71–80 of 229 posts
Can anyone recommend further reading that gives an in-depth analysis of housing costs? There's no end to articles exploring the various political angles, but what good are those without understanding the underlying economic constraints? I'd be most interested in sources that use raw data, introduce mathematical models, and take into account measurable factors such as land availability, construction costs, incentives…
So this article gives an explanation for why people would want to push up rents and property values. Anyone know the how of it? Rising rent compared to wage would normally lead to increased building, so this must be prevented somehow.
I would point the finger at NIMBYism and the fact that new developments in places like San Francisco, London, and New York have to hop through many many hoops to get built (and pass muster with a surprising number of "stakeholders"). Here is just one example... http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/201... The TL;DR of this article is that a large new apartment block in SF is being held up by a cons…
Reagan ended the Golden years and turned the US around from worker friendly to money-friendly. The result are low taxes for income generated from pure money, high speculation, bailouts for the big corporations and the decline of the US middle class. Many of the other "western countries" just copy this trend and get the same, just with a few years between.
This article doesn't answer the question and seems primary based on nostalgia. My theory: the Fed's zero interest rate policy is very good at inflating asset values: S&P500, housing, you name it. Rising income is a second-order effect: we hope that rising asset values will lead to increased wages. That used to be the case, but no longer is. Why? Because of automation and globalization probably. So, the Fed has the pe…
Here's another solution: Respect the wisdom of markets. Allow corrections to take place and don't bury malinvestment under the rug only for it rear it's ugly head worse later on by acting as if you have a better intuition on what the price of money should be. Most people accept the virtue of free markets. Yet many don't see that the actions the Fed has been taking destroys the concept of a market by artificially supp…
This article doesn't answer the question and seems primary based on nostalgia. My theory: the Fed's zero interest rate policy is very good at inflating asset values: S&P500, housing, you name it. Rising income is a second-order effect: we hope that rising asset values will lead to increased wages. That used to be the case, but no longer is. Why? Because of automation and globalization probably. So, the Fed has the pe…
One thing nobody mentions is the increasing share of the GDP that the government consumes: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total_spending_chart That wealth has to come from somewhere.
This article doesn't answer the question and seems primary based on nostalgia. My theory: the Fed's zero interest rate policy is very good at inflating asset values: S&P500, housing, you name it. Rising income is a second-order effect: we hope that rising asset values will lead to increased wages. That used to be the case, but no longer is. Why? Because of automation and globalization probably. So, the Fed has the pe…
I think that zero interest rate policy should have ended 2-3 years ago when economy got back in shape. The zero interest rates are benefiting housing market thereby increasing housing prices. I don't understand why Feds inflation gauge doesn't take into account the housing prices/rents that well? Every month Feds see unemployment rate and review the rates accordingly. I think they should also take into consideration…
When you have cheap money, more people think marginal investments now make a lot of sense. But if you create too many online dog food companies, eventually most of them have to be shut down.
It would have been better to allow an organic recovery.
And remove the impediments to hiring. We seem to ignore the law of supply and demand in the labor markets and then scratch our heads when there is a lot of unemployment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you kidding? What does a family line which has had uninterrupted, exclusive access to a personal library know ? I mean think about it--what is that family like? That family which has held on to the same chunk of physical space, with books and notebooks, for several generations. "Equal footing in terms of ability to gain information", my ass! My own toddler gets confused when he tries to describe his home--probabl…
i don't understand the argument you are trying to make. you cut off the the "more" to make it sound like my statement meant we are equal instead of relatively better than we once were in comparison to the upper class. then proceeded to provide examples of your toddler being able to retain information and yourself retaining information. both are about memory and ability to recall those memories with accuracy.
Oh, in the first post, my examples are about "ability to gain information [learn]" but you were talking about "ability to gain information [access]". Okay, yes the internet and the public library system are truly wonderful. I do presume that the ruling class (and/or the rich) have some information that is not publicly available, and it's probably very important information, but yes, a poor man can walk into a library today and find treasure laying around. That has improved our footing. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly right. The rich found this out early last century with the rise of communism. What they did was very clever; they basically introduced socialism in the 1930s by shifting the majority share of production to the masses to keep them quiet, introduced mass higher education with an emphasis on identifying the very smart (troublemakers if excluded) and brought them into the ruling class. Once this "decapitation of…
Democracy is the insurance premium the rich pay against the threat of pitchforks and guillotines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not exactly true, back in feudal times just being able to read was quite a privilege. They also had a lock on information. We're much more on equal footing in terms of ability to gain information. Whether we act on the information is another issue.
In order to have an effective meritocracy you have to have universal education. You then pick the top 0.1% and invite them to join you and marry your son or daughter. The whole economic system is designed to identify the very clever no matter their background and bring them into the ruling class.
This article doesn't answer the question and seems primary based on nostalgia. My theory: the Fed's zero interest rate policy is very good at inflating asset values: S&P500, housing, you name it. Rising income is a second-order effect: we hope that rising asset values will lead to increased wages. That used to be the case, but no longer is. Why? Because of automation and globalization probably. So, the Fed has the pe…
One thing nobody mentions is the increasing share of the GDP that the government consumes: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total_spending_chart That wealth has to come from somewhere.