Quote:
Originally Posted by Ginger34
Are you really that ignorant? You realize that many people DO WORK yet they still need gov assistant, because rent and everything is so darn expensive, especially in California. They pay taxes like you! So time for you to get educated before thinking stupid stuff..
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Things are "so darned expensive" where you live because YOU and your community made them that way. And you are trying to export your own ignorance to the national stage. Besides, nobody is forcing you to choose the highest cost-of-living places in the nation. YOU choose to do that. Here are two points for you, in your intellectual splendor, to consider:
1) Prices in your region, as I said, are astronomical because YOU made them that way. And what do you do to try to combat it? Well.... the same thing you've done to get yourself into that situation to begin with. You demand higher wages. At some point, you get your higher wages. The economy in your area responds to the fact that you have higher wages by raising the prices of everything to where your buying power is no different than it was ten years ago, and probably worse. You'll then demand higher wages again. And again, the prices of essentially everything in your area will rise accordingly. You are in a death spiral and you've created it yourself. No matter how high your wages (at least the part that you get to keep) go, your buying power will decline just as it has been doing for over 100 years.
2) As I said, YOU decide where you live. We are not 100% totalitarian yet. Why do you remain in a place that has an astronomical cost-of-living? Oh, well let's see... you like the... diversity, right? You like the social perks. You like the nightlife. You like the convenience of having every square inch of your surroundings packed with businesses, people, and infrastructure. You like having Starbucks just down the street. You like the "city life." Well... go ahead and like it, and pay for it. But stop whining about it.
Let me refer to my area as an example: over the course of the last twenty years, folks like you have moved in, trying to get away from the "rat race," and have, in so doing, created a new rat race. Home prices have gone from 40 or 50 k (or less) not all that long ago to at least a quarter million dollars. Giant chain businesses have popped up everywhere in the valley and this place has turned into one big, nauseating disaster of people soup.
HOWEVER, as I said, those who live here choose to live here. But guess what? Even though they are paying a quarter mil for a crappy home that is slapped together by illegals and has the style of a poorly-constructed barn, if they could tolerate having a commute of only about an hour, not having all the conveniences, not having the night-life, not having the box stores on every corner, they could buy a decent, frugal home built back when homes were actually built well, for under 50 thousand--right now. At times as low as 20K. Today. A building lot for 5 K. They would also be living in an area with a fraction of the cost of living compared to this urban hell. And their property taxes would be about 5% of what they are now paying. So why don't they do that? I suspect it is because, like you, they'd rather stay in a place that has all of what they think is great (Starbucks, nightlife, movies, city "diversity," the golden arches, etc) and complain about how expensive it is.
Bottom line is that you are free to move to an area with a very reasonable cost of living and decent job market any time. For instance, North Dakota. I keep an eye on real estate and the economy there all the time. I own a bit of land there (where I will probably end up, in time). You can... today... buy a NICE home in a smaller town near the bigger towns with good jobs, and commute to work, for 20 K to 100K. But no... you'd rather stay where you are and complain about the high cost of living and pay a million bucks for a home, whilst never really owning it because the property taxes are twenty times the cost to rent a house--you are renting "your" home from the government. It's worth the "diversity" and "city life," right? Well, if so... stop complaining.
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