patrick.net

bubblesitter says

Worse yet,if we are heading towards very low living standard even after collecting so much taxes,we are a runaway train.

This is part of the problem. Much of what is called 'entitlement spending' could be done far more cheaply through a well structured, performanced-based single payer healthcare system, but the entrenched healthcare and insurance interests aren't going to permit the taxpayer to stop paying top dollar for substandard care. Farm subsidied drive up the cost of food making food stamps more costly to taxpayers. Private prisons cost far more per inmate than efficiently run public-prisons, again, at taxpayer expense. In many areas, the oligarchs who provide these services and recieve these subsidies drive up the cost of caring for our vulnerable and providing needed social services, so when cuts to the safetynet are made, we don't get more efficent, we just get less security. Our tax money is wasted on lining the pockets of looters, not caring for the health and well being of moochers.

gbenson says

Reader, US cities are only overpriced if you can't afford the cost of living there. Some can, many can't. I think a more important question is to ask why the 'many' can't.

If the US continues to outsource for cheap labor and is unwilling to pay its own workers a living wage, then we in fact are in a race to the bottom. There is no way we can sustain the living style we have become accustom to. We will become a third world nation unless we change course on wages and free trade.

I understand what you are saying, but also understand people with real money, old money know value and as such (and I mean real wealth not horrible new money or pretend money - which most real estate transactions now fall into the catagory of pretend money, then new money only,) I digress, sophisticated real old money is NOT going to overspend on something of less value than asking. I don't care if it is Manhattan or London.

Why is so much more asking than value? Because mass-greed was unleashed and made possible where any fool could pretend they were rich. Pricing is just part of that fantasy. The best part of all of it? None of it is real.