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I can't figure it out. I wonder if there is anywhere left to invest in real estate. What is so amazing about your daughter's shack neighborhood and Sarasota ghetto?
I just don't get this explosion, what is so special, while home prices in nice many safe neighborhoods are stalled.
Convenience. The ideal of "front porch" living. After so many years rotting away in the burbs where you had to get in the car to get a cup of coffee, a sandwich or even a soft drink, people like the idea of walking or biking.
We have never lived a car-based life and never want to. That's the exception rather than the rule, but enough people feel that way to create high demand in good locations.
In Sarasota, you can buy a 5 million dollar condo at the Ritz-Carlton or other buildings nearby within eyesight of hordes of homeless folks. In fact, they tore out the benches in the nice little Downtown parks....imagine that!
Always remember the RE Maxim - Location, Location and Location. Also, Will Rogers....
""...out here I had been putting what little money I had in Ocean Frontage, for the sole reason that there was only so much of it and no more, and that they wasn't making any more..."
What jobs are those, exactly? If anything, what I see in corporate America, at least in big Pharma, is a boat load of ageism. I see ageism all over the place. These people aren't clinging. They cannot cling. I've seen one too many ousted.
If so, then, no problem. They're making room at the top for younger generations, so what's your complaint? Why the foolish imploring to "get a job?"
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And this brings me to plans of retirement year careers and what that can look like for older people. At least it's something I think about.
Don't be obtuse. You know I am not speaking about earners. I'm speaking of those who do not work.
Again, WHY on earth do you want those who don't need to work to support themselves (because they can live on their investment income) to displace those who NEED to earn an income to support themselves and their dependents? That makes NO sense whatsoever.
How about the fact that because of public school systems being funded through property taxes means high property tax bills for homeowners, even when they never had children, but because of those high property taxes, older Americans can't afford to retire from their "high paying jobs". Maybe if after the age of 55, a homeowner could have their property tax bills frozen plus giving them a discount on those taxes once they reach the age of 65, then senior citizens could actually be able to truly retire from working.
I would love to be able to retire in five years, but not with my property taxes always increasing.
I also know more than a few older people who can't afford to retire, because they have to help out their adult children with their grandchildren financially.
Have to? Or want to?
Are the children starving?
We help our kids because we have the extra $$. My parents helped us with our first house down payment because they had the money.
But I had this one customer....nicest guy in the world. Drove up year after year (after decade) in the oldest and junkiest beater you'd ever imagine. Always told us (and I suspect it was true) he was putting his kids through college and then helping them get started.
I think he was way over the top....and I think a person of 65+ who wakes up at 7am to hump to ANY job they don't love to death (and that's a lot of jobs!) for anything short of "emergency measures" is taking things too far.
Given the average life spans of males in the USA (some areas as low as 75, others 78), that sure doesn't leave much time for getting all those fine diseases and suffering for the 'golden times"....
My statistics on wealth are on the mark, and your (not you're) projection of your own "seething" onto me is telling.
I have more than 99.9% of people on earth. I still view the expansion of the American middle class as a good thing, and it's compression as a bad thing. I view people who support a lopsided system funneling more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands hoping to some day be one of the few reminds me of the suck ups who follow celebrities around hoping to bask in just a speck of their glitter. It's idol worship and a very poor way to formulate public policy. You read rich dad poor dad and suddenly you spew the rhetoric of a robber baron.
Well thanks for correcting my typo of the word "your". I'll make sure that I'll never make that mistake again. That's about the only thing that YOU'RE right about.
What kind of PC are you buying that costs $3000??? My laptop is 5 years old and cost me $500 when I bought it new in July 2014.
My laptop cost even less than that... $259 for a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 11e (e-version means educational institution version which means none of the preloaded crapware) with Windows 10 Pro. The only changes I made was that I doubled the standard RAM and bought a 480 GB SSD, cloned the ThinkPad's hard drive, resized the partitions and swapped out the hard drive. Total cost to me? Under $400.
What kind of PC are you buying that costs $3000??? My laptop is 5 years old and cost me $500 when I bought it new in July 2014.
Hey, you know...those exaggerators have to make a point...so instead of noting that John bought a $399 Dell or has a hand-me-down from dad that is 9 years old (like my millennial son).....might not make the their point properly.
So they multiply the real number by 800% or so.....sounds better.
Even when I buy the high priced spread ($1200 MB Air, etc.), I get 4 years out of it and then sell it for $450....also get a tax write off, for a grand cost of perhaps $10 a month.
There are many accurate points to be made about the lack of wages, benefits, pensions...and the larger homes that people MUST have. While people keep their cars longer, look at the average price of a new cat that people buy - $37K. You can buy a very fine machine for about 1/2 that amount (Kia, Hyndai, etc.).
Boiling it down....I'd say the biggest differentiators....
1. Our system is not people-centered, so the system of predatory capitalism keeps driving down wages and benefits to the lowest possible level that people are forced (by circumstances) to work for.
2. People desire houses 250% larger than they did in 1950 (average). Those houses require two cars (or more!) to commute further from, setting up a very expensive lifestyle.
3. Medical care in the US is 10K per person per year....it blows away most property taxes and other rounding errors.
4. Education and loans and other things have become Predatory and are marketed by both the government and the corporations. More expenses=more GDP. Most people simply cannot avoid taking the bait - marketing and brainwashing trumps common sense every time. Check the viewership of the Superbowl compared to, say, the Suze Orman show.
The standard in my neighborhood growing up was a 25 inch console. The standard in my neighborhood now is a 65 inch LED. Those are $1K and under. A $3K TV now is equivalent to giant projection screen tvs from the 80's...those cost a lot more than 24 inch consoles.
To do this exercise you actually have to try to be OBJECTIVE.
Whenever people try and compare cheap flat screen TVs of today to wooden console color TVs from the 80's, I can only shake my head.
A wooden console TV of the past consisted of hundreds of resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistor tubes and lots of labor to assemble that together.
With a flat screen TV today, you have a couple Integrated Circuits that replace all that along with an LCD panel. Very few parts involved.
The cost of TVs in the past and and an LCD TV of today are not even in the same ball park.
The average family today should have a Giant Home Projection Theater system if we compare the costs and labor that went into a wooden console TV back then.
This question is not specific to the US, but if capitalism brings so much wealth (and it does) why can´t families survive on a single income anymore like in the past when usually only men worked and women were not in the workforce?
In the past? LOL. The typical 1950s home was smaller (sq feet) with more people in it. The unusual family had more than one car. Go out to eat? Once in a blue moon. Cable nor internet existed-tv was antenna, whatever you lived inside 60 miles of. Vacations were mostly day car trips for families I knew.
We spend like drunken sailors, then complain the COL is sky high. We spend tons on frills.
Their lifestyle expectations are way too high to be supported in a one-income family.
THAT. Thank you.
It's not more expensive to live, we're just insisting on having a lot more house, and a lot more disposable income, and a lot higher standard of living. And cell phones, and two cars, and new carpet when fashions change, and eating out all the time.
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That's about the only thing that YOU'RE right about.
