Monday, March 13, 2006

Paying for Other People's Lifestyles II

This fits in with our recent discussions on this and the Sonoma Housing Bubble blogs about living beyond our means. Check out this post over at the Housing Panic blog. We borrow money to "buy" a house, do a cash-out refi so we can buy stuff we cannot otherwise afford, someone else borrows more money and buys our house thereby rewarding us for a lifestyle we couldn't afford in the first place, and on it goes. Wages are practically stagnant. Job growth is pathetic (especially when you consider the quality of the jobs vs. the lost jobs they are replacing). Savings are negative. We're borrowing the money to buy the stuff we really cannot otherwise afford. Try this on for size if you are still skeptical (or this).

Is this really prosperity? How long can it continue or should it continue? When will the piper be paid and by whom? At some point people are going to be trapped by those million dollar mortgages that they will never be able to get out from under. It'll be like a "ball and chain" of debt and cash will be king (again).

Check out this graph:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hahahaha nice cartoon!

Spencer said...

I often wonder when I hear the numbers of new jobs created, what those jobs are. I mean, jobs may be being created, but they sure dont seem like good ones.

bubbletrack.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

I often wonder when I hear the numbers of new jobs created, what those jobs are. I mean, jobs may be being created, but they sure dont seem like good ones.

It doesn't matter if they replace a well-paid professional job that has been sent overseas with a job as a Wal-Mart greeter. They can still say, "Hey, we're creating jobs as fast as we're outsourcing them! Look at that economy recover! Whoo hoo!"

Athena said...

bubble tracker on the sonoma housing bubble it has an actual listings of the jobs lost and found at least for Sonoma County.

It is shocking. I believe the thread is take this job and shove it... in the archives

anyway- it shows what jobs were lost and the pay for those jobs... and what jobs were found and the pay for those jobs. Also- there is the number of tech jobs lost, and many of those were sent overseas.