For someone who spent a major portion of an entire thread calling me a bigot, you can be pretty sensitive.
See, it's all coming back to that, isn't it? You've been gunning for me ever since then. I called you a bigot. I still think that on that issue you are a bigot. Now you're trapped in a revenge loop. Oh well. Keep them coming.
For someone who spent a major portion of an entire thread calling me a bigot, you can be pretty sensitive.
See, it's all coming back to that, isn't it? You've been gunning for me ever since then. I called you a bigot. I still think that on that issue you are a bigot. Now you're trapped in a revenge loop. Oh well. Keep them coming.
It's not that at all. I don't care if you think I'm a bigot about teenagers. Since I don't care, I have no feelings regarding revenge. You've spent a goodly portion of this thread calling me an alarmist, or even a "crazy alarmist". At one point you said you were "worried" about me. I similarly don't care about that. I'm just pointing out that I find it odd that you can spend so much time bashing my character and then take such offense when I make a joke about how you could stand in a burning building on the brink of collapse and convince yourself that everything is okay.
Capitol Weekly reports that newly elected California Congresswoman Laura Richardson walked away from the mortgage on her $535,000 Sacramento home, letting the house slip into foreclosure and disrepair less than two years after she bought it with no money down.
The information reviewed at the April meeting, which included the advance data on the national income and product accounts for the first quarter, indicated that economic growth had remained weak so far this year. Labor market conditions had deteriorated further, and manufacturing activity was soft. Housing activity had continued its sharp descent, and business spending on both structures and equipment had turned down. Consumer spending had grown very slowly, and household sentiment had tumbled further. Core consumer price inflation had slowed in recent months, but overall inflation remained elevated.
I've noticed a connection between this thread and another thread on this forum about a quarantined computer.
People are confusing problems with consequences.
A problem is an adversity you face. It is something that forces you to make a difficult decision, and then execute that decision. Depending on the decision and on your execution, there will be different outcomes.
A consequence is one of the outcomes. It's not a problem to solve, it is the unavoidable outcome of something you have already done, or failed to do. Having your computer quarantined because you were fooling around at work isn't a problem, it's a consequence. The answer is that you shouldn't have fooled around in the first place. Losing your house because you have no money isn't a problem, at least not in the situations that Joe is presenting. It's a consequence of being financially irresponsible.
Consequences are not something you can avoid. What comes before determines what comes after. Things that have already happened, and can not be undone, have forged the path to the present, and some distance into the future. You can not solve a consequence, you just have to accept it. Once you accept that a consequence is unavoidable, you need to look beyond the consequence.
Losing your house because you have no money isn't a problem, at least not in the situations that Joe is presenting. It's a consequence of being financially irresponsible.
You're really getting lost thinking about that one lady. I've shown statistics that prove that many, many people are having trouble. They're not all having trouble because of some personal failings, but because of an economic downturn.
@Jason: Pretty pictures. Notice how I'm not saying that it's the end of civilization. Also, notice back a couple of pages ago when you talked about previous recessions, I replied that I've lived through all the ones you listed. Sure, we will eventually come out of a recession. But the time spent in the recession is not fun.
In recent weeks, a spate of stronger-than-expected data has led some to doubt whether the U.S. economy is really in recession, as was widely believed a short time ago. One key reason for those qualms was the advance report that in the first quarter of 2008, real GDP grew at a 0.6% annual rate, rather than shrinking. Especially for those who believe the "technical definition" of a recession to be two successive quarterly declines in GDP, its continued advance was a sign that the U.S. economy might have averted a recession.
Scott, not all people getting hurt are financially irresponsible. Some of them were doing just fine but as prices went up their salaries did not. They may have kept a 5% or 10% buffer between their income and their expenses. As time moved on they found their buffer shrinking due to rising costs of fuel and food.
Now they have no buffer and are forced to dip into savings to make ends meet.
Scott, not all people getting hurt are financially irresponsible. Some of them were doing just fine but as prices went up their salaries did not. They may have kept a 5% or 10% buffer between their income and their expenses. As time moved on they found their buffer shrinking due to rising costs of fuel and food.
Now they have no buffer and are forced to dip into savings to make ends meet.
I think what Scott is getting at is there are a lot of ways to mitigate one's expenses. Buying a home and then staying with a job that offers no raises is not a viable long-term plan. Someone in that situation may need to move to an area with a lower cost of living or go for a job that does offer raises or selling off one's cars and going with public transportation. When costs start increasing while income remains the same, it may be time to audit one's standard of living (or should I use the term "quality of life?") and adjust accordingly.
You're really getting lost thinking about that one lady. I've shown statistics that prove that many, many people are having trouble. They're not all having trouble because of some personal failings, but because of an economic downturn.
It's not just that one lady. I am incredibly confident that the overwhelming majority of the people having trouble due to recent economic events are people who were financially irresponsible. How did this whole thing get started? It was the mortgage thing, right? People were getting mortgages to buy houses that they couldn't afford to pay for. Then when they were actually forced to pay, the banks took their homes away. People who did not mortgage a home that was bigger than they could afford did not foreclose, they just paid for their house.
Also, I've read multiple articles online about people with financial trouble, and every single anecdote in every single one of them is about someone living above their means. The one that I remember the most is one I read two years ago. It was an article about how people were having trouble paying off student loan debt. The most extreme example they gave was a person who had twice as much student loan debt as I do because they bought a bunch of shit they couldn't afford with credit cards when they were in college. Then the person bought a four bedroom fancy house with a two car garage in suburbia with two SUVs and started having children. Oh, they were making half as much salary as I make.
Show me. Where are the people who are having tough times who were not living above their means? Where are the people in the US getting foreclosed on who didn't have it coming to them? Where are the frugal responsible people, living modest lives, with good savings, getting their cars repossessed? I do not see these people. I don't believe they exist. I know the evidence is anecdotal, but I see a preponderance of anecdotes in one direction and zero in the other direction. I can't help but come to this conclusion.
I agree with you that a lot of people are having trouble, not just one woman. What I'm saying is yes, there are a lot of stupid people who lived above their means. Yes, really that many people. A year or two ago you would drive around a lower income neighborhood and see new SUVs, satellite dishes, big screen TVs, etc. Now you see for sale signs. It's just reality catching up with people.
Another example of people confusing consequences and problems are the people in Arizona without water. They live in a desert, and they water their lawns to get green grass. Now they have to ration water, and are trying to build pipes to get water from afar. This isn't a problem, this is a consequence. You choose to live in the desert and waste water, then you are going to have to pay a lot for water, and supply will be limited.
Show me the people who are having problems, and I can offer ideas for possible solutions. Show the people suffering consequences of their prior action or inaction pertaining to problems of the past, I all I can offer is "I told you so."
A consequence is one of the outcomes. It's not a problem to solve, it is the unavoidable outcome of something you have already done, or failed to do.
I fail to see how the consequence of a situation can't be a problem in the larger scheme of things. For example, I could crash my car because I'm careless and then have the problem of being stranded. I could call someone on my cell phone to pick me up and solve this problem.
Show me. Where are the people who are having tough times who were not living above their means? Where are the people in the US getting foreclosed on who didn't have it coming to them? Where are the frugal responsible people, living modest lives, with good savings, getting their cars repossessed? I do not see these people. I don't believe they exist.
A friend of my wife has been working for at&t in CT for over 28 years. She started back when it was still SNET. She has climbed the corporate ladder and she has been making six figures until now.
She has a choice to make, either be laid off, move far, far away (Ohio) to where her job is being relocated or find another job making six figures in state.
Her skills are set and specialized. She and her husband have been living below their means but now their means are gone. They have six months of salary saved up in a liquid form but even her car payment is over $400 a month (my mortgage is less than her car payment, funny eh?) The house they own is in a neighborhood where other homes have for sale signs up. Even if she were to sell her house and move she would take a loss on it. Getting rid of the car would result in a similar loss as she needs a car.
So, what should she do? BTW, she is in her 50's married no kids.
Scott, not all people getting hurt are financially irresponsible. Some of them were doing just fine but as prices went up their salaries did not. They may have kept a 5% or 10% buffer between their income and their expenses. As time moved on they found their buffer shrinking due to rising costs of fuel and food.
Now they have no buffer and are forced to dip into savings to make ends meet.
I could understand this is it was a sudden unexpected increase in prices. However, the rising costs of fuel and food are neither sudden nor unexpected. They were obvious and years in coming. We have had almost a decade of rising fuel prices and time to reduce our dependence on fuel. Yet, people kept on buying SUVs. They pushed it all the way up to the limit. If gas jumped from $2 to $8 a gallon overnight, then you have a point. It's gone from $2 to $4 slowly and gradually over many years. Where are the people who switched to public transportation who are having problems? Oh, there was a slight fare increase recently. I wouldn't have even noticed it if the news didn't make a big deal about it because it was so small.
She has a choice to make, either be laid, move far, far away (Ohio) to where her job is being relocated or find another job making six figures in state.
So, what should she do? BTW, she is in her 50's married no kids.
You said it yourself. Move to Ohio. What's wrong with moving to Ohio? I may not like Ohio as a state, but if that's what I needed to do in order to get paid, I would go instantly. Adapt to survive. She has an option to where she can continue to live well. The economy isn't screwing her, her resistance to change is the problem.
The alternative is to find whatever job she can get in the area and move to a house she can afford. She lost money on her house? That's the breaks. She can still sell it for what she can get and move to a house she can afford right now. Investments are not guaranteed to pay off, they are a gamble. If you view a house as a place to live, and not as an investment, you are much better off. Also, a $400 a month car payment? What is she driving, a Ferrari? Sorry, no sympathy for the Ferrari driver who has to trade it in for a Ford.
Even in that story, the writer is dealing with her economic problems. She moved in with her parents to decrease her cost of living, and she's been writing books that people are actually buying. That is not to say that her original economic problems don't suck, but she was smart enough to update her living situation rather than borrowing (or hemorrhaging) money to stick with a situation she knew she couldn't afford.
2005 was the first year since the Great Depression in which Americans spent more than they earned.
That should never happen. Ever. No single person should ever spend more than they earn. The country can't spend more than it earns if individuals do not.
The example in that article is also laughable. Living in Harlem? Man, I wish I could afford to live over there. She thinks she should be able to afford having children? Hah! Raising a child from the age of 0 to 17 costs about $15,000 a year. If you do not have a spare $15,000 a year in income, you can not afford to have a child. Having a child in such a situation is, in effect, buying something you can not afford.
People live at a standard of living that matches what they believe is reasonable. That does not match up with the numbers. The numbers clearly show that people are having children they can't afford. They are buying cars and houses they can't afford. The only reason it is screwing everybody is that it took years before someone finally told these people no.
Comments
Report: California Congresswoman walked away from $578K mortgage
People are confusing problems with consequences.
A problem is an adversity you face. It is something that forces you to make a difficult decision, and then execute that decision. Depending on the decision and on your execution, there will be different outcomes.
A consequence is one of the outcomes. It's not a problem to solve, it is the unavoidable outcome of something you have already done, or failed to do. Having your computer quarantined because you were fooling around at work isn't a problem, it's a consequence. The answer is that you shouldn't have fooled around in the first place. Losing your house because you have no money isn't a problem, at least not in the situations that Joe is presenting. It's a consequence of being financially irresponsible.
Consequences are not something you can avoid. What comes before determines what comes after. Things that have already happened, and can not be undone, have forged the path to the present, and some distance into the future. You can not solve a consequence, you just have to accept it. Once you accept that a consequence is unavoidable, you need to look beyond the consequence.
It's like that. It's just the way it is.
@Jason: Pretty pictures. Notice how I'm not saying that it's the end of civilization. Also, notice back a couple of pages ago when you talked about previous recessions, I replied that I've lived through all the ones you listed. Sure, we will eventually come out of a recession. But the time spent in the recession is not fun.
21-May-2008
In recent weeks, a spate of stronger-than-expected data has led some to doubt whether the U.S. economy is really in recession, as was widely believed a short time ago. One key reason for those qualms was the advance report that in the first quarter of 2008, real GDP grew at a 0.6% annual rate, rather than shrinking. Especially for those who believe the "technical definition" of a recession to be two successive quarterly declines in GDP, its continued advance was a sign that the U.S. economy might have averted a recession.
Now they have no buffer and are forced to dip into savings to make ends meet.
Also, I've read multiple articles online about people with financial trouble, and every single anecdote in every single one of them is about someone living above their means. The one that I remember the most is one I read two years ago. It was an article about how people were having trouble paying off student loan debt. The most extreme example they gave was a person who had twice as much student loan debt as I do because they bought a bunch of shit they couldn't afford with credit cards when they were in college. Then the person bought a four bedroom fancy house with a two car garage in suburbia with two SUVs and started having children. Oh, they were making half as much salary as I make.
Show me. Where are the people who are having tough times who were not living above their means? Where are the people in the US getting foreclosed on who didn't have it coming to them? Where are the frugal responsible people, living modest lives, with good savings, getting their cars repossessed? I do not see these people. I don't believe they exist. I know the evidence is anecdotal, but I see a preponderance of anecdotes in one direction and zero in the other direction. I can't help but come to this conclusion.
I agree with you that a lot of people are having trouble, not just one woman. What I'm saying is yes, there are a lot of stupid people who lived above their means. Yes, really that many people. A year or two ago you would drive around a lower income neighborhood and see new SUVs, satellite dishes, big screen TVs, etc. Now you see for sale signs. It's just reality catching up with people.
Another example of people confusing consequences and problems are the people in Arizona without water. They live in a desert, and they water their lawns to get green grass. Now they have to ration water, and are trying to build pipes to get water from afar. This isn't a problem, this is a consequence. You choose to live in the desert and waste water, then you are going to have to pay a lot for water, and supply will be limited.
Show me the people who are having problems, and I can offer ideas for possible solutions. Show the people suffering consequences of their prior action or inaction pertaining to problems of the past, I all I can offer is "I told you so."
A friend of my wife has been working for at&t in CT for over 28 years. She started back when it was still SNET. She has climbed the corporate ladder and she has been making six figures until now.
She has a choice to make, either be laid off, move far, far away (Ohio) to where her job is being relocated or find another job making six figures in state.
Her skills are set and specialized. She and her husband have been living below their means but now their means are gone. They have six months of salary saved up in a liquid form but even her car payment is over $400 a month (my mortgage is less than her car payment, funny eh?) The house they own is in a neighborhood where other homes have for sale signs up. Even if she were to sell her house and move she would take a loss on it. Getting rid of the car would result in a similar loss as she needs a car.
So, what should she do? BTW, she is in her 50's married no kids.
The alternative is to find whatever job she can get in the area and move to a house she can afford. She lost money on her house? That's the breaks. She can still sell it for what she can get and move to a house she can afford right now. Investments are not guaranteed to pay off, they are a gamble. If you view a house as a place to live, and not as an investment, you are much better off. Also, a $400 a month car payment? What is she driving, a Ferrari? Sorry, no sympathy for the Ferrari driver who has to trade it in for a Ford.
The example in that article is also laughable. Living in Harlem? Man, I wish I could afford to live over there. She thinks she should be able to afford having children? Hah! Raising a child from the age of 0 to 17 costs about $15,000 a year. If you do not have a spare $15,000 a year in income, you can not afford to have a child. Having a child in such a situation is, in effect, buying something you can not afford.
People live at a standard of living that matches what they believe is reasonable. That does not match up with the numbers. The numbers clearly show that people are having children they can't afford. They are buying cars and houses they can't afford. The only reason it is screwing everybody is that it took years before someone finally told these people no.