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justme
2009 Feb 17, 1:26am
DennisN and Sybrib,
I'm not exactly in disagreement with you, but I think there is another aspects of the situation which is overlooked: The rampant "pyramid-scheming" around the valley by those who have been here longer, exploiting those who arrived more recently.
When times are good, the schemers are cheerleaders because they can sit around and watch their property values and rents go up. When times go bad, as they now have, even some of the same people (and I do not mean any of you two) are whining about immigrants taking their jobs, blah, blah, blah.
There is also a real division among the old-timers between property owners and the plain blue-collar folks. The latter have children that move away, the former have children that become real-estate agents and tax the newcomers. If they are really blue-blood, they dabble in *commercial* real-estate and play lots of golf.
That is more or less the picture, and I think it has been ongoing for a LONG time, maybe since 1940-1945. Right now it looks like the pyramid has stopped growing.
Peter P
2009 Feb 17, 2:36am
justme, I agree with you!
That is more or less the picture, and I think it has been ongoing for a LONG time, maybe since 1940-1945.
It was the New Deal's fault.
justme
2009 Feb 17, 3:27am
Hardly. More like the generic tendency of pyramid-scheming in the US, coupled with WW2, Cold War buildup, and so on.
justme, I agree with what you said. Prop.13 is a fine example of this.
justme
2009 Feb 17, 10:08am
No kidding, Prop. 13 preserves the wealth of the haves (and hangers-on of convenience) at the expense of everyone else.
Peter P
2009 Feb 18, 2:15am
I say abolish Prop 13. It is a form of rent control (land rent/tax) and any form of rent control is evil.
I agree, I hate the fact that I will need to work for the rest of my enjoyable part of life if I ever wanted to own a home in the area that I grew up in. SF Bay Area.
I won't be able to take vacation days off work, I won't be able to take time off for family, I won't be able to do anything but go to work, they just want us to keep on working so they can keep on taxing, but what incentive is there to work, except to make us pay loads of money for a home.
Q: Does anyone know if banks --being as they are the effective owners of vast amounts of real estate-- are delaying settlements and recordations on theory that finalizing sales will accelerate the deflation of their assets?
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Why do we see so much suffering and moaning in the press about falling house prices when high house prices have directly injured and enslaved millions of Americans? To quote myself:
Housing is the biggest expense in nearly everyone's life, far more expensive than food, gas, energy, even more expensive than education or medicine. To reduce the time you spend working to pay for housing is to increase the time you have for everything else.
Cheap housing is good for us all! High housing costs take away from families' ability to save for retirement, fund their children's education, travel and lead a quality life.
How can we make lower house prices our official government policy? How can we completely eliminate the mortgage interest deduction which drives up housing costs and discriminates against renters? How can we wipe out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the FHA, and other agencies whose job it is to enslave Americans to mortgage debt?
Patrick
#housing