Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 03, 2024, 12:39 AMModel it in equations and see what happens with different policies.

One policy I would like to see is limiting the legal length of residential property mortgages to 20 years.

After WWII, the typical mortgage was 15 years and the price of a home 3X the average annual salary.  Today, mortgages are 30 years, and the price is 5X an average annual salary.  A Generation is usually about 20 years, the Boomers for instance were born between 1946-1964.

Shortening the length of time reduces the risk of your financial circumstances being significantly changed in either direction and makes the length of time you might own a home closer to how long you are paying it off.  Climbing the ladder and getting richer, you want to move to a more luxurious home, getting laid off and having to take a lower paid job you need to downsize.

This would limit the risk of people buying more house than they can really afford, when you take into account all the crap that can happen in an economy and people's lives over 30 years.

Next policy that is important is if the Private Sector builders are not building Starter Homes for first time buyers, the Goobermint should be building them.

Builders say the combination of land, labor, and material costs makes affordable homes impossible, and only more expensive models offer enough of a profit margin.

Not building them at all is simply not a viable option.  It just results in homelessness.    If it has to be subsidized, so be it.  Capitalism doesn't provide a viable means of making a profit from building affordable houses.  The Builders themselves say this.

These two policy changes IMHO would go a long way toward resolving the homeless crisis.

https://archive.curbed.com/2018/4/10/17219786/buying-a-house-mortgage-government-gi-bill

RE

QuoteNot building them at all is simply not a viable option.  It just results in homelessness.    If it has to be subsidized, so be it.  Capitalism doesn't provide a viable means of making a profit from building affordable houses.  The Builders themselves say this.

Americans are patriotic and will happily experience homelessness and deprivation before they see any issues with the system.

3000 square feet new homes are selling for two million a mile from me.  These homes are 8x the price what they would have been forty years ago here.  Totally unaffordable except for the greedy skim the cream off the top capitalist.  Most fools call this progress.  And it has been for decades, Affluence moves in and drives the locals away.  It is an old American story.  It is the American progress fable.

Most Americans would flip out if they knew how many Chinese nationals are moving in to keep the price up.  I'm not going to tell them.  What goes around comes around.  It would be fitting if the new Chinese lions were replaced by concrete buffalo at the end of the driveways.  The joke would be so subtle most people would not get it.

 
This will be Seattle in 20 years. 

You will not have to ask where Chinatown is. 

Noah Cross: Exactly what do you know about me? Sit down.

Jake Gittes: Mainly that you're rich, too respectable to want your name in the newspapers.

Noah Cross: Of course I'm respectable. I'm old! Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.

From the movie, Chinatown.  Noah Cross is an average guy now.  What goes around comes around.

And that is merely the headline federal debt number. When you add in private debt - corporate, household, municipal, bank - the United States now sits atop over $100 trillion in total outstanding obligations. In fact, total business debt alone has skyrocketed to $22 trillion, or 70% of GDP - the same percentage that ushered in the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. That alone should terrify any rational investor. Oh, and then there's the unfunded liabilities, which add another $80 trillion to the dung pile.

No worries.  Raise the Debt Ceiling to $INFINITY$ !  Or Infinity to the power of Infinity!  No wait...Mint a $200T Platinum Coin and pay the whole thing off with that!  Can we apply for that new Bioluminescent VISA Card?

I really have to wonder WTF buys the Toilet Paper at the Treasury Auctions these days and where they get the money to buy the bonds?  Do they sell Nvidia stock?  Do they pay for it with BTC?  Maybe they borrow it from Luxemborg? 

Clearly, The Smartest Guys in the Room now are equipped with the best AI Super Cooled Super Conducting Paralle Processing Super Computers and understand this far better than the rest of us mere mortals, so just Pahhty On!

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 03, 2024, 08:17 AMAmericans are patriotic and will happily experience homelessness and deprivation before they see any issues with the system.

Really? You aren't homeless, don't suffer deprivation, and see all SORTS of issues with the system. What makes you think most folks are any different? Because some MSM mouthpiece said otherwise?

Quote from: TDoS on Jun 01, 2026, 05:01 PM

Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 03, 2024, 08:17 AMAmericans are patriotic and will happily experience homelessness and deprivation before they see any issues with the system.

Really? You aren't homeless, don't suffer deprivation, and see all SORTS of issues with the system. What makes you think most folks are any different? Because some MSM mouthpiece said otherwise?

I have always seen problems with the system.  It is in my nature.  I am also painfully aware of how ill informed most people are, and that I am most definitely an exception the general rule.  Making me an idiot or a savant, depending on your point of view.

Most people concern themselves with the banalities of their lives and nothing else.  Not many people care to crunch the big numbers.






Concerning my original statement.  I stand by it.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jun 01, 2026, 07:26 PM

Quote from: TDoS on Jun 01, 2026, 05:01 PM

Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 03, 2024, 08:17 AMAmericans are patriotic and will happily experience homelessness and deprivation before they see any issues with the system.

Really? You aren't homeless, don't suffer deprivation, and see all SORTS of issues with the system. What makes you think most folks are any different? Because some MSM mouthpiece said otherwise?

Because most folks have no idea how money is created.  They don't  understand that all money is debt, and all a Dollar reprents is an IOU, it's a note of infinite duration.  The only thing backing it is "the full faith and credit of the FSoA".  Once the faith is gone, so is the credit, so is the value of the note.  That the F&C has lasted this long is a testament to how well the folks who issue credit sewed up the monopoly on this, beginning back in 1692 when our old friend Sir Isaac Newton, co-inventor of the Calculus was Master of the Mint at the BoE.  Actually it traces back even further to the Medici era and the Holy Roman Catholic Church, but the real Monopoly globally came with the Bretton Woods agreement after WWII.  Most people don't even know about that, much less understand how it works.  Really even here over the years besides myself I've only ever met a couple of people who understand it.  Neal Stephenson called it "The System of the World", and our whole civilization is guided by it.  A very small number of people control it, and they are not elected.

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Jun 01, 2026, 07:26 PM

Quote from: TDoS on Jun 01, 2026, 05:01 PMReally? You aren't homeless, don't suffer deprivation, and see all SORTS of issues with the system. What makes you think most folks are any different? Because some MSM mouthpiece said otherwise?

I have always seen problems with the system.  It is in my nature.

Well there you go. You see problems with the system as a default setting. I recommend fighting ones nature to come to conclusions we are naturally drawn to because we like them, or they sound cool.

Critical and analytical thinking is my motto....first, last and always. If some humans didn't do that, hell, we'd all still be praying to Zeus and confusing lightning with Thor running amuck in the clouds.

Quote from: K-DogI am also painfully aware of how ill informed most people are, and that I am most definitely an exception the general rule.

As far as I'm concerned any EE has what it takes to NOT just submit to their nature and pretend everything they believe is automatically true. Sort of a cognitive dissonnace thing maybe?

Quote from: K-DogMaking me an idiot or a savant, depending on your point of view.

Never met an idiot EE. And being one doesn't make one a savant either.

Quote from: K-DogMost people concern themselves with the banalities of their lives and nothing else.  Not many people care to crunch the big numbers.

Most people don't crunch any numbers at all. But quite a few BELIEVE stuff even if they can crunch numbers. Some use numbers to back up what they believe.....and hope that they don't run into anyone who knows what someone trying to prove s negative looks like.

Quote from: K-DogConcerning my original statement.  I stand by it.

Same here. Some folks can intuit an idea they like first, and then backup what they like. Unfortunately, they sometimes backup ONLY what they like...say..Matt Savinar for example. Not a dummy, but had a thought, and simply collected evidence validating that thought.

Others think a thought...and then back it up against all comers, as it is the only way to truly test its validity.

You never ask your friends or similarly thinking folks to test your thoughts. Echo chambers are quite popular on the internet as I've discovered since its invention. I learned to find the smartest people most experienced in the field who hate your guts and ask THEM to test your thought. AAPG Core committee as one example. Every peak oiler I could ever find. USGS folks...after all....Hubbert was one of them once. SPE chapters, the EIA, academics from Univ Texas Austin, Stanford, Penn State department heads.

At the end of the day it is just a procedure that some are familiar with to make sure they aren't espousing an idea they like, but one they can prove.

QuoteYou see problems with the system as a default setting. You see problems with the system as a default setting.

No, I do not see what does not exist.  A default setting would be delusional.  I am not.

QuoteYou never ask your friends or similarly thinking folks to test your thoughts.

That is untrue, smart people do it all the time.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jun 02, 2026, 06:32 PM

QuoteYou see problems with the system as a default setting.

No, I do not see what does not exist.  A default setting would be delusional.  I am not.

I just read the words you wrote. They sure seemed to indicate my representation. And YOU put in the delusional, I don't believe the mental machinations we are talking about are delusional. People are people, and think in many different and varied ways. And some people BELIEVE so strongly that they then interpret things within that belief...and can arrive at faulty conclusions. Hence why I anchor my perspective in science, as opposed to believing things.

Quote from: K-Dog

QuoteYou never ask your friends or similarly thinking folks to test your thoughts.

That is untrue, smart people do it all the time.

Indeed we do. I've got 20+ PhD's on call, on various aspects of the physical/natural and social sciences. Hell, I'll ask the kids if the old man is crazy depending on the topic.

Online folks? Hit or miss...as the PhD's I can name during the peak oil days have demonstrated. I swear, how can you put that much time and money into getting a doctorate and not have been taught to think for yourself?