It reminds me of businesses who want big contracts, shopping malls with a litany of policy crying for business, business start-up lecturing on the importance of revenue growth over revenue, and a hundred other examples of small-picture thinking. Unfortunately, we go to battle with the army we have. That is who we are.
Germany has relatively low levels of home ownership, isn't doing too badly. They're certainly not relying on house prices to increase or for house sales to pick up for their economy to grow.
You are basing your short term (micro) trading decisions on long term (macro) issues. A sure-fire recipe for disaster unless you have pockets as deep as the grand canyon. Give it up. You're done.
Good point. But hey, counterexamples mean nothing in the US. Logic and reasonable arguments plays a backseat to political correctness and obfuscation in general. People will just argue it away, the way they argued away when we compared health care in Canada and the rest of the world vs the US.
I don't really care where a thread goes, and either people misunderstood what I wrote, or this thread took a slight right turn. But my continued hope is that the human race is moving towards more freedom from the simple survival/competitive mode that dominates us today. Note I am not saying we need more leisure time necessarily. More quality time that is not work, or worse, survival work. If your job is interesting, then like the saying goes, "find work you love and you will never have to work another day in your life." That is what we should all strive towards. You know, maybe there is a wisdom to it all. Maybe we would go crazy if we didn't have to struggle constantly, our lives one big soap opera? Hmmmm, who knows?
the system kept US consumer reasonably healthy for many years because the economy depended heavily on the consumer. it was not in the best interests of big corporations to squeeze the little guy dry. the preferred strat was to milk the little dude slowly of a chunk of money he earned while allowing him to breeze and earn more. now that there is plenty of little fish in china and elsewhere, nobody cares about the financial health of the little guy in US. it is only natural that we see no jobs, high health insurance costs, etc. in US
I agree with you 100%. But people keep fighting for scraps. Is employment all we really want? Do we want to work at some menial job for $15/hr for 20 years? See, my point is that the whole notion of work is screwed up in peoples minds, because we have no choice but to survive, mostly due to rent! That is the great sadness. I see these brave people in Egypt, fighting for their freedom and democracy. What will they do with it? Will they coerce themselves to allow corporations to infiltrate their economy, with promises of riches beyond their dreams, only to fall into the same trap that the US is in now? Does anyone learn from history???!!!! Once you fall into the corporate trap, you become a number, a bottom line. You will be dehumanized. [BTW, working for a small corporation doesn't have this stigma. Small, is probably less than 200 employees.] Being "working poor" but working for yourself and being free and not reliant on corporate employment, in a democracy, is probably nirvana. I know you think I am crazy. Egypt, take the good of Democracy and Capitalism, block the bad with all your might! Remember, they will brainwash the children first. Look to Socialist Democracies and study them hard.
It has begun, in a quiet way: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/17/AR2011021705494.html I would never in a million years expect that it would start in WI. I thought almost certainly CA. It can never have real force without gigantic numbers. It has to play out with such huge numbers, that they would have to open up concentration camps in the dessert to detain so many people. The seams are slowly becoming undone. The shock value is about 1,000,000 x too little though, but that will change as the pain levels leave almost nothing to lose.