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+---- Thread: Housing prices and inequality (/thread-366.html)
Housing prices and inequality - Eric the Green - 08-10-2016
Rags posted this on the wrong thread, but it deserves its own. I saw a study not long ago that it's cities like mine, San Jose, San Francisco, New York, Washington DC, Boston, that are causing inequality in our country. That's because as people are priced out of these places, they move elsewhere and start pushing prices up there too.
It's like we are becoming a medieval society, based on land ownership, except a lot of the owners are absentee. Meanwhile life as we knew it and communities are being destroyed. When life is reduced to work, it becomes death. The opposite ought to happen. That smug real estate guy tells people to be smart and get more education; meanwhile prices keep going up so fast that soon even smart, educated people won't be able to afford anything except their rent or mortgage.
The ideology voiced by Classic Xer is the problem here. Even in SF, according to this film, they can't pass rent or housing price controls, even though the hall is filled to overflowing with folks who want them. Bernie is right; we need a revolution for government action to restore our country. This situation gives new meaning to the socialist-anarchist slogan "property is theft." It is becoming more and more true. We might soon hear, "Storm the Bastille, and set up the guillotine for these aristocrats!" And if we can't start that Revolution here in these ultra-blue cities, where can we?
RE: Housing prices and inequality - pbrower2a - 08-11-2016
Basically, interest rates are zero for a saver or a connected borrower, and loan-shark quality for everyone else.
Near-zero interest foster pricing bubbles. Obviously there is much cheap real estate in America's Third World (like much of Appalachia and the Ozarks)... but who would want to live next to a meth lab?
It's more like "Ask what the elites can do to you without consequences" if one is not part of one of the economic elites".
RE: Housing prices and inequality - pbrower2a - 08-15-2016
Now for a commodity often terribly overpriced -- cars if one is among the working poor. This is ugly.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-oliver-used-car-loan_us_57b169dae4b007c36e4f28af?section=&;
29% interest... quick repossession but one still owes the debt even if the car is repossessed and sold to another victim... the typical loan goes into default in seven months.... people going bankrupt because of loan-shark car loans...
Loan-sharking is a growth industry in America. Something about America is truly sick.