Coming Red Wave 2022

[Hijinx]

The surge in Covid didn't wait for the fall, it's happening right now.
Some sort of Covid will be around forever it seems, or at least calling every cold and snotty nose Covid is around. What happened to the common cold.? It disappeared. Every fever, every cough, every runny nose today is covid. COVID, Scare the piss out of Americans, mandate masks that don't work, in the meantime with nothing less to do force Americans into electric cars by restricting the fuel that we have in plenty.

Yes push electric while at the same time closing fossil fueled power plants and warning of brown outs.
What is crazy is that make sense to this stupid moron in the White House and his Democrat stooges.
Give our health to the WHO. Encourage an invasion of our borders, print more money.
This country is going down the toilet and the Democrats are doing the flushing.

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may ...

You’re going to have provide some of that data because to me this looks like the easiest time for anyone to be able to make it. Jobs are there for the taking and if you don’t like that one you can quit and be employed by the end of the week. Inflation is admittedly high, but interest rates are still very low making home buying fairly easy. More and more jobs are coming with benefits that include paying for education, so a degree is essentially just you committing yourself to it.

Perception in this case is definitely not reality. Jobs jobs everywhere is jobs, but no one is hiring. Funny how that works. Interest rates low? Have you not been keeping up with the real estate market? Sales are cratering due to people being priced out because rates now are averaging 5.839%. Why, because wages have not kept pace with inflation.

"Inflation is admittedly high"? Good God Merlin, inflation is through the proverbial roof heading towards the stratosphere. Hell, a pound of regular bacon is now going for $7.99 or more. Hamburger over $5 a pound. Damn, what planet are you posting from? And a degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on unless it's engineering or physics or something that actually requires skill, thinking, application of thought, and producing something.

 

[Merlin99]

If I may ...


Perception in this case is definitely not reality. Jobs jobs everywhere is jobs, but no one is hiring. Funny how that works. Interest rates low? Have you not been keeping up with the real estate market? Sales are cratering due to people being priced out because rates now are averaging 5.839%. Why, because wages have not kept pace with inflation.

"Inflation is admittedly high"? Good God Merlin, inflation is through the proverbial roof heading towards the stratosphere. Hell, a pound of regular bacon is now going for $7.99 or more. Hamburger over $5 a pound. Damn, what planet are you posting from? And a degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on unless it's engineering or physics or something that actually requires skill, thinking, application of thought, and producing something.

No one is hiring? Some places are offering to pay by the day just to keep the doors open. 6% interest rates are not exceptionally high, it's much closer to the average interest rate over the last 50 years. We've been spoiled by extremely low rates for the last several years. If people are being priced out of the market by a 6% rate, then they are trying to buy too much house for their means. You don't start out buying the half million dollar house at 20 years old, you buy the 125K one and move up, you take the 6% rate and refinance when the rates are lowered.
I buy the same groceries that you do, I do know the prices. I also know how to budget money for necessities.
A degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on? Maybe a degree in gender studies isn't, but a business degree will get you hired by the government pretty quickly. An electrical engineering degree is a golden ticket into most of the contractors here, even an english degree will get you picked up pretty easily. A technical certificate will get you a career, AC&R, Plumbing, Electrician, Welding any of them will get you in the door, even just a knack for being able to fix things can be enough. If you think these are hard times I fear you may not survive a real bad time.

 

[Sneakers]

If you think these are hard times I fear you may not survive a real bad time.

 

[Hijinx]

These may not be hard times, but if inflations keeps going and gasoline gets to $7.00 or more and the food shortages start ------well. It may not be hard times yet but they appear to be on the way.

 

[CPUSA]

Can we change the name of this thread to The Coming Blue Cheat?...Because THAT is what is coming.
They're going to retain everything...probably even pick up MORE seats, just to prove their point to us serfs...

And we'll take it, yet again...

 

[Kyle]

Can we change the name of this thread to The Coming Blue Cheat?...Because THAT is what is coming.

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may ...

No one is hiring? Some places are offering to pay by the day just to keep the doors open. 6% interest rates are not exceptionally high, it's much closer to the average interest rate over the last 50 years. We've been spoiled by extremely low rates for the last several years. If people are being priced out of the market by a 6% rate, then they are trying to buy too much house for their means. You don't start out buying the half million dollar house at 20 years old, you buy the 125K one and move up, you take the 6% rate and refinance when the rates are lowered.
I buy the same groceries that you do, I do know the prices. I also know how to budget money for necessities.
A degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on? Maybe a degree in gender studies isn't, but a business degree will get you hired by the government pretty quickly. An electrical engineering degree is a golden ticket into most of the contractors here, even an english degree will get you picked up pretty easily. A technical certificate will get you a career, AC&R, Plumbing, Electrician, Welding any of them will get you in the door, even just a knack for being able to fix things can be enough. If you think these are hard times I fear you may not survive a real bad time.

Oh please. Your economic ignorance is showing. The number of people earning less than $30,000 accounts for 46.5% of the US population. 46.5%! And, according to Social Security data from 2019, the latest release, the median household income was $34,248.45. Exactly how are these people supposed to afford a house when their incomes have not even come close to keeping up with inflation, which includes the astronomical increases in housing prices, along with the astronomical increases in fuel, food, rents, etc.? You must be living in LaLa land. Or be sufficiently insulated from the economic turmoil we are currently faced with, and from what is to come, by opining such drivel.

And 6% interest rates are exceptionally high for people whose wages have not kept up with INFLATION, regardless of their education or skills! High rates increase monthly payments on the median home price in Southern Maryland of $375,000. In order to afford a loan at 6%, sellers will now have to reduce their prices to accommodate for the increase in interest rates. Now, since many people, bought, refinanced, and took out HELOC's, (used their homes as ATM's again), these past years and were being "spoiled" as you say by low rates, how much negotiating room do you think home sellers have nowadays? A median priced house selling at $375K will have a $2,210, 30 year, mortgage payment at 5.842%. That's $26,520 per year just in mortgage payments on top of insurance and property taxes and the electric bill, etc.. Which would necessitate the buyer/'s have an income of at least $90,000 per year. Talk to any local realtor and they'll tell you they have many many, would be, buyers that are now priced out of the market simply because of the increase in interest rates.

We, as a Nation, do not produce or manufacture anything the world wants. (Except bullets, missiles, and bombs). We have no manufacturing base as we once had that supported the middle class of America. All we now have are "service" jobs. Thing about service jobs, (and I do not refer to the trades), is that they do not require that much skill, so, pretty much anyone can do them, which, keeps the wages low because of the number of people able to do such work.

"If you think these are hard times I fear you may not survive a real bad time." Hahahahaha. I have, intentionally, lived in such a way that, I have done so much with so little for so long, that now I can do anything with nothing. Literally. I look forward to the economic devastation and misery to come that is to be another Great Depression. I know I will make it through.

 

[Gilligan]

We, as a Nation, do not produce or manufacture anything the world wants. (Except bullets, missiles, and bombs).

And advanced marine control systems. (shameless company plug...but our customer base has always been outside the US).

 

[Merlin99]

If I may ...


Oh please. Your economic ignorance is showing. The number of people earning less than $30,000 accounts for 46.5% of the US population. 46.5%! And, according to Social Security data from 2019, the latest release, the median household income was $34,248.45. Exactly how are these people supposed to afford a house when their incomes have not even come close to keeping up with inflation, which includes the astronomical increases in housing prices, along with the astronomical increases in fuel, food, rents, etc.? You must be living in LaLa land. Or be sufficiently insulated from the economic turmoil we are currently faced with, and from what is to come, by opining such drivel.

I’m going to take this in small bites
Back when I graduated high school, 1981, the unemployment rate was more than 10%, in my local area it was closer to 25%. Interest rates were north of 10%. My personal fix was to join the military, this allowed me to save, learn a trade, marry buy a house and have kids. You’ll notice the order of these things, it’s kind of important. You don’t number 3 and 4 until you do 1 and 2.
I’ll move on to the next set of points in a while.

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may ...

I’m going to take this in small bites
Back when I graduated high school, 1981, the unemployment rate was more than 10%, in my local area it was closer to 25%. Interest rates were north of 10%. My personal fix was to join the military, this allowed me to save, learn a trade, marry buy a house and have kids. You’ll notice the order of these things, it’s kind of important. You don’t number 3 and 4 until you do 1 and 2.
I’ll move on to the next set of points in a while.

That time period was only 10 years after Nixon decoupled the gold standard from the dollar. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 9.02% per year between 1971 and 1981, producing a cumulative price increase of 137.15% had already affected many things, and somewhat leveled out after 1981 during your starting to work years. As the years went on, things have gotten much much worse. With financial deregulation, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, wars and more wars, huge deficit spending, financial chicanery, mortgage backed securities fiasco, shipping our manufacturing over to other countries ......

This time, today, is no where near the times of yesterday. Your thoughts might have some merit and apply back then, but they do not apply today.

 

[Merlin99]

If I may ...


That time period was only 10 years after Nixon decoupled the gold standard from the dollar. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 9.02% per year between 1971 and 1981, producing a cumulative price increase of 137.15% had already affected many things, and somewhat leveled out after 1981 during your starting to work years. As the years went on, things have gotten much much worse. With financial deregulation, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, wars and more wars, huge deficit spending, financial chicanery, mortgage backed securities fiasco, shipping our manufacturing over to other countries ......

This time, today, is no where near the times of yesterday. Your thoughts might have some merit and apply back then, but they do not apply today.

No it still applies, you don’t start a family until you learn a marketable skill, you don’t buy a house until you’ve learned to save. If you don’t make enough to save you do things like have roommates to share costs. If you do things in the wrong order like have kids before you’ve learned to do something marketable then you have only yourself to blame.

 

[Merlin99]

And 6% interest rates are exceptionally high for people whose wages have not kept up with INFLATION, regardless of their education or skills! High rates increase monthly payments on the median home price in Southern Maryland of $375,000. In order to afford a loan at 6%, sellers will now have to reduce their prices to accommodate for the increase in interest rates. Now, since many people, bought, refinanced, and took out HELOC's, (used their homes as ATM's again), these past years and were being "spoiled" as you say by low rates, how much negotiating room do you think home sellers have nowadays? A median priced house selling at $375K will have a $2,210, 30 year, mortgage payment at 5.842%. That's $26,520 per year just in mortgage payments on top of insurance and property taxes and the electric bill, etc.. Which would necessitate the buyer/'s have an income of at least $90,000 per year. Talk to any local realtor and they'll tell you they have many many, would be, buyers that are now priced out of the market simply because of the increase in interest rates.

6% is about what my parents paid for their house in the 60’s, not historically a high rate. Why are you using the median home rate? The rate you should be using is the the very low end. You don’t start out buying the house that people who’ve got several years of work and savings buy, you buy the starter house with the bad plumbing and drafty windows. Now with that in mind we’re closer to 185K, that’s closer to 1450 a month and 17.5K yearly which can be done on a $50k salary. People aren’t priced out of the market, they’re priced out of the market that they have to work up to.

 

[Merlin99]

We, as a Nation, do not produce or manufacture anything the world wants. (Except bullets, missiles, and bombs). We have no manufacturing base as we once had that supported the middle class of America. All we now have are "service" jobs. Thing about service jobs, (and I do not refer to the trades), is that they do not require that much skill, so, pretty much anyone can do them, which, keeps the wages low because of the number of people able to do such work.

Bullets, missiles and bombs sell, as do soy beans, corn, liquor and cars (yes we still make a lot of them here). The manufacturing jobs didn’t take a whole lot more brains than the service jobs. After the smart guys did the engineering the dumb union guys didn’t have a whole lot to do but the one job they’d been taught. Sometimes it was torquing down heads, sometimes it was putting on the wheels. As far as the pay scale for service jobs, you understand why we want to keep the southern border closed. It’s not that those jobs that they take are jobs no self respecting American would take, it’s that they will do it for practically nothing so there is no pressure on the industry to pay what the job is worth.

 

[Merlin99]

"If you think these are hard times I fear you may not survive a real bad time." Hahahahaha. I have, intentionally, lived in such a way that, I have done so much with so little for so long, that now I can do anything with nothing. Literally. I look forward to the economic devastation and misery to come that is to be another Great Depression. I know I will make it through.

I’m glad you think another depression is going to be fun. It doesn’t have to be except that the government decreed it to be several years ago by way of quantitative easing, add money to the system and let it percolate. Now it’s time to unpercolate so money is being removed from the system causing interest rates to increase. The smart guys took out loans for millions with half percent interest rates and just held it. Now that interests rates are going up it’s time to make loans, they’re paying .5% for the money and loaning it back at 6%.

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may ...

6% is about what my parents paid for their house in the 60’s, not historically a high rate. Why are you using the median home rate? The rate you should be using is the the very low end. You don’t start out buying the house that people who’ve got several years of work and savings buy, you buy the starter house with the bad plumbing and drafty windows. Now with that in mind we’re closer to 185K, that’s closer to 1450 a month and 17.5K yearly which can be done on a $50k salary. People aren’t priced out of the market, they’re priced out of the market that they have to work up to.

You are so out of touch with today's reality. In the 60's the dollar was still pretty stable, inflation was very low, and we still had silver content in our coinage. In the 60's, a modest house cost $11,900 to $13,000, with the average individual income of $5,600 annually, a ratio of 2.3 times income to the cost of a house ~ And now, the median home price, in this area is $375,000, with the median income being $34,248 equates to a ratio of 10.9 times income to the cost of a house. Do you see the difference? Do you see what the effect, INFLATION, and lagging wages?

The people, today, who could afford a mortgage payment for, more closer to a lower end of $225K+ in this area, are no longer able to qualify through no fault of their own due to the rising interest rates. Even for the people who could qualify, that were trying for the even lower end housing in undesirable areas. And when are the two working individuals supposed to find the time to fix the fixer upper? From where are they going to get the money to do so as most are already stretched so thin and squeaked over the line to get loan approval in the first place?

And maybe you do not understand this. Unless a young buyer is cash heavy, they are not going to able to get that fixer upper. Why? Because if they try to get a mortgage, the underwriters, after seeing the appraisal with all the defects and work needed to make the place safe for occupancy and habitable, will not approve the loan.

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may ...

No it still applies, you don’t start a family until you learn a marketable skill, you don’t buy a house until you’ve learned to save. If you don’t make enough to save you do things like have roommates to share costs. If you do things in the wrong order like have kids before you’ve learned to do something marketable then you have only yourself to blame.

What a joke. People today can't save much due to inflationary pressures, eg. rising prices of everything they need and use. And say they wanted to save, say $20K to buy a house 10 years down the road? 10 years later, now, instead of the 20K being sufficient for a down payment, now it's $35K needed. And another 10 years later 50K, and so on and so on. With INFLATION, it is always 1 step forward and 2-4 steps backwards. People just cannot keep up. These people are not to blame. You think everyone is a slacker. They just have to work harder. Apply themselves more. Pull themselves up by their boot straps. THE PLAYING FIELD IS NOT LEVEL! The debt based money system is designed like this for this very reason, to keep people down. To keep them working and hopeful that they too can live that "American Dream". To give all the illusion that they too can make it big, aided from messaging from Madison Ave and promotions of all the "influencers" on social media such as those ignominious Kardashians, (who are paid what they are paid for the very reason to give false hope to millions), that make it seem to look so easy for others to emulate. It is all a sham used to steal the wealth of this Nation, our labor and resources, by the international banking cartels

Even, if in your old fashioned world, (which does hold merit, but is extremely difficult to use as a standard today), people do as you say, "don’t start a family until you learn a marketable skill, you don’t buy a house until you’ve learned to save", The many would still not be able climb that ladder. And those fixer uppers? Well they are being bought up by the handful after one day on the market by institutions like Blackrock, and highly monied investors that get cheap, to free, new money from the FED to do the minimum necessary repairs then to "rent" to whom would have been would be buyers of that property. Again, THE PLAYING FIELD IS NOT LEVEL when there are evil actors in the game.

Intentionally, and purposefully done, loose monetary policies flooding the system with out-of-thin-air currency, is destroying any chance of regular people from advancing, as people were once able to do pre 1971, when we were still under the Bretton Woods agreement, aka, the gold standard with the dollar pegged to the price of gold, $35 to 1 ounce.

Your inability to recognize the inherent and intentionally evil, maniacal, diabolical, satanic monetary system, (and those that benefit, defend and promote it), that we are now living in, and the effects it has on good, truly hardworking, smart and educated honest people, and this Nation, shows the blinders that you are wearing.

 

[Merlin99]

If I may ...


You are so out of touch with today's reality. In the 60's the dollar was still pretty stable, inflation was very low, and we still had silver content in our coinage. In the 60's, a modest house cost $11,900 to $13,000, with the average individual income of $5,600 annually, a ratio of 2.3 times income to the cost of a house ~ And now, the median home price, in this area is $375,000, with the median income being $34,248 equates to a ratio of 10.9 times income to the cost of a house. Do you see the difference? Do you see what the effect, INFLATION, and lagging wages?

The people, today, who could afford a mortgage payment for, more closer to a lower end of $225K+ in this area, are no longer able to qualify through no fault of their own due to the rising interest rates. Even for the people who could qualify, that were trying for the even lower end housing in undesirable areas. And when are the two working individuals supposed to find the time to fix the fixer upper? From where are they going to get the money to do so as most are already stretched so thin and squeaked over the line to get loan approval in the first place?

And maybe you do not understand this. Unless a young buyer is cash heavy, they are not going to able to get that fixer upper. Why? Because if they try to get a mortgage, the underwriters, after seeing the appraisal with all the defects and work needed to make the place safe for occupancy and habitable, will not approve the loan.

What I'm actually seeing is apparently the impossible, houses are being sold, a lot for above the asking price. They're being sold before they even going on the market.

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may ...

What I'm actually seeing is apparently the impossible, houses are being sold, a lot for above the asking price. They're being sold before they even going on the market.

Now, do some actual research and find out who these buyers really are. Though few may be people, the majority are being bought up by Blackrock and other type institutions that can afford to pay, (and purposefully bid up the properties to keep regular people from buying them), more than the asking price. For the specific reason of renting them. We, Americans, are being returned to the days of being serfs, aka the peasant class, feudalism, in our own Nation.

And you? You, and others, are blind to what is happening right in front of your eyes.

 

[Kinnakeet]

Homes

You’re going to have provide some of that data because to me this looks like the easiest time for anyone to be able to make it. Jobs are there for the taking and if you don’t like that one you can quit and be employed by the end of the week. Inflation is admittedly high, but interest rates are still very low making home buying fairly easy. More and more jobs are coming with benefits that include paying for education, so a degree is essentially just you committing yourself to it.

Homes are 2x more than they were 3 years ago and not affordable