patrick.net

All that equity....
What a story. First a ridiculously expensive education - the stick that preceeds the carrot - the choice white collar job.....which disappears after all the high-end purchases (including the pricey home, cars and other toys)
...followed by the downsizing, outsourcing, off-shoring and various other corporate creative management tricks....which results in unemployment, underemployment, shrinking wages....
It's simple math: when $80,000 annual is followed up by 5 years of $60,000....it's not that hard to figure out what kicked in the $100,000 of missing income over that time period - the sweet home ATM machine.
These realities....riddle through the population like a plague of locusts let loose in a wheatfield.
When one gazes across America at all those late model cars choking up the endless beltways, parkways - at all those McMansions sprawling across God's little green acres...and all the other various displays of ostentatious wealth - did anyone ever think that WAGE income was paying for all that?
C'mon..............( no doubt there always was a few trillion dollars missing in the equation somewhere or other.)
It never was part of the plan that all that rising house wealth would just sit put safely tucked away. Our brains aren't constructed that way.
It's an old, old game - just superimposed on new realities.