patrick.net

Joe Schmoe,

In addition to Texas, you might want to consider DC. The pay there for lawyers is fairly good, and you're able to do fairly high level work. My parents rent a nice townhouse in one of the best school districts in Montgomery County, MD for $1550 a month. Non-whites are very mainstream, so your kids won't be alienated. Low crime rate and excellent schools, with a lot of magnet schools. There's lots of good ethnic food and the overall cost of living is still pretty low compared to NYC and West Coast.

Joe Schmoe,

I would like to get to understand how private schools are stacked against each other too. It seems to me that the common evaluation is by looking at their college placement data.

West coast private schools here tend to send more to Stanford and UCB than East Coast counterparts. I was looking at some data published by Harker, a decent private school here, and it seems that they send a respectable portion of graduates to good private schools, although at a slightly lower percentage than Andover, Exetor etc. but not material enough to justify the extra boarding fee. One may argue that you make far more powerful friends at Andover, but as someone mentioned before, if my kids end up being the poorest among their classmates from zillionaire families, that won't do any good to my kids' development either.

I am not too much into touchy-feely claims of "all-rounder" developments with more "music talents", "literature programs", I need some objective yardstick to measure these schools against each other. I find the private school system in this country equally disappointing, because the evaluation system is not very transparent. In Hong Kong where I came from, schools, private or public, are stacked against each other in all kinds of statistics possible, test scores in public exams (distribution of scores as well), music awards, sports awards, debate team championships, literature awards, etc. Parents are much better informed.

OO,

I would argue that the Asian system place way too much emphasis on getting into "the" school and often not enough emphasis on developing the kids as decent human beings. Maybe Hong Kong does a good job, but my cousins went through the PRC system and there is an incredible amount of cheating at top schools.

*unlurks*

Haven't got a handy photo of a Toronto $hitbox going for big bucks just yet but here's an article on the national newspaper admitting that things aren't so hot in the eastern half of Canada....

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060705.whousingg0705/BNStory/Business/home

"After a string of record years characterized by heated bidding wars and double-digit gains in prices, major markets such as Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal are taking a breather. Price increases are moving closer to the rate of inflation, multiple offers are less frequent and the number of homes for sale is increasing, industry sources say.

“Sure, the heat has come off,” said Don Lawby, president of Century 21 Canada. “It's a good market. It's not a spectacular market like it was.”

...yeah, 'cause now you buggers have to wait 30 or 60 days for a signed contract from day-of-listing rather than the 2 or 3 days it would normally take for an offer to show up (usually in a bidding war).

Of course, if those Hummer-driving soccer moms keep filling those gas tanks of theirs, there is one real estate market in the world that will continue to levitate....Calgary (and Edmonton) where lots of oil money has been sloshing around lately.

"West of Ontario it is a different story, with price increases in the hot Calgary market hitting levels never before seen in close to three decades of record keeping by the Canada Real Estate Association.

“What's been happening in Calgary in the last few months is mind-boggling,” said Gregory Klump, CREA's chief economist.

The average price of a two-storey home in Calgary is up more than 54 per cent in the first half of this year compared with a year earlier, figures released Wednesday by Royal LePage show."

.....sure glad I'm not shopping for a house in Calgary! Or even trying to rent a place, it's like the dot-com boom all over again!

*relurks*

*unlurks*

Ah, found my Toronto $hitbox. Well! Tsusiat DID say this became an International housing bubble thread!!

http://www.mls.ca/PropertyDetails.aspx?vd=&SearchURL=%3fMode%3d0%26Page%3d1%26vs%3d1%26rlt%3d%26cp%3d%26pt%3d1%252c57%252c99%26mp%3d100000-850000-0%26mrt%3d-1-0-0%26Beds%3d0-0%26Baths%3d0-0%26f%3d%26ft%3dall%26o%3dA%26of%3d1%26ps%3d50%26ptgid%3d1%26aid%3d3339%26MapURL%3d%253fAreaID%253d6367&Mode=0&PropertyID=4665989

Yeah yeah, I know it looks cheap by Kalifornica standards, but $379,000 is still a lot of money for a deep downstore core semi-detached on a busy aterial street. I haven't checked how far south on Parliament Street this place is, but south of College it gets very ratty very fast. $380's is the median price for a home in Toronto but I"d hardly consider this a median house! (never figured out the $380K median did, or did not include numerous Toronto high rise condos which would tend to drag down the median or average. 'Course, we have plenty of $400K two bedroom condos too).

And there used to be a fish and chip store in this house! The grease! The smell! Damn right they're selling "as-is"! The only benefit is that being in this place is that it is deep in the city core and you'd never notice gas prices since you'd never want to drive in downtown Toronto. (At least our public transit doesn't suck).

Love reading the threads but still catching up from the last week's worth. I didn't get to "Whack the Author". Would have liked to!

*relurks*

joe schmoe,

i heard of a 28 year old lawyer in DC who makes $500K a year doing corporate defence work or similar...

i don't know if he has to sell his soul, tho...

I will start a private school and give them true education. But please think twice before sending your daughters here if they are pretty. Boys are safe with me although I may corrupt them (oops, set them straight) with a refreshing and authentic look at this world.

Meritocracy in education necessitates cheating. Elite schools in the old days were finishing schools for the upper-class children.

Real education is outside schooling. Whoever places undue emphasis on schooling is a drone, a machine, a slave to the syste.

Do not let the society corrupt you.

I second Astrid's view that the true aim of education should be to teach the children proper values.

No, PARENTS teach kids values. Not schools. And it’s not what the parents SAY…it’s what they DO and DON’T DO.

Very true. The school is not important at all, so long as it is relatively free of bad elements. The simple and cheap way to fix schools is to expell the wrong students.

But please think twice before sending your daughters here if they are pretty. Boys are safe with me although I may corrupt them (oops, set them straight) with a refreshing and authentic look at this world.

Huh?

I second Astrid’s view that the true aim of education should be to teach the children proper values.

Value is a very difficult concept. What is the right moral system? Is there even one?

Let me ask you guys. What makes action A in context C moral or immoral?

How many top-notch hospitals are there in CA? Only three - UCLA, UCSF, and maybe Stanford.

What makes you think that top-notch hospitals are necessarily teaching hospitals? Do you really want to be treated by a student?

To me, culture is 98% food. I hate to say this but CA is winning by a margin. :) (True, Boston has better chowdah.)

Stanford is by no means a world class hospital, not even close. It is a teaching hospital, more often than not, you get an intern operating on you.

You don’t really get treated by students there. Clearly, you need to be treated by the right doctors even in the top places.

Make sure you get that point across. People DO get treated by interns.

Say you had a serious medical problem (cancer, heart, etc.). Where would you go in CA? Kaiser??? There are maybe a couple of places where I would go in this state, and no more than a dozen in the whole country. You may do ok in other places, but it’s riskier.

Just make sure you get operated at the right time in the right place.

There’s some good food in SF, but where else in CA? I’d take Manhattan any time for food…

The San Gabriel Valley has really good Chinese food. Much better than most restaurants in SF.

Manhattan does not have good Chinese food. Sushi is way overpriced. However, Italian food is excellent.

The Las Vegas Strip has the highest concentration of good food.

Wouldn't it be smarter to buy in a bad school district, save themselves a half million, and send their kids to the best private school in the country with their savings?

Wouldn’t it be smarter to buy in a bad school district, save themselves a half million, and send their kids to the best private school in the country with their savings?

Also, good school districts can be redistricted away. Houses in bad school districts do not have this potential downside.

When I was going to school in the 70's and 80's, public school was meant for the lower class people. I grew up middle class, so I went to private school. Are wealthy people today not affluent enough to send their kids to private school, or did they just lower their standard of living?

Mike,

The difference in price of comparable homes between Cupertino (considered to be a great school district) and say Santa Clara is not enough to sponsor private education for 2 kids for 12 years. Cupertino is insanely expensive, but if you add the costs of at least 20K per kid per year to houses in other areas, then Cupertino makes sense.

I rent in Cupertino. I throw away my money on rent in a nice apartment, to get the same education for my kids as those living in 1M+ crappy houses, with no liability, no loan, no angst. I am not even insy winsy tiny bit jealous of Cupertino home debtors. I thank them for paying horrendous amount of property tax to give my kids a good school district.

The irony is, which I had already mentioned, these same people - who are willing to be mortgage slaves for their kids primary education - may find it hard to pay for their kids' college tuition - UNLESS their homes keep appreciating.

I am willing to rent forever if the equations remain as is. And when my kids are ready to go to college, I will be out of Cupertino and peacefully move to a cheaper area.

To BA Or Not To BA ,

I'm not talking about renters who send their kids to a fairly good public school to get a fairly good public education for free. I'm talking about the people who can afford to pay 1/2 - 1 million+ for a home, but can't afford to send their kids to a world class school, like The George School, because their too poor. Just shows me their true status in society by sending their precious children to public school, even though they live in a Mc' Mansion.

Mike,

my wife grew up in the BA in the 80s, and the way I understand it is, the gap between the good school and bad school was not as huge as it is today. All schools were pretty much the same, some better than others (Palo Alto and Cupertino were always the blue-ribbon school districts in BA), but you could manage being stuck in East San Jose. Private schools were a lot cheaper back then, and since public school system was decent, there was no burning desire from parents to send kids to private schools, which also put a pricing pressure on these schools.

Recently private school tuition has been advancing at around 10% a year, no chump change for a 20K tuition to begin with. Since the overall quality of public school goes down so much, if you are not in a good school district, your only other option is a private school, which obviously creates more demand for private school, and hence comes the hefty tuition.

The problem with bad school districts is, they are usually located in bad areas. Do you want to live in East Palo Alto, Oakland or East San Jose? With the disappearing middle class in BA, we only have two districts, the safe districts, or the unsafe districts, and two classes, aka, the rich and the poor. There are increasing number of neighborhoods in BA that I will conider dangerous to live in. As people flee these dangerous neighborhoods, better neighborhoods tend to charge more in terms of housing price and rent.

It is just a symptom of a much bigger social problem this country is going through.

Actually Australia is sort of like what BA was in 70s and 80s. My cousin lives down under, and the notion of a "good school district" is very foreign to him. There are some better schools, but the quality is quite even so parents don't move around based on the schools, it is a non-issue.

Therefore, private school in Australia is extremely cheap (1/3 - 1/4 of our tuition) compared to us, for the same quality of output (I checked out their curriculum online and in general they are every bit as competitive as the private schools here). The Aussie government even offers rebate to parents who send their kids to private schools, but most Aussies, even the middle upper and upper class, choose to send kids through the public system since the difference in quality doesn't justify the extra out-of-pocket expense for private schools.

Therefore, private school tuition in itself is a manifestation of how effective the public school system is. A broken public school system is a breeding ground for outrageous private school tuition, and that is what we see today.

OO,

20k for tuition for family income of 200k is only 10%. My kids are worth it. I know what goes on in public schools. The masses and dregs of society peddle their influence. That is not the environment I want my kids to grow up in.

Our public school system has the lowest achievement standards compared with the rest of the industrialized world. This is why private is better, along with becoming a product of your environment.

Mike,

If 200K is pre-tax, then the take-home post-tax post 401K net income is roughly 120K. With 2 kids, private school expenses are 40K per year. Which 30% of the actual income. Very rough calculations. Add mortgage of 40K (post tax benifits) to it. That is 80K of 120K. A couple will be financially stretched at that level.

Renting at 25K (vs the 80K above) in a good school district is hence a no-brainer.

Well, it should never have come to this. For our kids sake.

Previous comment for To BA Or Not To BA .

LILLL,

When I went to school, half of us kids went to the same private schools. Hung out together and had lots of activities together. We didn't bring home the swear words as our first language, and disrespect that the children from public school bring home today. I don't mind hard language from time to time, in order to get a point across, but not loosely out of a child's mouth, who learns no respect.

The western analogues are “intellectuals” [...]. They disdain money, usually because they don’t have very much, and instead they rate themselves based upon publications, degrees, notoriety and reputation among one’s peers, etc. They too miss the big picture.

Those tend to be pseudo intellectuals. The real ones do not care too much about publications and degrees. They do, however, care about their reputations amongst a very select group of people.

You also have to understand that modern academia is a business, not an intellectual haven. Professors are generally speaking better compensated than most middle-class folks and do not perform supervised work. Many IBs who pull in a million bucks a year are supervised in some way. The professors enjoy certain prestige, which means a lot to a lot of people.

Not that I want to be one of them. Having spent a good chunk of my youth there, I have great disdain for the academia.

You can always send your kids away to a different country with higher education standards. Australia seems to be a good place. They speak English.

Even as the merchant class arose and gained power and affluence they were still looked down upon by the nobility and the civil service.

The merchant class has always been looked down upon in almost every society. The only notable exceptions are US of A, England 1700-1900, Venice in its heydays, and possibly the Athenian Empire. But, these are notable exceptions. In US of A and ancien Venice, the merchant class rule(d). In England and Athenian Empire, the merchant class shared power with the hereditary nobles. Correct me if I am wrong.

The original meaning of "middle class" refers to the merchant class and the factory owners. In short, business owners. Professionals such as lawyers were not considered middle class, because they were for hire.

They disdain money, usually because they don’t have very much [...]

Partially true.

Two kinds of people disdain money: Those who don't have much and have convinced themselves that they can live happily without much money and those who were born with too much and never have never felt the need for money.

Peter P Says:

> I still do not understand good school districts.
> If they really care so much about the future of
> their kids, perhaps they should perform cesarean
> deliveries when planets align instead.

Then Governor Conan Says:

> Real education is outside schooling. Whoever
> places undue emphasis on schooling is a drone,
> a machine, a slave to the syste.

This is the reason that you send kids to good schools. In a good school kids learn that you need to go to a good college from other students and their parents.

In a bad school kids learn that you need to do a drive by if someone “diss you” (for a less dramatic example a friend that moved to the mountains ended up with a pregnant 16 year old daughter since that is normal at her school (it is not normal in SF at Convent of the Sacred Heart).

Someone a while back said “who you pick for your parents will determine your success in life”… The reason for this is that “Where the parents send their kids to school will determine their success in life”… In good schools most kids go to college, and in bad schools most kids drop out.

Astrid,

That is a great idea. Thank you!

Ironically, the reason wny I don't want my kids to be the only non-whites in school is because I am afraid that they will be indoctrinated with the ideology of diversity.

In a CA good public school, one that isn't attended by too many Hispanics, I am pretty certain that my kids would immediately be labeled as "the Hispanics." On the Day of the Dead, Cinco de Mayo, etc., they'd be used as the token representatives of this minority group. That's because here, in the land of liberalism, everyone must be labeled as a member of a racial or ethnic group.

I do NOT want this. I do NOT want their heritage to be an issue. I do NOT want my kids to think of themselves as "Hispanics." I want them to think of themselves as people. I do NOT want them patronized or treated as "special and wonderful" (in a transparently fake way) because of the color of their skin or their heritage. I want them to be treated like everyone else.

This is a really big deal to me. I don't even let my kids watch Sesame Street because I am worried that there might be a liberal subtext in the shows. PBS seems to be pretty good about this stuff, and I am inclined to trust them, but I don't have time to monitor every show, so I don't let them watch it at all.

Ironically, in the provincial Midwest, this would not be an issue. In the lower-middle-class, lilly-white exurb where I grew up, minority kids really stuck out becuase there were so few of them. But no one made an issue of their race or ethnicity. There were so few minorities that people never really developed a seperate mental classification for them; everyone was treated as white. For example, there were exactly three black people in my high school graduating class of 400. Our Homecoming King was black. His election wasn't hailed as a great leap forward in tolerance and diversity. I remember that I didn't even think about it in those terms until my mom saw his picture in the paper and mentioned that he was black. It didn't even occur to any of the kids that we had just elected a black guy. No one gave Steve's race any thought, he won becuase everyone liked him. He was just a good guy.

Things have undoubtedly changed since I was a kid. I'm sure that the teachers are more liberal today and would make an attempt to "celebrate diversity." But I also know that if I quietly had a word with the teacher, they'd understand where I was coming from and would refrain from doing so, at least where my kids are concerned.

Here I am not so sure. I am pretty sure that if my kids were the only Hispanics in, say, South Pasadena, the teachers would immediately start in with the diversity stuff. I am not sure that I could dissuade them from doing so.

If there are enough Hispanics in the class, it won't be an issue. For example, here in Alhambra the schools are probably 2/3 Asian and 1/3 Hispanic. I do not plan on sending my kids to school here, becuase the schools are not that great, but if I did, the idea of indoctrination with the ideology of diversity would not be a concern. There seems to be a different dynanmic when everyone is a minority. And while there is some racial tension in the schools here -- the fact that the Asians make up the overwhelming majority of "A" students, while Hispanics make up the overwhelming majority of "C" students is obvious to everyone but the school administrators -- it's pretty minor. And the Hispanic "A" students seem to be readily acceped by the Asians. So if the Alhambra schools were good, I would have no problem sending my kids to them.

Here in CA, most of the good public schools have very few Hispanic students. The faculty is, however, quite liberal. I fear that if I send my kids to public school here, they'll be singled out and patronized. The private schools, on the other hand, have basically no Hispanics. I strongly suspect that for this reason, my kids' ethnicity will be a non-issue. And I am certain that if I ask the teachers not to make an issue of it, they will honor my request.

Also, I think the socialization kids get in private school is beneficial. While I don't want them to turn into little preppie shits, and will send them to public school in a heartbeat if this starts to happen, I do want them to know which fork to use, etc.

How many top-notch hospitals are there in CA? Only three - UCLA, UCSF, and maybe Stanford.

What makes you think that top-notch hospitals are necessarily teaching hospitals? Do you really want to be treated by a student?

I know this tangent is from last night, but aside from my personal bias for Stanford, I MUST correct some complete misstatements by Peter, OO and others.

First, every single hospital any of you would consider either "world class" or top-notch in this country is a teaching hospital, no exceptions. The way the US medical system operates relies on interns, residents and fellows to help run these hospitals. Any physician with any amount of national prestige and recognition (or aspirations thereof) wants to work at these hospitals. In addition to UCLA, UCSF and Stanford (all three are by all objective measures in the same "league" of national prominence and excellence), think of Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women's Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Texas Heart Institute, etc. Every single one of them will have interns and residents. Face it, at every single one of these places, yes, you will have trainees involved in your care. If you want top-notch care and innovation, these are the places to go. If you want a private practitioner GOME who kisses up to you when he/she visits your hospital room while practicing medicine that's 10-20 years old because he hasn't learned anything new since residency, go to a private hospital. And worse yet, if you want 2 minutes a day with your doctor, go to a Kaiser hospital. (BTW, Kaiser hospitals also have their own interns and residents, too. So do "private hospitals" like Cedars Sinai).

Of course, there are rare exceptions where certain specialty hospitals or clinics are completely privately run, but even these have "trainees", usually advanced fellows (just finished general training). The Steadman Hawkins Clinic at Vail (think Kobe Bryant) comes to mind.

Second point. It is well documented in several studies that the chances of medical error and poor outcome are significantly less at teaching hospitals compared to private hospitals. The multiple layers of double checking, between nurses, interns, residents, and attendings is the main factor.

Finally, the main reason for my diatribe is that the underlying attitudes I get from comments like those from Peter and OO is exactly what I and many others in medicine hate the most about the job. Namely, patients come in who expect top-notch medical care, expect expensive tests and procedures, and expect them to be free b/c they're covered by insurance. On top of that, even though they expect to have a great doctor, they don't think about where these great doctors came from - do you all think that they just show up on the scene all educated and trained? Medicine is in the end a profession that basically relies on an apprenticing model of training. Teaching hospitals are the bargain we strike for having one of the best medical education systems in the world. Unless you can think of a better system, that's what you get.

Face Reality Says:

“To me, culture is 98% food. I hate to say this but CA is winning by a margin. (True, Boston has better chowdah.) ”

___

Boston clam chow-chow.

Phoenix has better restaurants than San Jo. And way more of them.

But here’s the economic truth: The Fed doesn’t set mortgage rates. When it “raises rates,” that just means it is removing money from the economic pipeline. Not only doesn’t this procedure increase mortgage rates, but over the long run it reduces inflation and permits the markets to lower mortgage rates.

Very interesting, as I hadn't realized that the mortgage industry had figured out how to set their own cost of capital. It's a financial miracle! No longer do banks in the business of lending need to determine their own cost of lending that capital by evaluating the overnight repo rates or government bond yields. Astounding!

Sarcasm aside, the reason that when the Fed raises overnight rates it puts upward pressure on mortgage rates is simple: The banks/institutions doing the lending have to demand more interest in order to justify using their cash to lend to you. If a bank can get better return lending to companies or with bonds, then they'll just do that instead. Thus the mortgage rates rise to the level where banks will lend you money to buy a house.

I'm ignoring all the micro stuff, which can drive mort rates up too as int rates rise. For example, even though inflation is falling, the risk of financial distress is rising because of the increasing cost of capital. That means homeowners are become more risky debtors in a rising interest rate environ.

Joe,

Montgomery County does have its share of liberal teachers, but not obtrusively so. I was lucky to attend a magnet program full of teachers who were brillant and cared deeply about teaching.

As for the kids, my mom works for the school district and she says she's seeing more rude kids and more kids throwing gobs of money around than was the case ten years ago. So it's probably best to steer your kids away from the richest school districts. Those districts tend to have a mix of monied (but by no means exclusively white schools) and poor kids from the county's affordable housing projects, so your kids might feel uncomfortable being stuck in between. I'm a product of the magnet schools, so I would recommend looking at magnet schools. I had classmates whose parents gave them new Benzes and BMWs and many classmates who had to pay their own way through college, and money was never mentioned in class or out of class.

Hispanics in the DC suburbs are not fresh from the border and the ones in the better schools usually have parents who deeply care about their education, and many of them are middle or even upper middle class.

Most of the Counties near DC, with the exception of Prince George's County, has at least a couple of good schools. I definitely think the situation there is much more middle class friendly than California, and the weather is not too bad. The winters are quite tolerable and warm compared to the midwest and northeast.