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We never were. Thatās why your assumptions about my motivation rub me the wrong way. Whenever people assert opinion as fact I dig into it, and Iāve dug into these topics a lot over time. Iām no expert but I have a decent idea what BLS, us.gov, and census data have shown.
Like the question on home affordability. Sure some zip codes are out of reach for median income families, but home ownership in general isnāt. And I know that just from being a homeowner in a flyover state
Outside of states Iāve lived in, Iāve been in OR more than any other. 25 years ago when I was house shopping here, I was there for my grandfatherās funeral. Picked up a real estate guide and found I could buy nice homes on the coast for - again - about the same price as Warren, MI. Over the last couple decades housing in Warren has doubled while housing out there has quadrupled.
My cousin tells me that my nice ordinary ranch would go for $2M in San Diego where they live
Itās hard to compare all of it. As I mentioned earlier, infrastrucure costs have also multi-Xād over the last few decades so we have more real dollars but the core functions of government also cost more real dollars.
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Fair enough. I did not intend to cast aspersions on your character and I do apologize if it came off that way.
Itās fine
Iāve learned itās pretty typical on the internet for people to interpret disagreement as diametric opposition. Thatās often exactly what it is.
A recommendation I have for anyone is to be very careful using the word āyouā in a reply. Once done, the reply becomes about the person rather than the idea.
But @CuriousHusker you are an excellent poster and I wouldnāt stil be participating if I didnāt get something out of it.
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I just ignored it. Trying to get back to an on point discussion. Hoping people choose to go there. I like this topic. Already had to google some stuff to learn.
And if I am wrongā¦..
In before lock.
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Yes great topic. Not trying to go there either
But ignoring it obviously doesnāt make it stop either
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Underlying time frame and income assumptions, home ownership ,cars etc can be tweaked, but I saw this today and thought interesting and partly relevant to part of the discussion.
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We must have similar algorithms that popped up in my feed as well.
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Well I guess it comes down to the old saying itās who you know.
And of course:
Love thy neighbor as you love thyself
(gottta love yourself)
Live locally, force multipliers can make or break a community if they are good or bad.
Personally, Iāve wasted weeks/weekends of my life trying to do it on my own or figure it out.
By the time you watch all the videos, call for advice, but the wrong materials, get pissed off get drunkā¦
ā¦ it was cheaper to just pay someone who knows what they are doing in the first place.
Spend that time enjoying life or working at what youāre good at and make more money.
Spending that time on your craft is exponentially more beneficial.
I guess you learn something new & have an experience
But mehā¦ my experience says itās all about perspective.
As far as home ownership goes as an investment- itās probably one of the worst one you can make, strictly #s speaking.
Taking that down payment & investing in the market almost always beats the ROI.
But real estate is almost always an emotional buy
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The data is empirical that having children out of wedlock (which is a choice, except for rape) is a proverbial boat anchor to financial success. Which if you have that (financial success), you donāt need financial assistance. I stand by the belief supported by data, that poor decision making moreso than āmisfortune,ā or corporate greed, is the main dictator of financial success vs. needing assistance from others who made good decisions. Aesopās Ant and the Grasshopper is still valid in 2026. This is the lesson we should be teaching. Not Elon is greedy and keeps you from being successful.
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Care to elaborate? Consumption Tax is THE most fair way to tax. You ONLY pay in based on what you buy. Current tax system allows 40% not to pay in to Federal Income Tax. That is fact and wildly unfair. Meanwhile ALL crime transactions are in cash which doesnāt hit the tax stream federally. Only when they buy something do they pay State tax only. Consumption tax gets a piece from EVERYONE, including all visitors to this country that buy anything while here. Nothing moves the needle like SCALE. When you go from getting zero from 40 plus percent of this nation, to getting a little bit from themā¦. holy smokes will we have money for the truly poor. BTW Clint Eastwood was anti-Progressive Tax and was instead a Flat Tax advocateā¦. Just sayinā¦
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Iām not into using terms like āusuallyā when passing those sorts of judgments. It paints with a broad brush and lacks specifity. If you are going to present your argument as data driven then donāt hide behind terms like āusuallyā.
There is also a fallacy imbedded in your argument. I donāt have the data in front of me but I would imagine that there are significantly more out of wedlock families in cohorts of the populace plagued by property and extreme poverty. More often than not a foundation of financial success leads to further financial success. Similarly a foundation of poverty more often than not begets an impoverished future. Neither of those are written in stone but if one was to play the percentages that is where you would place your bets if you didnāt have intel on the particular individual.
I of course agree that decision making matters but so does oneās environment. I made a lot of crappy decisions in my youth. I was able to turn my life around bc of my friends and family and avenues that were available to me in large part bc I was a middle-upper middle class individual connected to people who had gotten ahead and were willing to help me turn things around. I had to work hard of course but Iām not going to delude myself into the belief that the same turnaround story would be plausible for a black kid in Brownsville Brooklyn. Thatās not to say he/she canāt make it out of the cycle of porverty but to pretend that their decision making is the only factor is ludicrous.
But it is just not RIGHT to do this. Donāt give me hey itās not a ānormal person.ā That is selling class envy which is straight out of the Marxist playbook. Because they have more does not make it more right to steal from them and taking 9 out of every 10 is effing wrong on every level there is. The country did not āexplodeā merely due to taxing the sheot out of the wealthy. There was a whole host of reasons, like 14% of our population having fought in WWII and coming home with a GI Bill and cheap housing. They started the Baby Boom. The economy also āexplodedā several times since then when we reduced taxes on the wealthy. When we didnāt have the level of people with zero shame and their hands out. Now welfare is a cottage industry and absolutely generational. Depending on what you believe to be true, we have been supporting upwards of 5-10M people who shouldnāt be here as they are not here legally. These are just the ones on assistance of some kind, not the full amount which is upwards of 20 plus million. So you canāt just look to the good ole days in a vacuum and not consider all the other financial cost drivers we have gotten ourselves into since the 50s.
I do agree left to their own devices, the quest for almighty profits will end badly. But those wagging their fingers at the evil corporations aināt hiring people and giving them 15K healthcare plans. Itās the Corporations that do that. For as terrible as the private sector does things, if you want to make it much worse, put Govt in charge and give them the power to take 9 out of every 10 dollars somebody (just not me right?) makes. What could go wrongā¦ Supply side economics is better in a free country than Eat the Rich. Because there isnāt a ton of those folks and when you create the Govt taking beast and set it loose, they never stop and say ok, well weāve cleaned out all the Billionaires and still need money, but weāve just got to stop hereā¦. NOPE!
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āTHE most fair?ā Care to define that. I think itās unfair to place ann additional tax burden onto families that can barely put food on the table.
Your preferred path is absurdly regressive. I donāt hate poor people. I am grateful for my good fortune and feel a personal responsibility to place my efforts in our electoral process pursuing a more just society.
What are you even trying to suggest here? Obviously extreme poverty begets crime. If you are frustrated with crime then policy pushing even more people into poverty and extreme poverty is a terrible idea.
Clint Eastwood is extremely conservative. Iām not sure what point are you even trying to make here.
The most significant argument for progressive taxation is fairness
While it has the added benefit of not excessively punishing people who are struggling, the wealthiest among us consume the most infrastructure and therefore should be taxed commensurately with that consumption.
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