Lowering housing prices will put many mortgages underwater. We are seeing the fallout from this today in CRE and across all properties in 2008.
Today, affordable housing means someone takes a loss. In new housing, the builder or the lender could take the loss but they won't start a project unless they are guaranteed to make a profit, which means the property owner takes the loss.
Deflating prices on existing housing means either the lender (ha!) or the homeowner takes the loss. An additional impact of deflating housing costs is that there may not be any equity for major repairs like roofing or medical expenses.
> Lowering housing prices will put many mortgages underwater.
But it's important to realize that if a mortgage goes underwater, nothing happens.
If you buy stocks on margin loan and that goes underwater too much you get a margin call and are in deep trouble.
A mortgage is nothing like that, it can happily go underwater and nothing happens. My mortgage has been underwater twice during its existence. No big deal.
If you keep paying it because you like the house and want to continue to live there, being underwater doesn't mean anything.
Can you point to articles describing banks in 2008 calling in underwater mortgages? That makes no sense, since it'll only hurt them (the bank doesn't want to own your house, they want the income stream from the mortgage). Also, at least for all mortgages I've signed, there is no provision in the contract for the bank to do that as long as I keep paying.
>Deflating prices on existing housing means either the lender (ha!) or the homeowner takes the loss.
Okay.
(Expand or they're going to flag you for snark.)
The cohort that is currently at prime home-buying age (and, really, most people under the age of 50) have had the wealth that was generated by their labor and productivity systematically siphoned to mostly-older higher-earners, in order to shore up unsustainable compensation and retirement funding for the professional managerial/executive class and Silent Gen, Baby Boomer, and Gen X workers. The value of the overbuilt, low-density, transit-access/amenity-access-poor housing that they've built or speculated on plummeting would be not only economically healthy (as it would act as a stimulus for non-asset-speculation activity and finally incentivize density and transit access, while disincentivizing the socioeconomic/racial exclusion that characterizes most American suburbs and which drives so many of our objectively terrible NIMBY-focused municipal planning decisions), but also just deserts.
I tried to edit my original comment, but the editing was turned off. My comment was not intentionally snarky but based on my experiences in 2008. At that time, there were many subprime mortgages floating around that should've never been written. Those taking the risk (financial institutions) should've taken the fall, but instead, they pushed the losses onto the homeowners.
Your last paragraph needs more nuance because the real world is messy. There are many factors ranging from inadequate income for savings and personal scale disasters like divorce and medical bankruptcy that prove your claims are inaccurate. However, I think your last paragraph is a passionate disapproval of people living in ways different from you. Some of your points are valid on income inequality, power structures, and transit, but the reality is what we live with today. If you look at the practical realities, widespread transit changes and housing densification are not likely to happen any time soon.
If you want to make change now, join your city government. Promote a plan to destroy old properties and replace them with denser, more environmentally sound buildings. Fix the core of the city before you try to change the way anybody else lives.
An easier path is engineering and product development of solutions that make what we have now less destructive.
If that's too big, here is a simple change that significantly impacts people and natural life: Turn off the lights. If you can't do that, make them fainter and warmer (2800K) and point them at the ground. Light pollution substantially negatively impacts the environment and the health of people and animals.
Another small change is nudging people to rewild their lawns. This would have a huge impact on insects, birds, and small mammals. It's a simple change: change a little bit of the zoning laws to reward native plant use and punish the use of invasive and other non-native plants.
It's important to recognize that if you can't make a small change happen and stick, the big stuff is a non-starter. This is true for personal change as well as societal change. A small change is a big change.
You've given individual solutions to try to fix a systemic problem, which of course does not work. They are good ideas; they are also not enough, and don't even begin to address the issue at-scale.
What does is recognizing that the "be realistic" bluster is just that: a bluff, from people who hold real power in the status-quo, but who realize that that status-quo can be changed, if only the walls would fall and nature could take its course. The reality is that older generations have created a zero-sum situation, and the only way for the younger ones to thrive is for the older ones to give up some (many) of their advantages. The reality is that this happens when political and economic forces are finally incentivized to stop protecting them.
One last thing I feel the need to mention whenever it comes up:
>At that time, there were many subprime mortgages floating around that should've never been written.
This is true, but not because they were written for people who were financially unfit to be homeowners. It's because these loans were written intentionally to fail, knowing that banks could steal the homes back in illegal foreclosure proceedings, knowing that the mortgages would be wrapped up in financial vehicles and sold off at profit, knowing that the government would backstop them when it all came crashing down. Given fair loans, most of these mortgage-seekers would have been able to keep up their payments - but that woukd have been less profitable for banks than what ended up happening. Instead, these financial institutions were able to siphon billions from the middle class, and buy up the remains of their failed rivals for pennies on the dollar. Which is despicable, of course. But to understand this, you have to reject the notion that we're living in a just world whose past mistakes can't be corrected. It isn't and they can be.
On reading your comment, I am reminded of Planck's opinion that science advances one funeral at a time. I think that is true here too. The change you want will come one funeral at a time.
I think one fallacy in your logic is that the older generation reaped benefits uniformly. The reality is something like 40% of my generation is retiring into poverty. Another 20 or 30% will end up in poverty when they run out of assets. Does that sound like people who have advantages they can give up? How do you convince someone to give up hard-earned privilege that is not financial but makes life worth living for them?
The very real conflict you describe is, in my opinion, misattributed. It is a class problem, not a generational one. The number of people who have caused the pain and suffering you, heck, we experience would fill a very small city in our very large country. These are the people we need to take power from in order to make the change we want to see occur and stick.
When I gave examples of problems in a small, I was not telling you to be realistic. If I did, I missedited and I apologize. I gave you the examples to use as a tool for measuring your capacity to implement change. The problems you want to solve are huge and are what I consider century-level problems. However, if you put what you want to do in the context of a very small population of powerful people, change becomes a multi-century problem if nothing about the current power structure changes.
But all is not lost. Remember, it's "if nothing about the current power structure changes". The question then becomes how to change the power structure, and I think the fastest way is to increase rent-seeking opportunities in your desired future.
My logic is that people in power are motivated by money as a proxy for power. After all, who needs more than three or four times basic expenses to have a good life? In today's economic realities, rent-seeking is the dominant method of wealth accumulation. You want to change the attitudes of the rich and powerful, change where rent-seeking is rewarding.
This has been a good conversation, and I thank you for it.
I always say no. I can get away with it in every case except banks and loans.
At the same time, anytime a company asks for your birthdate, give them a fake one. I frequently use my mom's birthday and a sibling's birth year so I can remember it.
Banking is actually a rare case where it makes sense because they legitimately need your TIN (taxpayer ID number). For businesses this is the same as their EIN (employee ID number) so no big deal.
What's problematic that ought to be fixed is that for individuals your TIN is just your SSN. Lazy. We ought to just issue personal TINs the first time you file taxes.
In pretty much any store that has rewards account that you have to punch in a phone number (like a drug store, gas station, grocery), I use this number. Someone has always created one.
I do exactly the same. There are a few situations where you really need to provide your SSN, but outside of those, I tell whoever's asking that I won't provide one. 95% of the time, they're ready for that and will create an ID number for me.
In the few times when someone who doesn't have a legitimate need for my SSN but insists on getting it anyway, I give them Richard Nixon's: 567-68-0515
FTA:
Elite overproduction is a concept developed by Peter Turchin that describes the condition of a society that is producing too many potential elite members relative to its ability to absorb them into the power structure.[1][2][3] This, he hypothesizes, is a cause for social instability, as those left out of power feel aggrieved by their relatively low socioeconomic status.[1][2][3]
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The nonviolent unwinding of elite overproduction apparently happened in the 50s and 60s with strong labor unions improving the financial well-being of laborers and high taxes on the very well-to-do recycling their excess wealth back into society. I look at the current shift towards trades as another form of reversing the access number of elites.
IMO, It's worth spending some time contemplating this concept and its potential application to society today.
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Side note: every time I say or hear the phrase elite overproduction, I think of Bertie Wooster and the Drones club. You're welcome.
for some reason in this culture, people think that working in an office, having a degree, living in a big metro area, etc makes them "elite". nobody ever called these people "elite" except themselves
That's part of the overproduction process, isn't it? That is, those at the top have those in the middle and midddle-top believing they're on the inside. Nah. They're the suckers. They're the exploited. They're where the wealth is being extracted from. Given human biases and blind spots, no one in that positions wants to admit they've been played.
Geez, look at the article. Written by a leftie for The Left and "blaming" The Right when in fact The Right has it right. That is, "we're done being suckered."
I sit corrected on the author. I should have said "entitled elite" ( which spans political ideology).
That aside...
Anyone who believes a degree === education deserves to be made a sucker.
Anyone who believes a degree === the ability to string thoughts together deserves to be laughed at.
Look around, we HAVE increased the ubiquity of structured education and yet we keep enlisting students who can't figure out their career doesn't pay enough to cover their excessive loans at their "I MUST go there" over-rated private college / edu.
Left or right, the overproduction system is fueled by such suckers.
90 yr old house here. Steam heat, crappy vinal windows from the past 20 years, vermiculate insulation (asbestos risk??).
I like the idea of recessed units within the central wall with condensers in the attack. I need to vent the heat somewhere. Maybe if I get rid of all the gas (water, furnace), I can vent out the chimney.
That does support both that governments can't be trusted to behave morally and that voting shares is just as good, but your tone suggests that you're disagreeing with the parent. Am I misreading that intent?
Thank you for prompting me to reread the comment tree to untangle the meandering rambles. Hopefully, this will clarify my perspective.
I think there's a chance you misread. Many times, I feel the conversations we have online would be better off held over a few beers and a backyard barbecue.
I feel that any concentrated center of power cannot be trusted to behave ethically. That's a fancy way of saying you can't trust the government or corporation to behave morally/ethically.
I assert that you have more control over government than you do corporations because, as someone said above, you can lobby/campaign/vote and have an impact on local, state, and federal government. As an aside, the further away from local, the less impact you have.
With corporations, you could buy shares, but given that each share is equal to one vote, the more money you have, the more influence you can exert.
I know it's been a fashion since Reagan to distrust government, but decades of neoliberalism have shown that counting on corporations usually makes things worse. Anytime one transfers a communal benefit into the pockets of a few, bad things happen.
> To fund their ever-increasing desire for Chinese produced tea, Britain, through their control of the East India Company, began smuggling Indian opium to China. This resulted in a soaring addiction rate among the Chinese and led to the Opium Wars of the mid-1800s. Subsequent Chinese immigration to work on the railroads and the gold rush brought opium smoking to America.
Me too, although it might not be the same thing you are thinking of. I see the license as a way to let corporations take advantage of your free work without giving anything back. I LGPL my public work so that anyone is free to use it but if they change it, I need to get the changes back and decide if I want to incorporate them.
So far, I've been fortunate that nobody's paying attention to my work so I don't have to worry about whether to harass someone for violating the copyleft.
> I LGPL my public work so that anyone is free to use it but if they change it, I need to get the changes back and decide if I want to incorporate them.
The LGPL doesn't do that. If that's what you want, you probably want to use a modified version of the MPL requiring distribution back to you. Note that, while the MPL permits such modifications, they are generally discouraged. Sadly, there are no popular copyleft licenses that do this "out of the box," to my knowledge.
They do give some changes back (like drivers, or the ability to use Linux drivers in this case) because it's easier to have them upstream and not patch with every new release and fix every time it breaks due to other changes. The companies that use FreeBSD are also major donors to the founndation.
Today, affordable housing means someone takes a loss. In new housing, the builder or the lender could take the loss but they won't start a project unless they are guaranteed to make a profit, which means the property owner takes the loss.
Deflating prices on existing housing means either the lender (ha!) or the homeowner takes the loss. An additional impact of deflating housing costs is that there may not be any equity for major repairs like roofing or medical expenses.
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