shortage of affordable housing for young adults

Of course. That's all part of the plan.

 

You both are reflective and make intelligent remarks. I agree though that unless and until Americans en masse demonstrate for healthcare, housing and jobs, there will be little progress made. When the crash of 2006 came and affected the populations of the Earth, 100,000 Israelis took to the street to protest government austerity measures and failure to properly regulate financial institutions, (and for bailing them out), so how many Americans took to the streets? It only takes about 3.5% of a population to make a revolution, so why are we seeing a right wing extremist revolution when we should be seeing a progressive one?

I do have another thing I would like to say though, and it is this: humans need trees and grass, they need space, they are psychologically stressed in large apartment block communities. When I pointed out that the over-population was causing and will continue to cause more and more intense competition (and distress) for air, water, housing, jobs, etc...., I want to underline that one can achieve all the material necessities but still be despondent because the psychological needs must be met--people simply do better in a natural environment. That is one of the reasons suburbs were so popular. One could sit on a back deck, look at the garden, see the birds eating out of the feeder, and once in awhile enjoy trimming the arborvitae. This is not to be under-appreciated. Remember that years ago when cities were peaking in the 1940's and 50's, they planted trees all along the neighborhood streets. One tenth an acre of lawn is equivalent to a 10,000 BTU air conditioner. Trees are essential to the watershed, as one big oak can store hundreds of gallons of moisture. I would never live in a high rise, and never in a large apartment block community. You would have to drag me kicking and screaming to live in a shoebox among God knows who next door and above. Humans need space and some natural environment. Of course, even if everyone on the planet agreed, the housing problem really is unsolvable, because there are too many factors which require action by the elites who control the money, resources and political will, so kiss it all goodbye. As Stephen Hawking once remarked, humanity is doomed by stupidity and greed. There is one last factor to consider, which Americans seem to under-appreciate--cause and effect. What we are living with today, in all things, is comprised of past acts and omissions. As one very good English physician/writer wrote in one of his historical fiction books, "The warp of the weave of life is comprised of an uncountable number of threads." Like it, like it.... Everything, everything, though Americans deny it by insisting on the foolish concept of "free wi% 5ll," is up to Chance and Timeliness. Ecclesiastes abbreviated and paraphrased for better comprehension: "For the strongest goes not the battle, nor the swiftest the race, nor the more intelligent success, ... for under the sun all men are affected by Chance and Timeliness. The rich become rich by Chance and being in the right place at the right time, as do the poor become poor, as do the crippled become crippled, as do the mentally ill become so, and all is due to Chance and Timeliness. The ancient knew this, the eastern peoples' now this, (e.g., Allah wills it!"), but the Western Europeans absorbed and still insist in great measure to "free will." Free will is neither widespread nor even well-understood. As Franklin Roosevelt once remarked, a man is not free unless he has financial self-sufficiency. A Spinoza (paraphrased) suggested, free will is to such a great extent confined within all the actions and inactions of the past by nature and by humanity, that it is very small indeed. You many have read or viewed "Passage to India." The Indian professor, Dr. Goodbody I think was his name, responded to the English headmaster's remark that they should do something to save the Indian physician who had been accused of rape of the English tourist. He said there was nothing they could do about that, so instead, why not try to think of a good name to call the new school he established. "It is out of our hands..." Things happen because of Chance and Timeliness; of all the things done and left undone for eons in the past. The butterfly effect. Everything is connected. The random path of a drop of water dropping onto one's hand. Randomness, always a touch of unpredictability, all matter moving all the time, sometimes in unpredictable ways. This is why so many modern physicists will tell you there is no free will as we think of it. It is all possible only within the place, time and a massive number of circumstances pressing upon the decisions or lack thereof. We choose what we are available to us, not whatever we want. One might say that "Everyone can be whomever they want to be" is the cruelest untruth told to children by their parents and mentors. Or, one could say that yes, one can become President. Why? Because of Chance and Timeliness.

 

Because Progressives are the Establishment which is bent on creating a massive urban underclass, packed into cities.

 

The 'housing problem' is a function of our grotesque demands for individual private homes. When dirt poor people in the developing world are housed (and most are, unlike America), it's because they accept that means sharing with extended family. First Worlders think they're too special to do that, so they end up with a 'housing problem'. It doesn't come from Govt, or policies, or even the economy. It comes from PEOPLE.

As for where that people problem came from, then yes ... the elites who promoted that kind of hubris are responsible. They taught us via the welfare state, that we needn't make any sacrifice or effort.

 

Yes, all true. Urban life is an abomination, and destroys our capacity to be all we can be. It destroys our physicality, our tolerance, our ability to be uncomfortable, our comfort in dirty hands, our patience, our capacity for compromise, our very animal resilience.

 

I don't disagree with this, but there are many urban areas that do have trees, grass, and open space. Especially in the nicer parts of America's oldest cities that were built before most of the residents had cars.

I know this is probably an aberration but, ironically, in the region where I live, the nicest outside spaces are in the urban areas. Large forested parks in the core areas of old urban areas. The rural areas have traditionally had less financial resources, so most all the land there is privatized. The newer developed areas are pretty awful though. I think part of the reason is that in older times, the cities had more money and more available space, so they could design several large forested parks into the midst of their cities. In the past, there was lower population so urban areas did not sprawl out so far. People could find more available open space just a short distance away from the core of their cities.

 

Re: nomadic employees I used to be a Director in several large organizations' HR Department. I was there when the gurus changed it from Personnel to "Human Resources." Our Vice President asked us department managers what we thought that meant. I know what it meant--employees were now considered resources like physical and financial and good will, etc.... That was in 1979. By 1990, "HR" was no longer, in most companies, the employees' ombudsmen. Yes, we actually used to argue for employees and that included for salary increases. We had 35 and 37.5 hour workweeks, and 12, yes 12 paid holidays in a northeastern state. We had nice offices, free parking, hour lunches, and everyone, even the executives shot out of the building at 4:30 or 5:00. There was a hoard of 2000 employees walking to the parking lot. Who the heck ever worked overtime? And if anyone did, you can be sure HR was on managements' backs to pay them premium, as defined by state and federal law. There was no "comp time" because that is what the law said. Now realize we had very high inflation in the late 70's and early 80's. So much so that Richard Nixon imposed wage price controls. I used to be in charge of employee compensation--I called the shots on the annual increase percentage. We used to watch the union contract results, and to make sure the service industries did not unionize, we gave only slightly less that the unions got so everyone was contented. BUT, around this time, Wall Street, the media hacks who are controlled by oligarchs, and corporate boards of directors all over the place began to whine about how they needed to raise "productivity." Believe it or not, many of us had no idea what that meant. Of course we could see the beginning of major investment in computer labor (most full time salaried either programmers or systems analysts), but also noticed some contract systems people being hired. We knew that this new tool, the computer, (my department got the first ever desktop pc and printer in the company), would help us greatly with calculations and databases. We did not know that the cry for increased productivity was a buzzword for mass terminations of millions of people in the 1990's once technology became king of the castle, (though the Queen always secretly ranked higher--Finance Department.) Anyway, that was it boys, the lawyers began telling HR how litigious employees were becoming, some employees began complaining about gender and race discrimination, we were suddenly hiring Affirmative Action officers and female "Organization Development" specialists for various kinds of indoctrination training for all ranks in various ways. Numerous management consulting firms played their games all over the country with seminars, retreats, phony team building, and you know. This was all to address the labor disruption in the economy. Some management consultants were telling us about "Change." How Change was inevitable, and how we needed to bow our heads to change and roll with the punches. This was all shorthand for get ready for a bloodbath, because the stock analysts want more productivity--i.e., more profit for shareholders via less employee overhead. Well, by the late 90's, since Reagan had broken the backs of the unions in he 1980's and the Republicans refused to regulate corporations, and even defunded regulatory agencies, nor did they and neither did the neo-liberal Democrats enforce labor laws, we saw the whole thing collapse and a choke hold by the top brass over everyone. By that time too, executive compensation had reached the stratoshpere. When I started, executives earned an awful lot less. So, HR became merely a gloved fist for the executives and used a defensive posture to make sure wages were puny but legal challenges and organizing went nowhere. Of course by that time the employees who were still around doing non-exempt and lower level professional work were not going to make waves. The mid-level managers used to be the buffers between the top floor who kowtowed to the Board of Directors and their staffs. The middle managers were wiped out in the late 90's, because hey, human beings aren't required to manage people when we have strong surveillance and strict procedures and technology to keep them small and working hard. Truth--I only wanted my employees to work hard when we had a particularly difficult task to perform, say like the rollout of a new payroll system. But otherwise, I wanted them content, paced and sometimes laughing and enjoying the antics of employees outside HR. The affairs, the weirdos, you know... So in the late 90's my throat was metaphorically cut and I found myself out of work for a year and applying for, now get this, 365 jobs. Finally I landed one for a prestigious organization in Washington D.C. for a lot of money. That lasted two years. I hated it. I left for a job outside of HR for half the pay and stayed in that new profession for the rest of my working life. I retired early at 62 after being fired for the last time by some shits that couldn't find the time and moral fortitude to be nice to employees, and who were forever worried about income. That was that. That is the story of employee life in the USA. The politicians are completely bought and sold via bribes, which are called "campaign donations," and are invited to drink champagne with the bosses. This is a corporatist state. It is controlled by oligarchs with obscene amounts of money and obscene power that money brings. You will not get affordable housing out of them, that's for sure. The only way forward for the mass of people is non-violent rebellion. Not violent, but constant demonstrations, even in the face of police repression. The politicians will pee their pants, and the business leaders want most of all a stable quiet society so they can pull their ***** without interference. You young people are going to have to figure out what to do in order to change this awful paradigm. I am too old and cynical.

 

It's perfectly rational. Ownership of land -- and especially primary residences -- is so exorbitantly subsidized, it makes financial sense to own as much land as possible under your house.

See above for the proof that that is false. It is a deliberate policy of government to steal from producers and consumers and give the loot to landowners, especially those who own the land under their primary residences.

No, they made sure that if you own land, you are on the escalator, and if you don't, then you are on the treadmill that powers the landowners' escalator. They made sure the only sacrifice and effort that gets you anywhere is the sacrifice and effort you put into obtaining ownership of land.

 

I've lived in Tokyo, the biggest city in the history of the world. You're wrong.

 

It's a policy problem. The higher the property tax rate, the more affordable the housing. In Detroit, where property taxes are ~4%, you can buy a livable house for $10K. In CA, where the property tax rate is ~0.4% and often far less, a starter home is $500K.

 

How Private Equity Firms Are Increasing U.S. Rent Prices
Duration:5:38



I saw this and thought of this thread topic. It's the private equity firms who are making the affordable housing crisis what it is.

Well, to go further, I think the whole house flipping industry is making housing unaffordable, and I think laws should be put into place to stop this inflation of housing prices. Maybe even outlaw making a profit on real estate altogether! It's an anti-free market idea, but at this point with prices, it's gotten out of control!

 

Great idea! Then all the landlords will drop out of the market, and sell off their properties to the highest bidder - who'll then live in that property, since there's no profit to be made in on-selling or renting. The poor will end up exactly where they started, except now there'll be no properties to rent. Brilliant.

 

Good post, touche!

 

The Earth is grossly over-populated. So, we can discuss this ad nauseam, but nothing matters anymore. When complex systems fail, which is not very often, they fail catastrophically and very quickly. You see what one more dangerous than ordinary flu has done to the people of the Earth? And fools are still unvaccinated even when begged to do so and provided free medicine. What hope then when something much more dangerous emerges? Supply chain issues my ass, try greed and stupidity.

 

You agree that this disenfranchisment of the common man from private property, is part of the corporate wealth transfer?

 

That's just a symptom. The disease is the institutional framework that shovels money into landowners' pockets for keeping good locations idle.

Yeah, that law would be called, "justice." You might have heard of it.

Remarkable how the same dumb ideas to put a band-aid on the symptoms of landowner privilege -- rent control, income and profits taxes, public housing, blah, blah, blah -- keep popping up, and the only good idea, the only actual solution, never gets a hearing...

A market where some people own and buy and sell other people's rights to liberty, like a land market, is not a free market. It is a slave market.

 

You've got it all wrong. It's not disenfranchisement of anyone from private property. It's erasure of rightful private property in the fruits of one's labor to enshrine wrongful private property in the privileges -- i.e., in others' rights to liberty -- the super-duper uber-rich own: land titles, IP monopolies, bank licenses, etc.

 

crank, you might look up "Geolibertarianism" and "Henry George" before responding further to bringiton.

It might result in a more productive discussion. bringiton has a bad habit of continually bringing up and getting into arguments about the finer points of this theory in many different threads, even though it is mostly off topic to what those threads are mainly about.

It is a discussion worth having, I think, but is really a subject that deserves its own separate thread discussion.

 

Thanks, but I know our pal well. I know all about his "geolibertarianism".

 

I doubt that you can give an accurate definition of it.