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yes but think of your..tenants...bargain basement and being a slum lord can work in some states,like NY.....NC and some areas u would not want to deal with the ramifications of what some tenants are capable of, trust me...lol...
You know I've known this was going to happen at least since 2007. I just saw the article and thought I'd post it for some who might not have learned about the devilish activities of the Federal Reserve and how it affects our cost of living yet.
If you made 25% more than last year you might just about be breaking even with last year considering food and gas prices have skyrocketed.
People mistakenly think that if they made more money this year than last year or their investments made more, they are automatically doing better. What they neglect to factor in is the inflation factor and the much higher cost of basic necessities. So actually many people who make more money each year may be ending up with a lot less after they buy their groceries, put gas in their car and pay their bills.
The problem is your investments in stocks are still denominated in dollars. If the dollar becomes worthless, so are your investments. That is why we need to END THE FED (LIKE YESTERDAY!)
What will give you a FAR better total return than stocks which as I said, unless you buy through a broker where your investments are backed by other currencies, are tangible assets like food and consumables and you'll do FAR better than you could in the stock market even if you consistently got a 25% return (which after you figure the reduced purchasing power of the dollar isn't anywhere near that). Example: Buy paper towels and stock up. You could easily see a cost increase of double what it is today in two years or more. That would be the equivalent of a 100% gain of your stock investment over two years.
People really need to understand how money growth works in today's economy (assuming we can't end the fed, which is unfortunate). Growth isn't good enough. Growth ahead of inflation is what we need.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dreamofmonterey
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ah a direct quote from Ali Velshi/ CNN is owned by JPMorgan and B of A.
Americans with families needing to put food on the table are not thinking about starbucks lattes
The vast majority of American families are not in poverty, and are not worrying about putting food on the table.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhouse2001
You can't deny that the economy is designed to keep the poor in poverty and the rich wealthy. There's no real mobility except in extreme cases and the "hard work" ethic might as well be considered a lie. Nobody's going upward and the powers that be will assure that it stays that way.
The standard of living for everyone has NOT skyrocketed just because there's more personal possessions or that the size of houses has increased. True, the numbers got bigger due to inflation, but so did the debt which increased much faster than income. We have surrounded ourselves with the illusion of wealth but are poorer overall. The dollars didn't get any bigger, you just need more of them to buy the same thing.
I can't say I understand your last sentence wherein you say the middle class got the wealth it wanted despite its self-imposed debt. That debt exceeds the wealth in its entirety, something unique to these times. Fifty years ago, one person could raise a family and manage to save money in the bank. Today, two incomes are necessary and our savings rate is negative. We are not better off, the stock market is not a savior, and the solution isn't investing in a fiat currency about ready to plunge to zero like they always do.
The current economics is designed to favor the well-educated, not the wealthy. Those who are poorer tend to be less educated. The solution? Spend time in a library reading instead of on wall street protesting.
Personally? I lived in a s**thole apartment for years (living on less than minimum wage even though I made more than that) so that I could save the remainder and invest. The issue is that the majority of people go out and actually buy the new iPhone, instead of investing that couple hundred dollars. A lack of education among those with less money is a real problem. And the standard of living for the middle class has absolutely skyrocketed. 50 years ago a single person could support a family because they spent less money. They had one car for the family. They lived somewhere that you could walk to a grocery store. They had a 900 sqft home for four people. They didn't go on a two week vacation every year. They didn't have cable.
If a person lived the same lifestyle today that someone did 50 years ago, a single income could absolutely support a family.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Randomstudent
Investing in the stock market more? Are you joking. I would buy houses over stocks any day. While houses have lost some of their value from boom levels they still out perform their 2000 prices. The dow jones is at the same place it was in 2000. Once more if you invested in prime agricultural land ten years ago you would be making out like a bandit. Besides that if you own houses then you have far more control over rental income then if you own stocks and are at the mercy of the Board of Directors for dividends.
Another advantage is that housing is a tangible asset which is more able to resist inflation over stocks. The only disadvantage is that rental property requires a lot more work then stocks.
Once more with houses you can rent them out.
But the data does not support this. The stock market has stabilized very well in the last three years (no drops are outside of a statistically insignificant range, but the housing market is still 20% overvalued. Why would you invest in an overvalued market?
The current economics is designed to favor the well-educated, not the wealthy.
i disagree. our policy lately has been pretty blatant: sacrifice the peoples' purchasing power, to try and boost asset prices.
that benefits the wealthy at the expense of the educated. there are many educated people without jobs, who are doing poorly. there are no wealthy people who are that poorly, because they are wealthy.
Last edited by Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus; 10-21-2011 at 08:18 AM..
How about favor the well educated amoral wealthy that manipulate both government and markets to enhance their personal wealth at the expense of all of the rest of society.
People really need to understand how money growth works in today's economy (assuming we can't end the fed, which is unfortunate). Growth isn't good enough. Growth ahead of inflation is what we need..
The vast majority of American families are not in poverty, and are not worrying about putting food on the table.
The current economics is designed to favor the well-educated, not the wealthy. Those who are poorer tend to be less educated. The solution? Spend time in a library reading instead of on wall street protesting.
Personally? I lived in a s**thole apartment for years (living on less than minimum wage even though I made more than that) so that I could save the remainder and invest. The issue is that the majority of people go out and actually buy the new iPhone, instead of investing that couple hundred dollars. A lack of education among those with less money is a real problem. And the standard of living for the middle class has absolutely skyrocketed. 50 years ago a single person could support a family because they spent less money. They had one car for the family. They lived somewhere that you could walk to a grocery store. They had a 900 sqft home for four people. They didn't go on a two week vacation every year. They didn't have cable.
If a person lived the same lifestyle today that someone did 50 years ago, a single income could absolutely support a family.
But the data does not support this. The stock market has stabilized very well in the last three years (no drops are outside of a statistically insignificant range, but the housing market is still 20% overvalued. Why would you invest in an overvalued market?
I agree with your first paragraph.
To the second paragraph people are a LOT poorer than they would be if there wasn't such rampant inflation. The reason they aren't worried about their next meal is because the government gives them food stamps.
I agree knowledge is power and reading is the best way, besides experience to get that. Let's not confuse that with an overpriced over-rated college education-- the quality of which has greatly declined over the past 30 years or more and isn't worth a fraction of what you now have to pay to get one.
Your next comment about what life was like 30 or 40 years shows that you obviously didn't live though it because you couldn't be MORE WRONG. I lived through it. We lived like kings and we were just upper middle class.
You were right about spending less but you are wrong about living with less. We spent less and had MUCH MUCH MUCH MORE! When my sister and I were little we had a live in nanny and my mother was a stay at home mom. We went to private country day schools, (like the ones today that cost $30k per year tuition). We had 3 homes (granted two of those were in our extended family). I spent summers in an ocean front summer home. Every spring we went on a tropical vacation (and we didn't have to get to the airport hours before the flight took off either nor did we have to take our shoes off and be poked and prodded or nuked and treated like a terrorist). Food cost a tiny fraction of what it costs today. My parents often took us to gourmet five star restaurants to broaden our palates. As little kid in kindergarten I remember 25 cents would buy you 5 large size candy bars. As a pre-teen 25 cents would buy you a large size ice cream cone. As a teenager I remember a brand new Toyota Corolla cost $1400 and a Chevy Camaro cost $1600.
The ice cream was made from real whole milk from healthy cows who had not been shot up with antibiotics. There was no rBGH growth hormone back then or genetic engineering of food and we were healthier for it. I think I had all of three vaccines not the 67 that kids today are given. Cancer was unheard of until much later. Needless to say there was no "health care crisis" because people were a lot healthier. People paid their own money for health care. Health insurance was just used for SERIOUS things. People paid for their own childbirth.
So you couldn't be MORE WRONG. People didn't live with less. They had a lot more than they do today (except we didn't have cable or computers - whoopie) and they spent a heck of a lot less for it.
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ah a direct quote from Ali Velshi/ CNN is owned by JPMorgan and B of A. 
