[quote=Arraya]Good grief, anecdotal evidence about the top 10% is assessing economic health is not very scientific. I guess it’s one way to look at it. Not sure how useful it is to understanding aggregate health of the entire country, though.

Food stamp usage went from about 11 million in 2005 to almost 45 million today. Over 50% have no retirement savings and live paycheck to paycheck and are saturated with debt. Another hiccup in the credit markets would put millions more down and destroy state budgets and banks don’t-count-the-losses-accounting balance sheets more then they already are. Which is really a microcosm of all other growing problems. Just pretend they are not there

This country is a train wreck but I’m sure it’s all rainbows and ice cream in carmel valley.[/quote]

Did I say that? I don’t think so…But come on, I think some of you folks have your blinders on in thinking everyone is in a financial trainwreck, which clearly isn’t the case.. It’s funny that folks some folks still think you’ll see a flood of foreclosures or 50% off of RE in some of the more affluent areas….Clearly that isn’t happening…If it were, you wouldn’t see $300/sqft place till get still get multiple counter offers with more than 20% down on each offer…

There are going to winners and there are going to be losers in the next few years… There’s relo’s out of San Diego and there’s relo in to San Diego. What’s happening is just a shift a demographics… Some folks who are in the defense business for instance, are already given up in San Diego and are headed for MD,VA,DC simply because economically they are doing much better there than they would here. Here, if you are b-c level in defense industry, you’re going to be asked to take a huge cut and benefits which probably isn’t worth if for folks that can pick up and just leave…In the east coast, they’ll give you a huge raise and even pay for the relocation….On the opposite extreme, you have some of the embedded folks migrating here (though competition is heating up with bay area).