Posted on 08/11/2018 5:44:33 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
This passage is key:
[Cities like San Francisco and Seattle have essentially become playgrounds for the wealthy in which existing homeowners fight tooth and nail any attempt to allow sizable amounts of new housing construction. They do this, they tell us, to preserve “the character of the neighborhood.” But what they’re really doing is using government regulations to drive up the prices on their own real estate, while driving lower-income people further and further out into the periphery.]
‘...some refuges remain...’
This is crazy talk. Coastal leftists really need to stay where they are. I live in ‘middle America’ - we all have a bible in our right hand and a rifle in our left hand and our beards flow sideways in the wind. We deal with plagues of locusts and tornadoes and people who spell potatoe with an E and believe in unalienable rights from our Creator and antiquated stuff like that. Turn back now and save yourselves!!!
The real problem is those high-cost areas lose their EMPLOYERS; I live a dozen miles west of NYC, and we’ve been bleeding both workers AND jobs for years now. What is left is a small number of good jobs and a large number of McJobs - which would never let anyone buy a home here. NJ had only one out of its 21 counties see a higher rate of home ownership (versus renting) over the past several years, and that one is at the southern tip of the state - an undeveloped tourist destination. Otherwise, the American Dream is dead here - so they traffic foreigners here who will accept that they’ll live ten per room while serving the 1%ers. The price for American normals who wish to stay: No children, since you’ll be worked to death to pay the mortgage and property taxes.
For a business trip about 4 years ago I stayed in NYC but took a ‘reverse commute’ out to a factory in NY. I was amazed at the traffic I saw opposite of me. Cars and commuter busses (full of asleep people) crawling along. They spent hours going into the city and presumably hours going out. I wonder if it was just accepted as ‘its what everyone does.’
I’ve telecommuted for the past 12 years or so and pray I never go back to an office.
NY should be NJ
Not fair to compare our “bigger” “cheaper” houses with Switzerland’s. They have to build every home solid out of rock. The Swiss laugh at our construction sites with our styrofoam and wood.
Having spent a bit of time in europe ( I had to leave my bible and rifle at home) I do appreciate their sturdy older contstruction and windows which open in 2 directions.
The commuter population accepts that, but it is actually a very small portion of the population - so when there are delays, disruptions, etc. most people in the area aren’t effected. That was Governor Christie’s rationale in voting down funds for a third tunnel between NYC and NJ; there simply wasn’t sufficient demand, and in the larger scheme of things many people would be paying for a service used by a relative few. I would never consider working in NYC, and never applied to a job there; the commute adds hours to your workday, and the cost of it eats away your income.
A basic problem here is that people have to live farther and farther away from the city due to high costs; the parts of NJ near NYC are getting very expensive (even when they aren’t very nice - very urban).
I would expect further and further away from manhattan would be less urban rather than more urban.
I keep getting ‘recruiters’ contacting me about jobs in offices in NJ though a simple search shows that they are typically based in India somewhere.
Cultural foreigners near the coasts and in scenic areas who move to the Midwest are in for some culture shocks. Midwestern cities and businesses advertise to get new consumers without being entirely honest about crime, very high rates of hard drug problems, low paying jobs, much hotter, more humid weather, prevalence of clouds of pests (bugs, including clouds of microscopic bugs), demographics and much more.
Those who would hope to find rural land are likely to encounter flooding, very highly mineralized water (pipe clogging, hydrogen sulfide with rotten egg smell, high iron, etc.) in very deep aquifers and other issues in the few properties available for sale. With farming so heavy and regulations less prevalent, the air is often full of glyphosate (RoundUp) and other chemicals that would cause even more concern. The reservoirs, rivers, lakes and creeks are full of chemicals and various kinds of biological waste (mostly fecal, carcasses, etc.).
Government is administered by perpetual, local, redneck dynasties that will never step aside (the good kind, heh), backed by enormous populations of good old boys and girls in pickup trucks (also the best kind, ha). Those caught possessing drugs in even small amounts (along with many other violations that can be found) are forever placed in dungeons (prisons in every locale) and surrounded for the rest of their unnatural lives with the most interesting of former residents of Midwestern inner cities (even in the rural prisons). Newcomers in rural areas are also watched very closely by police and their many friends among local residents (good old boys and girls again). Roaming pets that have any appearance of being threatening or pesky in any way are commonly shot on sight with unconditional approval by local authorities.
They are less urban; it is the parts closest to NYC that are “more urban”. Further from the city, it transitions to suburban to rural - and the furthest, most rural areas are now dying because jobs have left many of the office parks here (in NJ itself). People moved out there years ago when jobs left NYC and built up northeastern New Jersey (they could live in nice areas further west of the development); now those jobs are moving on (as we’ve approached NYC in costs), and those locations are even further from any real economic activity.
Yeah, muh ninja! Oh...I forgot to tell them that the Midwest isn’t what it used to be in another way. We rednecks are also Juggalos and Juggalettes since the 1990s. And styles after the nuclear exchanges just ahead...? We’re already there.
o<|;o)
Some things don’t change, of course. In the Midwest, one is ranked by number of teeth (fewer is better), color of teeth, body weight (more is better), how much time one has done, how many times one has been in and out of rehab, number of ink overwrites on skin, how many small car parts and firearms parts used as body jewelry, number of appliances and fixtures in the yard of one’s rental (extra points for toilet and refrigerator planters), by cubic inches of engine displacement (older engine designs better), how many interesting parts vehicles in the yard, how loud one’s vehicle exhaust is and how closely one proudly resembles his or her neighbors (eyes far apart, brunette, short legs, few words). And everyone knows everyone else very intimately. New arrivals are grilled in regards to the detailed histories of their lives and their every desire.
The “bigger houses” meme is exactly that. In most locales in Colorado, housing prices have gone up ten-fold over the last 40 years. And I’m talking about existing ones built in the 1970s.
Wages and salaries have not kept pace.
We need an immigration hiatus, and controls on foreigners buying up residential property. Someone who doesn’t live on US soil doesn’t need to own a house here.
Well they sure as hell shouldn’t move South. We all have guns...and we carry them around and shoot ‘em off all the time. Oh and we hate fags. We hate Yankees even more. No, they should definitely stay right where they are in the Northeast and on the Left Coast.
That point deserves more analysis than it usually gets. "The wealthy" includes senior corporate management, who can afford to live stylishly and comfortably in hideously high-cost but fashionable areas. This is why they continue to locate their headquarters there, even though most of their employees would enjoy a much higher standard of living elsewhere. Meanwhile, the younger employees are sold on the hip character of the big cities, and never mind that they're living in a cubicle and enduring brutal commutes. Older employees who've gotten married and have kids are trapped.
Sooner or later, the con game will collapse. Manufacturing fled the high-cost, high-tax cities long ago. Banking, finance and tech are ripe for their own "emperor has no clothes" moment. This is why I really hope Amazon goes to a sensible Midwestern or Great Plains city for its second headquarters. Balancing out the corporate functions and career paths between two headquarters complexes will get tricky, but if done right, Amazon could give its employees a real cultural choice.
More broadly, why should big tech firms stay in Silicon Valley? Why should big banks stay in NYC? Employees can have exactly the same cubicle, with a vastly higher standard of living, in many other places. Self-indulgent managements that are attracted to the expensive urban playgrounds are disserving their own employees, as well as the shareholders.
Trafficking foreigners aka H1B visa foreigners, violates the 13th Amendment. These slaves spend their lives denied citizen rights.
FTA: the lack of affordability in places like California can often be blamed on state and local government measures designed to limit the construction and diversification of housing.
The politicians got theirs (using your money) but do not want you as neighbors but stacked up in high priced apartments.
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