Much of Europe is privatized and their prices are much less than here. The main reason our prices are so high is the special alcohol tax the government puts on to discourage drinking.

It's a valid question. Honestly, getting rid of the test and instead authorizing driving schools to approve people as ready to graduate would likely be a fair better solution. The driving instructors spend much more time with students and thus are far better situated to judge if they are ready.

I strongly disagree, these driving tests do nothing for promoting safety, and everything for minor rule following. In some cases what they teach is actually less safe. Like having to waggle your head around to "show the tester you are looking" or not using backup cameras and other driver aids.

If we want to increase safety we should send people to skid school periodically, not retest them on useless easily abused by testers items. Also we should invest more heavily in public transit. I'd far rather see money go to public transit then further enable these private testing facilities to let their poorly trained testers continue abusing people trying to get their license and learn actual practical skills.

100% a money grab, especially now that it's been privatized. My partner just did the written test and at least a quarter of the questions were those inappropriate "What is the punishment for offence Y?" questions. Why is knowing that at all important? As long as we know what things are illegal it should be enough. Those are the only ones she got wrong and had to take the stupid test twice.

No doubt that they put that many of those useless types of questions because they know if they didn't no one would fail. But this way they get a lot of people taking it twice, which you can do without even waiting, as long as you pay more fees for each try.

Because most people actually like the updates, but you will only hear from angry people who don't like change. Everyone else just goes on with life.

I'm sure 80% of all drivers could not pass a road test, myself included, because those road tests are full of massive bullshit from testers with inflated egos.

I still remember the shit they tried to tell me I did wrong. One asshole tester said that I wasn't aware of the speed limits because.... I should know that road X was in a commercial zone and all commercial zones are 60, and that driving 40 by the school was wrong because it's the only school in the city without a 40 speed limit.

The testers are generally incompetent so them wanting to introduce more road testing seems like a bad idea.

If these jackasasses made the vaccines available before November maybe more people would have gotten them. I was set to get my covid and flu vaccines the very week that I ended up getting covid. So now I am not getting the vaccine, but not because I didn't want to, but because the government dragged its ass releasing the vaccine.

Yeah, I'm sure what these people expect. Either they are explicitly supporting attacks on civilians and hostage taking as a fine way of warfare, or they are deluded as hell that either side will stop. Hamas could at any time end the war, but they'd rather use innocent Palestinian lives as a shield.

And for what? To try to get a bunch of their hamas friend terrorists released? It's pretty clear where hamas' values lay, and it's not with the Palestinian people. In fact, this whole thing happened precisely because this hostage tactic worked previously. That's how the current leader of hamas was freed in the first place.

I'm 100% Isreal minimizing civilian Palestinian damage, and I think they need to do way better, but I also want to see hamas and their ilk shutdown.

Modern China is in no way communist. It’s more of an autocratic socialism. I mean come on, people own businesses, buy and sell things their businesses make, even their healthcare has significant private components!

Also, while Cuba’s medical system is good for what it is, the rest of the country is not very functional. If communism were so great everything in the country would be at least as functional as their healthcare despite trade.

Communism was a nice idea that doesn’t work in practice.

I've always paid >50% of my income when I rented. Sounds good!

At least they aren't communist lemmy posters who spend all their days shitting on good deeds.

There is also Soviet communism, Cuban communism, and North Korean communism. I'm sure one of those countries will happily welcome you with lovely high quality public housing.

The geniuses on this site think that if the government is your landlord then you don't have a landlord. Basically they want a form of communism. Public housing has it's place but as someone who has rented in the past it's not the sort of housing I'd choose unless it's a last resort.

In any case, VERY STRONG DISAGREE that the only rentals should be government run or co-ops.

No it wouldn't. Here is a comparable: https://www.realtor.com/rentals/details/166-Amsterdam-Ave_New-York_NY_10023_M33265-52776?property_id=3326552776&from=ab_mixed_view_card

A three bedroom would go for $12k a month, but we don't even have three bedroom units here. Assuming this is a two bedroom it would probably be in the middle of the range given. So 7k-8k USD. But Toronto shouldn't be as expensive as Manhattan, NYC.

No, we don't end up in the same place. While the liberals are not great, neither the liberals or the NDP will erode our social progress like the conservatives will. Both would also probably be better for the environment if that's your jam.

Literally the only reason to vote for the conservatives is if you agree with their campaign of hate and intolerance. If you want social regression go vote for them, but you wont' get anything else out of them.

Even if he was hypothetically not lying about wanting to address housing in the way he suggests, I still wouldn't be able to support him because eroding our social protections and freedoms is not worth it.

But I also think the likely hood that he upsets his rich suburban supporters and friends by allowing condos to be built next to their nice houses is close to zero. So it's probably one of those bullshit planks like the liberals saying they were going to potentially get rid of first past the post. There are zero consequences for our politicians lying like this.

It would be nice if our elections laws defined a class of promises where if they are broken an election is forcibly triggered.

Prices are already down over 20% and it IS a buyers market at the moment. The problem is that people don't have the funds so even though prices are down significantly there are now fewer buyers because people can't borrow. The elephant in the room is that wages need to come up.

The other way to make things more affordable is to raise wages for the lower 90% of earners.

Someone has to own the building genius. That person is the landord. The only alternative to having a corporation or individual as the landlord, is having the government or a coop as a landlord. There is a place for those, but sorry I'm not for communism, that can't be the only option as otherwise we run into the well known problems with communism, no competition leads to shit quality, which is generally what you get from government run housing.

So in your mind all those new grads out getting their first jobs should just be homeless for 30 years until they can afford to buy a house? That's a pretty harmful idea.