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News & ArtsSaturday, March 7, 2009
Economy Number of the Day: 19,000,000
Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 1:17 PM
That's the number of houses and apartments that are vacant in the United States right now—"nearly one out of every seven." Oh, and also:
But only about six million of those homes are for sale or for rent. That means millions more could still flood onto the market, depressing prices further.
1
Crises like these make unregulated capitalism look truly suicidal. When banks have a trillion dollars but don't lend, landlords have millions of units of housing they don't rent, and firms reduce production and jobs for fear there will be no market for their goods, the supposed law of supply and demand seems like a fairy tale. The basic human needs of those without capital do not factor into the system. It's not that there is no demand for housing right now. It's that landlords would rather take their properties off the market than house the poor and homeless.
2
@1
The law of supply and demand is perfectly rational, in a rational system.
Unfortunately, the fairy tale here is the free-market fundamentalist's notion that we're all "rational actors" who are informed and who will take the best actions for ourselves. Anyone with half a brain can see that isn't the case; people are ill-informed and deeply irrational, and pretending otherwise creates... well, creates disasters like our current mess. The old free-market economics also completely fails to take into account the manufacture of demand, via marketing and other related mechanisms, and anyone who's even passingly glanced into the marketing business knows what a ridiculous omission that is.
In short, yeah, fuck unrestrained capitalism. Any social philosophy that encourages self-interest as a primary virtue is crapshit. "The market" is not some inevitable force of nature; it's the combined turbulence of all of our avarice and apathy.
The law of supply and demand is perfectly rational, in a rational system.
Unfortunately, the fairy tale here is the free-market fundamentalist's notion that we're all "rational actors" who are informed and who will take the best actions for ourselves. Anyone with half a brain can see that isn't the case; people are ill-informed and deeply irrational, and pretending otherwise creates... well, creates disasters like our current mess. The old free-market economics also completely fails to take into account the manufacture of demand, via marketing and other related mechanisms, and anyone who's even passingly glanced into the marketing business knows what a ridiculous omission that is.
In short, yeah, fuck unrestrained capitalism. Any social philosophy that encourages self-interest as a primary virtue is crapshit. "The market" is not some inevitable force of nature; it's the combined turbulence of all of our avarice and apathy.
3
My first reaction when I saw "19,000,000" was "oh, that's how many Americans are unemployed right now. But no - that number would be much higher.
Obama: HOPE you've got enough CHANGE in your pocket to buy something to eat today.
Obama: HOPE you've got enough CHANGE in your pocket to buy something to eat today.
5
Millions of homes sit empty while millions of people remain homeless. The newspapers frame this as a tragedy not because of the human suffering involved, but because the glut of homes on the market might drive down the cost of housing from "astronomical, realizable only through a lifetime of debt" to "slightly less astronomical, but still realizable only through a lifetime of debt." In other words, it represents a tragic loss of potential income for the holders of Capital.
The wonders of the Free Market and its appointed spokespeople
The wonders of the Free Market and its appointed spokespeople
6
Wait, you mean that house prices might get depressed to the point where I could afford to buy one? What a catastrophe!
7
We aren't rational enough to make good decisions for ourselves, but give us the power to force our decisions on others and then you have a recipe for success! That's why so many Americans are flocking to Canada, Mexico and the EU, where it's more regulated.
8
5
Homelessness is not and never has been about a lack of housing.
It is about people who don't have the life skills to function in society.
Put them in a house and within a few months they will be messed up again.
Homelessness is not and never has been about a lack of housing.
It is about people who don't have the life skills to function in society.
Put them in a house and within a few months they will be messed up again.
9
It's funny though because our apartment in Kent decided to RAISE the rent from $770 to $820 a month which is crazy in this economy.
Anything for a penny though right?
Anything for a penny though right?
10
So F-ed up.
Amen @ 1, 5, and 6. Amen somewhat @ 8, although it shouldn't be that way.
Has anyone else heard about this program where they put up chronic homeless people in apartments, help them furnish it, *and* they don't have to stop drinking? I seriously think this sounds pretty awesome. It was on a PBS documentary once, forget the name of the program and the show.
Amen @ 1, 5, and 6. Amen somewhat @ 8, although it shouldn't be that way.
Has anyone else heard about this program where they put up chronic homeless people in apartments, help them furnish it, *and* they don't have to stop drinking? I seriously think this sounds pretty awesome. It was on a PBS documentary once, forget the name of the program and the show.
12
@6, I'm with you. I just can't get worked up about home prices falling, since they were artificially inflated to begin with.
13
"Has anyone else heard about this program where they put up chronic homeless people in apartments, help them furnish it, *and* they don't have to stop drinking?"
It's right here in town:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story…
"Morning Edition, July 19, 2006 · Bill Hobson is a homeless advocate in Seattle who runs a government program that one critic calls "bunks for drunks." It's a facility that offers a home for alcoholics in exchange for nothing. They can even continue drinking while living there. Renee Montagne speaks with Hobson about the logic behind the program."
Or read the story in the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/lo…
It's right here in town:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story…
"Morning Edition, July 19, 2006 · Bill Hobson is a homeless advocate in Seattle who runs a government program that one critic calls "bunks for drunks." It's a facility that offers a home for alcoholics in exchange for nothing. They can even continue drinking while living there. Renee Montagne speaks with Hobson about the logic behind the program."
Or read the story in the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/lo…
14
@2: I would go a step further and assert that there is simply too much information involved in the valuation of any particular asset for any human being to be able to accurately process it.
In other words, capitalism has always been a game of educated guesses, and as the system grows, so does the amount of information one needs to process. Crashes, I think, indicate that we've reached a point at which the amount of information necessary to make good bets is beyond the processing capacity of the average high-stakes player.
To be "rational" at this point in time means to either favor the kind of radical de-leveraging being pushed by anti-credit economists (which would result in a further drop in the overall per capita spending power in the US) or a massive federal investment in the economy (far, far beyond what has so far been authorized).
In other words, capitalism has always been a game of educated guesses, and as the system grows, so does the amount of information one needs to process. Crashes, I think, indicate that we've reached a point at which the amount of information necessary to make good bets is beyond the processing capacity of the average high-stakes player.
To be "rational" at this point in time means to either favor the kind of radical de-leveraging being pushed by anti-credit economists (which would result in a further drop in the overall per capita spending power in the US) or a massive federal investment in the economy (far, far beyond what has so far been authorized).
15
Housing is a basic human need, and it has been capitalized to the point of market implosion.
The homeless out there are not just the substance-addicted and mentally ill. There are families, young children - who by strict definition are not homeless, but are sleeping on relatives' couches and floors.
Years ago in the go-go "boom" of Seattle real estate, it did not seem to add up. House/condo prices required a six-figure family income, nice if your work is professional or in high tech. For the rest, "drive to qualify" was the mantra, meaning, if you were a teacher and your spouse was a fiirefighter, Marysville or Kent for you. Even still, houses 50 miles from Seattle were overpriced.
Don't give me the bullshit that it was a "low supply" issue. The matter of supply and demand has come from housing prices increasing so long as there are CRAZY LOANS to finance them.
If all loans were limited to 30 year fixed, vs. ridiculous ARMs or interest-only loans (the equivalent of renting your home from the bank), prices would have never gone up the way they did.
The homeless out there are not just the substance-addicted and mentally ill. There are families, young children - who by strict definition are not homeless, but are sleeping on relatives' couches and floors.
Years ago in the go-go "boom" of Seattle real estate, it did not seem to add up. House/condo prices required a six-figure family income, nice if your work is professional or in high tech. For the rest, "drive to qualify" was the mantra, meaning, if you were a teacher and your spouse was a fiirefighter, Marysville or Kent for you. Even still, houses 50 miles from Seattle were overpriced.
Don't give me the bullshit that it was a "low supply" issue. The matter of supply and demand has come from housing prices increasing so long as there are CRAZY LOANS to finance them.
If all loans were limited to 30 year fixed, vs. ridiculous ARMs or interest-only loans (the equivalent of renting your home from the bank), prices would have never gone up the way they did.
16
The root of the current economic crisis is that home prices became much greater than the homes were actually worth. Prices were artificially bid up in a classic bubble where price was set not by how much it cost to build the house or how much house the purchaser could afford but by the expectation that prices would go up forever. People made foolish greedy decisions based on that assumption. Until housing prices reflect the actual value of the house the economy will stay stuck.
The problem with the bailouts and stimulus plan is that they have wasted Billions (so far $1.5 Trillion, all of it borrowed, and we are not close to being done) without addressing that core problem.
The problem with Obama is not that he has not solved the mess yet, that will take time; but that he has not recognized what it is and targeted it. When he or his Treasury Sec speak on the topic it panics the shit out of Wall Street because they are obviously clueless to this point.
When Japan had a real estate bubble they would not bite the bullet and address the problem and their economy was stagnant for a decade. We so far are doing worse, we have not bitten the bullet and are burning thru Trillions wasted on non-solutions.
The problem with the bailouts and stimulus plan is that they have wasted Billions (so far $1.5 Trillion, all of it borrowed, and we are not close to being done) without addressing that core problem.
The problem with Obama is not that he has not solved the mess yet, that will take time; but that he has not recognized what it is and targeted it. When he or his Treasury Sec speak on the topic it panics the shit out of Wall Street because they are obviously clueless to this point.
When Japan had a real estate bubble they would not bite the bullet and address the problem and their economy was stagnant for a decade. We so far are doing worse, we have not bitten the bullet and are burning thru Trillions wasted on non-solutions.
17
@14 It might interest you to know that gay people DO serve in the military and that many more would serve if they could, asshole. Oh, and no doubt you voted for the real culprits who started a totally useless and unnecessary war in the first place. So that would make you at the very least as culpable. And I also doubt that someone like you volunteered to take that woman's place yourself, now, did you? I'm a Vietnam Era vet myself and I resent know it all turds like yourself.
19
@17: You identify my comment as the one to which you are responding, but I don't think I denied that gay people serve in the military, nor that more would if it weren't for asinine policies about disclosure. I assume you were talking to someone else?
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