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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.
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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