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If all of your dire predictions come to pass ( and I believe there is a good chance for that to happen, or already is happening ), how are we becomming better people or benefitting from the constant focus on everything that is wrong with the economy-Colorado-USA-government, etc? Obviously you both have peircing insights regarding the ills that plague us, but you offer very little in the way of positive solutions and then you both go right back into your pessimistic tirades. I'm well aware that no one forces me to read your posts, but admittedly I'm as addicted to negative news as the next person. Both of you are well spoken writers and very entertaining to boot and that makes your negatively focused messages so much more powerful.
...The city has worked overtime to attract and retain businesses of all sizes
i read your post and article and wondered about current migration patterns within the u.s. this little study knocked out some perceived notions i had regarding inbound and outbound states. interesting stuff...
If all of your dire predictions come to pass ( and I believe there is a good chance for that to happen, or already is happening ), how are we becomming better people or benefitting from the constant focus on everything that is wrong with the economy-Colorado-USA-government, etc? Obviously you both have peircing insights regarding the ills that plague us, but you offer very little in the way of positive solutions and then you both go right back into your pessimistic tirades. I'm well aware that no one forces me to read your posts, but admittedly I'm as addicted to negative news as the next person. Both of you are well spoken writers and very entertaining to boot and that makes your negatively focused messages so much more powerful.
For whatever reason, I'm still more worried about what the scale reads when I step on it each morning.
For whatever reason, I'm still more worried about what the scale reads when I step on it each morning.
First things first, eh? You have your priorities squared away and you still have a scale to stand on, but only until the sky falls down and you lose your home with everything in it.
For whatever reason, I'm still more worried about what the scale reads when I step on it each morning.
First things first, eh? You have your priorities squared away and you still have a scale to stand on, but only until the sky falls down and you lose your home with everything in it.
If you are poor you can fake being rich (people do it all the time.)
Regarding the previous two generations and retirement/inheritance, it sure helps to be able to pick your predecessors! My three immigrant grandparents died relatively young with their cash jingling in the pockets (one from pneumonia, working on the the docks just before antibiotics became available- for him, 1939, and the other died in a county nursing home at 92.
My parents (divorced, but broke) lived in a paid-for trailer on Social Security. My father stilll lives there and says he's going to leave the trailer to my sister "because the way she spends money, she might need it." Worth about $20K.
Am I on some kind of low end of the spectrum? I get so tired of hearing "This isn't your father's retirement" or "Whereas your grandparents could X, Y, Z..." I always think, "It depends on who your grandparents or parents were."
Not everyone is middle-class. I was an adult before I really realized that some people's grandparents were born in the U.S. or lived through the war and had accents.
A question. So many people or owners say, regarding housing, "Just rent it out," to make money. During the Great Dep., didn't housing go empty? I know older people who remember being asked to live in empty city housing just to *protect* it, in the days when more people rented in the city than now, where so many people currently own. (I knew of a guy who got the same offer in New Orleans, 1990).
Also, isn't it possible that there are periods of time where you really can't look to make money in investments/purchases (none that are legal, anyway) and it is just time to hunker down and do damage control?
A question. So many people or owners say, regarding housing, "Just rent it out," to make money. During the Great Dep., didn't housing go empty? I know older people who remember being asked to live in empty city housing just to *protect* it, in the days when more people rented in the city than now, where so many people currently own. (I knew of a guy who got the same offer in New Orleans, 1990).
Also, isn't it possible that there are periods of time where you really can't look to make money in investments/purchases (none that are legal, anyway) and it is just time to hunker down and do damage control?
Well, if a person can't afford a thousand dollar house a month mortgage payment, then they are probably not going to be able to afford thousand dollar a month rent, either. A lot of the "landlords" out there--probably "house-flippers" who got caught with their pants down and now have a property they can't sell--probably need that kind of rent to make the "PITI" payment (principal, interest, taxes, and insurance) every month on the inflated price they paid for their property. So, yeah, there will be a problem.
What people don't get is that--in an out-an-out recession/depression--everybody is going to have to figure out how to get along on less: less money, less housing, less automobiles, less gasoline, less travel--maybe even less food. That goes against the grain of the "everything is always going to be bigger and better" psychosis that people have in the US right now. Ask anybody who lived through the Great Depression, and they will tell you it didn't work that way for over a decade back then--and then the depression got ended by a nearly four-year World War (that was for the US--Europe and Asia got to "enjoy" WWII for quite awhile before we got into it) that pretty much sucked for everybody.
"Hunkering down" is a good way to put it. Maybe a better term is "survival."
If all of your dire predictions come to pass ( and I believe there is a good chance for that to happen, or already is happening ), how are we becomming better people or benefitting from the constant focus on everything that is wrong with the economy-Colorado-USA-government, etc? Obviously you both have peircing insights regarding the ills that plague us, but you offer very little in the way of positive solutions and then you both go right back into your pessimistic tirades. I'm well aware that no one forces me to read your posts, but admittedly I'm as addicted to negative news as the next person. Both of you are well spoken writers and very entertaining to boot and that makes your negatively focused messages so much more powerful.
Everyone has opportunities to adapt to the environment they are in. But one will not...cannot, in fact...adapt if unaware of the dangers lurking in the shadows.
I work with predominantly very educated people, very few of which understand how precarious the financial system is right now. Most still spew forth the old-school mantra about buy-n-hold, dollar cost averaging, they're not making any more land, etc.
I'd like to think that convincing and compelling demonstration of systemic risks would allow at least a few people to re-evaluate the choices they make with those risks in mind. This spans from housing decisions (living space and energy requirements for heating, cooling, and transportation), investment decisions (allocation of assets for retirement), spending patterns (saving versus high consumption of nonessentials), debt levels and trends, vehicle/transportation choices, realistic retirement planning (age, income needed, future trends) and many more.
The "piercing insights" should give a thinking person cause to do these sorts of evaluations. And since everyone's circumstances are different, offering "solutions" to many of these problems wouldn't take those differences into account. And blast it, people should do their own thinking when confronted with evidence that they may well be camped out on a dry stream bed with the sound of thunder on the horizon.
Anyway, the cross discussion of the systemic risks gives me food for thought every day as well...jazzman and other posters have perspectives that widen my own aperture on the world, and maybe my views can do the same for them.
And, at the very least, for me it's therapeutic to know that there are others who see the dangers. The teeming masses...the "sheeple" if you will, are largely a leaderless thundering herd. They take their cues from the media and herd together--including right into the chutes to the slaughterhouse when it's time. Mob dynamics certainly can be seen all over the financial markets.
It's not just negative news unless you consider yourself so unempowered with your own life that you can't get out of the way of a speeding train when someone else does what he can to point out the cause of all the noise and bright light, and that you appear to be standing astride the tracks. If it turns out that the bright light and honking air horn were really just that bright future I keep hearing so much about here, well, better safe than sorry.
A question. So many people or owners say, regarding housing, "Just rent it out," to make money. During the Great Dep., didn't housing go empty? I know older people who remember being asked to live in empty city housing just to *protect* it, in the days when more people rented in the city than now, where so many people currently own. (I knew of a guy who got the same offer in New Orleans, 1990).
One of the best metrics for assessing if housing is overpriced is to compare the cost of owning a home to the cost of renting an equivalent one. When the cost to own a home is significantly higher than renting, then it follows that you won't be able to rent it out for enough to cover the high payments if you ever ended up as an "accidental landlord" by virtue of a job relocation, divorce, move to a needy elderly parent etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by brightdoglover
Also, isn't it possible that there are periods of time where you really can't look to make money in investments/purchases (none that are legal, anyway) and it is just time to hunker down and do damage control?
Yes, it's possible. But you have to avoid the trap that says if your savings are not growing then you're being damaged. In the Great Depression, a tremendous deflation occurred. The sharp reduction in the money supply caused prices to fall...in this case just holding cash in a box buried in the back yard was a good thing, as its real value in buying power increased despite not earning any interest.
The last few decades have bred overoptimistic expectations on the part of the sheeple with respect to how much return they should see on an investment. Many seem to believe that putting just 5% of their salaries in an IRA or 401(k) should literally explode in real value sufficient to fund a comfortable retirement after 30-40 years. I believe that fallacy will be plainly observable once the unwinding of the massive financial leverage in the banking system is completed and the false wealth trapped in the Ponzi pyramid evaporates.
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migration patterns within the u.s.
