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In Costly Bay Area, Even Six-Figure Salaries Are Considered 'Low Income' (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: In the high-priced Bay Area, even some households that bring in six figures a year can now be considered "low income." That's according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which recently released its 2017 income limits -- a threshold that determines who can qualify for affordable and subsidized housing programs such as Section 8 vouchers. San Francisco and San Mateo counties have the highest limits in the Bay Area -- and among the highest such numbers in the country. A family of four with an income of $105,350 per year is considered "low income." A $65,800 annual income is considered "very low" for a family the same size, and $39,500 is "extremely low." The median income for those areas is $115,300. Other Bay Area counties are not far behind. In Alameda and Contra Costa counties, $80,400 for a family of four is considered low income, while in Santa Clara County, $84,750 is the low-income threshold for a family of four.
move
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Well now that depends doesn't it? If you live in, for example, Tennessee, and you make $100,000 and can't get by - sure, you spend too much. If you live in San Francisco or probably say New York city and can't get by on $100,000 - yes, that is the way it works in high cost areas. In those areas, it is not poor choices (unless you call it the poor choice of being born there), it is high cost of living.
Which decision is that? Living in San Francisco? Having a low end job?
I'm all for personal responsibility, but do you have any idea what a simple 1200 SqFt home goes for in this place? If you make 100K you are not going to be making the mortgage payments on that small single family residence...
Personally, I'd move (and I did just that because used to live there), but I get that some folks don't feel as free to flee California and the liberal wasteland of absolutely Democratic controlled governments.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
When I was out of work for two years (2009-2010) and underemployed for six months (working 20 hours per month) in Silicon Valley, I couldn't qualify for food stamps because I made too much money (20 x $16 = $320) as a single adult. After I filed for Chapter Seven bankruptcy in 2011, I still didn't qualify for food stamps. You have to work 20 hours per month at minimum wage (~$160) to qualify for food stamps. I ate a lot of rice and beans during that time.
I'm quite comfortably making it in the Bay in the low six, but I have a unique deal on rent and live out in the burbs. Rents in the city are going for absurd amounts - a two bed apartment in the city rents for almost 4k/mo. Raising a family in the bay area is nearly unaffordable - the huge costs in rent and property trickle through to everything else. Childcare costs are colossal - there are few child care centers in the bay and all are hugely expensive because the people who work in the centers are themselves paying obscene rent.
If I were to buy a home here, I'd probably put about 65% of my take home income towards it each month. I could afford it and pay for all my other expenses, but there'd be nothing left to put into savings, so the only 'saving' I'm doing is building home equity. That's not 'poor' but not normally a financial situation associated with people making six digit salaries.
Half the homes in Santa Clara County are above $1m (and half are below that). If you are a single income household making around $100K, you will find it increasingly difficult to purchase an average home in Silicon Valley. The rents and home values in the rest of the Bay Area tend to follow along with the South Bay's increases.
For me, my below average home in Silicon Valley is preferable to a bigger home elsewhere. Weather is nice, lots of things I like to do nearby, and good job prospects.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Well, it could. I mean, the three letters agencies have spy planes don't they?
#DeleteFacebook
It will be good to buy when the bubble pops. Assuming it is a bubble and not your own wishful thinking.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Oh, you want to live in some of the most desirable real estate in the country, but you want to do it on a non-billionaire income? Sorry. You don't get to. Why on earth should the federal taxes of someone making $80k in Tennessee subsidize the housing of someone making $80k in SF? The first one doesn't get to live there; the second does. They're free to move any time they like if the housing situation is suboptimal.
Hey its cheap though you could buy a damn nice house here for what you pay in rent in the SF bay area.
Living in "Fly over country" does have its advantages.
What if its deserved condescension?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
make the H1B minwage $150K then
the poor choice is staying there when you can move somewhere else. I live just outside of NYC and I am moving down the charlotte, will make the same i am now with way less cost of living
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Doesn't really matter, as in another several decades all the coasties will be living in float-over country. They'll need the practice of turning up their noses.
$100,000/yr = $8333/mo. Lets say your rent is up there at $5500/mo, that still leaves you with $2833/mo to feed yourself, your spouse and your 2 children. The remainder of what you have to spend nearly $34,000 for the year to pay your bills, buy food and buy whatever other crap you need. A helleva lot of people don't even make that much and support a family of 4 on a single income and their salary hasn't yet even covered their housing expenses. The lower amounts they mention, I can agree with, considering current rent prices in SF. But $100,000+ per year? National prices aren't SF prices. Your money goes a helleva lot further on the internet than nearly everyone living outside of places like SF.
Here's an idea. Tell the NIMBYs to go suck a fat one and start building appropriate housing for the demand. Or people could wise up and stop giving a shit about living anywhere near SF.
It will be good to buy when the bubble pops. Assuming it is a bubble and not your own wishful thinking.
I'm waiting for rental prices to pop downward in Silicon Valley. My 50-year-old apartment complex is half-empty. The last time that happened was after the dot com bust (2001) and great recession (2009). A new apartment complex down the street opened Phase III of their development that isn't filling up and Phase II is schedule to open soon. New apartment buildings up and down the light rail lines are being built.
Have you ever thought how terrible of a statement "fly over country" is? Seriously stop and think for a minute about what that actually means, and what a really condescending statement it is.
Maybe the precious snowflakes in flyover country should learn that whole sticks and stones game.
...if I say, I do't give a fuck about San Francisco or the people that can' t make it on $100k salaries.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Do you really need to turn this into a rant about a 'liberal wasteland...'. San Francisco is expensive because people want to live there. Period. Democratic controlled governments have nothing to do with it other than either
1. contributing to the desirability of the places - whether you care to believe that or not.
or
2. being elected by the people who chose to live there for some other reason - which is more or less the same thing.
Now it's quite possible that the residents of San Francisco and New York are deluded about how desirable those cities are. And maybe they'd all be happier in the sun belt - though I doubt it.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
CA to MN. Halved my expense while exponentially upgrading my housing. And being fifteen minutes from Minneapolis is a hell of a lot more awesome than being fifteen minutes from Sacraghetto.
Wait, no, I mean, it's terrible here. Nothing but frozen tundra, all year round, as far as the eye can see. Don't move here.
(Are they... are they gone? Are our reasonably priced homes safe?)
I guess we'll just not have anyone serving us in any of our supermarkets or restaurants then.
It isn't a bubble. it is the full extent of the Reality Distortion Field. This is why people in Bay Area have a very distorted view of the rest of the country, you know, people in "fly over country" who are nothing but rubes and hicks. They won't move, because they can't fathom living on 75K a year, when they are virtually poor making $150K. They think 4000-5000 mo House Payments is "normal".
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
yeah, it really sucks the way people want to live in the places where their employment options are the greatest. What a bunch of entitled assholes
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
which will drive more people out and will make the housing market more affordable
I'm all for personal responsibility, but do you have any idea what a simple 1200 SqFt home goes for in this place?
In this overcrowded space, 1200 SqFt dedicated to your use is NOT simple, that is a Luxurious home that only the rich can afford. The price is high BECAUSE the demand is high. The simple answer is: Eventually the cost will be so high that you're financially justified in spending more $$$ on commuting, telecommuting, or working someplace else.
High demand and low available space EQUALS High Price or Exhaustion of supply. There's no getting around the fact that supply is limited........ If government tries to subsidize people with six-figure incomes, they'll just wind up raising the price even more, at least for the people with barely enough income that they no longer qualify for the subsidy.
The high price is how the markets respond to the shortage to tell you that you should move elsewhere, And
the high price that developers can charge for rents/sales also justifies developers consuming larger and larger amounts of resources to try to squeeze in more people, whereas, without that incentive there would be less total usable housing.
Yes. Exactly this. Supermarket worker wages will go up until someone is willing to work for the price or the wealthy won't get their groceries. If the wealthy want to pack together in one big city then let them pay the costs of it. Not someone from Tennessee.
The actual number is of little consequence most.
In most bay area locales, Section 8 housing is basically unavailable for new applicants. Wait lists are estimated to be greater than 8-10 years or simply closed to new applicants until further notice because of essentially unbounded wait times and basically zero new section 8 housing inventory.
AFAIKT, the increases of these income threshold numbers only serve to keep a small amount of existing people (the vanishingly small fraction of the 17,000 total served by section 8 with reasonable jobs near the limit) from being kicked out of Section 8 housing simply by getting cost of living raises at work and forced to fend on their own...
Basically, section 8 is totally broken in the bay area and is a non-factor in housing. This adjustment doesn't really do anything either way to change this...
To be fair though, san fran could do some things to lower the cost of housing, like allowing for larger apartment building to be built and such. I'm not a fan of this "democratic cities" bullshit either but in this case they are making some decisions that are in some ways making the situation worse. Not like it would be cheep overnight if they did things differently, but it might slow the growth rate of the average persons rent.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
yeah, but if you believe some of these idiots then renting and always moving is the way to go because you can put money away in retirement funds and be a gazillonaire when you retire
of course it will all be spent on rent in retirement, but that's cause these people are idiots
For the same reason as the SanFranciscans on high wages are subsidizing Tennessee's shitty economy. Remember - CA is a net contributor to the US economy, it takes out less from the tax pool than it puts in.
I know many of you think the year of remote work will coincide with the year of the Linux desktop, but I am getting the sense that companies are tired of paying for office space. When remote really does go mainstream what will happen to jobs and real estate in these areas?
love is just extroverted narcissism
It's not as much a condescending statement as it is concruisealtitude statement.
Ezekiel 23:20
California is one of those states that send more money to the Feds then they get back SOOOOO Tennessee dollars aren't going to California to subsidize those California people getting section 8 vouchers other Californians are doing the subsidizing.
San Francisco is expensive because a lot of tech companies decided to move there. I doubt they moved there because of California's governance but because it hit a critical mass of tech industry businesses and talent decades ago. For some reason every software company thinks it needs an office in that area.
I live in Kansas too I've seen some real nice houses in the $250k-$500k range with all sorts of things though my favorite had a private lake.
There's little culture, economy, or population to speak of.
Spoken like a true moron.
SF? Restaurants staffed by robot waiters and groceries delivered by Amazon drones. Gourmet, of course.
What if it's not condescension at all? I'm not all that familiar with US population densities but if a substantial population lives all the way to the east and another substantial population lives all the way to the west, a randomly picked flight is highly likely to fly over the middle.
Ezekiel 23:20
Look, 100k/4 = 25k = low salary. Not unusual at all. Similarly if you have 10 children, but only make 200k, your freakin' POOR.
The basic problem is our culture tries to measures wealth by income rather than net worth.
You can not compare the salary of a young, healthy, single orphan with a married couples supporting two sets of sick parents and multiple kids.
We need to reset our definition of wealth to be based on cash, stocks, mutual funds and real estate in the bank. This means the IRS should ignore your salary and base your taxes on what you own. Ignore the stuff in your IRA and give a set amount to ignore (just as we don't take the first 10k of income for a single person). Start it at 1% and gradually raise it to a max of 5% if you have more than a couple million in the bank.
If we did this, we could get rid of most of the complexity of the tax code, because it is all based on not overcharging the poor, which this system does automatically.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Wonderful national and state parks to spend the weekend
But do you have a wonderful telephone system? ;)
Ezekiel 23:20
You're right. While people do live in "flyover country", it pales in comparison to where the majority of Americans live.
http://www.citylab.com/design/...
Come to Illinois, but the rural areas.
Your neighbors will be Republican but the state votes to the Democrat side because of Chicago.
But don't move to Chicago, it's expensive there.
BlameBillCosby.com
Liberal or Conservative doesn't matter, many places put up barriers to more affordable housing, high rises and the like. The affluent like their views and large estates and will put up regulatory barriers to prevent the hoi pollio from moving into "their" neighborhoods. See Cape Cod residents fighting off shore wind generation because it will mess with their precious view or Gated Communities etc.
The Hamptons make it almost impossible for new construction due to minimum lot sizes and other methods to keep out affordable housing.
It's always a bubble.
you realize Tennessee takes in way more federal money than it pays out, and that California does exactly the opposite right? Like it or not these economic centers are the engine that keeps this country running. The tax dollars they pay go to supporting the people of Tennessee and other states.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Let me google that for you
https://wallethub.com/edu/stat...
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
A family of four with an income of $105,350 per year is considered "low income." A $65,800 annual income is considered "very low" for a family the same size, and $39,500 is "extremely low."
Making only $27,400 is considered "incredibly low". Whereas an income of $16,900 is "impossibly low". And for those making $8,500, their income is "super-duper low". $0 is right out.
If my post were a car, this sig would be its bumper-sticker.
Has there always been a large difference in salaries and cost of living in SF?
This gentrification map shows the underlying cause to rising prices:
http://www.urbandisplacement.o...
I live in the purple strip between San Jose/Sunnyvale. In the last 5 years, house prices (in that area) have gone up 30-50%. In my own neighborhood, 4 houses were demolished to the ground and completely new homes were built in their place (in the last 12 months). Most of these 'modest' homes sold for 1.5 million+. My guess is they would sell for 200-300k in less-demand-areas.
Because of our federal system, they have an outsized per person vote. Thus they cry a lot.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
NYC only became desirable after Giuliani cracked down on crime, littering, squeegee guys, and got rid of the red light district around times square. After that people started to move back into the city and rents soared even higher.
https://www.brickunderground.c...
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Why on earth should the federal taxes of someone making $80k in Tennessee subsidize the housing of someone making $80k in SF?
They shouldn't. The net flow of funding is from CA to TN, not the other way around. Nit picking the details is political, not economic.
Learn to love Alaska
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=net+tax+p...
Did you even try to look before your insane babbling? It was literally on the first link from the first search I tried.
Learn to love Alaska
If there is an offer to purchase the complex, then perhaps they are aiming to empty it out to some threshold (50%?) in order to evict the remaining tenants and renovate or demolish the building. You might be able to make an inquiry to see if anything has passed through planning, you might be looking at yet another mixed use upscale apartment-retail center like Santana Row, Rivermark, Homewood, Meridian at Midtown, etc.
I suspect a lot are condos being snatched up by foreign investors, yet are unoccupied. Which does smell of a bubble. My hope is that it's foreign investors that get soaked this time and not Bay Area locals.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
So in your misguided worldview, people who scrimp and save, research, and invest their earnings wisely should have to pay more taxes and be excluded from government assistance. While someone who earned exactly as much money but blew their income on parties, concerts, eating out, hookers, and blow should have to pay lower taxes and qualify more easily for government aid?
Net worth (wealth) is just the integral of income minus expenses (or if you prefer, income minus expenses is the first derivative of wealth). Income is the correct basis for determining taxation and qualification for government aid. How much wealth you accumulate depends not just on how much income you make, but also how much money you spend. As a result, any form of taxation based on wealth unfairly penalizes people who save their money instead of spending it unnecessarily. OTOH, taxation based on income treats everyone the same regardless of whether they spend their money wisely or foolishly.
Also, since wealth is the integral of income minus expenses, wealth is the accumulation of past income. So any attempt to tax wealth is an attempt to retroactively tax past income. Ex post facto laws are illegal under our Constitution.
If you want to tax rich people more, increase the tax rates on higher income. It's as simple as that.
Try to see through your biased view of politics. You are forgetting about earthquakes and liquefaction especially in California and especially in San Francisco which spatially limit development based on the ability of the ~ground~ to support the weight of buildings like large apartment complexes. Those weigh a lot. Falling buildings in dense urban areas are not just costly in damages but lethal to residents.
As a Michigander who moved to the Bay Area, I have to say it's all relative. And the Bay Area has multiple urban centers that I find way more pleasant than the ones I had access to in Michigan. And for living in the country, I would much rather have a small hillside vineyard or a forested mountain cabin here in California than most of the boggy swampland turned into farmland that I grew up with in Michigan.
That said, the fishing and hunting is way better in Michigan than California and I do miss it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This is what doesn't seem to enter into the discussions about basic income and national minimum wage laws. Perhaps I'm just reading the stoopid versions in the popular press, but it seems clear that proposals like a national (US) $15 minimum wage simply can't fly with cost of living disparities like this, without significant tailoring. A 'basic' income of $17K doesn't take you very far in Si Valley (or my adopted homeland of Portland, for that matter). At the very least, you'd need some kind of market basket tables similar to this, and even then note the terrific disparity between the two neighboring counties, with the obvious gaming of that system that the differences might promote.
If there is an offer to purchase the complex, then perhaps they are aiming to empty it out to some threshold (50%?) in order to evict the remaining tenants and renovate or demolish the building.
My 50-year-old apartment complex had three or four corporate owners in the last five or six years. Each one came in with the brilliant idea to redo the landscaping, slap a new coat of exterior paint, and charge "luxury" rental rate. The current corporate owner is actually renovating the apartments, as repeated landscaping and painting didn't work for the previous corporate owners. New residents are paying the same "luxury" rental rate that the brand new apartment complex down the street is charging. According to economic theory, an older apartment complex should be charging less rent to compete with a new apartment complex. That's not happening.
You might be able to make an inquiry to see if anything has passed through planning, you might be looking at yet another mixed use upscale apartment-retail center like Santana Row, Rivermark, Homewood, Meridian at Midtown, etc.
My apartment complex is down the street from but not directly on the light rail line. Old warehouses up and down the light rail lines are being torn down for mixed developments. Many of them already under construction.
A firefighter engineer makes about $110k-$140k base salary in Santa Clara County. With overtime and benefits, cities are reporting $220K for total compensation.
Now the other thing to remember is that the Bay Area has been a two income area for quite a long time, even in the 1980's many households were two income and nearly all younger households. And this trend goes back to the 1960's. It's nothing new that houses are more expensive here, but lately multiplication factor has gone up. It's not really a simple linear relationship, but as more people move here and more investment occurs here, the competition for homes becomes more heated and there is a bit of a feedback effect.
In contrast, middle America has been primarily single income households. And the market sets the price to what it can bear, it amuses me that it is mostly conservatives shaking their finger at the Bay Area when the situation we have here is created by the mostly unregulated free market for real-estate in California.
No matter what part of the country you buy your home in, the banks always come out on top. Don't own a home, own a bank.
Don't forget Cali is about to go bankrupt,
Lol? And I thought SFers smoked a lot of weed.
Or you know, people were born and raised and schooled and have all their family and friends and careers in a place and just would like to not be forced out of it. Like the 30 million or so people, 10% of Americans, who were born in California where the average income may be 20% higher but the average home price is 200% higher. Those tens of millions of people should all just move so far away it may as well be another country -- just like all the poor in the UK should all move to Russia where they can afford to live, right? Population sizes, areas, and distances there are all comparable to California vs midwest.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
According to economic theory, an older apartment complex should be charging less rent to compete with a new apartment complex. That's not happening.
Sometimes greedy investors are stupid, buy a complex for way too much, and eventually lose a lot of money. Their only way out is to find someone who has the same grand ideas, and pass the property off at cost and write the improvements off as a loss. Improvements cost them very little in the long run as they are depreciated on taxes, and can be written off as a loss at sale.
My apartment complex is down the street from but not directly on the light rail line. Old warehouses up and down the light rail lines are being torn down for mixed developments. Many of them already under construction.
That kind of mixed development has gotten really popular with city planners, so they are approved right away. We'll see more and more of this. We won't make much noise about it until they run out of warehouses and start rezoning and tearing down single family neighborhoods. But that's a long way away. Apartment complexes pay very little property tax per tenant relative to a single family home, and a commercial-industrial building pays less than any kind of residential. The city pulls in a ton more taxes with these new residential buildings.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Rent isn't the only thing that's inflated.
Google liquefaction - that is reality in San Francisco.
"In Costly Bay Area, Even Six-Figure Salaries Are Considered 'Low Income' "
And that's one key reason why I won't live there (among many, many other reasons).
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Then again, someone has to pay the exorbitant incomes the people on the coasts are making in the first place. Product prices, unless you're talking about housing, doesn't discriminate based on income level of the region you live in.
Why do those people living on the coasts make so much money? Well, likely because they're being paid vast amounts of money for some very simple thing they developed and got a patent on which now has no competition, leading to inflated prices.
Or... maybe they designed a product, that they've now outsourced the manufacturing of to a low wage nation, thereby ensuring revenue from product sales has a much harder time recirculating back into the overall economy... instead being used to buy up super expensive property which then inflates property prices. Meanwhile, those Tennessee manufacturing workers are out of a job.
Or... maybe they got rid of the workers altogether and everything's been automated, with a similar result as the outsourcing.
I mean, money doesn't grow on trees, and a lot of these wealthy people living on the coasts are only there because of practices that transfer wealth upwards at a rate that is unhealthy for our overall society.
The math is a little off...
In California you have:
$150k - (28% fed avg taxes, 9% state avg taxes) = 94,500 - (5000*12) = $34,500
In Oregon you have:
$75k - (25% fed avg taxes, 0% state tax) = 56,250 - (1000*12) = 44,250
The argument could very well be made that neither $34k in California or $44k in Oregon is "poor", but the point is that $75k in Oregon nets you more disposable income after tax then $150k does in California.
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
They subsidize the billionaires .
In my experience, God's faithful believers are happy in flyover country, and their primary political concerns are that they don't want their nice little corner of the world to turn into San Francisco or Detroit, and that they don't want to be taxed in order to pay for the lifestyles of the "hedonistic godless people" in those places.
For instance the coast guard isn't protecting Tennessee
I'm usually polite on Facebook, but this comment is inane.
If CA were a separate country and had to support their own Coast Guard, there would just be another national border along the California border with the US, and you'd be patrolling that instead. It is indeed in Tennessee's best interests to help pay for the cost of patrolling national borders.
But the main reason this comment is so stupid is that Tennessee also depends on the Coast Guard, as they operate on the Mississippi River and other large bodies of water. Even if they did not, all that shipping up the Mississippi comes from somewhere, and the bulk of it isn't from elsewhere in Tennessee.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
http://www.mercurynews.com/201...
It means that it's a place that I usually fly over to get to one of the two more civilized places in the US. There's really nothing in the middle of the US except for Chicago and a few sized-cities. There's little culture, economy, or population to speak of.
I grew up in flyover territory, but have lived on both coasts, as well as in Chicago.
The poster is correct. The mid-west is a barren landscape as far as culture goes. Even in the cities.
Don't forget Cali is about to go bankrupt, as is San Francisco. Just wait and see how "desirable" it is when it's in receivership. (Have a look at Detroit and how it died for how this goes down). It's going to get a lot worse and a lot more expensive before it gets better there. Was I the only one who saw the mass robbery on BART the last few days? Desirable? Not on your life. I'll visit and see the sights, but I'm not staying there.
Pretty clear you *want* this to be the case, but you couldn't be more wrong. CA is one of the largest economies in the *world*. Detroit died because the one and only industry behind it went in the crapper. The tech industry isn't quite in the same boat.
Was I the only one who saw the mass robbery on BART the last few days? Desirable? Not on your life. I'll visit and see the sights, but I'm not staying there.
OMFG you saw a news story about CRIME in San Francisco? Say it isn't so!
Go back to school. You don't understand how a nation functions. Or, hopefully, you are still just a young student so once you graduate then you may understand something. Come back then.
but you don't want to pay them enough to live where you do? You don't get to.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
this site. California's below $1 on the chart, meaning they pay more than they get back. That makes sense. Not a lot of natural disasters, not a lot of military bases, lots and lots of productive industries.
I rate your post 4 Pinocchios. Fake News.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Your the one that clearly doesn't understand the country really functions.
If California was forced to pay the real cost of the electricity and water it steals from other states, California would go bankrupt.
For the same reason as the SanFranciscans on high wages are subsidizing Tennessee's shitty economy. Remember - CA is a net contributor to the US economy, it takes out less from the tax pool than it puts in.
Consider how totally jacked up government is when you take that statement and combine it with California's state and local governments being heavily in debt.
I'd love to know how you calculate the "real" cost. LOL.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If you're poor you live and work where you're born. Moving is _expensive_ and risky. Unless you get a lucky break you're stuck and even then you better pray that job doesn't go away because you probably don't have the education & credentials to get another one like it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's not my fault! It cannot be done!
Look, I'm pretty sure that a couple of engineers could sit down and figure out how to make this work though an earthquake or two. But you do realize that liquefaction is only an issue in specific areas of San Francisco. But being able to build houses isn't the only issue here..
Have you seen the tax rates? Sales taxes are 8.5%, State Income taxes are (on 100K) another 9.3 % which is added to the federal taxes for Medicare, social security. Then, you still have to pay property taxes (1% of valuation), highway taxes (though fuel). By the time you get done, you've spent half of your paycheck and have nothing to show for it.
Other states don't have such oppressive tax rates... Both because it's cheaper to live and the tax rates are lower. For instance, Texas has an 8.25% sales tax, ZERO income tax and property taxes which are less for the same for the same home (I pay about 5K/year on my 200K house, which would be a million dollar home in SF area and cost you $10K in taxes). It's crazy!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
There are also a lot of things that Tennessee receives that are not "taken into account". What makes you think that this would work out in Tennessee's favor vs California? It would be one thing if you produced some numbers to back up your argument, but you are just speculating out loud.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Also consider how you are siphoning METRIC SHITLOADS of water from your neighbour states, the the point of it being unsustainable.
CA is in debt up to it's eyeballs, beyond it's ability to tax enough to stay solvent. It may be a big economic engine, but the state and local governments are running on fumes. Eventually bankruptcy will happen, and a whole bunch of folks in Cali will be left paying the price by loosing their retirements, government services and welfare programs they depend on..
I've seen the tax rates... I know why companies are leaving the state in droves, many heading to places like Texas (where I live). t may take awhile, but eventually the robbing Peter to pay Paul will have to end, and the already oppressive tax rates will have to go up, driving more folks away. The cycle is already in motion... I see the results here in Dallas.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Have you had a look at the state's budget deficit lately? The tax rates? Eventually the house of cards will come crashing down... Just the unfunded retirement liability for civil servants will do the state in....
Business is leaving the state in droves to escape the tax rates.... I know because many of these companies are moving to where I live, a state with low taxes and a budget surplus with money going into the "rainy day fund" the last 5 or so years.....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
What is the economic gain from agglomeration in your region? It is likely much less than in SF. That is the driver for businesses to co-locate in the same area especially related and often dependent ones which then saves costs for all parties. Taxes have a purpose in supporting the infrastructure required to allow increased concentrations within constraints from required sewage with both complex construction and increasing maintenance costs and even maintaining habitability with water availability and air clean enough to breath from policy decreasing traffic fumes , etc.
Sorry Jr. but you really need to learn some grammar, or at least how to use a spell-check, and how to proof-read your own writing. Secondary school is a minimum for literacy and understanding the labels on packages.
Try again, those pieces are called clauses and the word "and" is a joiner. Not everything is for kids to read.
I've seen the tax rates... I know why companies are leaving the state in droves, many heading to places like Texas (where I live).
You can keep repeating what your talk shows tell you, but that doesn't make it true.
a retirement savings account & a college savings plan for their kids. It's trivial to exclude those things. In face we don't. We tax homes to pay for schools so the wealthy don't have to pay for poor kid's schools. Meanwhile we have "State Trust" lands where the state holds land "in trust" so that wealthy land owners don't have to pay property taxes while they're waiting for land to become valuable.
When people say "Tax Wealth" they mean rental properties. Nobody likes rent seekers. Other rent seekers don't like rent seekers. We're trying to figure out how to reign them in.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So no moose bites? I still prefer Sweden, then.
Ezekiel 23:20
Not if you won't pay a delivery driver enough to deliver them.
Instead of saddling students with debt why doesn't the government void the debt the same way that it was done for the banks in the global financial crisis?
Seems to me crippling people with debt before they even start in life is a good way to really destroy the economic wealth of an entire generation.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Just fly over.
We have lots of godless people in the Midwest. Where I live, we have traffic jams, but they're five minutes long and only if you leave at exactly 5pm.
In a ten minute drive, I can get Thai (3) genuine Chinese (7), varieties of Mex (11), Turkish (2) Afghani (1), Indian (7), and much much more. A good house: $115K. A great house: $250K. House in the country with pond and woods for $350K.
Gigabit Ethernet in town. International airport 45min drive on a bad day. LGBTQ+ friendly. There are evangelicals, rednecks and others who, when they're sober, are fine people. The music is good, but not great, but not as expensive as the coasts.
The universities are rated very well, and aren't that expensive. Sports is ok, major teams within easy driving distance.
You're not going to get rich here rapidly. But you might have much less stress and be happy, hedonistic and godless-- or not.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Remember - CA is a net contributor to the US economy, it takes out less from the tax pool than it puts in.
A nit but "the economy" is not the same as "the federal government."
(Yet.)
Every state contributes to the economy. I'm pretty sure it's mathematically impossible for every state to receive more federal outlays than they contribute, even using Political Fuzzy Math.
If that were true, then the coastal states would be conservative and lobby for lower federal taxes and spending while fly over country would be liberal and lobby for higher federal taxes and spending. But it isn't true, which is also why you see the opposite ideological distribution.
You're welcome to try to scare up some data to support that ridiculous statement. But it is true that there are a significant number of federal jobs in Western states and the people who live there would like to get rid of them.
That's because smart retirees move to places with low cost of living and mainly live mainly off social security and leave their savings untouched. It's certainly what I'm planning on doing. That is hardly an indictment of those states.
San Francisco is expensive because people want to live there. Period. Democratic controlled governments have nothing to do with it other than either
Absolutely. I've lived in the south Bay Area for half my life. Most people I've talked to moved here or stay here for the weather, jobs, culture, and the like. I'm sure some people move here because they want to hang with other Progressives/Statists/Poor-At-Accounting. But that doesn't seem like a dominant reason.
Personally, I've always viewed the Democratic domination as a minus. Maybe that's just me. Having grown up in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, I didn't really notice much difference.
Water that is bought and paid for fairly. Those other states made poor decisions when they sold their water rights downstream to CA.
I have a better idea, instead of ballooning state governments well past their self sufficiency points with federal reserve funnymoney, how about they pay back what they owe and operate in the black like they should? I know, I know, balanced budgets are racist and sexist and colonialist and anti-science or something, but if we're expected to run our lives and businesses this way, so should governments.
For the same reason as the SanFranciscans on high wages are subsidizing Tennessee's shitty economy. Remember - CA is a net contributor to the US economy, it takes out less from the tax pool than it puts in.
Why treat all people in CA as a single unit? Every state has some rich people paying lots of tax, and many more poor people taking more in services than they pay in tax. CA is a magnet for rich people, and its high costs kick out the poor.
If the fact that a group of people pays more in taxes makes them better, then rich people are the best group of people and poor people are the worst. Is that really an argument you wish to make?
Midwest. Nice college town.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Got a job offer out there back in the late 90's for roughly triple what I was earning at the time.
But they I did a cost-of-living analysis.
After taxes and expenses I'd have been making more, but I'd have just about broken dead-even with ZERO savings.
Living paycheck to paycheck in the Bay Area? FUCK THAT!
Not to mention the fact that a million bucks can't even buy you a port-a-potty in the Bay Area today...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You cite all these oppressive taxes, and yet, people keep moving there, and getting rich.
Somehow, your world view that taxes are oppressive, and counter to being able to better yourself; and the reality that California is the home to many people who are being incredibly successful need to end up unified, and I'm struggling to see how.
Instead, could it simply be that said oppressive taxes aren't oppressive at all. Instead, they're supporting education, environment, health, and wealth.
You know... It might turn out that supporting people, and making sure that the group as a whole operates well actually improves conditions more than saying EVERYONE FOR THEMSELVES!
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... Pheasant...
I had pheasant once - it was revolting
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Not every cycle is a bubble. A boom followed by a crash is a bubble, but a boom followed by a slow reverse isn't. The housing crisis was a bubble because it was built on banker fraud. The increase in housing prices in the '80s was new plateau, with localized crash in Texas, from a "crisis" identical to the later global housing/lending crisis, just localized to Texas, centered around fraud related to land valuations. If the "crash" is a slowing of housing cost growth, then it was never a bubble.
housing *always* goes up. There are more people tomorrow than there were yesterday, so demand is going up, but there's no new land.
Learn to love Alaska
Why are you crying?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
the thing that stinks the most is that the AMT is absolute, not relative to cost-of-living.
An unpleasant pheasant? Do tell!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I for sure don't know where you get your numbers. I presume you've conflated the marginal rate and the effective rate of taxation. You seem to have forgotten that Oregon has a state income tax. Who knows how you rate sales taxes. Basically you seem to have simply made numbers up.
Nullius in verba
I have a hard time figuring out why companies insist on having their office in a place that requires them to pay salaries 4x the national average.
"Fly over country" is poor because being in the middle of nowhere leads to less economic activity
This is definitely true for physical goods that have high transportation costs. It's less true for virtual goods, such as most of the California exports.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Gold leaf can be made one atom thick and gold electroplating can do the same. The total volume of gold required to cover something tap sized at a thickness of one atom is pretty small.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No, he's right. To afford a standard of living comparable to what the same engineer would be able to afford elsewhere, he needs to make $500K/year. That's obviously not sustainable for his employer, which means that the rational thing to do is start moving jobs out of the bay area (which some companies have already started - Microsoft closed the bay area Microsoft Research site a year or two back, for example).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No you just don't like our culture. I thank you for staying away. Keep in mind if it gets worse there on the coasts y'all can move to Europe. They're very "enlightened" there as well and therefore they shouldn't have borders...
The wealthy want to live and work where there is nice real estate. In planning headquarters and million plus homes in nice locations, they continue to dictate what the market will bear. The poor will be more and more often priced out of locations with a good view, water front property, or anywhere centrally located. Washington DC is a perfect example of this type of gentrification. Some of the worst parts of the city were Potomac-side property and had easy access to downtown. It was only a matter of time before the poor got priced out of the same convenience that allowed them to work all the service and labor jobs downtown without a costly commute. This trend will continue until most places look like Silicon Valley, with low income service providers living in work colonies outside of the city.
On the flip, should we depopulate small rural towns that contribute nothing and pull down tons of subsidies?
Cheap storage VM.
You know that's in North Carolina, right?
Cheap storage VM.
Don't pay attention to this guy. I think he's some sort of astoturfer repeating bullshit so people will start to think it has a kernel of truth.
If he has a goatee, he might be from some alternate evil reality...
Cheap storage VM.
The word "and" is a conjunction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Just another day in Paradise
At 60+, it's exactly part of my personal retirement plan... Take the equity out of my house in a high cost of living area, move to one where I'll be able to buy the house outright, and pay less than half of my current property taxes for a similar home. I've already got an area identified (I'm less than 2 yrs away from doing this), with good healthcare, amenities, lower crime rate, etc., etc. The only downside is having to make new friends/neighbors.
Just another day in Paradise
I see, when arguments fail you and facts contradict your world view, you simply resort to ad hominems.
A nit, but he never said they were equivalent, he was tying the concept of good economy and shitty economy with taxes by that connecting phrase. Totally fine.
Have you had a look at the state's budget deficit lately? The tax rates?
Yes I have, according to the governor's office, the Proposed 2017-2018 budget will have a budget surplus of $2.5b. Much of that will go into the rainy day fund.
As for taxes, no I don't have a problem with them. I actually like my infrastructure and not having a broken down state. Now my local taxes, that's another matter.
Business is leaving the state in droves to escape the tax rates
And more are starting up to replace them; that's how it works. California's unemployment rate is 4.9%. A smidge higher than the national average, but hardly symptomatic of some mass exodus.
Your stating alternate facts. I've provided multiple citations and links and you spin them around and pretend they are the opposite of what they say.
Cheap storage VM.
You provided a bunch of links about white people doing bad things to black people, and then you conclude that those white people must have been "conservatives" because progressives and liberals would never do such things. What you have proven there is your ignorance of history and your bigotry, nothing more. The fact is that the progressive movement is primarily responsible for racism in the 20th century.
I've given you a couple of links where a Harvard-educated, highly respected black economist and political scientist explains to you how you are wrong. I suggest you read them and try to understand them instead of continuing to wallow in your ignorance.
Here is the link again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
There are tons of other sources you can read that make the same point.
I also provided links to white people hurting other white people or white people's property. Every time you see something you just swap it around and pretend the conservatives are on whatever side you support. Your either mentally deficient or just enjoy being obtuse.
Your trying to reframe things and act like I'm some sort of race baiter. Everybody agrees that race politics are bad, single issue voters are bad. "Almost" everyone agrees that minorities have been shit on and deserve a break.
Your premise was "conservatives don't riot". I posted examples of them doing exactly that and you just because it involves race you reject it or pretend it was progressives blocking the advance of society. Read the definition of conservative, if someone is trying to stop new things, they are conservative.
Cheap storage VM.
This discussion about riots started with your statement:
That is simply historically wrong. The rioters of the 1960's were overwhelmingly leftists and anarchists. Heck, I lived through that period!
I didn't say that either. What I actually said was "Conservatives are simply not involved in most riots.". That's a general historical observation that I made which merely makes your wrong assertion about the 1960's riots even more implausible. But regardless of whether conservatives riot more or less than leftists, it is crystal clear that the 1960's riots were not "conservatives trying to stop progressives from integrating", they were progressives and anarchists rebelling against the system.
I'm not defending conservatives. I don't even like conservatives or their ideology. What I am saying is that your statement that "The 1960's rioters were the conservatives trying to stop progressives from integrating." is wrong.
You then shifted the goalpost to 1920's lynchings and riots and blame "conservatives" for those. I just pointed out two things: first, that you provided no evidence that these were conservatives, and second, that it is far more likely that they were angry white working class people enraged by the racially divisive rhetoric at the time.
Not at all. I understand perfectly why you believe what you do; I used to hold pretty similar beliefs about conservatism, racism, race, and slavery. Obviously, those beliefs are common, otherwise 25% of the US wouldn't identify as progressives. Those beliefs are widely taught in government schools and promoted by an intellectual elite. But you ought to reflect on why 36% of the population are conservatives and 39% are independents; do you seriously think they/we are all dumb, uneducated racists?
I can't do more than point you in the right direction. To make it easy, start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Maybe a poor black Southerner is more convincing to you than a gay atheist immigrant, I don't know. He also provides tons of references in his books, and, of course, he lived through somewhat more of the history than I have.
The tax dollars they pay go to supporting the people of Tennessee and other states.
Not when Trump is through with the federal budget.
Having grown up in the People's Republic of Massachusetts...
Funny, I used to use that same phrase for Maryland.
Just another day in Paradise
As a Michigander who moved to the DC burbs 35 yrs ago, I agree. I love the MI outdoors, but would never move back w/o seeing some major improvements to the economy and infrastructure there.
Just another day in Paradise
Again, your twisting what I said. There were plenty of progressive rioters in the 60's, but the specific riots I'm talking about, where conservative. Here is an example:
http://www.npr.org/2012/10/01/...
Yes, I reached back even further to show conservative riots. My point was that riots are not a progressive or conservative phenomenon. We've seen alot of progressive riots because the conservatives held (hold) the legal power and framework of the state. As that changes, we'll see more conservatives rioting. Riots are the obvious end game when people feel powerless.
Cheap storage VM.
There's enough population to ensure we didn't have President Hillary! inflicted upon us.
Well, when certain multipliers are applied to make that population's votes worth more than the plurality that voted for Ms. Clinton, sure.
and people call bernie sanders a socialist. fucking satanic asshats. clearly society has a shitbar for living. the french, be-it their bread-jokes, and white flags waving from asses (murica) etc: they could teach YOU (us) a thing or two(even): Kill the aristocrats. lol, jk dont kill anything, but really- capital gains tax? wtf
You weren't talking about specific riots, you made a generic statement: "The 1960's rioters were the conservatives trying to stop progressives from integrating." Then you tried to support that (historically laughable) generic statement by cherry-picking your examples.
And this was in the context of a large discussion, namely my statement that there was no clear link between the plight of blacks today and 19th century slavery; in fact, blacks today tend to be poorer largely as a consequence of segregation, eugenics, and the destruction of the black family, all progressive policies.
No, you showed a few riots by whites against integration and desegregation, not by conservatives. Since segregation was a progressive policy, those whites were rioting for progressive causes, not conservative causes. Just look at the three great progressive presidents: Woodrow Wilson and the two Roosevelts. Wilson segregated the federal government, and all three were vile racists.
Well, much of the 20th century, progressives were in power in the US.
But, yes, that's typical: when progressives can't win at the ballot box, they riot. It's an explicit, deliberate part of left-wing politicial strategy manuals, from Marx to Alinsky.
Your confusing Democratic and Progressive. The two have only recently become conflated. Republicans were progressive for a long time and Democrats had many conservative trends. It wasn't until the Civil Rights Act that rascists seemed to all become Republican. There are records of many Democrats flipping parties to opppose the Civil Rights Act.
Integration and desegregation are progressive and have been since America was founded. If it is ever well founded for generations, there could be a "progressive" movement to segregate, but since the status quo is segregation, the progressive policy is integration and desegregation. The rioters opposing this were conservative, they were seeking to maintain the status quo, the same as the South in the Civil War. They lost at the Ballot box and went to violence and riots. It's not a progressive method, it's a human method.
It's also possible for people to mix progressive and conservative policies. Even Obama was conservative on many issues.
Your "statement that there was no clear link between the plight of blacks today and 19th century slavery; in fact, blacks today tend to be poorer largely as a consequence of segregation, eugenics, and the destruction of the black family" Is partially true, those policies of segregation, eugenics, and black family destruction are well documented and resulted from a mix of conservative and progressive policies. Many of the progressive policies were "modified" by vile rascists to facilitate this, similar to how the Republicans supported black in government jobs until Woodrow Wilson purged them.
Your also missing the clear policies enacted by local, state, and federal policy makers that prevented blacks from living in certain areas or taking certain jobs. Claiming none of this is related to slavery, is a falsehood.
There have never been any reparations for slavery. Slavery prevented generations of African's from handing down wealth and creating strong family bonds. Slavery and subsequent laws prevented black from getting educated, created rifts between house and field slaves. Slavery allowed the rape of black women and the created the inferiority complex of poor whites. All of these issues and more are deeply affecting our culture today. They've influenced how blacks and whites interact, contributed to racism, and allowed "progressives" to advocate the scientific inferiority of blacks.
Now that I see where you are misled, I apologize for my earlier frustration. It's easy for someone only familiar with today political climate to assume Democrats are Progressive and Republicans are Conservative in history books.
Cheap storage VM.
No, I'm not "confusing Democratic and progressive". When I say "progressive" I mean it. Progressivism in politics is an ideology that holds that government should intervene in society and people's lives based on science and reason in order to achieve progress. Progressives often can't conceive that others reject the idea that that is the function of government. Conservatives divide mainly into social conservatives and classical liberals. Social conservatives believe that government should impose traditional values, which in the US means protection of religious expression, self-reliance, small government, and free markets. Classical liberals roughly believe the same thing, though for different reasons.
It is true that after the 1960's, many racists became Republicans. But your interpretation of that, namely that there was some switcheroo between parties and progressivism/conservatism is wrong. The big change that happened in the 1960's was that Democrats changed from a progressivism based on blaming race to a progressivism based on blaming racism.
To the degree that one can formulate a kernel of a consistent ideology on race and liberty in the two parties and ideologies, it's probably the following. Republicans and conservatives are rooted in classical liberalism: free markets, small government, individual liberties. That means government should not make distinctions based on race: no segregation, no eugenics, no slavery, but also no reparations, no affirmative action, no anti-discrimination laws, and no ideological indoctrination. Progressives and Democrats believe that government should promote progress by intervening in society, and at the beginning of the 20th century that meant segregation and eugenics, and at the beginning of the 21st century, that means affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, government handouts and redistribution, and teaching people what they ought to believe.
Obviously, that made the post-1960's Democrats unattractive to people holding racist beliefs and attractive to minorities looking for government support, but so what? Classical liberalism doesn't become immoral suddenly because progressives decide in the 1960's that they want to flip from being racists statists to being anti-racist statists. The error of progressives is statism, not the particular issue-du-jour they mobilize the state for.
And who should pay reparations and to who? The vast majority of whites in America are related to people who either fought against slavery or immigrated after slavery. There were many black slave holders, and many black slave traders. The single identifiable group of people with close family relations to slave holders is blacks themselves. And where are you going to draw the line? Are you going to make octoroons pay reparations to quadroons? Furthermore, massive amounts of money have already been transferred from whites to blacks over the last century; when does it stop?
I'm an immigrant and my parents started off dirt poor; you don't need generations of inherited wealth to succeed. Inherited wealth (like welfare) alleviates poverty in the short term, but it actually prevents people from developing the kind of skills they need to succeed. Hence, the old observation "from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations".
As for family bonds, black single parenthood started rising sharply after the Civil Rights Act, the 1960's Counterculture, and the massive expansion of the welfare state in the 1960's; in 1960, it was about 20%, in
Come on, you know Sowell is a Libertarian hack with a background in "economics", which is barely a science.
Here is the definition of "progressive": a person advocating or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas.
There may be a sordid history of progressives and eugenics, but the current progressive movement is not the same. The current conservative movement is the one with problems. The progressives who advocated Eugenics and the other stuff your talking about are not the same as the ones advocating for desegregation, it's an apples and oranges comparison.
Your going into this thing with an agenda your trying to validate. Generational wealth may not be necessary, but generational help is certainly necessary. All the things your parents and grand parents gave you helped you. When your sold away or your parents are imprisoned, this disappears.
I'm not going to debate progressive or conservative policies. My only point was that conservatives riot. We just have to go further back to find a time when they felt disenfranchised, but we're probably going to get there again in my lifetime.
Pick up some real history, for economic history, try Only Yesterday, by Frederick Lewis Allen.
Cheap storage VM.
And you know what? That's just what Sowell says! There is little rational basis for progressive economic or social policies because economics and social science are barely sciences. Yet, progressives and leftists justify massive redistribution and massive interference in the economy with economics and social science, which is why their ideologies make so little sense. You still haven't read him, have you?
Yes, it's wonderful that progressives have given up on eugenics, segregation, forced sterilizations, camps and all that. Unfortunately, their new project, namely social justice and reducing inequality seems to still very harmful.
That's a nice theory, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny, since single parenthood didn't become prevalent among blacks until the late 1960's, generations after the end of slavery. Incarceration rates among blacks also shot up in the mid-70's after half a century of stability and long after the end of slavery. Giving the timing and history of these social ills, they are clearly not in any way due to slavery, but due to progressive social policies in the 1960's.
No, that wasn't "your only point". You made the ridiculous claim that (I am quoting) "The 1960's rioters were the conservatives trying to stop progressives from integrating" and tried to defend the indefensible in various ways.
Unlikely. The left postulates this long litany of rights: right to education, right to healthcare, right to economic equality, right to welfare, right to housing, etc. All of these amount to extracting stuff from their fellow human beings through the coercive power of the state. Any political resistance to those "rights" is considered "disenfranchisement", the taking away of rights, by the left.
Conservatives and libertarians can't be disenfranchised that way because we don't believe in these rights in the first place. And the few rights we do believe in are pretty tough to take away. Furthermore, if the state takes too much of our property, we do one of a few things: organize politically, leave the country, or stop producing and take the free crap the government hands out until it collapses under its own weight. I've done all of those, no riots needed.
In any case, I don't see a big comeback for the left or for progressives. Without the migration of third world peasants into the country, the left would already be history in the US, which is why Democrats are so desperate to push that. In the unlikely event that the left were to make a comeback in the US, we'd follow in Venezuela's footsteps, see a massive exodus of smart and productive people from the US, and become irrelevant as a nation.
We'll have to agree to disagree, maybe someday you will expand as a person, there's just too much work for me to do to be responsible for educating you, you win, if you wanted to win continued ignorance.
Cheap storage VM.
Look, I used to be a progressive myself, I know all the arguments you're making. Sowell used to be a Marxist. Many other people start out as leftist and abandon those beliefs as they grow up and understand the world better. I'm afraid it's you who remains ignorant and, sadly, rather bigoted as well.
Spoken like a true "Libertarian" which I used to be, but outgrew.
Cheap storage VM.
I'm sure you superficially "believed in" libertarianism; many young people like the anarchy and rebelliousness of it. But based on what you have said, you didn't understand libertarianism any better than you understand progressivism or history. I'm sorry, but you simply need to read up a lot more on history and work on your arguments.
It's clear your operating in some sort of reality distortion field. That's fine, but don't try to pretend you understand anything. Looks like Slashdot will have to shut this thread down, because every comment I make prevents you from commenting one other place to spread your disinformation. You've listed one information source you find dear, pray tell who other then Sowell you've listened to or read? What is the last book you read? I'll start:
conservative voices I listen to:
Dave Ramsey
My priest
My Mother WIBC Greg Garrison
Chicks on the Right
Rush Limbough (early Rush)
I read Fox News, but avoid watching it.
All of these people say alot of things that are just wrong, but they illustrate the talking points that are circulating. I also read plenty of online discussions and live in a conservative area, so I know what's going on. Your points are clearly conservative FUD, they are designed to undermine, not help in any way. You think I'm someone who doesn't understand your methods.
I also listen to plenty of "progressive voices" and read information from a progressive viewpoint, although there is no overarching progressive voice, like Fox News.
Cheap storage VM.
I read several books a week. And I have given you other books and authors to look at: von Mises, Hayek, Nozick, Friedman, Rothbard, Bastiat. I also experienced socialist and social welfare states first hand, and my parents (barely) lived through fascism.
As I was saying, I tried to keep it simple for you.
Well, I certainly understand your methods because they are so typical: it's second-hand left-wing propaganda, full of name calling, goal post shifting, and simple falsehoods, a mix of modern progressive political messaging, Frankfurt school ideology, and echoes of Soviet/Russian disinformation. Of course, as is typical too, you don't even quite know what you're doing.
You sound a lot like Sebastian Gorka. Wall of citations that don't actually say what your claiming they say, attempts to put me on the defensive by accusations of name calling and prejudice, loosely correlated personal stories that you didn't actually experience.
I can play too.
My Grandfather fled Mexico to avoid being swept up in a minor revolution. He worked all his life as a migrant worker and took advantage of the social safety net to let his children do better. He never spoke English, but public schooling allowed his children to integrate.
Cheap storage VM.