deadzone, the sheep thing is very important to our discussion, and I’m glad to see it brought up again. Every bubble relies on sheeple mentality. Yet, we still have to answer why some cities have bubbles and others don’t.
Ok, I am *not* religious, so I have no agenda here, but it seems to me that truly religious people have that sparkle in their eyes, that non-religous people usually lack, although I have non-religious friends who sparkle too. In general, it seems that truly believing in religion makes people happier on the inside, and that could explain less desire for materialism. But I don’t know if this is proven, and I agree that many people use religion as a crutch, just like people use AA as a substitute for alcohol.
Back to the point: whether we like religion or not, the graph jg provided makes a compelling case for a link between religion and housing bubbles. Since we are students of housing bubbles, it behooves us to consider this link, and not dismiss it out of hand. I was so appalled when Gloria Steinem said we should stop research on the differences between male and female brains, because she didn’t want to think these differences existed; however, knowing these differences has been a boon to educators and it turns out that the research proved that boys and girls each have their own strength.
We’ve had two tantalizing links this week to explain why some cities had a housing bubbles, and others did not: Religion and more high-income workers.
