And the rich get richer

[kelpdiver 2]

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on the positive side, pushing jumbo mortgage rates below 4%, coupled with some lingering fears, allowed me to buy a home in San Francisco, which may never have been possible at traditional 6-8% rates. Since that money wasn't making much anyway, putting it into real estate becomes sound diversification.

Make sure you do double check on the neighborhood. Some of the section 8 housing inhabitants have ruined some nice neighborhoods.

not a lot of incentive to do Section 8 these days - can do much better with hipster tenants. But I'm in the SFH part of town anyway.

[lurch 0]

Bullshit.
I've BEEN putting up $100/mo for some years now. And going without TV and most other optional middle class nice things to be able to do it. The idea of "saving for retirement" or "building a nest egg" at that pitiful crawling rate is laughable.

At 1 year you have...$1200. Lovely. That'll cover a fraction of a single minor injury or one single major car repair.

At 2 years you have...$2400. The interest earned on this is equally laughable. Even at 10X this, the interest is still laughable and doesn't do squat to build up the bulk of it. OOh, I got a few hundred bucks extra.

At a decade you have... $12000. Still chump change.
After 30 years you have... $36 grand. That'll buy you a nice new Nissan. And nothing else.

These days everything costs amounts that ordinary workers must work months to accumulate and it vanishes in one single purchase/emergency/whatever.

I've tried plain savings account, tried a Roth IRA... put 1k$ in the IRA... watched it vanish, slowly... watched it recover, slowly... a decade later, I still have...$1014. Yeah I'm really gonna retire on THAT.

If I could save at 10X the rate, then MAYBE I could retire on it. But I'd need to jack my income to 100k/yr to be able to do that. Most average americans will never get anywhere near this. The cost of everything escalates far, far faster than they could possibly keep increasing their incomes to keep up with. When this catches up with the majority of working class people and we can no longer sustain the illusion of prosperity by credit and debt, we're fucked.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[kelpdiver 2]

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At a decade you have... $12000. Still chump change.
After 30 years you have... $36 grand. That'll buy you a nice new Nissan. And nothing else.

...

I've tried plain savings account, tried a Roth IRA... put 1k$ in the IRA... watched it vanish, slowly... watched it recover, slowly... a decade later, I still have...$1014. Yeah I'm really gonna retire on THAT.

what did you put that money in? And while the 2000-2010 was the worst 10 year period on record, the 30 year picture is very different.

$100/month at 8% annual return (S&P500 mix) turns in 150k in 30 years - 36k in contributions and 114k in gains. And yes, it would be much better to save more than $100/month, but people have to start somewhere. The idea is that when they get a raise, that they dedicate a big chunk of the increase to savings so they don't even miss it.

Insisting compound interest doesn't work and not participating is guaranteeing failure. The rich, in the context of this article's premise, are the ones that don't hold your belief. They do save and invest.

[rickjump1 0]

There's been some terrible instances in Lakeland, Fl where an established neighborhood became a haven for drug dealers, break ins, and assaults.

Houses lost by working individuals came up on the market, and were bought by enterprising individuals who turn around and rent them out to people on welfare; courtesy of the US Government.

Great investment if you have no conscience, and I wonder how the original owners are doing. Sad.. You're lucky.

Do your part for global warming: ban beans and hold all popcorn farts.

[ChrisD 0]

"Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” fantasizes a world in which anti-government citizens reject taxes and regulations, and “stop the motor” by withdrawing themselves from the system of production. In a perverse twist on the writer’s theme the prediction is coming true. But instead of productive people rejecting taxes, rejected taxes are shutting down productive people.

Perhaps Ayn Rand never anticipated the impact of unregulated greed on a productive middle class. Perhaps she never understood the fairness of tax money for public research and infrastructure and security, all of which have contributed to the success of big business. She must have known about the inequality of the pre-Depression years. But she couldn’t have foreseen the concurrent rise in technology and globalization that allowed inequality to surge again, more quickly, in a manner that threatens to put the greediest offenders out of our reach.

Ayn Rand’s philosophy suggests that average working people are “takers.” In reality, those in the best position to make money take all they can get, with no scruples about their working-class victims, because taking, in the minds of the rich, serves as a model for success. The strategy involves tax avoidance, in numerous forms."

Again the idea that "creating jobs," is going to get our economey moving by allowing corporations to do what they want is a false way of imposing "tyranny" upon the people. Small busnesses are being devastated by this way of thinking! Small buisnesses are sholdering, as the middle class, an unfair burden!

But what do I know, "I only have one tandem jump."

[billvon 3,111]

>Houses lost by working individuals came up on the market, and were bought
>by enterprising individuals who turn around and rent them out to people on
>welfare; courtesy of the US Government.

Buying homes in blighted areas results in urban renewal. The process goes like this:

1) Lots of people default on mortgages.
2) Banks foreclose.
3) People abandon the houses/businesses and move out.
4) Vacant houses become vandalized; broken windows, weeds in yards, vagrants living in abandoned homes. Drug dealers abound. Property values plummet.

This is the bottom of the cycle.

5) People buy homes/property because they are dirt cheap. They fix them up and rent them out. Property values recover a bit.
6) Low rent stores open up - bodegas, fortune tellers, pawn shops.
7) A new startup (a brewery, a restaurant, a software company) opens there because they can't afford any place better.
8) Traffic increases; people rent/buy homes near the new businesses.
9) Clever entrepreneurs decide this is a new "place to be" and open small businesses.

This is the middle of the upswing - and a good thing overall. Those people who buy property, fix it up and rent it out are the first steps in recovery.

[airdvr 210]

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Buying homes in blighted areas results in urban renewal.

Maybe 10% of the time. On yes, I can see step 7 happening in the attached picture . Only in the most liberal of minds would you think that renting properties that were once single family owner occupied dwellings would be a step in the right direction.

In the real world it usually hits step 4 and stays there.

Step 5 actually becomes the taxpayer ends up subsidizing these armpits of the world. There's no incentive to better oneself.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[billvon 3,111]

>Only in the most liberal of minds would you think that renting properties that
>were once single family owner occupied dwellings would be a step in the right
>direction.

I guess it takes a conservative mind to think that a neighborhood filled with abandoned homes occupied by vagrants is better than a neighborhood of renters paying rent and landlords maintaining their properties. Whatever floats your boat.

[OHCHUTE 0]

billvon

>Only in the most liberal of minds would you think that renting properties that
>were once single family owner occupied dwellings would be a step in the right
>direction.

I guess it takes a conservative mind to think that a neighborhood filled with abandoned homes occupied by vagrants is better than a neighborhood of renters paying rent and landlords maintaining their properties. Whatever floats your boat.

At least it keeps the vagrants in a place that can be managed by the cops as we really don't want the vagrants sleeping out in front of mansions, and 2 story colonials now do we! Jeesh. Take your money and fund the vagrant who, doesn't want to work and buy them a colonial in a nice neighborhood. Reserve your cash to help them with the cable bill and beer and dope money too. Make sure you give them enough cash to buy and illegal gun so that they won't have to GO THROUGH ALL THE BS LAW ABIDING CITIZENS HAVE TO GO THROUGH BY SUPPLY FINGER PRINT CARDS AND REGISTRATIONS AT A NEEDLESS EXPENSE just to buy a dumb .22 pistol.

The liberal mind, that whey want to help the vagrant, with other peoples money is so unnerving. Hell, send the vagrants to Iraq to help look for roadside IED's. Why pay marines to do it when we could just have vagrants walking around finding mines! Hence, no abandoned US neighborhoods filled with vagrants.

[airdvr 210]

billvon

>Only in the most liberal of minds would you think that renting properties that
>were once single family owner occupied dwellings would be a step in the right
>direction.

I guess it takes a conservative mind to think that a neighborhood filled with abandoned homes occupied by vagrants is better than a neighborhood of renters paying rent and landlords maintaining their properties. Whatever floats your boat.

The idea is to never get to step 3. How? By not having your hero president Clinton throw his weight around and threaten lenders to give mortgages to people who can't repay them, or how about not listening to Barney Frank when he assures us that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not in trouble, even though congress has been repeatedly asked to reign them in.

Yes, neighborhoods that are occupied by renters are better than vacant crack houses. Neighborhoods occupied with single family owners who go to work and pay taxes and raise kids are best. In order to get there we have to start with high school graduation rates and teen parents. Leave Lala Land and come see Cleveland, or Akron, or Canton. The Great Society experiment is a huge failure and no one is doing anything to make it better.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[billvon 3,111]

>The idea is to never get to step 3.

So you want banks to foreclose on people's homes - but you want them to keep living there? Is this more of the "conservative mindset" - don't pay your mortgage and then just refuse to leave?

I guess it goes well with your healthcare plan - "just go to the ER and don't pay."

>Yes, neighborhoods that are occupied by renters are better than vacant crack houses.

Good! Progress.

>Neighborhoods occupied with single family owners who go to work and pay taxes
>and raise kids are best.

Oh, I think neighborhoods with apartments and condos with such people are just fine as well. (Although raising kids, while fun, is not a necessity for an economically healthy neighborhood.)

>The Great Society experiment is a huge failure and no one is doing anything to
>make it better.

I prefer to let people create their own society, instead of getting the government to "do something to make it better." They generally screw it up anyway.

[airdvr 210]

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I prefer to let people create their own society, instead of getting the government to "do something to make it better." They generally screw it up anyway.

As do I. Too late by about 50 some years. Government broke it and now they have to fix it, even if the fix is to stop doing what they're doing.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[billvon 3,111]

>. . . .and now they have to fix it, even if the fix is to stop doing what they're doing.

So what would they stop?

[ManagingPrime 0]

billvon

>. . . .and now they have to fix it, even if the fix is to stop doing what they're doing.

So what would they stop?

Stop the Mortgage interest deduction.
Make it 100% clear to the market that the US gives no implicit or explicit backing to Fannie and Freddie.
Get rid of the FHA loan program.

...that could be a start and I'm sure we would be busy for sometime dealing with the fallout.

[billvon 3,111]

>Stop the Mortgage interest deduction.

OK. Result there would be higher taxes and fewer people buying homes. That would reduce, but certainly not end, real estate speculation. However, to Airdvr's point, it would also greatly hasten defaults on mortgages, and would thus cause what he is claiming to want to avoid.

(Might be a good idea overall despite that)

>Get rid of the FHA loan program.

Short term result is fewer people with homes, but life as a renter isn't all that bad.

>that could be a start and I'm sure we would be busy for sometime dealing with
>the fallout.

Definitely true there.

[rickjump1 0]

Maybe I should have gone a little farther than: "There's been some terrible instances in Lakeland, Fl where an established neighborhood became a haven for drug dealers, break ins, and assaults.

Houses lost by working individuals came up on the market, and were bought by enterprising individuals who turn around and rent them out to people on welfare; courtesy of the US Government".

Hoodlums get to move from the hood into nice neighborhoods, "courtesy of the US Government". Not all hoodlums, but enough to make life miserable for honest homeowners who now have neighborhood watches, and never go anywhere unarmed. Some of the honest homeowners would leave if they could could sell, but most see no way out and are prepared to fight for what they have accumulated through hard work.

This is a great opportunity for hoodlums and vagrants to spread "blight" and hold honest people hostage while at the same time making landlords wealthy courtesty of the US Government. Redistribution of wealth thru capitalism?

Do your part for global warming: ban beans and hold all popcorn farts.

[billvon 3,111]

>Hoodlums get to move from the hood into nice neighborhoods, "courtesy of the
>US Government".

You'll have to point out that hoodlum relocation program to me; haven't heard of that before.

>Some of the honest homeowners would leave if they could could sell, but most
>see no way out and are prepared to fight for what they have accumulated
>through hard work.

Good for them! Buy the house next door (going for a song because no one wants it apparently) and rent it out. Then clean it up and get higher paying tenants. Everyone does this, the area improves.

>This is a great opportunity for hoodlums and vagrants to spread "blight" and
>hold honest people hostage while at the same time making landlords wealthy

Good, we're making someone wealthy. Next arrest the hoodlums (those wealthy landlords are paying for the cops, after all) fix up their properties and you start moving the area from blight to renewed.

[Bertt 0]

This looks like as good a place as any to post this tidbit from BBC news.

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Apple has been accused of being "among America's largest tax avoiders" by a Senate committee.

The committee said Apple had used "a complex web of offshore entities" to avoid paying billions of dollars in US income taxes.

Apple chief Tim Cook will go before the panel on Tuesday. In prepared testimony Apple said it did not use tax gimmicks.

The committee said there was no indication it had done anything illegal.

Congress makes the tax laws. They could simplify the law and eliminate loopholes, or they can sit and complain while doing nothing. Apparently the congress has made it's choice.

You don't have to outrun the bear.

[kallend 2,146]

billvon

>Hoodlums get to move from the hood into nice neighborhoods, "courtesy of the
>US Government".

You'll have to point out that hoodlum relocation program to me; haven't heard of that before.

.

Isn't that one run by the US Marshals Service?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[rickjump1 0]

http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_4_lets_end_housing.html

Bill, you have me by the knuts. There is no mention of hoodlums being relocated; just plain old criminals.

Quote: In Maryland's Prince George's County, an area of
the Washington, D.C., suburbs with a large concentration of middle-class black residents, hundreds of voucher tenants—many of whom come from Washington, since vouchers are portable from one jurisdiction to another—do not pay their utility bills or their required 30 percent share of the rent. "We're very concerned about the program," says Mary Lou McDonough of the Prince George's Housing Authority, which doles out the vouchers. The Authority is concerned about more than non-payment. Unlike most such agencies, it screens its voucher applicants, and it finds that some of the households have criminal records—including, recently, a murder conviction. Every year, the authority boots out 25 or 30 voucher holders for brand-new crimes, usually drug-related.

Do your part for global warming: ban beans and hold all popcorn farts.

[rickjump1 0]

kallend

***>Hoodlums get to move from the hood into nice neighborhoods, "courtesy of the
>US Government".

You'll have to point out that hoodlum relocation program to me; haven't heard of that before.

.

Isn't that one run by the US Marshals Service? Nice way to get people off your back: tell them you belong to the Federal Witness Protection Program. It works.

Do your part for global warming: ban beans and hold all popcorn farts.