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spdrun
ParticipantPoor taste on Mr. Kelly’s part to make light of this and use it to grab the spotlight.
ParticipantThey’d have to pay ME to take a trucklet with a wimp-o-matic transmission. Even then I’d part it out. Consider it the automotive equivalent of drawing and quartering 🙂
ParticipantWrite down the existing homeowners’ loans to current fair values. Permanently, no restrictions on re-sale or renting. Hell, make the new mortgages assumable. End of story. Real estate bubbles aren’t wealth creators. And development for its own sake is deleterious to the environment.
As far as working hours, plenty of places that are doing well economically (Germany, Australia) have restrictions on hours and vacation time. We shouldn’t aspire to be China or Japan, where people commit suicide from overwork.
BTW – wealth creation via inflation or encouraging people to buy more of the same trinkets made in pestholes with no labor or environmental standards is a f**king sham. If anything, we should be aiming for genuine innovation combined with environmental sustainability.
I’d be all for “free” money for clean-energy projects, ranging from solar, to wind, to new nuclear plants. The goal should be to phase out fossil fuel use inside of 20 years. This should be combined with a tax on fossil fuel energy that starts small, but doubles every year or two. The carrot and the stick, make it so that in 20 years, using fossil fuels for power generation, heating, or driving will be prohibitively expensive, while clean sources will become cheap as economies of scale grow.
ParticipantWhy not actually encourage savings and thrift, instead of discouraging savings in favor of borrowing? Is it really a good thing to keep 95% of Americans on the slave-treadmill, in hock to the company store? Bad idea in the 1800s when there were company towns. Just as bad now.
I have a different idea: mandate vacation time and working hours in line with most of the civilized world. Reduce productivity per worker, so that more workers reap the benefits of employment.
Let home prices fall to where they’re affordable on one to 1.5x the average income in an area.
ParticipantIf you form an LLC on equal terms, wouldn’t you basically all be members/shareholders of the LLC, rather than employees? Forming an employer/employee relationship between friends seems like very bad juju.
ParticipantAbout 1.2% of purchase price in New York. This is actually on the high side for residential in the city, though low for the state as a whole.
ParticipantNothing. Let the chips fall where they may — lower asset prices will benefit the competent vs the idiots who overspent.
ParticipantI thought this had turned into a CA vs East Coast pyxxing contest. Or at least SoCal 🙂
West Harlem (esp below Columbia Uni) and East Harlem are two different ball games. We can at least agree about Camden sucking!
ParticipantAll of these cases are better than coming into the same office in the AM, with a forced smile on your face, while wanting to beat the p!ss out of your boss. BTDT, never again.
I’m not a geek in the sense of an innovator (freely admitted), merely a damn good technician and engineer.
ParticipantDepends on the building, I guess. Mine was built in 1911 or so, and my apartment doesn’t smell of much of anything. Plaster over brick construction. Big windows, decent ventilation, enough electrical capacity to run appropriately-sized A/C’s in summer. Wish it were bigger, but that’s about it.
ParticipantBottom line is net worth THAT CAN BE TRANSLATED TO INCOME(!) My hope for the next 2-3 years is to acquire enough income property to pay for all of my fixed expenses, so I’ll never have to be anyone’s b**ch in life. If not in SD, then in NY area. Either is acceptable in my book.
ParticipantBG, you have it wrong… Consumer expectations have changed. Lifestyle have changed.
People today want brand name designer clothing. They also expect granite counter tops. And they definitely can’t live with popcorn ceilings.
Interest rates are lower, so people drive more expensive cars today.
And BG, it’s true that people are not as handy as you. I have a friend who can’t fix a small sink leak.
People today don’t improvise as easily to fix things around the house. Look at the proliferation of expensive cleaning products all specialized for different applications.
If people can’t improvise and end up buying a house based on the countertops, then I’ll call them IDIOTS. That’s the home-buying equivalent of buying a K-car for the Rich Corinthian Leather.
As far as cars, average age of a car in the US is 10+ years. Remember when a 5-year old car was considered “old?”
ParticipantActually, probably not. I ended up with a dead motorcycle battery and broken clutch cable in Newark one day (don’t ask, but it made push starting basically impossible). Saw some dudes working on a car in their garage, asked if they had a charger. They let me chill there for an hour while I charged the battery, and let me borrow their tools to remove the fairings.
I can’t speak to Logan Heights, but I’ve heard of out-of-towners getting shot because they went down the wrong street in L.A.
ParticipantLogan Heights/Shelltown. And what about LA: Watts, Compton, South Central.
This being said, I’ve driven (and walked) through South Bronx, Newark, and Spanish Harlem in the day. No real issues, probably would avoid hanging there at 3 am alone. I live about a mile from Spanish Harlem and had a good friend who lived on E 105th St whom I’d visit regularly. Used to live in West Philly, and took Baltimore Ave. out to the ‘burbs on a regular basis.
Camden is a whole ‘notha ball game, but it’s comparatively small.
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