Doomstead

Violence erupts in Paris as protesters throw Molotov Cocktails at Police.

Quote from: RE on Aug 17, 2024, 06:47 AM

Quote from: K-Dog on Aug 17, 2024, 12:23 AMThe Answer:

Build more housing.

Astoundingly obvious.   ::)

RE

As a man, I know one said, "Who cooda node?"

Carl Sagan: We need to invest more in our poorest and less in military might

QuoteCarl: We have let all sorts of social programs languish as we have permitted the amount of children in poverty to increase.  Before the end of this century more than half the kids in America maybe below the poverty line.

What kind of a future do we build for the country if we raise all these kids disadvantaged and unable to cope with the society.  Resentful for the injustice served up to them?  This is stupid.

TTT: And then what happened with the resources is they they went into increasing budgets for arms.  Isn't that where the money went. 

Carl: That and making rich people richer.  Those are the two places.

TT:  The thing about rich people, and I being one.  Is the money all gets reinvested.  If you've got money you put it in a bank.  The bank runs it out to people to buy homes or cars or whatever.

Carl: Not to poor people.  That's a good point.  It tends to stay up at that highly stratified level.

TT: More people get employed with capital formation.  Are you a socialist?

Carl: I'm not sure what a socialist is, but I believe that the government has a responsibility to care for the people.  I'm not talking about dole.  I'm talking about making people self-reliant.  Able to take care of themselves.  There are countries which are perfectly able to do that.  The United States is an extreme rich country.  It's perfectly able to do that.  It chooses not to.

The United States chooses to have homeless people.  It chooses.  We are 19th in the world in infant mortality 18 other countries save the lives of their babies better than we.  How come?

They just spend more money on it.  They care about their babies more than we care about ours.  I think it's a disgrace and this country has vast wealth.  You just look at what something like Star Wars.  The money on Star Wars already spent is $20 billion.  If these guys are permitted to go ahead they will spend a trillion dollars on Star Wars.  Think of what that money could be used for. 

To educate, to help bring people up to a sense of of self-confidence.  To improve not just the
happiness of people in America but their economic standing.  To improve the competitiveness of the United States.  Compared to other countries we are using money for the wrong stuff.

Carl feared half American children would be in poverty by the year 2000.  Was he right?  Dammed lies and statistics.  Hell if I know.  But check this out.

Carls fears are realized.  I do not care if he was right about the year 2000.  Current material conditions are unacceptable.

Looks like another winter with the Pols saying we must do something and following up by doing nothing.


City clears out latest Midtown Anchorage homeless camp (https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2024/08/31/city-set-clear-latest-midtown-anchorage-homeless-camp/)

RE

Danny Shaw is part of Midwestern Marx.  But he needs a new way to buy the beans.

Quote from: K-Dog on Sep 02, 2024, 06:30 PMDanny Shaw is part of Midwestern Marx.  But he needs a new way to buy the beans.

With many colleges closing and downsizing, professors are an endangered species anyhow.

RE

Endangered-R-Us

Knee Jerk documentary by a local that reflects the typical middle class attitude toward "those people" who they view as kind of sub-human.  Lots of moaning about how it's getting worse and no solution.

You do get a fairly comprehensive look at some of the encampments tho.


RE

The "solution" they come up with?  Give builders tax credits!  This makes it cheaper for the RE developer to build, but why would he pass the savings along to the buyer?  The same market forces would keep the price high and the builder just pockets the additional profit.

It also doesn't encourage development of the type of housing needed.  It's the same suburban model of "starter homes" for families with "middle class": incomes.  What is needed are apartments for lower class people with min wage incomes.  Where are the Starbucks Baristas EMTs and CNAs and Uber drivers supposed to live?  Places for old retired people on fixed incomes.  Places for recent immigrants.

The Private Sector of builders doesn't build this type of housing, it MUST be done by Da Goobermint.  God forbid though you put forward the CFS solution of a socialist solution.  Capitalism will solve it, as long as we make their profits bigger, right?  ::)

Un-fucking-believable.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-12/homebuyers-hit-by-price-surge-supply-crunch-rock-2024-election?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqEAgAKgcICjDi7PAKMIXduwIw68WSAw&utm_content=rundown&gaa_at=la&gaa_n=AWsEHT64DovikYvRwVqpSCsiCOzEAW73iF1I_Z4qqXOU0dsbxD23yGMYSPw45OfJkMkUFz27anj81Y_aphrV&gaa_ts=66e3f33d&gaa_sig=wF27gFiTaM2Xz7NO4OkpBPbwwoSMSVc8b_z1u1wDwBe2iedUqWIxuj1pjcdXa3XnpJwHoFe8xTdZjCetDxXvJQ%3D%3D

Housing's Worst Crisis in Decades Reverberates Through 2024 Race

RE

QuoteThe Private Sector of builders doesn't build this type of housing, it MUST be done by Da Goobermint.  God forbid though you put forward the CFS solution of a socialist solution.  Capitalism will solve it, as long as we make their profits bigger, right?  ::)

Yes, but I'm sure the plan is all news to Kamala too, she knows no more about it than we do.  It is a ploy to get votes.  Likely she just found out about it.  A ploy to get undecided votes.

The Jan 6th Capital insurrection demographic has been analyzed.  It turns out to be the same social class that elected Hitler.  Petite Bourgeois to be specific.  Small business owners, and self-employed people who do not draw a paycheck.  People who may even have a couple of wage slaves.  Likely not paid well.  The class of people who could use this kind of program.  People who hate the government until they want something from government.  It is a targeted campaign promise directed at them, and no more than that.

The tactic is probably is very effective, and likely turned a part of the potential Trump hurd to Kamala.

The Harris staff could have used AI to come up with the program after they determined which group they wanted to persuade.

Yet another "solution" to providing "Affordable Housing" which demonstrates just how out-of-touch with reality policy makers are with the mismatch between what they think the words "affordable" and "housing" mean.

$2500/mo gets you 300 square feet of living space.  Let's examine this realistically.

You work as a CNA in a Boulder Assisted Living Home for Cripples and Old Folks. or a Barista at a Starbucks.  You make $15/hr, $600/week.  Your rent alone burns up tour whole paycheck and you haven't bought food, paid utilities or anything else.

For this unaffordable housing, you get 300 sq, which if it's well laid out can be a good space, but having visited the units that Alaska Housing has I can tell you it's NOT well laid out.

For such small space, really an Open Floor Plan 20'x15' Studio is best, sticking an 8'x8' bathroom in a corner, but they instead throw in a wall to make it a  "1 Bedroom".  This makes BOTH the Living Room & the Bedroom into claustrophobically small rooms, and shrinks the bathroom to 6'x6'.  The bedroom is just about big enough to squeeze a double bed into.  The "Kitchen" is on a wall separated from the Living Room by an Island, leaving just enough space for a small couch and your Entertainment Center.  Maybe you get 1 or 2 tiny closets.

If the unit at least has a porch or balcony it's somewhat livable, but the unit I looked at did not.  The building hallways were narrow also, and overall it felt like a Prison.  My current space is better laid out.

Besides the fact it sucks, the number of the units available is FAR short of the demand.  The Waing List for the Alaska Housing Units is 18 months and growing longer.  It's a total failure on all levels, and it sounds the same in Boulder.

https://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/15/affordable-housing-boulder-laughable-letters/

Letters: $2,500 a month "affordable" housing plan in Boulder is laughable

RE

Quote from: RE on Sep 15, 2024, 12:46 PMhttps://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/15/affordable-housing-boulder-laughable-letters/
Letters: $2,500 a month "affordable" housing plan in Boulder is laughable
RE

Indeed. Daughter owns her own townhome and the mortage with a minimum down payment is <$2000 month in the Denver area. Could commute to Boulder without trouble if she wanted to. And between her 3 floors including her garage it certainly isn't 300 ft^2, I think it runs more like 1500 ft^2.

Pearl street is pretty close to the college, so it is some premo area but that doesn't justify $2500 month for 300 ft^2 under any purchasing there that I can ever imagine. I wonder who the article is meant to scare (as opposed to just being doomer bait).

Of course, she is young and has done what anyone wants their children to do (not that anyone else here is a parent) so in doomer land that makes her exceptional and all. Admittedly, she was properly raised.  8)

 
Private Equity's Ruthless Takeover Of The Last Affordable Housing In America

The money Borg (https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IkLd-nubJdw/VrDZ9G51jTI/AAAAAAAAHZY/Vc2xYjN21GUOlE883j11UI5kAFjfv7cNgCKgB/s640/BORG%2BCUBE%2BEMOS.png) is never satisfied.  Private equity, it kicks the old farts out.

This is a real bargain, considering they spend $132,000/prisoner/year in the penal system.

Of course now they are criminalizing it to be homeless, so now they'll triple the cost every time they put a homeless person in jail for illegal camping.

https://ktla.com/news/california/heres-how-much-california-spends-on-each-homeless-person/

Here's how much California spends on each homeless person

RE

It ain't just the Big Apple and other major big shities.  The homeless are everywhere now.  Motels have become homes.

(https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/45/12/15/26518348/5/ratio3x2_960.webp)

https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/news/article/hudson-valley-families-homeless-living-hotels-19874371.php

Hundreds of Hudson Valley families with children are homeless and living in hotels, report finds

RE

Locally, we collected one of these kinds of facilities recently. An older hotel was purchased by the county/city/state/whatever and stocked it with homeless and some of the Central/South American influx. It is interesting to watch when I drive past on the motorcycle, the only evidence that it isn't a hotel is that there are no cars in the lot, maybe one or two who I presume are the people making sure the tenants don't burn the place down or whatever. And the only other sign has been one of whom I presume are members of that hotels new residents sitting on a street corner holding a sign looking for cash or handouts. The location is REALLY bad for panhandling, as it is all triple lanes converging at a big intersection, crosswalks are few to nonexistent as it is more of a commercial area than one expecting foot traffic.

 

These days, spending your Golden Years living on a Golf Course means pitching a tent in one of the Sand Traps.

(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/5f/87/fd/5f87fd926aaef5899a1b3f408329694c.jpg)

https://wtop.com/maryland/2024/11/more-people-aged-65-face-homelessness-md-housing-officials-report/

More people aged 65+ face homelessness, Md. housing officials report

RE

Quote from: RE on Nov 12, 2024, 12:05 AMThese days, spending your Golden Years living on a Golf Course means pitching a tent in one of the Sand Traps.

(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/5f/87/fd/5f87fd926aaef5899a1b3f408329694c.jpg)

https://wtop.com/maryland/2024/11/more-people-aged-65-face-homelessness-md-housing-officials-report/

More people aged 65+ face homelessness, Md. housing officials report

RE

It's America.  Bottom lines can't grow in capitalism without a reserve army of unemployed, and the homelessness that comes from it. 

American denial means times get tough.  The precariat must suffer as a function of system dynamics responding to denial and capitalist cultural hegemony.

So far the winter has been pretty average cold & snow.  We had a couple of decent snowfalls about 4", and temps mostly in the 20sF, though a few nights have dropped to single digits.  No sub-zero yet.

Sounds like the same old story with the shelter biz, they wait until the last minute and consistently run a couple of 100 beds behind whatever the estimated population is.  However, nobody really knows how many people are actually without a shelter, and the natives (at least half of the homeless) usually are pretty acclimated and as long as they have a tent and sleeping bag can handle 20F weather by going to warming spots and making small fires etc.

We'll see how it goes when Jan rolls around.  That's when the sub-zero days start to pile up.  1 day an experienced outdoor living homo sap can handle pretty easily, when you start stringing 3-4 of them together is when the frostbite problems really kick in.

Of course, still nobody has come up with a reasonable long term solution acceptable both to homeless people and property owners.  Ireconcileable Differences.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/anchorage/2024/11/21/winter-shelters-are-full-anchorage-officials-say-theyre-working-to-open-more/

Winter shelters for Anchorage's homeless residents are already full. Officials say they're working to open more.

RE

At least the Hosers aren't criminalizing homelessness like here in the FSoA.  However, Halifax is not Montreal or Toronto.  I wonder if they tolerate camping in the parks in those cities?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3wq7l1lnqpo

What happened when a city started accepting - not evicting - homeless camps

RE

Just back inside the Gulag after a smoking break while burning the midnite oil working on my designs.  Got some new ideas so I'm going back and overhauling some of the basic stuff.  I still have a lot of tweaking to do.

Temps have dropped to the negative digits Farenheit tonight after being in the single digits the last 2 nights.  Now the real test of this year's shelter system for the homeless gets rolling.  Also the test of the electrical grid and the NG supply to run the power plants and provide the juice that makes living in AK reasonably comfortable in the modern era.  The 15 minutes outside smoking at these temps reminds me quickly why only around 60K people liked up here  when the Europeans first arrived.  You just can't spend much time outside unless you're seriously bundled up in layers, and you need a good insulated habitation to hibernate in.

The fact it's only Thanksgiving and we still have a solid 4 months of this weather ahead is annoying, but then I think about what it would be like living down in Houston with no A/C when the power goes out and it's 98F with 90% humidity.  At least in the cold you can keep adding layers. Hot & humid, once you're naked that's it.

RE

Of course it was sabotaged.  Along with Food and Health Care, Real Estate is one of the core areas capitalists use to extract wealth from the working class.  All 3 areas are absolutely essential to a human being's existence, so if you control it everyone dependent on it is forced to buy from you.  Providing affordable housing as a social obligation of the society and human right is as anti-capitalist as you get.  It was inevitable in the FSoA that it would be sabotaged, founded as it was under British Common Law during the pinnacle of the feudal era.  The entire NA Continent was declared Property of the Crown, and the King granted land to lesser nobles who collected the taxes on it for him.  Capitalism and the shift over to Corporate ownership from Royal ownership didn't really change anything.  In fact the British Crown still owns plenty of property both in the FSoA and in Canada.

Public housing has been successful in other countries, a while back I put up an article about Austria, and I think Denmark does fairly well with it also.  However, all the english speaking former colonies of the British Empire including the FSoA, Canada and Oz have horrible problems with affordable housing now.  It all traces back to Feudalism, property ownership and the Rentier system.

https://www.vox.com/policy/390082/public-housing-america-policy-failure-poverty

Public housing didn't fail in the US. But it was sabotaged.

RE

QuoteProviding affordable housing as a social obligation of the society and human right is as anti-capitalist as you get.

Of course it is anti-capitalist, it denies the PRIMACY of private property.  Private property is the basis of class.

Provide fair rent or you can't rent and society will tell you what a fair rate is.


Such a statement in a place that mattered would result in the speaker getting his ass kicked.  And that statement is only consistent with the weakest form of socialism.  A social democracy. 

It is better to get rid of private property altogether.

So strong is our social conditioning that we treat mortal men as if they were gods.  Gods who only have land because what they have is provided by the dead labor of other men, and that which was taken by force.  But we act like the owner's land has been his or hers since dinosaurs roamed the earth. 

Calling title to land a 'deed' is appropriate.  Landed property is the result of dastardly deeds.

Here is good article about how private property was created in Britain.  English history is important.  It is the model western civilization evolved from.  It is the foundation that structured our society.

First you steal it, then you sell it.  And then it is rented out like Yahweh himself gave the property to an owner. (https://thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain)

The natives of North America experienced a parallel experience that for them was far more devastating.

Up 12% in 2023, 18% in 2024.  Well, there's something in the economy that's growing.  One wonders what the numbers would be if they could get a count on the number of people couch surfing and living in cars?  These numbers only reflect the ones who occasionally turn up at a public shelter.

Does The Donald have any plans to address this problem?  I haven't heard a peep about either homelessness or affordable housing from the new POTUS.  Maybe he plans to send them all to colonies in Greenland and Panama?  This we hear about plenty in the newz.  Maybe it would be a good idea to fix problems here before we annex new territory?

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/u-s-homelessness-up-18-as-affordable-housing-remains-out-of-reach-for-many-people/

RE

Quote from: RE on Dec 27, 2024, 02:52 PMUp 12% in 2023, 18% in 2024.  Well, there's something in the economy that's growing.  One wonders what the numbers would be if they could get a count on the number of people couch surfing and living in cars?  >>

Does The Donald have any plans to address this problem?  I haven't heard a peep about either homelessness or affordable housing from the new POTUS. 
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/u-s-homelessness-up-18-as-affordable-housing-remains-out-of-reach-for-many-people/

RE

Plenty of room out west for shooting ranges. I'm thinking President musk and VP Ramiswamy will offer Special Licenses to the anointed to hunt the homeless for sport. And in the best spirit of fairness, give them a head start of, say, 100 yards.

(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6c1643914acaa96bdd5af8378d429c8c76bdbd21/0_0_1330_798/master/1330.jpg?width=1900&dpr=2&s=none&crop=none)

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/VH-92_Quantico.jpg/620px-VH-92_Quantico.jpg)


Donald J can borrow Marine One from Daddy Orange and do it Ted Nugent style.

Perfect.

Considering the fact they have now criminalized being homeless, it's just a matter of time before one is cop-shot for "resisting arrest".  Particularly if guilty of multiple crimes, such as "Black while Homeless".

RE

Quote from: RE on Jan 02, 2025, 07:35 PMConsidering the fact they have now criminalized being homeless, it's just a matter of time before one is cop-shot for "resisting arrest".  Particularly if guilty of multiple crimes, such as "Black while Homeless".

RE

(https://preview.redd.it/itll7jkv3lae1.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=24e5f0f3472e88c7b235a49bdfdcb68a23fdb7c4)

(https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/01032025_Homeless_numbers_134042.jpg?d=768x515)

Looks like Seattle is the odds-on favorite to win the "Worst City in the FSoA to be Homeless" Award.  Despite the fact it's far smaller than NYC, it far exceeds the Big Apple in terms of the number of people sleeping rough and is doing the worst job at addressing the problem possible.

The term "stark outlier" is used for Seattle four times in that study

As in it's so far off the curve it sticks out like Shaquille at a party for Kentucky Derby jockeys.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-new-report-on-homelessness-shows-a-catastrophe-for-wa/

The new report on homelessness shows a catastrophe for WA

RE

Quote from: RE on Jan 04, 2025, 05:31 PMhttps://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-new-report-on-homelessness-shows-a-catastrophe-for-wa/
The new report on homelessness shows a catastrophe for WA
RE

Catastrophe indeed. I say K-Dog gets the ACP to come in there, sell their plan, and get all of those homeless 7 figure homes and luxury cars for them and their spouses by just making them good Communists! It would cure the homeless problem, the ACP can take the credit, throw in some MAGA politics to run off the "undesireables" (dark skinned, South/Central American origins, or slanty eyes of any type or maybe even suspicious Canadians?), and presto! New America! Still lousy weather, but the homeless problem solved, and those who already own 7 figure hovels and luxury cars will need to find other mechanisms to display their social status. Maybe special gold medallions or secret hand shakes or something? 

One thing is 4 sure, the ACP couldn't do worse than the current goobermint in dealing with the problem.

Far as what the ACP has as a plan to address homelessness, I doubt it involves 7 figure homes.  Probably they would have HUD build 1 bedroom apts on a standard plan for singles and townhouses or condos for couples and young families at a subsidized cost, off a waiting list until enough units were built to get everyone housed.   That's the most straightforward plan anyhow.  A better plan would be to use this as an opportunity to completely redesign our paradigm and get away from the urban/suburban/rural models of housing and begin demolishing the current suburban individually owned McMansions in favor of more flexible modularized mobile housing.  Both of these methods could be employed depending on the situation in the current community.

RE

Not doing much better in Chi-Town than Seattle with making progress on their homeless population either.  They're slightly above the national 18% increase, at 300% in 2024.  ::)   Don't worry though, they have BIG PLANS in the works!

There are also plans to explore a $2 million rental assistance program for Chicagoans.

Let's see, if you divide up that $2M by the roughly 20K people who experienced homelessness last year for rental assistance, you can slip each of them a cool C-note one month this year to help with the rent.  ::) Forget the rent, maybe that's enough to keep the lights on for a month.  Are we just a little bit underfunded here?

Also highly encouraging is bringing the Chicago Public Schools and the Teacher's Union into a room together to work out how they can help with the homeless problem.  ::)    This makes sense since they do such a great job with running the school system.  Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the teachers are homeless.

Really this political farce which makes homelessness appear "insoluble" is ridiculous when it's a simple problem with an obvious solution.  BUILD AFFORDABLE HOUSING UNITS!  Don't issue any Building Permits for luxury housing until you have a surplus of apartments that rent for $1000/mo, or around 30% of the monthly income for a min wage worker.  Problem solved.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/real-estate/2025/01/04/homelessness-rate-chicago-migrants-affordable-housing

RE

Quote from: RE on Jan 04, 2025, 11:40 PMOne thing is 4 sure, the ACP couldn't do worse than the current goobermint in dealing with the problem.

Far as what the ACP has as a plan to address homelessness, I doubt it involves 7 figure homes.

Well, the ACP hasn't accomplished anything to date, so sure, it could possibly do better. Could certainly be worse. We know the results of communism and warehousing people, we've got plenty of USSR/Chinese and central/south American folks as examples.

Their 10 step plan seems completely reasonable for anyone, and it obviously works for dopers and drunks..not all of them of course...but some. Is "some" solution enough to be better at scale...or worse?

Quote from: REProbably they would have HUD build 1 bedroom apts on a standard plan for singles and townhouses or condos for couples and young families at a subsidized cost, off a waiting list until enough units were built to get everyone housed.  That's the most straightforward plan anyhow.

Sure. USSR style communism. Personally, I think K-Dogs ACP version is much better. Teach people to be better, and then the results will follow from sticking to the self improvement principles. BOOM....7 figure homes and cars for all ACP members. We promise!

(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/837f8c_69f3b5f6778b4d7080673bea03984c6c~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_568,h_874,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/837f8c_69f3b5f6778b4d7080673bea03984c6c~mv2.jpg)

Quote from: REA better plan would be to use this as an opportunity to completely redesign our paradigm and get away from the urban/suburban/rural models of housing and begin demolishing the current suburban individually owned McMansions in favor of more flexible modularized mobile housing.  Both of these methods could be employed depending on the situation in the current community.

RE

Hopes and Dreams abound. Outcomes however...well...I think K-Dog has it right. Get yours first..and THEN proclaim your support of ....whatever...and the ACP salesmen can use those ACP members as examples of what being a good ACP member can get you.

Changing paradigms is hard. Americans aren't the hard workers they once were, fast, loose, and easy rule the day now. Get on the internet, become an influencer, collect your cut of the ad sales, everyone can do it (or they want others to believe that) and presto! Call the system whatever you want, as long as those pitching it got theirs first. You need them to bring in the suckers.

Quote from: TDoS on Jan 05, 2025, 08:37 AMSure. USSR style communism.

The Soviets weren't perfect, but homelessness was not a problem.  Everybody got an apartment.  If you were a successful gymnastics coach, you got a really nice apartment too!  8)

Far as more recent examples of goobermints that have a successful Affordable Housing system, the Austrian socialists did a pretty good job over the last 20 years or so. Vienna's Unique Social Housing Program (https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html) is known as an effective and innovative model for providing superior, affordable housing to the city's residents.

Of course, given all the problems the central European countries have right now with energy due to the Ukie war and the general piss poor state of the Euro economy there's no guarantee this will last, but our economy isn't yet in such a dogshit state so we could apply that model fairly easily, if the political will was there to stand up to the bankers, hedge fund mgr and RE brokers, which there is not.

RE

Quote from: RE on Jan 05, 2025, 11:08 AM

Quote from: TDoS on Jan 05, 2025, 08:37 AMSure. USSR style communism.

The Soviets weren't perfect, but homelessness was not a problem.  Everybody got an apartment.  If you were a successful gymnastics coach, you got a really nice apartment too!  8)

Sure. Special folks did well. Others not so much. So the obvious answer is make two distributions, with the same minima and maxima, except one is skewed heavily towards the American living standards and the other towards the USSR back in that time.

Guess where you, me and ACP member K-Dog choose to live? Along with hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens. CFS

QuoteOthers not so much.

bullshit

QuoteIn 1983, American sociologist Albert Szymanski reviewed a variety of Western studies of Soviet income distribution and living standards. He found that the highest paid people in the Soviet Union were prominent artists, writers, professors, administrators, and scientists, who earned as high as 1,200 to 1,500 rubles a month. Leading government officials earned about 600 rubles a month; enterprise directors from 190 to  400 rubles a month; and workers about 150 rubles a month.  Consequently, the highest incomes amounted to only 10 times the average worker's wages, while in the United States the
highest paid corporate heads made 115 times the wages of workers.

And now asshole, the ratio here is 500 to one.

QuoteThe Soviet Union not only eliminated the exploiting classes of the old order, but also ended inflation, unemployment, racial and national discrimination, grinding poverty, and glaring inequalities of wealth, income, education, and opportunity. In fifty years, the country went from an industrial production that was only 12 percent of that in the United States to industrial production that was 80 percent and an agricultural output 85 percent of the U.S. Though Soviet per
capita consumption remained lower than in the U.S., no society had ever increased living standards and consumption so rapidly 2in such a short period of time for all its people. Employment was guaranteed. Free education was available for all, from kindergarten through secondary schools (general, technical and vocational), universities, and after-work schools. Besides free tuition, post-secondary students received living stipends. Free health care existed for all, with about twice as many doctors per person as in the United States. Workers who were injured or ill had job guarantees and sick pay. In the mid-1970s, workers
averaged 21.2 working days of vacation (a month's vacation), and sanitariums, resorts, and children's camps were either free or subsidized. Trade unions had the power to veto firings and recall managers. The state regulated all prices and subsidized the cost of basic food and housing. Rents constituted only 2-3 percent of the family budget; water and utilities only 4-5 percent. No segregated housing by income existed. Though some neighborhoods were reserved for high officials, elsewhere plant managers, nurses, professors and janitors lived side by side.

Quote from: RE on Jan 04, 2025, 05:31 PM(https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/01032025_Homeless_numbers_134042.jpg?d=768x515)

Looks like Seattle is the odds-on favorite to win the "Worst City in the FSoA to be Homeless" Award.  Despite the fact it's far smaller than NYC, it far exceeds the Big Apple in terms of the number of people sleeping rough and is doing the worst job at addressing the problem possible.

The term "stark outlier" is used for Seattle four times in that study

As in it's so far off the curve it sticks out like Shaquille at a party for Kentucky Derby jockeys.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-new-report-on-homelessness-shows-a-catastrophe-for-wa/

The new report on homelessness shows a catastrophe for WA

RE

The political group I am involved with has made connection with a group of Seattle people that are dedicated to 'Stop the Sweeps'.  This group shows up to help move homeless people and their shit to a new location before police start hauling away their shit.  They also do small protests when there are relevant city meetings.

My skills moving heavy boxes may come in handy.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jan 05, 2025, 09:19 PM

QuoteThe Soviet Union not only eliminated the exploiting classes of the old order, but also ended inflation, unemployment, racial and national discrimination, grinding poverty, and glaring inequalities of wealth, income, education, and opportunity. In fifty years, the country went from an industrial production that was only 12 percent of that in the United States to industrial production that was 80 percent and an agricultural output 85 percent of the U.S. Though Soviet per
capita consumption remained lower than in the U.S., no society had ever increased living standards and consumption so rapidly 2in such a short period of time for all its people. Employment was guaranteed. Free education was available for all, from kindergarten through secondary schools (general, technical and vocational), universities, and after-work schools. Besides free tuition, post-secondary students received living stipends. Free health care existed for all, with about twice as many doctors per person as in the United States. Workers who were injured or ill had job guarantees and sick pay. In the mid-1970s, workers
averaged 21.2 working days of vacation (a month's vacation), and sanitariums, resorts, and children's camps were either free or subsidized. Trade unions had the power to veto firings and recall managers. The state regulated all prices and subsidized the cost of basic food and housing. Rents constituted only 2-3 percent of the family budget; water and utilities only 4-5 percent. No segregated housing by income existed. Though some neighborhoods were reserved for high officials, elsewhere plant managers, nurses, professors and janitors lived side by side.

When the Bolsheviks filled the Romanoffs full of lead in a Ruskie basement in 1917, Mother Russia was an agrarian society that had been ruled by a brutal monarchy going all the way back to the Rus, descendants of the Vikings.  The Romanoff dynastye went all the way back to Peter the Great at the end of the 17th century.  Peasants had nothing, they were serfs bound as slaves to the land from birth and owned by the aristocracy.  Pogroms in the 1800s were undertaken to exterminate Jews and drive them out of the country, a century before Hitler.

By the  time WWII rolled around not even a quarter century later, the USSR was an industrial economy producing Kaalishnikov assault rifles superior to the arms made by Remington, Winchester and Smith & Wesson, who had been manufacturing small arms for a century.  By the 1960s together with the German scientists they inherited from the Nazis they built the most powerful nuke weapon ever created and tested, the Tsar Bomba, a 50 megaton thermonuclear device.  They beat our German scientists putting Sputnik into orbit and put Yuri Gagarin into space while we were still sending up chimpanzees.  By the 1980s ,  their education system was producing STEM Ph.D.s while our education system was failing to teach basic math.

Eventually, they were outmaneuvered economically by the Rothschild & Rockefeller controlled banking system , the IMF hitmen, the CIA destabilizing goobermints and using the Israelis to destabilize and control MENA with a perpetual war.  They've certainly had their own problems with corruption, but to this day they don't have the kind of slums we have in cities like NY, Chicago Los Angeles and Philadelphia.  They don't have near the epidemic of gang violence and drug either, although there certainly is plenty of organized crime there too.

Anyhow, you can make all sorts of comparisons, but in the area of housing for their population, they dida better job for a laerger percentage of their population.

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Jan 05, 2025, 09:19 PMAnd now asshole, the ratio here is 500 to one.

I was specific about the method used to calculate how the choice was made K-Dog.

It was not related to the wages of workers. I said "living standards".  Feel free to attack someone else's metric, but you didn't attack mine. Feel free to get faux offended at your strawman.

While your claims of how great the USSR was are nice...there was a reason why defections tended to be a one way street.  Someone let me know how many US hospitals lack hot water...and we can factor that in to the care one might receive in a Soviet style system versus the admitting expensive, and top notch, US one.

QuoteDespite a doubling in the number of hospital beds and doctors per capita between 1950 and 1980, the lack of money that had been going into health was patently obvious. Some of the smaller hospitals had no radiology services, and a few had inadequate heating or water. A 1989 survey found that 20% of Russian hospitals did not have piped hot water and 3% did not even have piped cold water. 7% did not have a telephone. 17% lacked adequate sanitation facilities. Every seventh hospital and polyclinic needed basic reconstruction.

As a quick aside, I've noted the dichotomy between American good communists like you and the personal wealth you bring to the table obtained in a capitalist system, but unwavering support for a system that most certainly wouldn't even have provided you with the KITCHEN in your current abode seems a bit...incongruous.

Are these just straight up personal biases coming out vis-a-vis political leanings, that are so powerful as to cause you to lean into the "good old days" of hospitals without running water and lousy kitchens?  But at least the homeless weren't sleeping in the streets...them and the undesirables probably really enjoyed feather filled mattresses and 3 hots a day in the gulags. The Soviet solution to the American homeless situation might not have the appeal you think it does to those homeless and undesireables.

Quote from: RE on Jan 06, 2025, 12:20 AMEventually, they were outmaneuvered economically.....

RE

Sounds like a good synopsis without all the need for some interesting extrapolations on how capitalism certainly cleaned their clocks.

Why can't we just agree on American Exceptionalism and leave it at that?
I just love this propaganda piece myself, but it does capture the feel good exceptionalism part. Both good and bad.

(https://cdn.britannica.com/05/101105-050-AC5CA24E/American-Progress-painting-title-1872.jpg)

Quote from: RE on Jan 06, 2025, 12:20 AMEventually, they were outmaneuvered economically...

RE

Not exactly.

Quoteit was triggered by the specific reform policies of Gorbachev and his allies. In 1987 Gorbachev turned his back on the reform course initiated by Yuri Andropov,the path Gorbachev himself had followed for two years. He took up new policies that replicated in an extreme way the Khrushchev policies of 1953-64 and even further back, the ideas espoused by Bukharin in the 1920s. Gorbachev's about-face was made possible by the growth of the second economy that provided a social basis for anti-socialist consciousness.

Gorbachev's revisionism routed its opponents and went on to discard essential tenets of Marxism-Leninism: class struggle, the leading role of the Party, international solidarity, and the primacy of collective ownership and planning. Soviet foreign policy retreats and the evisceration of the CPSU soon resulted.  The latter process occurred with the Party's surrender of the mass media, the unraveling of central planning mechanisms and resulting economic decline, and the end of the Party's role in harmonizing the constituent nations of the USSR. Mass discontent enabled the Yeltsin anti-Communist "democrats" to capture control of the giant Russian Republic, and to begin to impose capitalism there. Separatists won out in the non-Russian republics. The USSR fell apart.

Quote from: TDoS on Jan 06, 2025, 06:40 AMcapitalism certainly cleaned their clocks.

Capitalism "cleaned their clocks" only in the sense that capitalism was a highly organized criminal cartel that had been in operation since the founding of the British  &  Dutch East India Companies and the Bank of England in 1692.  By the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, through the colonial period from 1700 through 1900 the Rothschild bankers had 2 centuries developing a lock on international trade enforced first by the British Navy until WWII and then by the Amerikan MIC in the post-War era.

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQSdDNZA-PzVWCFiyY0AMXCN_zWUjBpNky7AA&s)

The Nazis didn't lose the War, they simply moved their operation from politics to economics and their base of operations to Switzerland and Brussels and consolidated their economic hold on the global trade and banking system with the Bretton Woods agreement at the end of the war.  By controlling the global money supply and international trade, they were able to shut out both the Ruskies and the Chinese and wth the creation of the Petro Dollar control the Oil prices to bankrupt the Soviets in the 80s.  The BRICS have been trying to break this monopoly over the last 20 years, but came into the game  so late most of the good shit has already been used up.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DgJbrCpX4AA4aS6.jpg)

This maxim is even more true when applied to the global money supply than to an individual nation.  The Rothschild lock on this has been unbreakable for over 300 years, and any nation that doesn't play ball is destabilized and puppet goobermints installed to maintain this hold.  As a criminal racket, capitalism was quite a successful operation.

RE

Quote from: RE on Jan 06, 2025, 11:23 AM

Quote from: TDoS on Jan 06, 2025, 06:40 AMcapitalism certainly cleaned their clocks.

Capitalism "cleaned their clocks" only in the sense that capitalism was a highly organized criminal cartel that had been in operation since the founding of the British  &  Dutch East India Companies and the Bank of England in 1692. 
RE

While the history of Western European colonialism has been written, the interpretation of it certainly appears to be a popular hobby for some folks.

Without those random acts of history, there is as much chance of NON American exceptionalism as ACTUAL American exceptionalism. Certainly the Bank of England, bankers through 1940 or money supply through that period of time encouraged the Japanese to pull the pin on the dumbest military adventure of the 20th century, thereby activating something that wasn't much related to all those pesky bankers and events prior.

Transition events can really bollocks up a cool macro story.

And then capitalism in America post WWII is what did in those fine Commie gentleman. Oh sure, we had some red scares along the way and more run of the mill capitalism, No Dutch Indies around much anymore. And in the world of those fine Soviet Commies, with third world kitchens and if memory serves, NOBODY driving those fine German luxury autos available to American communists, turns out that system failed pretty specularly. China is still an ongoing concern, so maybe we should all cheer on a better society as replicas of the ChiComs?

Everyone here would LOVE the minders living with us to make sure we treat our children right? Brainwash them correctly? Don't the Chinese have some wonderful row housing sort of like the Soviets did?

(https://chasingthesquirrel.com/doomstead/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.traveladventures.org%2Fcountries%2Fchina%2Fimages%2Fnanluogu-hutongs01.jpg&hash=a5faf3d0e5a849d5c3ffa5117bb69b036627486b)

I wonder what it takes for a ChiCom to be given a million dollar home and luxury cars for family members? Political influence probably?

Why is it when the wonders of Communism are espoused, we don't talk about the ChiComs as our model of how well Communism works? Or...not...?

Trump flips on immigration and our troll's ancap filth pollutes our forum.






And the earth still goes around the sun.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jan 06, 2025, 09:20 PM.... ancap filth pollutes our forum.

What is ancap?

And what forum? This is like 2 or 3 old farts, in the back of an old bar no one has ever heard of in a dead town with sagebrush blowing through and the last family left for greener pastures 3 years ago, sitting around doing what old farts do. Pretending what they say matters...while never acknowledging that it does matter...just not to anyone except them. And maybe not even then.

But ancap! New cool terminology! ...maybe...

Anarcho - Capitalism => ancap 


Which is an accurate description of your propaganda.

Cooler time for insulting the forum.

RE

Quote from: RE on Jan 07, 2025, 01:08 PMCooler time for insulting the forum.

RE

Thank You

Los Angeles Has a Housing Crisis. These Fires Will Make It Worse.

The fires raging in Southern California offer a tragic preview of how the climate crisis will exacerbate homelessness.

The fires sweeping through Los Angeles are going to leave hundreds or perhaps thousands homeless. The speed at which the fires have spread has forced major evacuations across several neighborhoods; the Palisades fire alone is already believed to have burned over 1,000 homes, schools, and businesses, while the Eaton fire has now passed 10,000 acres, endangering an estimated 13,000 buildings. More than 150,000 people have been told to evacuate, and many more are being told to prepare in case. In a county that already has a massive homelessness crisis, that is short on housing, and has recently taken several measures to punish unhoused people, the people left displaced by these blazes—particularly those with fewer resources—face a rough future.

Climate change is a housing issue. Housing is a climate issue. And these fires are a clear preview of the disasters to come. The fallout of these blazes is going to strain an already struggling effort to help those on the streets. While the 2024 Los Angeles homeless count saw the amount of homelessness stay even, it's still very high for one of the densest and most populated counties in the country. There's not enough construction, services are overstretched and underfunded, and the area is not exactly kind to unhoused people. The more disasters we see like this, the worse the crisis is going to be.

Right now the focus is rightly on safety. The fires show no signs of stopping, and people are fleeing. Many are trying to make sure their friends and loved ones got out of evacuation zones safely. Every resource should be spent on getting people to safety and containing the fires. But it's also worth considering what comes next. Once this is over, hundreds if not thousands of Angelenos are going to be newly homeless. The fires that are burning indiscriminately are destroying neighborhoods that are home to everyone from working-class people to wealthy individuals. Money and privilege are not making a difference here. Those displaced are going to find themselves dealing with limited services and city and county governments and officials who favor punitive measures against unhoused Angelenos. What's happening and will happen to Los Angeles is what's happening nationwide.

Whether it's hurricanes like Helene in the southeast or fires on the Pacific Coast, climate change–intensified disasters are exacerbating the rise in homelessness, which saw an 18 percent increase nationwide in 2024. A massive drought has left the area primed for a fire. The intense Santa Ana winds made things worse. And this is January—not even what used to be considered the official fire season.

Once the fires stop, the biggest danger is going to be time. The longer it takes to get help, to get the resources and housing and services to people, the more apathy and resentment will grow. The second-largest city in the country, with its large metropolitan area, is going to have thousands of displaced people to help in a county where more than 75,000 people were unhoused even before the fires, per the 2024 point-in-time homeless count. More than two-thirds of those Angelenos are unsheltered. Many of the people forced to flee burning neighborhoods will be joining them. Many are among the most vulnerable too—seniors and people in low-income households among them. Even with major federal and state assistance or large insurance payouts—which, given insurance companies having canceled many policies, are not guaranteed—it's likely that many displaced by the fires won't have a place to go.

Issues including pandemic-related logistics and local pushback have delayed or increased the costs of some projects the county was undertaking prior to the fires for new construction. New housing units are opening, and hundreds are in the pipeline, but they aren't enough to meet demand, nor are they opening fast enough. And they're now endangered by the fires like any other home. This is a region with not enough permanent housing and not enough shelter beds. People are already getting priced out by rising rents; the fires are going to put even more strain on limited options.

People who can't find family or hotels to stay with will face city ordinances that bar them from sleeping in public spaces; they'll face fines, risk having what few belongings they were able to save being taken from them, and be met with police responses quicker than homeless services. This isn't an abstract worry, it's happening now. The City of Los Angeles has focused on trying to push struggling people out of sight, often without providing any housing or services that could actually help unhoused Angelenos. Los Angeles has tried to arrest and punish its way out of the crisis because actually helping people takes time and resources—many in privileged positions have opposed the shifting of resources that truly meeting the homelessness crisis would require.

Similar dynamics have prevailed with regard to the climate crisis. Despite increasingly bad fire years, the city and county did not put extra resources into firefighting this year. It did however boost funding for police, even as crime fell. "No, L.A. County and all 29 fire departments in our county are not prepared for this kind of widespread disaster," L.A. County Fire Department head Anthony Marrone said at a press conference on Wednesday morning.

The political sentiment behind these questionable budgeting decisions is another problem. The disdain for unhoused Angelenos in recent years, fueled by conspiracy theories that they are not locals, that they are all addicts or criminals, has led to a reactionary electoral backlash and increased anti-homeless actions. It's cruel and shortsighted in the face of what's to come with climate change. Even in the best-case scenario for the current fires, it's going to take time to rebuild and provide help to those hurt by the blazes. California has some recent examples of how long that recovery can take, such as the fallout of the 2018 fire that destroyed much of the town of Paradise. Both the climate crisis and the housing crisis are going to take major resources and time to effectively address and provide assistance to those already experiencing the worst and those falling into homelessness. These fires are a preview of what's to come. The main question here and in any future disaster is whether those in power want to actually help those displaced, or instead continue to go after the most vulnerable.

Nicholas Slayton is a journalist in Los Angeles covering inequality, and a contributing editor at Task & Purpose

The fires that are burning indiscriminately are destroying neighborhoods that are home to everyone from working-class people to wealthy individuals. Money and privilege are not making a difference here.

I'll dispute that claim right off the bat.


People with Money & Privilege won't be going homeless here.  They'll be in hotel rooms or in the mansions of friends whose houses did not burn.  The house that burned up probably wasn't their only house, at the very least they have a condo at a ski resort or a sailboat moored at a marina.  If they are truly rich and privileged and not one of the many who "own" everything on credit, they can at the very least simply sell off $300K worth of their stock portfolio and buy a Class 1 Diesel Pusher Motor Home.

(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p4mzqOKaxc4/maxresdefault.jpg)

What is true however is that many of the people who SEEM rich live beyond their means, and that is particularly true of movie and rock stars who are often "nigger rich" and spend their high incomes on fancy cars, big houses and a Coke habit.  While some of them are smart enough to take part of their big paychecks and invest it, others go to a bank and based on the $1M paycheck they got for their last movie take out a mortgage on a $20M mansion.  If they don't stay on the A-list and keep getting the big paycheck roles, in a couple of years they burn through the money and they're broke.

In any event, most of the high income people will be OK in the short term, they're not gonna be street level homeless.  However, people who were mid-level in the entertainment biz who were making $150-200K and had a nice Mercedes might be among those who find themselves truly homeless pretty quick.  They may not be able to find a place in the neighborhood to live and they might not be able to hold on to the high paying job they had.  Folks in that situation can fall off the cliff quickly, but they aren't truly "rich & privileged".

RE

Historic Black neighborhood of Altadena reduced to ashes in Los Angeles Wildfires

Amongst the thousands of acres set aflame by the Los Angeles wildfires, Altadena, a historically Black neighborhood, is left incinerated.

Los Angeles County is engulfed in flames as a series of devastating wildfires rage from the coastline to the city's heart. While the media often paints Los Angeles as a haven for celebrities and the wealthy, these fires have displaced thousands of working-class families, leaving many uncertain if they will have homes to return to.

Among the four active wildfires tearing through the region, the Palisades and Eaton fires have collectively scorched over 30,000 acres, destroying an estimated 10,000 structures. The Eaton fire, burning on the east side of the city near Pasadena, has completely obliterated a vital piece of Black history.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/historic-black-neighborhood-altadena (https://www.yahoo.com/news/historic-black-neighborhood-altadena-reduced-120210471.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKro6TaX79kBRub0-Rh2__ka6pMRx6lcqjtIKXdhAulJ5pX_bTGy_omMomS3Fu-hkh3ood3TdyuNhK1GPLpbnsvtHKGwKRgotVpmu2k4K--V99g2r3dTNjma0c373xAXxAz-vzoT7C1xtfaKDnbFf45Ss1gDEkmfH_OJ9VzME3UA)

East LA is of course the slum side of town, like the Bronx and Harlem in NY where all the poor folks live and where you have all the gang and drug related violence.

You can be pretty sure most of these folks do NOT have fire insurance and that many if not most of them WILL be homeless for quite a while, if not permanently.

You also gotta wonder who will rebuild there?  Will they build affordable housing?

RE

Quote from: RE on Jan 11, 2025, 11:15 AM The fires that are burning indiscriminately are destroying neighborhoods that are home to everyone from working-class people to wealthy individuals. Money and privilege are not making a difference here.

I'll dispute that claim right off the bat.

RE

It's useful to understand that there's a difference between the average (the number you get by dividing the sum of a set of values by the number of values), and the median which means the middle point

The average net worth in American households in 2022 was $1,059,470 but the median was only $192,700.

That is a ratio of 5.5.  If entire neighborhoods are gone simple math shows the poor must suffer more than the rich will because income inequality is so damn huge.

More people than not are shit out of luck. In the end we all are.

A good script with text and voice generated by AI.  The human who picked out the stock footage did a great job, and I am not saying that just because half the footage is in Seattle.

It documents our cities well.

This kind of video is something anyone can do with the right tools and a bit of practice.  Essentially it is the equivalent to a magazine article in the video medium.  Many will disparage these types of videos.  I do not.  The message is what matters and if I wrote the script in this video taking the trouble to put an AI voice behind it with generated text and stock footage is just a new way to publish.

I rate the facts presented as reliable based on my other explorations.

Like many (most) current You-Tube videos this cover pic and title are meant to get you to click.  The content is not so ghetto.

I'd find it just as intolerable to spend an afternoon at a city bus stop shelter as I would a typical suburban backyard get together bbq. Both sets of crazy ideas and beliefs can do nothing but annoy.

Might be kinda fun to spend a weekend with the elites, though :-D

[quote author=K-Dog
A good script with text and voice generated by AI.  The human who picked out the stock footage did a great job, and I am not saying that just because half the footage is in Seattle.

It documents our cities well.
[/quote]
Has the local ACP club decided to do anything about this situation? It would seem like a natural organizational method to begin recurigin from? Those with nothing to lose would really like a little "leveling of the field" I'd bet.

MT not very friendly to the homeless.  Kind of surprising since it's home to many Survivalists.  Of course, survivalists try to be invisible so you don't see them.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/kalispell-montana-homelessness

RE

Quote from: RE on Jan 27, 2025, 11:27 PMMT not very friendly to the homeless.  Kind of surprising since it's home to many Survivalists.  Of course, survivalists try to be invisible so you don't see them.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/kalispell-montana-homelessness

RE

Kalispell, Montana is a beautiful city located in the northwestern portion of the state. With its close proximity to Glacier National Park, it offers residents amazing outdoor recreational opportunities while providing a safe and comfortable atmosphere in which to live.

Property values are very important in Kalispell and unhoused people interfere with real estate speculation.  In the land of unearned riches real estate speculation trumps being your brothers' keeper.  You should know that.

https://www.jamesedition.com/real_estate/kalispell-mt-usa

Nothing like the unhoused to bring down inflated property values.

Quote from: K-Dog on Feb 09, 2025, 06:27 AMKalispell, Montana is a beautiful city located in the northwestern portion of the state. With its close proximity to Glacier National Park, it offers residents amazing outdoor recreational opportunities while providing a safe and comfortable atmosphere in which to live.

Kalispell is nice, Columbia Falls is preferred though. Kalispell was becoming too "Kalifornicated" back around turn of the century. We've got a place in Columbia Falls in the family, couple acres, used to take the kids there to hang with their uncle, they had 2-3 cows and some work horses, the dogs and kids loved it.

Most of the nice western places are getting screwed by rich suburbanites. Western Yellowstone springs to mind as well. Certainly Jackson Hole has been a place of the uber rich and cool since at least the early 90's when I first began stopping in.