What is wrong in this planet ?

[Externet]

A century old collection of termites in San Francisco, Ripoffornia sells for $2 Million perhaps with a garage and a yard to have one tomato plant if lucky, for whoever has dormant $200K for initial payment and a loan of $1.8M meaning $11K monthly mortgage for every month of the next 30 years of your life...

plus $2000 monthly property taxes to feed a herd of dolittle seat warmers keyboard massagers,

plus monthly $200 maintenance if lucky,

plus $100 monthly insurance (to benefit the lender)

plus $100 monthly water

plus $200 monthly electricity

plus whatever am forgetting just to have a roof over your family. Similar for other major cities, also Europe...  What salary allows such abuse ?  What is left for fuel, car payments, food, medical, kids... ?

How a plain person deals with this ?  Any magicians here ?   How do you do it ?  Members of this forum with much higher knowledge, education, activity status than the general public.

 

 

[Moontanman]

Unregulated, unchained, Capitalism. 

[exchemist]

56 minutes ago, Externet said:

A century old collection of termites in San Francisco, Ripoffornia sells for $2 Million perhaps with a garage and a yard to have one tomato plant if lucky, for whoever has dormant $200K for initial payment and a loan of $1.8M meaning $11K monthly mortgage for every month of the next 30 years of your life...

plus $2000 monthly property taxes to feed a herd of dolittle seat warmers keyboard massagers,

plus monthly $200 maintenance if lucky,

plus $100 monthly insurance (to benefit the lender)

plus $100 monthly water

plus $200 monthly electricity

plus whatever am forgetting just to have a roof over your family. Similar for other major cities, also Europe...  What salary allows such abuse ?  What is left for fuel, car payments, food, medical, kids... ?

How a plain person deals with this ?  Any magicians here ?   How do you do it ?  Members of this forum with much higher knowledge, education, activity status than the general public.

 

 

What are you talking about?

[TheVat]

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089174630/housing-shortage-new-home-construction-supply-chain

In addition to the labor and supply chain problems, and unfortunate trend to builders only motivated to build luxury units, mentioned in this article, there is also another factor in the US less mentioned, which is the number of people losing their homes in accelerating natural disasters.  3 million Americans were driven from their homes in 2022, some only for a week or few, but half a million couldn't return: their homes were destroyed.  That adds yet another burden to municipalities trying to put up affordable housing and apartments in a timely manner.   And this climate-driven aspect is worsening, as more people build in warmer, scenic areas where housing is most vulnerable to floods, hurricanes, wildfires, etc.  The most threatened bits of land also happen to be the most affordable land, and buyers often encounter sellers who conceal that.

Out in the West (here), we have lots of people coming in who want their "own private Idaho," as the B-52s song puts it, and they keep building into spaces that are just insanely prone to wildfire, flashfloods, mudslides, large animal attack, etc.  

Edited April 1, 2023 by TheVat
tpyo

[TheVat]

Here is an in-depth look at how things like federal flood insurance, zoning laws, abandoned mortgages, out-dated flood zone maps, opportunistic developers, etc are contributing to a massive problem.   (and who pays, when FEMA flood insurance is in the red, and they have to keep paying out for destroyed homes?  We, the taxpayers.)

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/1-spring/feature/how-climate-change-could-sink-us-real-estate-market

 

[mistermack]

3 hours ago, TheVat said:

and unfortunate trend to builders only motivated to build luxury units,

Maybe a reflection of the fact that the rich are the ones getting richer. 

[TheVat]

And this doesn't help:

https://apnews.com/article/tornadoes-disasters-extreme-weather-why-af8acdcb330cff39d689efc187cd17b7

 

Quote

The United States is Earth’s punching bag for nasty weather.

Blame geography for the U.S. getting hit by stronger, costlier, more varied and frequent extreme weather than anywhere on the planet, several experts said. Two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, jutting peninsulas like Florida, clashing storm fronts and the jet stream combine to naturally brew the nastiest of weather.

That’s only part of it. Nature dealt the United States a bad hand, but people have made it much worse by what, where and how we build, several experts told The Associated Press.

Then add climate change, and “buckle up. More extreme events are expected,” said Rick Spinrad, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

 

[NTuft]

6.5% interest rate should be in red with blood dripping off it for effect. As far as I know, the Magician is involved when the mortgage (dead-hand) is created: the bank creates a fictitious deposit as an "escrow", then you service that "loan" with interest; though I don't actually know about "escrow".

23 hours ago, exchemist said:

What are you talking about?

"Have you seen the cat?" is an old slogan from Georgism or "Geoism"--the question about who owns the land. From wiki,

Quote

"[...]an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land—including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations—should belong equally to all members of society. Developed from the writings of American economist and social reformer Henry George, the Georgist paradigm seeks solutions to social and ecological problems, based on principles of land rights and public finance which attempt to integrate economic efficiency with social justice.^[6][7]
Georgism is concerned with the distribution of economic rent caused by land ownership, natural monopolies, pollution rights, and control of the commons, including title of ownership for natural resources and other contrived privileges (e.g. intellectual property). Any natural resource which is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent, but the classical and most significant example of land monopoly involves the extraction of common ground rent from valuable urban locations. Georgists argue that taxing economic rent is efficient, fair and equitable. The main Georgist policy recommendation is a tax assessed on land value, arguing that revenues from a land value tax (LVT) can be used to reduce or eliminate existing taxes (such as on income, trade, or purchases) that are unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate for the return of surplus public revenue to the people by means of a basic income or citizen's dividend.[...]

Maybe I brought my own axe to grind here, but I think what he's talking about is how gonzo the real estate market is, and I think the reason it is so is because speculative capital can and is leveraged or created to "purchase" land or dwellings that are then rented in a fashion that is inherently unfair, largely unexamined, and profitable to some. I think the "rentier class" should have their rent incomes taxed differently, and from what I understand that alone could serve to finance government and simplify the tax code.
 

On 4/1/2023 at 7:47 AM, Externet said:

How a plain person deals with this ?  Any magicians here ?   How do you do it ?  Members of this forum with much higher knowledge, education, activity status than the general public.

No sage answer, but financial literacy seems a must. Avoid debt, unless it's taken on to finance what becomes an income stream? Though that would incude the kind of rentier capitalism I'm talking about under the current state of affairs; maybe refuse that on principle.