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joec
ParticipantI believe anywhere most people want to live in prime areas of CA (SF, SD, LA) are already priced out for most kids that are graduating and growing up…
Heck, most of these areas are out of priced for working professionals
Sure, you have less desirable areas and maybe people should reset their expectations, but I’d recommend kids just move to cheaper areas and start their lives instead.
Sorta like if you grew up in Hawaii, you LEAVE since there’s no way really many jobs will allow you to make a great living compared to most places on the mainland…to save for buying a house, raise a family, save for retirement, travel, etc…unless you factor in family wealth/help again.
Personally, if I owned a lot of real estate in prime areas, I’d rather the prices just keep going up to insane levels and kids be damned, they can just live in a rental I own or they can move and learn what it’s like to not get everything handed to them (I have family who lives in one of their parent’s home)…
As bad as it is, I think a lot of people just rather do financially better and have more options than see low cost high density real estate…
I expect to eventually leave SD honestly…(immigrant anyways to US/SF/SD…) Not tied to this area or most areas really.
Participant[quote=CA renter]
Right, I totally get this, but it doesn’t change the fact that getting a ~3% yield on RE (maybe, and there are so many things that can go wrong with rentals) is worse than getting a 5-7% yield on Treasuries. Of course, if they don’t trust the Treasury market, then RE is a better bet.
Buying rentals is a good bet when prices are low and interest rates are “normal” or high. I don’t think it will be a good investment for those who are buying high.[/quote]
Another thing to factor is even if you are getting 3%, a lot of times there’s still a loan so it’s a leveraged bet. Leverage, of course, cuts both ways but if the real estate market isn’t a crazy bubble, then getting a 3% return to match inflation for someone with 20% down is more like a 15% return (I think)…
As others have mentioned, there is just more “trust” from what I’ve seen with real estate as an asset than stocks and bonds which a lot of Asians feel is an unfair and manipulated game. With real estate, you get depreciation against a decent income to also keep that W-2 lower and I’ve seen parents put their kids on the deed/loan to let them depreciate against their taxes as well and get a tax write of for rental properties…There is just a certain level of sharing which I didn’t see in many Caucasian families (kicked out at 18, self fund college, etc…)
ParticipantOne thing I don’t think a lot of Americans “get” is the immigrant mindset…
What happens if you get a bad renter? What happens if this or that? The whole immigrant mindset and why it’s different for them is because a lot of these people had a much tougher life where they came from…I grew up wearing Trax shoes from K-mart and hand-me-down clothes looking like a goofball/fob/geek…I didn’t even know it…
A lot of immigrants don’t have the whole “entitlement” mindset so prevalent in American society now of keeping up with the Jones and looking cool.
Growing up, we knew families who were saving well over 50% of their income and buying a house every other year. I don’t think they care if their returns are as high as stocks since they just don’t trust that market.
Also, for real estate, if you buy in a “good” area, I don’t think a lot of these immigrant (Asian) buyers care that much since as in the past, I’m sure all the people who bought in Cupertino, parts of LA are sitting pretty. Also, Asians like to live next to other Asians and get their weekly dose of eating out/dim sum, you name it so they will continue to buy I think.
We’re not talking about Las Vegas, Phoenix or places that people don’t “really” want to end up…but buy in a family area that people want to raise their kids and if you are patient, I don’t think these buyers are the weak hands people think about. This has been true for most prime areas (SD, I don’t think is as prime though as LA/Bay Area).
Again, maybe I’m very biased with what I’ve seen, but nearly every Asian I know had family help buying their house and we’re talking of properties all over a mil in the bay area…
When money is pooled/shared and used to buy real estate, from my experience, it’s strong hands and it’s unlikely the parents of the kids are going to kick them out/be forced to sell. Heck I know of cases in my own close family where this is done already.
I’m sure if you look at property prices in Del Mar, La Jolla, anywhere considered “top”, it has also always been considered “overpriced”…
As mentioned in Rich’s article, it may lag a bit in terms of nominal prices, but I’m not too concerned long term really since there is so much wealth outside of the US and some of these dollars need to leave their original country for safer places to park it.
It’ll go sideways maybe, but again, as I’ve said before, rents are still way too high in a lot of areas so until that goes down, I don’t think foreign buyers with a lot of cash currently getting 1% on their money is going to worry as long as they are making more in rental income.
Participant[quote=CA renter]But this is only true if the people who buy these places never plan to sell or rent to the local people at some point in the future. If they are speculating on rising rents or prices, then it’s a bubble, IMHO. It might take a while to pop, but chances are pretty good that prices cannot stay out of whack forever.[/quote]
Not sure how representative this is, but 2 Asian families close to me are renting out their houses and haven’t sold…Growing up, my dad also nearly always just bought and held renting the properties out.
I think “Asians” in general trust real estate more than stocks/bonds/financial advisers, etc…so they are more likely to buy and hold for their kids, use as a vacation home, possibly use in case they have to leave China/Taiwan, etc…
Some of the other Asian people here can voice their opinion, but I don’t think all the Asians with how they pool their money tend to sell as quick in general…
People who held in areas like the bay area/cupertino/la are sitting pretty well.
ParticipantIt maybe a waste of time, but look at how far something like the Amber alert has come. I and everyone around me just got an alert last week I think. It’s pretty hard for a child kidnapper to get away when everyone is looking for a type of car with a certain license plate…
In this case, he emailed and posted right before his act and the mom called the ex-husband immediately.
Maybe something could be done to notify authorities to keep an eye out if someone is deemed a high enough risk by parents, etc…or if something like this is done. You already have folks monitoring terrorist and social networks, a lot of these kids also already scream for attention posting messages/videos frequently.
Clearly, this guy being treated since age 8, off his meds now, has purchased guns in the past month or whenever, etc….should fire off an alert to at least warn an area, etc…after he posts something or calls his parents, etc…
They can keep tweaking it, but it’s a start to try something.
ParticipantThe problem with the profits growth story is for a lot of companies, this is due to cutting costs and mergers and acquisition and stock buy backs. If you look at a lot of large corporations, there hasn’t been any revenue growth at all during these past 5 years and it has almost all/bulk to do with stock buy backs, cost cuts, etc…(IBM comes to mind).
I don’t have the report or links, but it’s pretty easy to find I believe and reported often.
I suppose a lot of this is also a gut feeling and intuition from watching bloomberg all day every day for the past few years and just following news in general (and here, even though the demographics here tend to be middle/upper income).
I think some people will continue to do very well also and the wage/income/asset gap will worsen, but since Japan happened and we’re sorta doing the same thing, I just think it’s human nature to do the same thing as them and it’ll be a long long time before rates go up (all IMO).
Also, I think the fed is pulling back on the housing QE because they have been quoted (I believe) as saying that it wasn’t really helping the overall labor market or economy so it wasn’t working overall…so why bother? Interest rates are technically still 0% so until that moves up, nothing to see here.
A bigger boost IMO would be, say just refinance everyone who hasn’t yet for free to a lower rate with no credit check if they are already current on their mortgage. I know it’s impossible, but it’d help me (I’m selfish) and that’d free up money (self employed)…
Oh well, will revisit this area in 10 years to see where rates are still. 🙂
Participant[quote=livinincali]
If you actually bothered to open the link and look at the charts, the researchers plotted number of gun homicides vs per capita gun ownership and didn’t find a strong correlation. If you pull out all the developing countries and South Africa and are left with the 25 or so western countries there does seem to be some correlation between gun ownership rates and number of homicides.
So let’s just say the solution is to become like Japan. Repeal the second amendment, make gun ownership illegal and confiscate most of the 300 million guns in this country. That would probably be effective at preventing mass killings by guns. Do you think that is feasible in this country. I would argue that an attempt to go down that path probably gets fairly bloody and might end in civil war. There’s a fairly large segment of the population that isn’t going to give up their guns voluntarily and likely would fight to the death to keep their weapons. This would likely be an effective solution but you might have decades worth of mass killing deaths to implement it.
Solution 2 add more gun control that was discussed after Sandy Hook. Enhanced back ground checks, assault riffle bans, ammunition buying limits, etc. Does anybody here think those additions would have prevented this current tragedy. Do you have any scientific evidence it prevents any future tragedy? If so then this is a reasonable debate to have. It obviously can’t prevent a mass killing from ever happening, but maybe there some evidence that it creates fewer mass killings. I honestly don’t think anybody knows although I’m sure some will argue it’s worth doing even if we can’t measure the results.
Solution 3. Address the mental illness problems in this country. In pretty much ever single one of these cases you have a total nut job that goes on one of these killing sprees. In all the cases there were significant warning signs, but effective action was not taken before the tragedy happened. I personally think it would be more effective to spend the money and resources on identifying and helping those citizens that exhibit these warning signs.
Solution 4? Do nothing. The most likely solution in our current political climate and maybe the only realistic solution in a country that values it’s right to own guns. I’d like to see the debate focus on solution 3 because I think it can get broad support. It might mean taking on the pharmaceutical lobby but I think it’s at least reasonable doable.
Solution ? Do something that isn’t a violation of the second amendment and has a measurable reduction in the number of mass killings? Tell me what it is and we can debate it. It’s not enough in my eyes to say do this because we had to do something. Demonstrate how you think it would reduce mass killings preferably using this case. What do you advocate for that would have prevented this particular case.[/quote]
+1
Agreed…with Solution 3.
Again, the fight over gun control is a losing battle and a waste of money/time/resources…I wouldn’t support it neither since having so many guns in America seems to make us impossible to take over by a foreign power. I’m sure some folks have enough guns to arm a small army. I also don’t trust our government neither…
Aside from all that personal believe, I think…Solution 3 won’t be challenged by many groups and the NRA can’t be against getting help for people who do this since it puts them on the defensive yet again.
If it takes drugging more people and it shows it helps to prevent this, then the drug companies would be happy too.
It is sad not much/anything seems to be done since we are wasting all our time/resources on the gun debate issue.
Incremental steps…small wins first.
ParticipantI’ve said before that I don’t think interest rates are going up anytime soon…still…
I’d say we won’t see noticeably rate increases for 10 more years+ or longer…
Noticeably as in anything over 5% on the 30 year fixed rate…
One thing you left out that is all over the press now is European country rates for a lot of economies are BELOW the US rate. France is at 1.75% I just saw and a lot of others are at ~2% or so. So France is in better shape than the US with 50% youth unemployment? Uhh, yeah, US can fall further even and there is huge fears in Europe of deflation. They are thinking of having a negative rate in EU soon.
In the end, I think we are headed to be like Japan and rates are going to be low for a long time.
Deflation will be very scary if it comes here. Especially since I got shit loads of debt.
ParticipantI really think the whole gun debate talk is a waste of time. Congress can’t pass crap and people want them to seriously try to slap on a band-aid and solve gun control?
As someone else mentioned above, we need to take a long hard tough look and realize that all these people who killed like this were very mentally disturbed. This kid, having finally actually read some stuff on it today and looked at some of the photos…looked to me had a lot of help being in therapy at a young age. Maybe they should have a sponsor or a few sponsors where when they feel really bad, they can call and talk to someone they like/trust. Maybe it wouldn’t help, but more ideas related to attacking the mental health issue is more helpful than all the pro/anti gun debates.
Also, I know we all hate meds, but as an ADULT, it was mentioned he STOPPED taking all his meds and refused so that may have something to pushing him over the edge.
A lot of these people sound like they actually want the help I feel, but the current system, even though he came from a pretty well off family wasn’t able to provide it so something isn’t working in the current system/help.
Instead of getting into a shouting match about gun control, people/congress/gun lobbyist and NRA folks should find a way to offer suggestions on what to do with the very mentally disturbed/bullied kids/young adults doing this. I don’t think most sane folks would be against this since it could happen to our kids/us/our kids could be the shooter…etc…
Looking at his writings, he comes off to me as like a 10 year old still that hasn’t grown up. I’m sure we’ve all had these feels growing up, the difference is he acted on it and murdered 3 people with a machete/knives/a hammer, etc… in their sleep. Then killed 3 more with a gun.
Participant[quote=Hobie]Remember it was cops with guns that limited this rampage to 10min. I don’t recall any of these type of shooting occurring in open carry states. Hmm.[/quote]
I’d be curious if more data was gathered/available on this as well…I used to be (maybe 15 years ago) completely anti-gun and have since changed my view. A lot of these shooters seem to get a “high” finally being able to shoot people and feel stronger, bigger than people without guns.
If everyone was packing, it’d probably end with < 5 deaths and much less injured...Would like to see more data though since it's been recently reported gun violence is down in general so maybe it's just all the media coverage now. The idea of raising gun prices is just ludicrous an impossible...The market determines the price and having a government tax/"just raise prices" sounds stupid. About debating in a forum on the "Internet", I've noticed it's not to debate, it's to come and confirm what you think/feel already. I figured everyone knew that already. 🙂 No one is going to change anyone's mind. 😉
ParticipantThe thing that stood out to me (from the comments above) is the parents were divorced and he lived with his mom.
I don’t know about some of the other parents of little boys here, but I can see why some “moms” can have a tough time with rough boys and think dads don’t take the crap from little boys as much as moms (again, there ARE ALWAYS SOME MOMS WHO ARE TOUGHER TOO)…
since they were little boys themselves once (the dads).
Online articles are conflicting on both sides, but I don’t think many people will say raising a boy in a 1 parent household is better than 2 parents…
I don’t think it’s the parent’s fault this happened, but the environment just isn’t ideal and sounds like he had issues with no where to turn…I don’t doubt more and more mental issues arising from the poor economy.
ParticipantI guess this goes back to my other thought that we are just at an age and time of oversupply of labor/workers. There just aren’t enough decent paying jobs for most people and wages will just go down and revert to the norm of massive poor people and a few at the top.
I remember reading that the middle-class is actually an anomaly in regular society throughout history and we are just reverting back to what it should really be at.
One reason I don’t really see much positive developments politically for any of these situations and people (jobs/income inequality/dejected and crazed youths).
ParticipantWhat I’ve found annoying with this whole housing crisis/collapse is how some banks/businesses criticize that people should not walk away or what not when a business will do the exact thing they slammed…
I think if you can do it, squat as long as you can and take advantage of the system if it’s legal/allowed. All the big banks and all businesses will do that anyways and have been so consumers should just do what’s best for their family.
The whole legal/political system is pretty screwed up.
ParticipantThe problem is probably where/how he grew up, everyone around him probably had BMWs/Audi’s, etc…
Sorta like how everyone has a smart phone now and pity the kid who has to go to school known as the “poor” kid without a phone (or iPhone), certain clothes, needs low income lunch, etc…
It takes a certain level of maturity (or simply being married with kids or OLD) to not “care” what members of the opposite sex think about us or what anyone thinks about us in general.
Now I understand why old people dress so funny and don’t seem to care since I’m one of them.
I read the kid was the son of the director of hunger games so I’d assume he wasn’t poor at least, whether that’s “good” or not can’t be measured…
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