patrick.net

-- could have
+ could have been

How on earth can you guarantee a house for a year after it’s sold?

guarantee no earthquakes

Peter P,

I track Cupertino school district, Evergreen, and many pockets of East Bay. For example, Pleasanton PROBABLY had more sales in May than in April. I do not have access to any official information. This is pure guesswork based on various web-sites and talk to friends. agents etc. Cupertino, on the other hand, seems to have slowed in May, and in April bubble was still going fine there.

DataQuick has not updated their site in a long time. Their SJMN weekly chart still has info from May 17th.

But the uptick does not seem like a general trend. Surfer-x posted a link that shows that official numbers are bad. So I guess, let's wait for the BA numbers. They will be out in a week or so.

I think the one difference between people who can become financially successful and those who fritter away everything is the ability to defer gratification, to see the larger, long term goals.

then there's the outright poor who can't get well-paying jobs. not counting countries where virtually everyone is poor. and the nature of high modernity capitalist markets where wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and real wages have dropped over the years. bill gates could put quite a few of his kids through college with $40bn in the bank... it's not all rugged individualism to blame...

randy's away...

I track Cupertino school district, Evergreen, and many pockets of East Bay.

I see. I think some parents may be rushing to buy just in time to register for school. That will pass.

Different Sean,

And a big "Randy's away" to you to Sir!

Both Kirsten Dunst and Minnie Driver have rich and well-connected parents. If they are from any ordinary background, I can hardly imagine how they can secure the first acting contract for any role.

Kirsten is ok, she looks distinctively Scandinavian, and there are guys out there who are very smitten by that kind of look. Minnie Driver is downright UGLY, no matter how well she can act, she is just unattractive, she has bigger jawbones than Maria Shriver before her cosmetics surgery.

I think the one difference between people who can become financially successful and those who fritter away everything is the ability to defer gratification, to see the larger, long term goals.

And how do you support your rock and roll lifestyle? This is a sweeping generalization at best. I know many people who life paycheck to paycheck not because they buy Prada, but because they chose to pursue engineering when the only value in society is for parasites, like fucking lawyers, real estate agents, and loan brokers. tss tss. Bad blueblood, no grey poupon for you.

-life
+live

I think the one difference between people who can become financially successful and those who fritter away everything is the ability to defer gratification, to see the larger, long term goals.

Huh? If stars do not align, you have no chance.

@OO,

I agree. I think Kirsten Dunst is fairly pretty --in a girl-next-door sort of way. Minnie Driver? Not my cup 'o tea.

On the subject of wealth/poverty, a few observations...

(1) No matter how well informed/educated every poor/working-class person decides to become or how hard s/he works, there is just no way they're all going to become wealthy (as DS & Surfer-X already pointed out), by the very definition of the word. Wealth without poverty is like yin without yang. The two concepts are inseperable --they define one another.

The more important question to me is, what constitutes poverty where you live? In some Western European countries, it means living on the government dole with guaranteed healthcare, free education, free food, subsidized housing, utilities, etc. Not a grand existence to be sure, but a shitload better than even the "merchant class" has it in Somalia.

(2) The local wealth distribution has a huge impact on how large/healthy the middle class is and whether or not people perceive themselves to be "poor". Unfortunately, the world's wealth is being ever more tightly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and this seems to be a global phenomenon. In the U.S., it's as high as it's ever been, going back to the 1920s, when they started measuring this kind of data. Not a positive trend.

(3) If the world collectively decided reducing human numbers were an important goal and really worked at it, then we could all be "rich", or at least middle class, by North American/European standards. A U.N. study I read several years ago estimated that if the world's population were no more than say, 2 billion, then we could all consume and live like N. Americans (or Europeans, or Aussies, etc.). Our current population is already beyond the earth's carrying capacity to provide everyone with enough natural resources, food & energy to sustain everybody at a U.S. standard of living. Now, over time, improved technology and productivity per worker of course increases this metric. Problem is, we're producing people faster than the rate of productivity gains.

(4) Some people could not save two nickels to rub together if their life depended on it, just as some are inveterate savers. Whether or not we like to admit it, personal choice/responsibility does affect our ability to succeed financially and accumulate wealth over time. Personally, though, I believe this ranks rather low on the scale of what ultimately determines individual wealth potential --well behind choosing your parents, choosing your birth country, choosing the correct decade to be born in, your family's busines/persoanl connections, etc.

I know many people who life paycheck to paycheck not because they buy Prada, but because they chose to pursue engineering when the only value in society is for parasites, like fucking lawyers, real estate agents, and loan brokers. tss tss. Bad blueblood, no grey poupon for you.

It's fucking so true (or it's so fucking true).

If you wanna make money, you'd better be closer to the asshole that spews out the green stuff.

Most people (including moi) lack the courage to die honorably. If people can face the truth and are willing to die, there won't be retirement problems, 'cause old age without a lot of money and familial connect to children and grand children just aint worth it.

Why don't they form a legion of old people and go to Iraq to beat up the insurgents?

@GC,

:lol: Call it the "Geezer brigade"! That would certainly help mitigate the recruitment problems the Army's been having lately. Only problem is they's drive the tanks/Hummes way to slow to actually catch any insurgents.

-they's
+they'd

That's right. The International Geezer Brigade. You know, it may happen when the world gets crazy enough. Fuck it. When I am old, regardless whether I have children or not, I still want adventures. Better die fighting than lie dying.

The other thing I don't understand is why children won't live with their aging parents. It's just plain immoral. When I select a wife -- if such a time shall come -- i'll make sure that the woman should be entirely willing to live with my parents. Of course, ideally, this also requires a fairly large house, preferrably staffed as well.

Also, it's immoral to send young men to die in order for the old folks to live lavishly. It's just fucking wrong.

I remember watching a norwegian film a few years ago about two really old people (a man and a woman in their 70's). Both fled the nursing home. The man came to live with his daughter's family in the city. Needless to say, he had to leave after a week or so. He then joined his nursing home girl friend and went back to the chiling coast where they grew up. It was desolate. The buildings were complete abandoned. But they were determined to stay till they die.

So I think the modern world is fucked up. All these technological advances are just temporary drug fixes. They don't solve the problem. As a matter of fact, they make matters worse by tricking people into abandoning the traditional way of life but yet failing to offer a feasible alternative.

So I think the modern world is fucked up. All these technological advances are just temporary drug fixes. They don’t solve the problem. As a matter of fact, they make matters worse by tricking people into abandoning the traditional way of life but yet failing to offer a feasible alternative.

yes, well spoken, M. Rousseau...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_the_Arts_and_Sciences

Different Sean Says:

SF Woman wrote:

> I think the one difference between people who can become
> financially successful and those who fritter away everything
> is the ability to defer gratification, to see the larger, long
> term goals.

Then Different Sean (who should write press releases for the DNC) wrote:

> then there’s the outright poor who can’t get well-paying jobs.
> not counting countries where virtually everyone is poor. and
> the nature of high modernity capitalist markets where wealth
> is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and real wages
> have dropped over the years.

Let’s stick to the US since I’m not going to argue that it will be tough to get a good paying job in Sub Saharan Africa.

One of the things my Dad (who dropped out of college to work full time at 20) told me is when you hear someone say they “can’t do something” it just means that they “won’t do something” (or are just too lazy to do something”).

If you work hard in America you will make plenty of money even if you have no education. My tree trimmer and tile guy both make over $250K a year and my tile guy even has a second home (with servants) back in Mexico near the town he grew up in

Governor Conan Says:

> The other thing I don’t understand is why children
> won’t live with their aging parents. It’s just plain
> immoral. When I select a wife — if such a time
> shall come — I’ll make sure that the woman should
> be entirely willing to live with my parents.

I’ll let my parents live with me (or move down to their house if they want someone other than paid help to keep an eye on them some day) since they are nice people. Many people do not do this because their parents are not nice people.

Since as SF Woman points out many people don’t know how to delay gratification so more and more woman don’t wait until after marriage (or even High School) to have kids. Most Dad’s who never marry don’t stick around and most single Mom’s end up living in a crappy place and making their kids deal with a long line of the pathetic looser type guys that can’t get a date with a woman without kids.

Most people who had crappy parents just let them die in a state run housing facility…

I talked to Kiyosaki at the bus stop the other day, you know, "off the record" so to speak.

He said that the important thing to remember is to keep your eye on the ball, and buy his books, so that he can make money off them and get rich pimping your dreams of wealth without effort.

I said, "well, what about guys like me and Surfer-X, down here in the trenches, swinging a bat the old fashioned way and racking up college credits because we bought the Boomer line about education and working hard and all that sh-t?"

He said, "f-ck 'em. Let 'em eat cake!"

Now that's fricken' hard core! Damn, he's soulless!

yay!
Just checked the CL Austin listings. There are now over 2,000 homes under 150k. That's freakin' awesome. There was like 500 just a few weeks ago. It is nice to see that at least one cool city in the country is going in a totally opposite way RE wise than here. Hell- I bet those prices will drop even more than that. Yee haw!( sorry, just kinda excited)

I was under the impression we were discussing the economics of people within the US.

OK, so in a market society with lots of advertising distractions, people who defer gratification will end up with more. QED. The ol' hoard it and never spend it Protestant work ethic prevails.

I still say it's a highly individualistic world view, and takes no account of other life chances, as Max Weber would put it. However, it is a common 'pop psychology' explanation put about a lot in the highly individualised US (and psychologists tend to work 'inside the box'), and it becomes a circular explanation, like the signs of the zodiac describing personality... In other environments, perhaps those who don't hoard fare better in an adaptive evolutionary sense? Which is why we see a spectrum of behaviours - most behaviours are adaptive in some way to some environment, past or present. Let's posit that in the wild, the person who eats what they find straight away is more likely to live, and who breed on a whim will populate the earth more successfully... 'Lifelong success' in a long-term acquisitive and materialistic capitalist society is a different thing to success in the wild where you don't know where your next meal is coming from, and you have to make the most of it... and maybe the non-delayed types enjoy their lives more from moment to moment?

Besides which, did the marshmallow experimenter control for other variables such as intelligence (and there are many kinds of intelligence), parents SES, social and cultural capital at the homes of the children, educational opportunities, individual emotional lability, and so on? Does childhood gratification patterns equate to adult gratification patterns? I find the explanation of a single behavioural variable a little unsatisfying. How many other variables did he control for? Is it causative or just correlative? etc...

And I’ll even argue that if you want to be an artist, and can’t support yourself and expect others to chip in and do so, then you are the very definition of a parasite. Pay=job, can’t support yourself=hobby.

I'm a corporate lawyer, and I expect to be helped out by generous corporations -- I find that when I lie in a certain way, they chip in and pay me a lot of money to get them off the hook. I particularly like to say things like tobacco doesn't cause cancer and that a company should not be liable for asbestos deaths. I might become a politician or politician's adviser next, and put favourable spin on wars that kill thousands. After that, I'll become a lobbyist and take bribes to piss in some politician's ear. I expect a socially useful $500 K p.a. for all the abovementioned noble duties. That's far more morally superior than just producing silly art for the sake of people's ephemeral happiness, when I could be helping big business to get off the hook with my skills in glibness, and making so many people unhappy... See what modern society values? My glib tongue is worth its weight in gold...

If you work hard in America you will make plenty of money even if you have no education. My tree trimmer and tile guy both make over $250K a year and my tile guy even has a second home (with servants) back in Mexico near the town he grew up in

hard-working public servants with degrees here are pushing to make $50K. that's their salary. maybe they should drop out and start tree-trimming businesses, i don't know...

in fact, if you look at the means and distributions of income in the US, you'll find that the average salary is still $36,764. a tree trimmer making $250 K pa is charging $125 per hour for an 8 hour day, more than most doctors with 10 years of tertiary study behind them can charge. unless they're ripping off their clientele, have quite a few employees passing the money up to them or start a franchise...

the White House reports that the average hourly earnings of non-supervisory workers was $15.54 in March 2004. however, the average pay for CEOs running $5 billion companies for the three years ending in 2002 hit $12 million.

so it all sounds a little 'bullish' to me...

And then there is everyone born after the very early 70s,..

... or late 60s

...who brown bag their lunches...

Amen

...and drive used compact cars,...

Sing it brother

but despite saving $1500-$2000 per month,

So true, so true.

... watch houses appreciate by $10,000 a month.

Sweet Jesus!

You can EASILY become poor without spending any money at all. Remember, debt = wealth.

Don't forget, the money that you don't spend today will be worth jack tomorrow:

http://tinyurl.com/mhx5l

I was born in mid-70s but I do not pinch pennies. Must be my Taurus ascendent sign.

a few useful (?) links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_metrics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

Wow, the blog is starting to get CHINESE SPAM! Cool. Can anyone translate this for me?:

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@Robert,
:lol: I think that's what the Japanese spam says.

Different Sean wrote:

> hard-working public servants with degrees here are
> pushing to make $50K.

SF cops make over $100K with overtime and I have many firefighter friends making over $200K a year (and working less than 15 days a month). You can make over $50K with a SF government job and work less than 20 hours a week so have plenty of time to make money somewhere else...

I "brown bagged" for years. Not so much that I'm THAT cheap but b/c NW Portland was/is legendary for PC restaurants. I mean where else can you get a "vegetarian hot dog"? I swear, after one bite I almost gagged and took it out of the bun and tossed it to the curb. A mangey mutt came by sniffed it and he wouldn't eat it either! After sampling the "vegetarian pizza" my stomach was so upset I told my co-workers to cover for me b/c I had to go home. They change ownership, management and menus CONSTANTLY. Just b/c it was edible last week doesn't mean it is this week! Oh and on top of that they're snooty.

Different Sean writes:

> Does childhood gratification patterns equate
> to adult gratification patterns?

I have never seen an "official study" but every kid I grew up with that didn’t study every night and watched a lot of TV and ate a lot of junk food when they were little then started smoking pot, drinking and having sex at 14 are not doing nearly as well as the kids who had less fun and worked harder…

Portland Sucks (there, I said it)

I'm told they have a Portland Sucks Blog. I'll have to let them know just how right they are. Right now it's like 58 degrees, overcast and drizzling off and on. We are 3 weeks away from the 4th. Great.........

DinOR,

No matter how often you bash Portland, I'll never lose my romanticised image of the PNW. But if Portland-bashing helps to scare away greedy flipper asshats from CA (who are f--king up prices there too), then I'm all for it. Bash away...

HARM,

Hey thanks! There really is no particular agenda on my part to bash PDX. It's just depression and the "tease" of having a few nice days and winding up back in "solitary" so to speak. For the most part flipper mania has been concentrated in Bend, OR and the surrounding areas but any time I hear Oregonians blame Californians my eyes involuntarily role into the back of my head! I've heard that same schpeel for so long I now finish the diatribe for them just so I don't have to hear it from somebody else.

Most of the places that still have that "Old NW Charm" are still there so don't let me spoil that for you. It's just that with all of the "in-fill" construction they are now a more difficult commute but tolerable by national standards.