Investment ?

From:

http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/05/ponzis-end.html

"how can people who make $20K a year afford $200K apartments that need another $100K in buildout? "

Sounds like the situation most of the middle class of the EU, JAPAN and a good part of the USA find themselves in doesn't it ? 20,000 dollars a year income, 200,000 dollars to buy a home or 1,000 dollars a month to rent. But if you go to Madrid or London or Rome, you are at about 300,000 dollars to buy a puny home and 2,000 dollars a month to rent. I think the situation in Tokyo and Moscow is even worse, but we all know that Real Estate and Property have become a great weapon to beat up people who have less income, a great way to distribute wealth from the poorer people to the richer, and also to let banks make a huge amount of money by forcing people to pay interests on large loans taken out to pay for high home prices and such.

"Therefore, I believe Kunstler is very vulnerable to the call of a cult with the trappings of the authoritarian, religioun based societies of "simpler" times. "

He is already inside a religious CULT: the Green, Tree Hugging, Environmentalist, Love Nature and Kill Consumerism cult that has infected most of the Western World. We have been living, starting from the 1960s on, a huge Nature Loving, Plastic and industry hating, Future and Science and Technology hating Religion and Ideology that wants the USA, EU and JAPAN to go back to a fairy tale past of living poor and with no creature comforts and such. Well, I hate that religion, it is killing our economy and the future, we should be doing the exact opposite: building trillions of Skyscrapers, Rockets to Mars, Highways, Nuclear Power Plants by the trillions, changing our Brain Style etc. etc. We need huge consumerism, we need to hate nature and simply use it as a tool for our purposes, be a Pig, be Greedy, show Nature that you are the Boss, beat it up like it deserves to be, we didn't choose this "Nature" or Matter to develop like this, some random blind forces of Natural Evolution gave us this quirky flukey design of carbon based material that has no higher status or value or metaphysical worth than any other material: just look at the planet Mars and how empty it is, a whole lot of Nothing, just the way I like it, it is bare, no Nature there, only Dead Rocks, the way Nature should really be, Dead, Empty, with No meanings or designs, especially no pain/pleasure circuits, or look at the center of Stars, what most of the material of the universe is organized as: a plasma of high energy particles, it is not a solid or a liquid or a gas, but a fourth state of Matter that we cannot relate to in any possible way, so cool, that is the way I like it, kill this Carbon Based world that sucks so much, etc.

On the Chinese Housing Bubble. Well they are building the homes as an "Investment", so they expect to be able to sell it to someone in the future at a "Higher Price": good luck with that, that didn't work out too well in the USA or Spain or JAPAN (that popped their bubble 20 years ago and still can't recover, go figure).

But it is the entire idea of "Investment" that is flawed, the idea of finding something stable, something secure, something sure etc. But nothing will ever be sure, security doesn't exist, nothing is an Investment really, it all depends on random forces and circumstances that occur for any old reason, so no matter how hard you try to create "security" to "protect your money", it will never be guaranteed, it can all fade away in a jiffy: you just need a war, an earthquake, an economic crisis and anything else. Housing and Real Estate is NOT AN INVESTMENT, and in the end neither is Cash, or Gold or Diamonds or anything else, it is all an Illusion, a false hope that things will be stable, a search for "Security" when security will never exist as life is defined exactly by all of its surprises and deep intrinsic, structural insecurities: but life is all about unstable and surprises, nay, the economy itself must constantly be unstable and changing and constantly killing all investments and certainty to function at all, since the economy is a fight and constant game changing hand of poker, since that is what creates the engine of economic activity, along with Inequality and all kinds of games with a Winner and a Loser, etc.

Anyways, the entire idea of "Investment" should be hosed, there is nothing worth investing in anymore, just invest in huge Consumption and trillions of empty Skyscrapers and trillions of Rockets to Mars and such.


On China:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=175880

"I was looking at some of China on google maps and photos and such. It is "beyond pale", as someone said, they are really building like there is only tomorrow! You can estimate how much excess real estate inventory they already have by a simple thought experiment: the USA has 300 million people, so just imagine to add four extra floors to all homes in the USA to host 1.5 billion. Now look at their towns and cities, most of their buildings have 4 or more floors, but also thousands upon thousands of various high rises, no way they can pull off the excuse of "population", it just doesn't hold, they simply have huge excess capacity with no end in sight."

and

"Maybe the Chinese government should start paying itself some serious property tax, can you imagine how much cash they could obtain by printing it and giving it to themselves in the form of property taxes and then flooding the world with their cash ? "

THE APE JOB

Author Profile Page 8man | May 29, 2012 4:47 AM | Reply

Or look at the center of Stars, what most of the material of the universe is organized as: a plasma of high energy particles, it is not a solid or a liquid or a gas, but a fourth state of Matter that we cannot relate to in any possible way, so cool, that is the way I like it, kill this Carbon Based world that sucks so much, etc.

Also from:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=175880

"I can't stand these Greens and Environmentalists and scaredy cats all afraid of manipulating the living daylights out of Nature, always finding something poisonous and bad in every process, you can't build atomic energy reactors, you can't build high speed trains, you can't do this or that and this or that. What c*cks! all in the name of Nature, this phony "False Religion" if I ever saw one (give us back the Catholics and the old Christ, or even the old Christian Fundamentalists with their hell and punishment and all, but please don't introduce yet another fake religion, another belief system, another set of crappy values). It is their fault we have the economic crisis, we should consume and build like there is no tomorrow, we should build trillions of Skyscrapers, Rockets to Mars, trillions of Malls, buy and throw away like crazy, every 3 years change all furniture and cars, wild crazy consumption, and hose nature, use nature until it no longer exists, since then we will use Mars, and the Sun itself, go on, do it, you can do it, go on."


THE EIGHT MAN