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Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

latimes.com

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Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#51

Post by gozur88 »

pjmorris wrote: post #46
gozur88 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cheaper to buy fresh food than junk food. If you're buying junk food it's because you don't have a place to cook or you're too lazy to cook.

My metric for food price is calories per penny. For example, the 760 calorie slice of pizza for $1.99 at Costco works out to about 3.8 calories per penny, while the 500 calorie Caesar salad for $3.99 works out to about 1.3 calories per penny. In my worked example, the fresh food is more expensive than the junk food from the point of view of 'How much money do I need to spend to keep myself alive today?' Could you pos…

A pound of uncooked white rice is $0.69, and it has 1696 calories, which works out to 24.6 calories per penny. That's about 19x better by your metric.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#52

Post by metaphor »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #21
solotronics wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

by your measure most people in the USA are poor I would guess about 80%+

One interesting factoid I know is that 50% of Americans represent 2% of the income in America. “The shrinking middle class” is a phrase that is part of common discourse here for a reason - I wouldn’t be surprised if 80% of Americans fit the parent comment’s definition.

> One interesting factoid I know is that 50% of Americans represent 2% of the income in America.

Reference?

This recent study[1] suggests the bottom 50% income represents 12.5% pre-tax, 19.3% post-tax based on 2014 data.

[1] http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2018QJE.pdf see p. 39, Table I

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#53

Post by rleigh »

pjmorris wrote: post #46
gozur88 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cheaper to buy fresh food than junk food. If you're buying junk food it's because you don't have a place to cook or you're too lazy to cook.

My metric for food price is calories per penny. For example, the 760 calorie slice of pizza for $1.99 at Costco works out to about 3.8 calories per penny, while the 500 calorie Caesar salad for $3.99 works out to about 1.3 calories per penny. In my worked example, the fresh food is more expensive than the junk food from the point of view of 'How much money do I need to spend to keep myself alive today?' Could you pos…

You can buy an entire sackful of potatoes for around the cost of two slices of pizza, and it'll last for weeks. Or several pounds of flour which will likewise last for a while--you could make your pizza bases in a few minutes if you wanted to, then just add the toppings you want. These are all vastly better value for money than buying pre-made food.

I don't buy for a moment that processed food is cheaper than the raw ingredients. The processing has a significant cost. The main factor for many people is pure laziness--they can't be bothered to spend 10 minutes preparing stuff; they'd rather waste money on processed food.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#54

Post by sologoub »

LA really needs to work on providing restrooms. The RV convoys aren't really that much of a problem themselves (some individuals are, but so can be those with homes). Instead what they leave behind is a problem - feces, urine and trash.

I'm sure most people would rather not do this on a sidewalk or under an overpass, but if they have no other option it's hard to blame them. To add insult to injury, city has proven uninterested in increasing sanitation work to at least clean this up. Now LA and San Diego are facing diseases most developed countries only read about.

I'm sure the city could organize a service to place mobile restrooms at a reasonable cost. I'd be more than willing to pay extra sales tax for this and it would generate jobs for companies that maintain them.

EDIT: It's worse than I thought - in skid row (granted this might be an extreme) 9 toilets for roughly 1800 people!

Source: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bathroom-protest...

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#55

Post by perl4ever »

grandmczeb wrote: post #31
cletus wrote: post #7

I can’t help but think of Snow Crash where Hiro Protagonist (and many others) lived in the U-Store-It former storage facility. This is the the real cost of allowing (particularly foreign) capital to be parked in real estate in the developed world. In NYC for example most new developments are ultra-luxury not because building affordable apartments is uneconomic, it’s just that the ultra-luxury end is way more profitab…

> This is the the real cost of allowing (particularly foreign) capital to be parked in real estate in the developed world. It's amazing to me that people don't recognize this as xenophobia when other forms ("Mexicans are taking our jobs!", "Migrants don't have the same values!") are so readily called out. High housing prices are a self inflicted problem. When you mix supply restrictions with tax breaks explicitly des…

When reading an article about New Zealand restricting foreign real estate investment, I found their reasoning compelling. Housing can be used to house people, or for speculation, like Bitcoin or gold. If you believe that providing shelter takes strict priority for the limited housing stock then it is moral and necessary to restrict the demand from investors.

Quantifying the scale of the problem is another issue, but I certainly think that if people are buying houses for purposes other than living in, allowing that is the, or a, "self-inflicted problem".

If someone wants to invest and grow the supply of something, they should be welcome, but bidding up a resource that cannot be increased is not something people have to accept merely because of some misguided slogans or epithets.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#56

Post by hashkb »

aphextron wrote: post #34

I'll be facing this soon as well, at least they've got RV's. After getting back from my third open house for the week, with double digit atendees, I think the bay area just isn't for me. A perfect credit score and a job making double the median wage is not enough to land a 1 bedroom apartment apparently. I'll probably end up sleeping on someones couch for a few months to finish my work contract, and get out of this h…

I don't think you're facing what they're facing. Sounds like you make quite a bit more than the people profiled in this article.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#57

Post by QAPereo »

dnautics wrote: post #47
TuringNYC wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason people dislike foreign capital specifically is when the houses come just a piggybank and remain empty. It is bad enough when capital (local or foreign) drives up home prices, but it feels worse when the homes sit empty. Note, this affects everyone because people get knocked down the ladder incrementally.

> the houses come just a piggybank and remain empty seems like a poor investment to me. You're just pissing it away on property taxes. So why not let the rich do this and basically redistribute their wealth?

It makes sense if you want to exfiltrate your money from the Russian mob, or Chinese communist party.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#58

Post by QAPereo »

dnautics wrote: post #49
martin_bech wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel sorry for you.. buy yes.

you've never been a scientist, have you? The experiments don't care about how much vacation you're legally entitled to.

Sure, if you’re a lab rat or a PhD student.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#59

Post by cletus »

jjeaff wrote: post #29
cletus wrote: post #7

I can’t help but think of Snow Crash where Hiro Protagonist (and many others) lived in the U-Store-It former storage facility. This is the the real cost of allowing (particularly foreign) capital to be parked in real estate in the developed world. In NYC for example most new developments are ultra-luxury not because building affordable apartments is uneconomic, it’s just that the ultra-luxury end is way more profitab…

The thing is, this money being parked from overseas isn't even benefitting the local economies. It just props up property values for a select few homeowners. The people buying these houses are just leaving them empty. There has been some private investigation of some of the homes being bought and built in BelAir right now. One home was found to be owned by a Nigerian politician through multiple layers of shell compan…

It’s worse than that: they’re not even payin* their fair share of property taxes either. For example:

- 157 West 57th St #77, asking $49m, paying $4,200 in monthly taxes [1]

- 301 West 53rd St #3E, asking $1.85m, paying $1,681 in monthly taxes [2]

Why is an apartment asking 25 Times as much only paying 2.5x the property taxes?

You can largely blame Bloomberg and Andrew Cuomo for this.

[1] https://www.elliman.com/new-york-city/one57-157-west-57-stre...

[2] https://www.elliman.com/new-york-city/fifty-third-and-eighth...

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#60

Post by iak8god »

etr-strike wrote: post #17

Keep doing what you’re doing central banks! Your policies of persistent inflation have robbed us of our ability to save our wealth and accurately plan for the future. You’ve decided that devaluing our wages 2% per year is in our best interest meaning we must perpetually fight with our employers to keep our wages we fought for the previous year. Your policies of QE have driven asset prices so high we have no hope of e…

Over the last four decades, the slow and steady annual inflation looks very easy to plan for: http://www.inflation.eu/inflation-rates/united-states/histor...
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