My name's Andrew Xiong and I'm a computer science major at UCI.Â
One of my favorite tropes within literature is faulty or unreliable narration, where the point of the view story takes place from is fundamentally problematic and requires the reader to scrutinize the narrator's contradictions to come to the truth.
Somethings I find interesting for some reason are history, economics, and public policy, even though they are somewhat disconnected from my major. I'm hoping to be able to include these topics in my entries for this website at some point, though for now I'm gonna list some random news topics that have come up that I've found interesting.
How the 60 housing bills Newsom signed are going to change California (sfchronicle.com) Oct 24, 2023.
The state passed a number of bills aimed at addressing the ongoing housing crisis. These measures included permitting churches and motels to convert spare space into housing units, as well as restrictions on maximum security deposits to assist lower income residents. I think this is progress in the right direction, though I am always cautious towards increased rent control. It seems to be a temporary solution to a long term problem.
California is facing a large deficit for fiscal year 2023 as a result of lower tax revenues than initially expected, along with a spending surge due to a large revenue windfall last year. Factors like the recent spike in inflation and the Federal Reserve's rate hikes to combat it significantly depressed the tech sector that California heavily relies on for employment and tax revenue, as well as the economy as a whole. The most likely means of reducing this deficit are cuts to school spending that ballooned in recent years, as well as pulling on reserves to fill remaining gaps. This revelation highlights the need to shore up the state's finances to weather stormier economic times ahead, and to take a thorough look at how the state spends, considering it has the highest tax rates in the country.