Posted on 03/11/2005 9:27:36 PM PST by The Loan Arranger
Years ago, this country did away with debtors prisons. The nation in general, and poor people in particular, would be well served to bring them back. The harm to business from unpaid debt, and the reduced productivity and even business failure unpaid debt can bring, is obvious. Businesses or individuals who are not repaid the money they loaned or who are not paid for the goods or services they produced and sold on credit are prevented from accumulating needed and even expected capital for expansion, and they are frequently thrown into serious financial constraints making it hard to pay their own creditors and employees. This not only can theoretically choke the gross national product, many recessions and even the Great Depression have been in fact brought on at least partly by unpaid debt.
But debt relief measures, either in the form of actual debt forgiveness or in the form of relaxed procedures to collect debt (including the abolition of debtors prisons), are generally thought to help the poor. The idea that once again forcing poor people into involuntary servitude to pay for meager food and shelter is certainly a tough sell. But here goes.
A return to debtors prisons would help poor people in at least five ways: 1) increasing workforce participation; 2) increasing personal responsibility; 3) making it easier for the poor to climb the economic ladder through entrepreneurship; 4) reintroduction of the virtues which have proven the only reliable way of the poor to leave poverty; 5) making credit more readily available.
(Excerpt) Read more at jesbeard.com ...
"But I do think that the difference between the same house - the same house - if its likely cost was 35K in 1955 and is now 600K in 2005 is a far greater increase than the likely increase in salary of the sole breadwinner for the household, 1950s again, but having recently purchased such a property." Time to move to somewhere less expensive:
http://www.livingchoices.com/home/homedetail.aspx?refer=lycos&mid=0920&hid=534281779
http://www.livingchoices.com/home/homedetail.aspx?refer=lycos&mid=0920&hid=533972198
http://www.livingchoices.com/home/homedetail.aspx?refer=lycos&mid=0920&hid=534280978
http://www.millenniummortgagemississippi.lenderhost.com
I'm telling you how it is. This is an actual case. As for inflation, generally, over the past 40-50 years, you don't need to go back any further than the late 1960s. Look at the prices of items similar to today - then. The difference is what - a factor of 6, 10, more, in just 30 years? That's all I'm saying to you. If the rest of business had gone the way of microfab, as they keep saying, a car that cost $3000 in '68 would cost pennies, today. And soap, eggs, butter, etc., they'd have to give away. Instead, other businesses seem to have taken almost an inversely proportionally direction.
A CEOs salary in 1955 was $150,000 and is now over $30 million or more! That may not be true at every large corporation in the country. But it is true in certain corporations. I know of one that paid $150K in 1960, that probably makes $60 million, today.
So I guess we can extrapolate salaries have risen just as much after all.
Could be her company's stock tripled because being in jail, she couldn't interfere with it.
You could, as a lib, fuzzy thinking and all. And you forgot any entertainment salaries driven by an underground of kickbacks, talent agents and corruption. But I think even a lib would have difficulty believing their own words if they then said that such represented salaries, generally, instead of suggesting a 1930s sort of income/class stratification, instead. I don't think it's that bad. But that's easily where the example you prefer would lead.
People are worth whatever amount they can convince someone else to pay them.
That's part of the problem.
The money has gotten sucked out of the working man to freeloaders and crooks and overpaid BS artists.
Or trick.
...yes, or trick. But that's capitalism at work. Buyer beware and all of that.
That was my example, too. But it's also true for the NE, and some other areas, as well. In CA, the problem is that the housing stock can't expand without reliable commuter transportation, and potable water. And as long as there is free Asian money, a lot of it taken in corruption, and crime, or from US government foreign grants and loans to those countries, the demand won't necessarily cease for people willing to overpay, and grossly overpay. Furthermore, in the greater LA area, that keeps the expansion going north and south. But in 'alta' CA that isn't so much a concern as people pour out over the eastern hills into the central valley, both out toward Pleasanton and north along the corridor to Sacto, hoping to find their piece of the American dream, for a while, until they too are surrounded.
I think even if the Asian money finally dries up, after 15 years or more of this, that particularly the more desirable property in SoCal will still command a premium because of that problem of transportation and water. I'm not saying it's a SURE bet. But I do think a lot would have to happen to collapse the higher end of CA housing, compared to many other places in the country that could well be suffering de-flation.
Did you say mid-20s in regards to co-op prices? The mid-20s weren't a terribly healthy period as we now know. It was the lead up to the Crash.
Times have changed. After the war, America was the producer to the world. You can deny that all you wish. But we all knew the day was coming when imports would overwhelm us, and manufacturing was only a ghost of its former self, and so on. It's now an internationalist economy, where national boundries mean nothing either to a conglomerate or a small proprietorship ordering through catalog or the net. I'm no different. I don't consider it necessarily wrong. But in situations - it could be. And I think granting Red China an unparalleled manufacturing base is foolish and not at all in our national interest. We'll have to disagree there, as well. And I think, ultimately, the best in all countries will come through. And I believe, like Reagan, that America's best days are AHEAD of us. That means, however, some things have to change. Government policies, corporate policies, based in assumptions of the 30s have to change. And that's going to be difficult, particularly for statist Dem, and even some of the GOP old guiard. There should be no personal income tax. There should be no regulation of the web. There should not be subsidies. There should not be regulation as today, which is typ. ineffective, at that. And so much more. What WILL happen? We'll see.
I disagree. People are worth much more. Your 'collectibles' are worth whatever you get someone to pay for them, this day, this month, if not the next. Your equites, even though there is a market-maker, do travel with the market, even if price discrepancy as in 'collectibles' is absent.
For example, I find it personally offensive that Franklin Raines escaped without any punishment his gutting of Fannie Mae and retired with over 120 million dollars in his 'golden parachute'; portions of which, just portions, exceeded the dreams of any sports agent dealing with a first round college pick. I think it was very wrong. But that's what he convinced a corrupt government to pay him for his ineffectiveness. And the same is even more the case, outside of the headlines, in other countries. And it's just as wrong, there.
And besides,what has that got to do with the high end prices of co-ops anyway? The prices back then,vis-a-vis what they are for those same apartments today,aren't as gigantic a leap up,as some other things are.
My point( and I did have one,which you completely ignored ! ) is that prices should be looked at in adjusted/ equal dollars...not the price today as opposed to the price back whenever.
In 1916, $15.00 a week was the average man's wage in N.Y.C.! That's what thew price was for my grandmother's wedding shoes. Today,a pair of white satin Delman's,is also somewhere around the wage of the "average man's" weekly salary or less.
During the GREAT DEPRESSION, a yearly salary of $15,000 would put one firmly in the upper middle class. Today, in today's dollars, one would have to earn what...$600,000 or more a year for that same status.
I agree with your suggestion of that return to 1930s income stratification. But I agree more with your point that it sets a horrible example - graft is rewarded, incompetence and connections lead to millions and millions in rewards. A merit-based society cannot flourish with such public example. It saps the public will. It's the army that knows the commanding general would NEVER take the field with them. It's them, who get their own, and us who are not them. It's terrible. I'm not sure legislation and regulation is the answer. I think people in position need to assert themselves against such abuse. Such people seem fewer in these times, than even in those times. And those times were an era of robber barons, corrupt police forces, and neopotisim in all sectors of government.
Very high salaries can be offensive, but they're still legal. The number of CEOs making more than $50 or $60 million are still relatively small.
Speaking just for myself, if I could convince the board of American International Consolidated Widget to pay me $50 million, I'd go for it. I wouldn't say, Gee, do you really think I'm worth it, guys?
America was the "Saviour" of the rest of the world right after WW II;however, we weren't the "producer"; no,we were the lender. Many were in the imports to America; yes,even in the '50s.
You don't know the history of that time at all and have proven that.
How old are you? GenX or Y ?
Using the internet inflation calculator I find your totals of yesterday's $15,000 equaling $600,000 are a little off, but I don't know how the system calculates and whether it takes the Depression into account.
Yes, prices should be looked at in "real dollar" amounts, i.e. buying power. However, my point, such as it was is that real estate is a commodity. It goes up and it goes down.
Two Things:
Last year I was sitting in the backyard of a friend in L.A. who has a pretty nice house. Not terrific, but okay. This is a guy at the peak of his earning capacity for his lifetime. He's a highly skilled professional who will never be paid more. And he says, "You know, the house is worth bladadeeblahde amount. I couldn't afford it, if I wanted to buy a house today."
B)I know, personally, three people over the past year who have sold their apartments in NYC. This is not unusual, except that they've sold to either rent or to move out to the burbs. All three are, in their words, "taking the money and running." And it's a good chunk of money, on average more than a million in profits. The people buying these properties are, Euro rich European. New family just starting out buying with an interest only mortgage. And some dot.com moron who is paying cash.
Neither of these examples bodes well for real estate.
So is permissive abortion. That doesn't make it right. You see how people feel about merely 'legal' when comes time for the next Court appointment. Trust me. Legal should match what's right, what's moral. That will be the tug of war, between those who want legal to sanctify immorality, and those who want legal to sanctify life. I'm making the broader point, here.
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