Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
- Start date
Yeah, but we have a new dad, and he's a fucking moron.
I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again: The UN is a dictators' club that for some reason the democracies of the world has given the air of legitimacy. Some of their sub-organizations do good work (the World Health Organization, for example) but the General Assembly and even the Security Council (and especially the UN Human Rights Council... chaired by countries like Iran in the past) are just jokes and an affront to anything resembling a "good thing" for the world.
When a world government comes around that ONLY allows places with a minimum standard of Democracy into it (it can be pretty loose, see India), then I'll respect that. The UN as "world government" is a farce.
When a world government comes around that ONLY allows places with a minimum standard of Democracy into it (it can be pretty loose, see India), then I'll respect that. The UN as "world government" is a farce.
You're right. Obviously the only way to improve the situation is to leave the UN, thumb our nose at the rest of the world, and react with disdain to the very suggestion of working with other nations.
I'm in Canada. Our PM has love-ins with international dictators as a "normal" thing, and even lauded Castro when he died.
All the way one way is as bad as all the way the other way. International co-operation is fine, but at the choice of the nations involved.
However, what has occurred for a lot is that anything the UN says has "moral authority" to an extent. I consider that a farce.
What the right is saying now about the UN is exactly what the right said about the League of Nations in the 1930s. Yes, they're ineffective and they do'nt achieve their stated goals, but no, the alternative of simply not dealing with dictators and letting them do their own thing isn't any better. That way lies war, famine, death. Maybe not for Canadians and Americans in the short term, but for everyone in the long term. Reform, evolve, change, don't just stand there holding your dick while other countries invade, oppress, butcher. Besides, choosing who to deal with only leads to more "Putin's my biggest bestest buddy now!".
Bubble, it's ineffective BECAUSE those dictators are part of it. They use their votes and influence to gum up the works for anything that would actually declare that what they're doing (routinely) is bad, and trying to concentrate any ire they can generate towards countries that are on the whole pretty damned good, but with a few social problems.
So the root of the problem (currently) is the inclusion of those places which are the source of the bad. Staying with it won't solve anything about that bad unless you find a way to kick them out.
Anyone want to hazard a guess on whether a budget will actually get passed this year?
Of course. It'll be
That all depends on how well the Dems are at filibustering.
I read this at first as "defibrillating" and didn't think it out of place at all.
--Patrick
Something has been nagging at me since I heard it recently, and I couldn't figure out why. It was a report from the Canadian Department of Finance, projecting that we won't have a balanced budget for at LEAST 30 years: Report That itself is horrifying enough, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd heard it before. Today I remembered:
Back in 1993, during the Election that year, our Prime Minister said this at/near the beginning of the campaign:
And now, with 30 (some say 38 or longer based on that report) years of deficit and more to come, not much is being made of it. It's just resignation that it'll happen. This is even with a CBC report from early 2015 showing how the deficit was on a trend of being reduced to almost nothing (at least one report I read said it was a slight surplus right before the Conservatives left). Now numbers between $30B and $100B have been said by various people, but you'd be surprised how hard it is to get concrete numbers for 2016. Maybe it considers the fiscal year not ended yet? I dunno.
And this isn't sinking the ship of our current PM? Weird and sad this isn't focused on more IMO.
Back in 1993, during the Election that year, our Prime Minister said this at/near the beginning of the campaign:
That quote didn't help her party's electability, and it was a devastating loss for them for projecting 7 years of misery. There were other reasons as well, no doubt (funnily enough, her party being pro-NAFTA and the opposition being anti-NAFTA was one of them, despite the other party which got in SIGNING it later), but that quote dogged the campaign greatly. Funny how the 90s was wonderfully prosperous for most of the western world (at the least).
And now, with 30 (some say 38 or longer based on that report) years of deficit and more to come, not much is being made of it. It's just resignation that it'll happen. This is even with a CBC report from early 2015 showing how the deficit was on a trend of being reduced to almost nothing (at least one report I read said it was a slight surplus right before the Conservatives left). Now numbers between $30B and $100B have been said by various people, but you'd be surprised how hard it is to get concrete numbers for 2016. Maybe it considers the fiscal year not ended yet? I dunno.
And this isn't sinking the ship of our current PM? Weird and sad this isn't focused on more IMO.
Necronic
Staff member
So I was at lunch today and one of my older coworkers who is generally complaining about "millennials" went off on some thing about how apparently younger people spend more at Starbucks than they do on retirement. I replied "yeah, and more boomers have put more into their houses than they have retirement". Almost got a bit ugly. Luckily we both really like each other and generally just talk shit when we can.
New rule though when one of us makes a comment that is very entitled (since apparently millenials are very entitled) someone says "watermelon". He tried pulling that on me when I said I like scotch. I'm just st waiting to hear him talk about social security.
New rule though when one of us makes a comment that is very entitled (since apparently millenials are very entitled) someone says "watermelon". He tried pulling that on me when I said I like scotch. I'm just st waiting to hear him talk about social security.
And why was that considered foolish? Admittedly, I don't know your tax system down there, but I was under the impression that you could write off your interest payments on your mortgages as "not income" and thus it was really a very sound strategy to make your house a "primary investment" in a way, and thus putting lots of money into that was actually a fairly decent strategy to finance yourself later through the proceeds of such.
I'll admit this is overly-simplistic, but why was your response a "burn" to those pissing away (literally) their money on expensive coffee? If you LIKE it, great, and you're spending your money accordingly, but what does that have to do with investments?
Maybe I'm missing something huge.
Housing as an investment only hodls up if real estate prices go up at least by inflation. I don't know how eal estate prices evolved where you live, but most of the US doesn't exactly have the same real eastate market as before 2008.
I'm with you. Even home improvements are a more worth while investment than the purchase of a disposable beverage.
I'd forgotten that. Our country's price crash hasn't really happened... yet (well, it'll only really crash in Vancouver and Toronto, as they're insane). For somebody in the USA, it's a different story, which makes @Necronic's original point an OK one, though tragic in different ways.
That's real estate purely as investment. A primary residence basically turns your biggest living expense into a free investment.
Necronic
Staff member
Property values more or less hold even with inflation over the years. No more no less. There is a lot of variance but that is the average. That in and of itself is a bad thing though, as it wildly underperforms most low-risk mutual funds.
There are other big problems though.
1) most of the increase in value is offset by the cost of maintenance. And generally speaking the more valuable the house the bigger the maintenance.
2) houses are massively less liquid than stocks are.
3) housing investment requires a LOT more skill than stock investing and is therefore more risky. Both can suffer bubbles and crashes, but (as mentioned above) there is a ton of regional variance in housing markets whereas stocks are highly correlated. Combine that with the fact that your primary agent in housing market not only has no real fiduciary responsibility they actually have conflicting goals. Then there's the emotional aspect of housing purchases that don't exist in stocks (I have to buy a house to fulfill the American dream!)
4) Homeownership is way over saturated in older generations looking to offload them to younger generations that can't afford them. Since so many boomers took the view that their house equity is as good as savings many of them are looking to cash out at the same time. But when the next generation is so cash starved that creates a real dearth of demand. This problem hasn't fully materialized yet but I would not be surprised if a lot of housing markets see some serious issues over the next decade.
5) you also pay something like 12% in closing costs and fees going through the full buy/sell cycle. That's a pretty large hurdle.
Also for many people the interest deduction on your mortgage won't actually beat the standard deduction, it didn't for me.
Home ownership is (generally) not a sound investment tool. There's nothing wrong with owning your own home, and in many cases it's a great idea. But that is no excuse for bypassing your savings.[DOUBLEPOST=1485292259,1485292168][/DOUBLEPOST]
There are other big problems though.
1) most of the increase in value is offset by the cost of maintenance. And generally speaking the more valuable the house the bigger the maintenance.
2) houses are massively less liquid than stocks are.
3) housing investment requires a LOT more skill than stock investing and is therefore more risky. Both can suffer bubbles and crashes, but (as mentioned above) there is a ton of regional variance in housing markets whereas stocks are highly correlated. Combine that with the fact that your primary agent in housing market not only has no real fiduciary responsibility they actually have conflicting goals. Then there's the emotional aspect of housing purchases that don't exist in stocks (I have to buy a house to fulfill the American dream!)
4) Homeownership is way over saturated in older generations looking to offload them to younger generations that can't afford them. Since so many boomers took the view that their house equity is as good as savings many of them are looking to cash out at the same time. But when the next generation is so cash starved that creates a real dearth of demand. This problem hasn't fully materialized yet but I would not be surprised if a lot of housing markets see some serious issues over the next decade.
5) you also pay something like 12% in closing costs and fees going through the full buy/sell cycle. That's a pretty large hurdle.
Also for many people the interest deduction on your mortgage won't actually beat the standard deduction, it didn't for me.
Home ownership is (generally) not a sound investment tool. There's nothing wrong with owning your own home, and in many cases it's a great idea. But that is no excuse for bypassing your savings.[DOUBLEPOST=1485292259,1485292168][/DOUBLEPOST]
That's simply not true. Home ownership always has a cost even when you own it flat out. In my case nearly half of my mortgage payment is escrow (taxes/insurance/etc).
Well, I did recently buy a second house, you're right....
Necronic
Staff member
If you want to get spooked about housing take a gander at this:
https://www.nrmlaonline.org/2017/01/13/annual-hecm-endorsement-chart
This is the rates for people signing up for reverse mortgages over the last 30 years or so. A reverse mortgage is basically a system where the bank starts paying you a monthly check, and at the end of some period of payments they own your house and you have to gtfo.
This is often seen as an extremely predatory form of lending that generally targets seniors/retirees as a lender of last resort. And it is generally often literally a *last resort*.
If they actually survive through to the end of the reverse mortgage they will not only stop receiving checks but as an added bonus they will now be homeless (technically the bank doesn't take the home at the end but instead expects you to pay back all the money you borrowed over the years using your house as collateral)
Ed: actually the way it works is a bit more complicated than I present above.
The rates are really closely tied to the beginning of the boomer retirement streak, although the recession definitely got the ball rolling hard.
The end result though is about 10-15 years from when that spike in reverse mortgages started you are going to see a shit ton of houses hit the market.[DOUBLEPOST=1485293563,1485293063][/DOUBLEPOST]Here's a decent article on it
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/normal-term-reverse-mortgage-years-62796.html
https://www.nrmlaonline.org/2017/01/13/annual-hecm-endorsement-chart
This is the rates for people signing up for reverse mortgages over the last 30 years or so. A reverse mortgage is basically a system where the bank starts paying you a monthly check, and at the end of some period of payments they own your house and you have to gtfo.
This is often seen as an extremely predatory form of lending that generally targets seniors/retirees as a lender of last resort. And it is generally often literally a *last resort*.
If they actually survive through to the end of the reverse mortgage they will not only stop receiving checks but as an added bonus they will now be homeless (technically the bank doesn't take the home at the end but instead expects you to pay back all the money you borrowed over the years using your house as collateral)
Ed: actually the way it works is a bit more complicated than I present above.
The rates are really closely tied to the beginning of the boomer retirement streak, although the recession definitely got the ball rolling hard.
The end result though is about 10-15 years from when that spike in reverse mortgages started you are going to see a shit ton of houses hit the market.[DOUBLEPOST=1485293563,1485293063][/DOUBLEPOST]Here's a decent article on it
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/normal-term-reverse-mortgage-years-62796.html
Last edited:
I remember Chretien and Martin having it balanced for most of their terms.
Necronic
Staff member
Sorry I never actually responded to this. Spending more money on coffee than you do on retirement is a god damned terrible idea. But it's actually a pretty complicated fact that doesn't carry a lot of weight imho:
1). You're talking about a group that is already going to be low earners with low contribution rates as is, and on top of that has historically low levels of employment and income overall. So for many of them spending more money on coffee could mean 20-30$
2) the young have a bit more of a "right" to be stupid with money. Not only are they...well immature and kind of stupid in the ways of the world, they also have a good ability to recover from that mistake in their 30s (although it will definitely hurt them).
Now compare those points with someone who is 60 and has <50k in retirement and assets (about 50% of that group). The 25 year old has made some poor choices. The 60 year old has made a LOT of poor choices. And they continued to do it well past when they could blame it on youthful ignorance. For the 60 year old to criticize the 25 year old, especially at a generational level (ala "your generation is so dumb my generation would never do that"), is incredibly hypocritical.
That's why I took the shot.
Last edited:
Necronic
Staff member
How long have you lived there? How long do you plan to? Are you afraid of ending up upside down?
This goes back to my original point about liquidity. As I think can be agreed on after watching this election there are a lot of areas that used to be prosperous that no longer are. A lot of folks asked "why not move to somewhere better?" This is a place where home ownership is horrific compared to renting. Watching the opportunities in your town dry up at the same speed you watch your opportunities for leaving disappear. That American dream sounds a lot more like a nightmare to me.
This is of course the double edged sword of the security offered by owning a home. People can't easily force you out, as opposed to renting where there is a lot more risk of not keeping your lease. It goes both ways.
Again. I am not against home ownership. Home ownership can be great. But there are a TON of lies being peddled about how it is an amazing form of investment. Many people would be better served renting and taking the extra money and investing it properly, if all they are interested in is money.
Buy a house because you want a house. If you want to retire then save. Nothing saying you can't do both. I do.
I enjoy looking at houses for sale in the area and from my perusings, prices have gone up a lot in the last few years. It could just be local factors as the economy around here is doing pretty well, but it's sure seemed like a large increase.
The CBC graph that I linked shows that. It's quite good. But I'm just going on the political echoes of politicians saying certain things and public reaction, and how it's different now, with no different (and worse really) promises about duration.
Colorado housing is ridiculous right now, there isn't enough supply to meet demand, it's even worse for renting, so everything costs a lot. Houses are on and off the market within sometimes days. People are playing $1300+ in rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in some places.
We bought our house right before the bubble burst because we wanted to be able to get an 80/20 loan since we hadn't saved for a down payment, and the writing was on the wall for those kinds of things to be hard to get/non-existent soon. This was back in 2007. We lost about $30k in value after the bubble burst, but now we're up over $100k from what we paid. So it's pretty area dependant.[DOUBLEPOST=1485296826,1485296670][/DOUBLEPOST]I do remember my mother not believing me when I said we had negative equity in our house in 2008 though, because to her generation and older, that's not a thing that happened. (Also my mom is on the cusp of Gen X, and not really a boomer)
I'm talking in bumblefuck parts of Colorado. Boulder and Denver are a lot worse.