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If someone wants to eat themselves into a coma or drink their liver away, what can we do? Force feed them celery? Lock them up? Glue their mouth shut? If someone wants to do a job that’s not in their best interest, what do you want us to do? They get up and choose to do it each day.
And nobody has to follow them into losing money. The goal of business is to produce value...aka profit. If they’re destroying value, and losing money, they go under. They should go under. Society is better off when they do go under. The capital should be taken and used elsewhere. But it seems to me Uber/life isn’t going away...why? It’s creating value for stakeholders.
If they don’t understand business...what do you want us to do? Consult for them for free?
Which two areas? I'm not doubting you but it's surely the exception, most of the complaining around here has been about the high price of real estate. Taking an outlier and trying to present it as a macroeconomic indicator is quite disingenuous. Home prices have been rising for years and are projected to continue rising, using your logic that home price net worth is an economic indicator it says the opposite of the picture you're trying to paint.
If you are claiming that Real Estate values aren't a big component of each of our net worth or equity...I seem to remember hearing otherwise. I always thought it was the single largest asset for more households. Maybe things have changed....
But let's pretend that scuttlebutt is accurate.
Schiller, who I have to assume knows more than you and I, has studied housing prices as a career. He went back to 1850 and worked out all the numbers. Housing has appreciated by about zero.....in that time period.
But, closer to the point, I think my own lifetime (40 years of home ownership) should provide at least some basics. We had a nice house in a top suburb of Philadelphia. Top schools, nature, safe, etc. - high demand.
We owned it for 26 years.
It gained almost no value (stayed at 200K) from 1988 to 1998, when it started appreciating again...and then, of course, sped up given the 2005 era. We sold at the peak (2005) and moved elsewhere.
In 2012 the same house we sold for 369 sold for 249.
Finally, after some major renovations, it again sold for $349 about 2 years back.
It goes without saying that property taxes as 10X what they were when we moved in - let alone the cost of normal repairs, etc.
Without doing the math it's obvious that no money was "made" on this fine residence even tho we constantly updated and improved it..and it was located in one of the best areas in a populated market, etc.
"Home prices are rising" is just like "The Dow just went up 200 points". The same sentence doesn't tell you that the DOW was down 2,000 points from 10 months ago or that the house value had been cut by 40% 10 years ago, etc.
I just asked some locals in SW Florida about trends there - prices are not even back up to 2006 levels. So, yeah, they are rising from the 50% they fell, but over time they are not rising.
I guess we all have our indicators. My point is that people always think they are making money even when they are not. I think Kushner and Trump are perfect examples. Trump didn't find out he was in the hole until the banks made him sell his boats, default on all the loans and file bankruptcy. More recently, Kusher through that big billion-dollar NYC Office building was going to make him money.
In our calcs we forget to figure that people are fairly ignorant. If Trump or Kushner put their money into Buffets Fund when they received it they'd be MANY times wealthier and never had to stiff a contractor or sell a yacht. By one calc I did, Trump would have 150+ billion if he didn't enter the RE biz and instead invested in Buffet. Instead he had virtually zero return.....(in a real sense...hard to count money taken from taxpayers, contractors, etc. as ROI)....
And, yes, in times of plenty there should be little need for ADDITIONAL government borrowing. Do you really disagree with that statement? My take is that War and Depression/Recession or similar situations is where borrowing is needed - NOT to give free money back to people now and have their kids pay for it....just because it's fun and handy. But maybe my economics are too conservative?
If you are claiming that Real Estate values aren't a big component of each of our net worth or equity...I seem to remember hearing otherwise. I always thought it was the single largest asset for more households. Maybe things have changed....
But let's pretend that scuttlebutt is accurate.
Nope, you misunderstood. I was questioning your assertion that finding two popular zip codes where housing prices have been stagnant for two decades is a reasonable indicator of the health of the economy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by craigiri
But, closer to the point, I think my own lifetime (40 years of home ownership) should provide at least some basics. We had a nice house in a top suburb of Philadelphia. Top schools, nature, safe, etc. - high demand.
We owned it for 26 years.
It gained almost no value (stayed at 200K) from 1988 to 1998, when it started appreciating again...and then, of course, sped up given the 2005 era. We sold at the peak (2005) and moved elsewhere.
In 2012 the same house we sold for 369 sold for 249.
Finally, after some major renovations, it again sold for $349 about 2 years back.
It goes without saying that property taxes as 10X what they were when we moved in - let alone the cost of normal repairs, etc.
Without doing the math it's obvious that no money was "made" on this fine residence even tho we constantly updated and improved it..and it was located in one of the best areas in a populated market, etc.
Well no, your own experience doesn't provide anything but a single person's anecdote in a country with hundreds of millions of people. What matters when using home values to evaluate the economy as a whole is what home prices have done across the entire country. Your personal experience is no more relevant than someone else finding a good job and declaring that proof the economy is good, neither by itself is worth anything.
It is interesting that you found two zip codes that have no gains in two decades but when pressed for details you're suddenly interested in prices since 1850 and changes to a home value after the housing crash. So I ask again, which zip codes did you find had zero appreciation for two decades?
Here's the trend nationally for the last 20 years, you know that period you were lamenting how a loss in home prices has affected net worth:
Quote:
Originally Posted by craigiri
I just asked some locals in SW Florida about trends there - prices are not even back up to 2006 levels. So, yeah, they are rising from the 50% they fell, but over time they are not rising.
So housing prices in Florida haven't risen in 12 years. What an odd time frame to pick, what about 5, 10, 15, 20, or 30 years? When someone uses a weird number like 12 like you just did they are usually interested in presenting information in a way that suits their argument. Ask yourself why "over time" is limited to the time frame of 12 years in your conclusion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by craigiri
My point is that people always think they are making money even when they are not.
What people? You're the one who introduced this real estate thing into this thread by trying to use an outlier to show home values have gone down when clearly they've gone up at a national level in that 20 year time frame. Which were the two zip codes by the way, I'd be curious who didn't have any rise in home values since 1998...
Quote:
Originally Posted by craigiri
And, yes, in times of plenty there should be little need for ADDITIONAL government borrowing.
Agreed completely, which is not the same as you implying a government that borrows despite high revenues indicates a poor economy. There are far more facets to the decisions the government makes on budgets including the glaring (spending) and the unfortunate dominant aspect of politics.
It gained almost no value (stayed at 200K) from 1988 to 1998, when it started appreciating again...and then, of course, sped up given the 2005 era. We sold at the peak (2005) and moved elsewhere.
In 2012 the same house we sold for 369 sold for 249.
Finally, after some major renovations, it again sold for $349 about 2 years back.
And had you bought a $200k home in the Bay area back in 1988 it would be worth millions today. Even where I live in NoVA a home going for $200k in 1988 would be worth over $1M.
Found a random listing with the original sale price listed
I am glad Uber and Lyft are here, but seeing the average hourly rates of like $13, yeah, pay is horrible and a total waste of time. I hate driving anyway, it’s so annoying most of the time, I wouldn’t do it for $75/hour let alone $13. But god bless that people feel it’s worth it to ruin their cars for $13/hour lol
The OP acts as if driving a car for substantially more miles than average takes a significant hit on a car’s predictive depreciation- well yes, it does affect it but cars just sink so much in value the minute that you driven them off the lot that a few more miles won’t materially affect its resale price.
It’s like the old school Italian’s solution of “protecting” the furniture with clear plastic slip covers that nobody is allowed (or would want to) to use anyways. It’s an ugly floral print fabric, in a room that is purposefully arranged to make anyone uncomfortable in it, that now is being called out for the (expectedly) non-serious way of acknowledging your fellow motorists without hiding behind tradition.
the bottom line is that you can not judge the economy by the number of people driving for these ride app companies. its a job that has very low barriers to entry so its highly desirable for people regardless of a likely low wage.
the bottom line is that you can not judge the economy by the number of people driving for these ride app companies. its a job that has very low barriers to entry so its highly desirable for people regardless of a likely low wage.
Yup and there are people who do it strategically and can make substantially more than $13/hr. If I go down to the college bars at around midnight it hits surge pricing and you can make $150-$200 for 2-3 hours of work.
I see so many modern and new cars with a Uber or Lyft sticker on them, and I always ask, is it worth the massive deprecation of putting 20-30k miles a year on a near new car for .60 a mile. Or doing Uber eats for the equivalent of $5 an hour after a days work.
So for a economy that so many brags about is doing well, why are so many resorting to working for near minimum wage and destroying their near new cars for pennies on the dollar. Im guessing something is better than nothing at all, but doesnt seem worth the effort to me.
Sorta kinda.
I didn't drive for Uber much (about 15 shifts) but even after accounting for all the added costs of the extra miles on the car, I was making about $13/hr after tax which is about double the federal minimum wage (and my state minimum wage). I did it immediately after getting a new car with the idea that hey, I could offset the car payment by driving 25 hours a month.
The reason I stopped was because $13/hr profit wasn't worth it for me because it was a lot less than I make at my 9 to 5 (errr, 7 to 7) and sometimes I just needed to rest instead of work work work. It ultimately wasn't worth the effort.
Also, if you happen to have a new car and become out of work, it could be a decent stop gap while you look for a better job.
Ultimately, I think automated cars will kill the industry (or at least, the drivers making money part of it) almost as fast as the industry blew up.
90% of Uber/Lyft drivers I encounter are immigrants, many of them recent. I don't know if or how carefully Uber and Lyft check for legal presence status, but I know there's been instances of illegals driving for them.
Either way, even if you do have papers..unless you speak English and have good qualifications, you're probably gonna be working a lot of jobs that aren't exactly lucrative.
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