I doubt America is in permanent filter mode. The average life expectancy of a house in America is 130 years, whereas in Japan it’s 30 years… and much of what is in a house is salvageable- copper and brass, recyclable wiring, masonry- and biodegradable wood. The paint, roofing, and sometimes glass has got to go, as well as concrete, but the rest can be salvaged.
The baby boomer population has to be factored into the US economy, as well as it’s effects on the global economy. Prior to the recession, the elderly had money… and it was fixed in investments meant one day to become liquid… investments in houses… which for the most part was stupid as they thought a SMALLER generation after them would leap to buy up all their houses… half of which in many parts of the country are well into their life expectancy in the first place, having been built for immigrant or worker neighborhoods at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. The US is dealing with a unsavory INFLUX of too much housing in relationship to the community capable or even willing to buy these places. As more people die, the higher the quality of these places will be in relationship to the decreasing valuation of the cost. This is okay… it needs to be this way, as the sudden shift to suburbanization means younger households will have access to grandpa and grandma’s suburban baby making residence. It will also insure the relative flexibility of the ‘construction’ market in breaking down derelect and long abandoned residences and recycling it in new constructions, be it brand new houses or add ons to reflect the diversification of the assmerican lifestyle (ass intended in assmerican) in terms of habitation.
The sudden collapse of the economy in the states shouldn’t be a shock- they elected a socialist word-monger that sent off every warning signal flair to the economy for the people who have money- the old, to get their money out and hide it well, or else Obama will take it from them, and deny it’s use to them when they really need it. It’s a win-win scenario for them to sit on their money… they have it as backup if they need it, and they can use the socialized system pretending they don’t have it… but the socialized system is guaranteed to be bugged and low quality given the lack of doctors in the US and lack of international availability (export countries mass producing them already sent them to Europe and Canada and Australia).
Anyway- as the old kick it, which they will- all those hippies did was smoke and do drugs and eat bad foods… the money will free up or be lost (both good for the economy), much will be recycled and reentered around reproductive aged families. In a few generations- given the standardization of US architecture and lifestyle (both rich and poor have similar tastes- poor and rich woemn have purses- be it bought at Hermes as a Birkin or a cheap purse from a flea market, both have beds, have cars or tables, bathrooms and living rooms, etc) it will balance out for the needs of the young with a eye to the long term… family building materialistic lifestyle that characterized mid 20th century america. However, the longevity of houses and products will likely increase… the houses built in the last 50 years will last much longer than 130 years. Computers are digitilizing what people value, and are standardizing while expanding mediums of communication… we’ll see a lean towards a very different sort of consumer market more based on cultural and technological innovation than mass production of technology or materials for short term gains. I think within two generations we’ll actually see a sudden freeze up of people buying new products such as microwaves. Right now on craigslist in most cities in north america (yes, I’ve checked) you can find microwaves for 10 dollars, if not flat out free. As people upgrade, they are of higher quality- the hand me downs last longer and are less likely to be gotten so readily rid of. As the asian markets turn inwards to internal consumption, their quality on manufacture will increase. I see africa at the end of the 21st century being where the US is right now, with China being where the US will be continuously 30 years behind the curve until the country restructures it’s population to wealth again… which most chinese know is coming eventually.
The US market is shrinking. It’s not because they are trying less hard, but from disastrously imported ideological compromises designed for Europeans populations that were paracitical in sucking the lifeforce out of america in the first place. Norway’s soverign wealth fund is a perfect example. Does anyone here think the US can have a sovereign wealth fund like that too? No, that would lead to a mass inflation situation where the dollar would periodically clone itself to keep up with it’s own interest at a rate faster than it can clone itself. The US economy still to this day drives the export economies of china, the sogo shosha of Japan, and of export centric germany… and as a benefit to germany, unlike it’s local neighbors, the US can actually pay for it’s goods as it still has a functioning economy that survived Obama’s best efforts to destroy it.
Obvious knee jerk reactions from the american far left in slowing down the natural resettlement of wealth in america are counter productive. The reoccupy housing movement in America in threatening bank’s ownership of houses in threatened markets is a very good example. The banks now have to spend effort in making certain it’s books are backed by real and liquid ready assests… and having hippies threaten the ownership of those assests with stunts is a no go, the banks have to move in and spend a lot of effort reassering it’s right to the property, building wide ranging SOPs back up by the common law tradition. The houses will devalue on their own, to a point where they are affordable. Stealing them from a bank isn’t going to speed up the process, it will make them hostile and focused on retention and add costs to the overall pricetags and costs of future mortgages. The occupt wallstreet is another big mistake- threatening to destroy and redistribute wealth that will instantly disappear upon redistribution into meaningless paper money (can’t spend it if we can’t make or import goods because wallstreet was destroyed along with the manufacturing hubs and shipping companies) isn’t going to make the money holders want to take any real risks. They are in a similar case as the elderly, just hide their money, and wait and see. Unlike the elderly, they are potentially immortal (though most won’t last more than a few generations) but are very aware a fuck up now can bankrupt them and put them out of business. The left in America is it’s own enemy. It has no plan forward that has a chance to succeed.
The underlying issues facing New York City, San Francisco, Anchorage Alaska, and increasingly southern florida is the utter lack of buildable space. Manhattan is a island with only so many bridges and a road system already at it’s max capacity, San Francisco is a peninsula with two main bridges in it’s north and west providing access to open lands for building, but that’s already pushed hard in terms of inner city access and access to the dock areas- it’s cross bay subway system (bart) and bus systems to the far north and south is maxed out and metered per zone… the farther you are from the city core, the more it will cost to travel… but the cheaper lands are farther out. Factor in the city code for the county of san francisco, and you have a situation where new buildings can’t be erected higher than buildings on elevation HIGHER than that next to it for aesthetics in attracting tourist, it traps the higher ceiling for new construction as to the ultimate size new buildings can be, and therefor how many people can live inside of it. Poor people must make a decision of living in a pretty city in ever smaller living space, or live farther away from the core where they work… adding cost to their expenses and reducing their ability to enjoy their extra space. Add to this San Jose in the south expanding northward up the peninsula, and you have a population trapped in over regulated shitholes. Millionaire invested Sausalito immediately north and the redwood forests prevent northern expansion over the golden gate bridge, despite very ample land available, and sky rocketing costs in east bay and high costs of commuting even if by public transit keeps everyone locked to neighborhoods linked to BART, and then double trapped by imported liberal culture and threat of crime into building gated communities keeping the oakland population out of a otherwise also poor township, largely based on cultural, racial, and behavioral lines.
Anchorage Alaska is a far more pathetic case, it’s very high cost of living is moderated by the oil dividends, but this isn’t enough to explain why it costs 900 to 1000 dollars to live in a one room apartment in resource rich and wide open Alaska. It’s on a flat of land pent in by two military bases to the north, a mountain range (both federal and state) to the east, water to the south and west. Add to this huge sections are city parks to keep wildlife safe (apparently they have a shortage of moose and bear in the state, and must make habitat available in the city so they can migrate out and living in the adjoining parks in the mountain that stretch on to infinity)… parks mostly inhabited by hundreds of freezing homeless, and you immediately grasp it’s a landloard paradise. You own a apartment complex in Alaska, your set. The property tax is very low- has to be as the city land’s extend through and over the mountains and would make many rural dwellers bankrupt instantly… but tax is insanely high. Environmental terrorists from the southern provinces in america keep the population stuck in it’s expensive limbo. The homeless survival rate in Alaska is ten years. The city parks and state-federal lands can be pushed back a few hundred acres without appreciable loss of frontier. Only three highway systems link far flung and fuel expensive suburbs outside the city, and each is pent up in it’s own geographic isolation, most north of the bases with commutes in literally arctic conditions on poorly maintained highways with thick sheets of ice on them half the year.
You can’t have this problem in a city such as seattle or des moines or in other countries such as sydney or perth. Hong Kong is another situation. San Francisco infact modeled it’s transportation off of Hong Kong, in being the first to adopt the Octopus Card for mass transportation. All the buildable land is taken, the population is fenced off into progressive economic zones that is legally recognized and not like in America only economically and secretly enforced… if your card says you don’t belong there, you’ll get removed fast. Hong Kong, as the Aztecs before them, have been ‘reclaiming’ land by filling in the ocean to build on. San Francisco did this with the Naval base on treasure island in it’s base, the dutch didn’t quite fill in anything, but they used dykes to keep the waters out (dykes that slowed the earth’s rotation by 50,000th of a degree per rotation in prematurely stopping the tides). However, not a long term solution for san francisco, given it’s arid environment, and unwillingness to use enviromentally unfriendly desalinization, they use a very complex harbor water management system to ‘naturally’ desalinize sea water and reclaim usable water in the bay. The whole system is inherently off balance, and contradicting as fuck, and lobbyist fight for what will be protected one year from the next… and the back up lake and well systems fluctuate fairly wildly too. Hopefully the melting of the glaciers will just down the whole damn city and give planet earth a sign of relief. Their delta project is unnatural and unsustainable, and fluctuates widely. The wrong kind of naturally occurring bacteria starts to grow in the delta, and they all freak out.
Now, compare all this to say, Christchurch in New Zealand, where a nice room can be rented for USD170.00 a month over San Francisco for something similar at USD900.00 a month. The difference is population size, the Ekistics of ordering the society in terms of transportation and proximity to work, maintenance and flexibility of it’s transportation system, and most importantly, no one giving a fuck about New Zealand’s existence. There is no rush to manufacture there, they have excess but well educated population that emigrates everywhere keeping population growth down, and their industries are wisely regulated and they don’t have to spend much on defense… the symbol for the New Zealand Airforce is the Kiwi… a small, blind, flightless bird. Most aircraft carriers that would be potentially hostile to is, say a chinese one… would run out of fuel before getting within strike range. Only threat is a deep blue navy, and they are common wealth or American or Russian… and the Ruskies don’t give a fuck about New Zealand, and Australia and America and France owns all the fuel depots on it’s approach and a long line of defensive treaties to trip up any advance in their direction. This can’t possibly be the case with the US which MUST maintain a large military for self defense as well as ordering the international flow of goods. If it let’s down it’s guard for a second, zealots or ideologists from everywhere will attack it… this is it’s WW2 and Cold War Legacy of coming out on top, not so much for actual policies it choose to pursue, would of happened to the Soviets or the Axis had they won, and was the case for European colonialism (much to their annoyance) when they held international power… people who your not even aware of in countries you don’t hold are interested in taking a bite out of you. Only Andorra and San Marino and Palou is immune to this, and in the first two cases, it wasn’t always that case… they had to always play their neighbors off one another.
