patrick.net
An Antidote to Corporate Media
1,260,093 comments by 15,050 users - desertguy online now
invite response« First « Previous Comments 227 - 236 of 236 Search these comments
Randy H
2006 Aug 7, 4:21pm
I second SQT. I am very appreciative of all the diversity of opinion here, even some I viscerally disagree with. But the likes of GC are disruptive because they are classic, old fashioned Trolls. Just clever enough to often coax a few people into arguing with them, only to sit back and fan the flames.
His/her problem is that I'm old enough to have been a Usenet moderator. Sometimes I really pine for those days when we could squash a Troll and effectively get them blacklisted until they could figure out how to get their university shell account changed, which usually they couldn't.
Woops --sorry Randy. I was furiously typing away at In the Mind of a F@cked Borrower and published before I saw your "Inflation" thread.
SQT Says:
exactly, as i said, it’s not appropriate to write 2,000 words on either topic into this forum, i don’t have the time right now, and no amount of baiting or whingeing will make me do it.
OMG! You of all people have the guts to post this. You! The one who writes endless OT posts that take up half the thread?
because, SQT, i've realised there's there's no point making eurocentric posts against american libertarians, religious fundamentalists, 2nd amendment rightists, market fundamentalists, capital penaltists, ethnocentrists, fatalists, etc, as they just get longer and longer as people react. you will find just as many long posts by other regs here, and the word count of other regs is much longer than mine. i think you'll also find i don't initiate OT discussions 9.8 times out of 10, but i DO react to people who are willing to happily sacrifice other people's limbs and organs and lives in the interest of 'markets' or expediency or something in the interests of cocktail party chatter.
Randy H Says:
DS,
I’m just curious. Which “ist†am I? Welche “ist†bin ich?
hee hee, wouldn't you like to know.... :twisted:
and you can be more than one ;)
Dear GC,
The truth hurts. That is why you hate Colbert. From your posts you are an imbecile. Go fuck yourself.
NARB
Communism may have victored yet we have failed to recognize it. Nearly 50% of the UK is involved in socialized industries. Energy industries are nationalized worldwide. China. Taxes 30-50% depending on the industry. Sadly Communism has never and can never produce the economic growth civilization requires. Only free market capitalism can produce the requisite growth. With the imploding bubble, real estate may be the next overtly collectivized industry.
But collectivized housing isn't all that bad of an idea. Housing is not a particularly innovative or productive area of production, and the McMansion trend is a case of the market's runaway evolution, like the peacock's tail. If Americans were content to go back to smaller comfortable dwellings that have no investment value (due to govt regulation or otherwise), that would free up investment and human capital for real innovation and real economic growth.
Also, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Fed rates...the US taxpayers are already in the RE business, they're just saddled with all the risk and non of the rewards.
Time to get an EU passport? Autralia and New Zealand are viable options. Know some shrewd hedge fund guys moving to NZ. Know some professionals in South Africa who are desperate to find an alternative.
« First « Previous Comments 227 - 236 of 236 Search these comments
Thanks to Hollywood's cultural hegemony, everyone in the world seems to "know" California and usually has a mental image of what life in the state is like. Sadly, the reality of the typical CA "lifestyle" today bears almost zero resemblance to the popular Baywatch glamor image slavishly promoted by the media.
For most working-class wage earners (especially for post-Boomers) that lifestyle generally ranges from spartan to awful, and seems to be trending worse by the day. Housing is only one part, albeit a very large one, in the overall progressive deterioration in the quality of life here for regular folks. The deterioration manifests itself in a number of ways: environmental degradation/pollution, overpopulation/urban overcrowding, traffic perma-gridlock, rapidly deteriorating physical infrastructure and schools, and --critically-- the inability of a working-class income to provide a middle-class lifestyle.
Ignoring the current housing bubble for the moment, the secular trend for at least the past 30 years appears to be California transitioning to a completely bifurcated economy and society, strictly divided between a super-wealthy elite "haves" and a permanently impoverished majority, mostly made up of illegal immigrants and marginalized citizens. The emerging reality is closer to what one might expect to find in Mexico or Brazil, not in the U.S. The housing bubble has greatly exaggerated and magnified this trend, of course. However, even when you remove it from the equation, this long-term trend towards housing unaffordability, overpopulation and overall lower quality of life remains.
I present you with three distinct visions of California.
California Past (pre-Prop. 13, SMUG/NIMBY, illegal flood):
Hollywood Fantasy California:
California Present:
#housing