many long weekends and a couple of full weeks helping me out. He worked as a carpenter for two years before deciding to go to college so he taught me a lot about rough carpentry, but all the finish work, plumbing, electric, etc was just me learning how to do things the hard way. I even installed an entire mini-split AC system by myself.

Because this is the random off topic thread for Chicago??

^ I'll give LVDW credit that he can actually do construction work with his own hands (unlike me, I've done some serious rehabs yet never lifted a finger--my hands are still soft and sexy as ever), but c'mon, you can't tell me what you did was legal. You just got away with it because you never got caught.

I have 1 piece of advice: if you plan to do what LVDW does, make sure the building you purchase doesn't have a bunch of outstanding violations. If it does, the city and the courts will be on your ass like a dog in heat, and you'll never be able to accomplish anything. Do some research before buying and make sure that a property has no active violations, or if it does have them they should be very minor and easy to remedy (no ownership sign posted, a broken window, etc) easy to fix and not requiring that inspectors have to come in and walk through your entire property.

Once you establish that, whack away and do whatever you are capable of doing. Doing your own construction (if you're good at it) is the best way to save money, IMO. That was never an option for me.

Which one??? This thread seems to be the appropriate place for things that would be considered off-topic rants in any of the other Chicago threads. . .

. . .

Yeah of course my earliest experiments in renovations were relatively minor (started off just gutting the bathrooms and kitchens and doing bare minimum repairs to electric and plumbing), I quickly moved on to more and more legit renovations as my knowledge and finances improved. The thing is the city will never mess with an owner occupant unless they are doing something blatantly and obviously unsafe. If you are just running an extra breaker to your attic they will never bother you, they get quite pissy if you rip apart the entire interior of a building all at once. That's why my first building was a gradual upgrading of spaces as I lived there, they aren't going to come shaft me for ripping all the tile out of an old bathroom and adding a GFCI outlet while the walls are open. My second project I used repair and replace permits on and my third project I hired a GC and used full new construction permits and haven't varied from that since.

Unfortunately this is how I know exactly how out of whack Chicago's building code is. Used to be no PVC, no BX, no vinyl wiring, etc. First few wiring projects I used some BX or vinyl, then I learned how to bend conduit and have used that since. I still do improvement projects on my first building/home probably once a quarter. I leveled all the floors and stairs in my entire enclosed porch a few years ago and just got around to upgrading that plywood to solid oak with a solid oak Bannister this spring. I'm going to add oak trim and AC to the porch once the weather cools down this fall. No matter how much bigger my business gets, I'll never be able to resist the sheer pleasure of seeing something from nothing with my own hands.

In all my years I have never heard of a varmint biting through PVC pipes or BX electrical. The other options are clearly more expensive the only reason I think they still use Cast Iron drain and vent pipes and metal electrical conduit piping in Cook County is because they could be more resistant in fires. That and it pays a better Union wage to install. Or a combination of both. Most Collarland counties do not prohibit PVC or BX. Dry vent PVC pipes under extreme fire can be highly flammable. BX not really that much at all. Conduit will protect the plastic covered copper wires a bit longer in a small fire but in a large one they are both toast. Whereas Cast Iron pipes will be salvageable to be cheap metal scrap post a catastrophic fire.

The point when PVC can be ignited in the hottest fire is black and toxic no doubt, like burning a roll of carpet rapped around old worn out tires type of burn.

Btw I’m not talking about pvc water lines but the 4-3 inch drains and pluming vents.

Anyone interested in the toxins like dioxan and chlorine released from burning pvc polyvinyl chloride
can google it rather easily.


All incoming water supply’s are copper. Old hundreds of year old lead pipes from the street can be lead pipes but risk to lead contamination is not a real issue. They form a lead oxide inside the main that prevents leaching in a mater that could be harmful. We are not talking about flint like water issues here in Chicago

We have one of the best water delivery systems in the world.

Cast iron eventually rusts away and needs to be replaced, while flex conduit is a lot easier to do oneself than solid conduit. Its essentially job security for union plumbers and union electricians.

Cast Iron should have a shelf life of 75 to 100 years. Unless its a very old property they should not have to be replaced before than.



https://www.houselogic.com/organize-...eir-lifespans/


PVC on the other hand has no life span as far as we know it. Right now they are classified as " Indefinitely" which could mean over a thousand years.

Who knows really how long PVC can last, for now we at least know it is a very long time. Not Geologicly long but for several centuries at the least.

I've seen cast iron waste pipes less than 50 years old rust away to the point they need to be replaced. PVC is a much smarter solution, but don't expect the code to change on that anytime soon.

The greatest irony of lead water lines in Chicago is that, due to our glacial pace of building code reform, they were required to be lead up until 86 almost a full decade after lead paint was banned by the federal government. I just looked at a building that had a really nice 2.5" line put in in 1983 that was solid lead.

The biggest benefit of PVC is that, when installed correctly, it is basically a frictionless surface inside meaning that it doesn't catch debris and hair and back up. They still require you use cast iron below grade even if its a smaller (less than 3 floors) residential building and you are allowed to use PVC above grade. This is literally the most moronic thing because below grade is where most sewer backups happen and you have to tear everything out to get at it. Why not allow watertight infinite life plastic below grade too?

My grandparents house in Florida had cast iron pipes and after only 20 years they were all leaky and had to be replaced with PVC.

Wow, LouisVanDerWright you sound like a real hard worker like my uncle, he's also very successful and never stops working. Glad you've found success, you deserve it! I know most people don't have a drive like that, to work so hard.
I helped a company install AC units in Florida one summer, and just trying to help them install a system was pretty complex. That's amazing you figured that out on your own wow!

I think I'd have to hire a contractor to do the work. How do you figure out if you buy a building it will be profitable? Would we be able to talk offline about it sometime?

This is my experience as well. At a commercial property my parents own, we've had to replace cast irons pipes leading out to two catch basins in the rear lot near the alley. They were both as old as the building (roughly 45 years) and we had to dig through concrete foundation and asphalt in order to replace them. And of course the city demanded they be replaced with cast iron again. Complete idiocy...

covering those tracks, while costly, would really be amazing. come on mr. griffin let's open that wallet baby.

Yeah was just thinking that. Cover them and the towers will come. Hope this happens in the next 25 years.

It’s not up to Ken Griffin, but yes it’s high time for that. It’s a huge amount of wasted land.

The city might have missed its chance to have someone else pay for it though. They should have been offering big density bonuses to the developers of all of these plots overlooking the southern half of the in exchange for contributions to a fund to pay for covering the tracks.

When they can already build to the limits of federal airspace under the current zoning, what sort of density bonus could be offered?

Personally I hope they never cover those tracks. Chicago was historically (and still is currently) the largest railroad hub in North America, and one of my favorite things about Chicago is how much of the city’s massive industrial and railroad infrastructure is out on display, either deliberately or by a happy accident. Those tracks have run through Grant Park since there was a Grant Park. Sure you could try to cover them up and make the park look a little bit nicer, but the result just wouldn’t be Chicago.

Lol right and we should also bring back the slaughterhouses bc it’s just not chicago without them

To each his own, however, I would get over such bygone romanticism real quick in this case.

I always thought a cool concept would be to cover all of the tracks except where they go under the Art Institute. That way they would sort of be preserved in the open and reflect the heritage of rail.

If I remember correctly that is what the Art Institute intended when they built the eastern wing. I'm sure I could find if I looked. They certainly had enough money to cover them if they wanted to.

There is absolutely no danger of Chicago losing or forgetting about its railroad history. Railroad infrastructure literally abounds in this city. There are railyards and viaducts absolutely EVERYWHERE. Covering up the Grant Park tracks would simply tidy up the city's front lawn/central square. If you are in Grant Park and want to see trains, literally one block from the western end of the park there is century old elevated tracks with trains rumbling by every few minutes.

I always thought that the tracks added to Grant Park.

How could that possibly be the case?

Even if you’re talking about aerial photos (which is silly, because 99% of people don’t observe the park via aerial photos), I don’t see how that’s the case.

At ground level, they’ve done their best to make them invisible, so at the very best they are simply wasted space and a blight for pedestrians walking from the Loop (because American cities tend to do a poor job of hiding their infrastructure; in Europe there would be an attractive brick wall).

I'm probably in the minority, but I think the tracks add to Grant Park the same way that the surrounding architecture does. It adds to the atmosphere. My favorite place to hang out and relax in Grant Park is near the tracks. When I went to school downtown that was my favorite place to study on nice days. I think that it can be narrowed in most places,and maybe covered in some spots, like between Balbo and 11th, but I would hate to see it be completely covered.

the exposed IC trench through GP has never bothered me very much.

i mean, i wouldn't mind if it were decked-over, but it's a low-priority thing in my mind.

i'm FAR more disgusted by the obscene widths of the columbus, monroe, jackson, & balbo auto-sewers.

^ Seconded. Thirded. Fourth'd. Fifth'd. Sixth'd. You get the drift

Grant Park has many gaping scars, both below grade railroad tracks and at grade multi lane roadways. I do not like the tracks, but boy howdy do I despise the roads that cut the park up into a checkerboard of green. Removing the roadways is definitely the bigger priority, but the tracks should eventually be addressed as well, IMHO.

Yeah, the tracks are low priority and it's kinda cool to see the history of those tracks and, in all fairness to the tracks, they were there first.

The tracks sprawl out more on the south end and take up alot of space that could be parkland. Near the Art Institute they aren't so bad. I'd like to see the roadways eliminated or reduced and lake Shore Drive put in a tunnel, so that you can walk freely to to the lake from Buckingham Fountain. Then have the lakefront as a promenade with more cafes and vendors like they are adding along the river.

Cover the Grant Park tracks or cap the Kennedy?

I would cover the tracks, it gives more continuous open space.

Lets do both. I do notconsider covering the tracks at Grant Park a low priority issue. Id be ok with section by the Art Institute open for all of the rail historians we have just to appease them. Not sure why the city and the hotels cant come up with a funding plan. Just covering it non Millennium like expensive but simple covering enough.


Look how much more Grant Park there is in this shot if covered. An the ease of access....

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1839/4...aa997236_h.jpg



http://yochicago.com/the-kennedy-cap...ds-cave/28434/

http://i.yochicago.com/images/hpmain...?preset=yosize

I'm far more disgusted by the existence of Columbus. You can't tell me traffic wouldn't adjust fine if you just closed it and ground it up. Why the hell is there a street like that running though the heart of our front mat park? It needs to be closed, demoed and reopened as a narrower, crushed granite pedestrian strollway like the Champs d' Mars or something.

Well, the South Lake Shore Drive buses get fucked up whenever Columbus is closed. But if there was fare integration with Metra (and better Metra Electric Service), they'd largely be unnecessary.

Or if there was a fucking bus lane on Michigan.

Yep

I like the tracks, especially around the Art Inst., but I would cover them to the south near the new towers going up, where the curve is. Larger area as well.

And capping at least one key segment of the kennedy would build a better link for walking to west loop

^ Yeah I wouldn't mind keeping the tracks by the Art Institute uncovered (between Monroe and Jackson). Otherwise, cover the rest. Finish the job that Millennium Park started two decades ago

Crown Fountain
 

August 21, 2018



Crown Fountain branching out beyond faces into displays of cryptic software error messages.

I really don't understand why makers of these sorts of displays insist on using Windows. I know it's "easy," but when it fails, it fails in embarrassing ways. It just seems like a relatively simple Linux-based system would be more reliable, not have licensing issues, and could be designed to fail more gracefully.