The Housing Bubble

“We cut our sq ft in half.”

Very wise! Too bad my in laws went the other direction (bought a supersized prestige home on the hill once they finally had all the kids out of their hair).

Now that they are getting closer to the point of slowing down, the decision looks increasingly questionable.

Goldman Sux….. yeah… Their street cred is that of NARscum.

This could slow down housing higher taxes

“Now our elected officials are going to tell us in the name of tax simplification they’re going to further reduce the value of our housing by 10% to 15% right as we’re about to retire?” Howard said. “When you make that kind of case to lawmakers, you should see their eyes widen.”

But a lot of that concern is based on the misconception that the deduction is a boon for average Americans, critics said.

“This is a sacred cow to the real estate industry, and it’s almost an entitlement to homeowners,” said Anthony Sanders, a real estate finance professor at George Mason University. “They could cut it in half and it would not harm a lot of middle-income households.”

An analysis by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation found that 78% of the $83 billion in mortgage interest deductions in 2010 went to households with income of more than $100,000. Households with incomes of more than $200,000 got 35% of the benefit.

Wealthier people own more expensive houses and have more interest to deduct. And because their income is taxed at a higher rate, the benefit of the deduction is greater.

The average savings from the mortgage interest deduction was $2,454 in 2010. But for households making more than $200,000, it was $6,370.

In addition, people in high-cost areas benefit the most from the deduction. A 2001 study found that three metropolitan areas — Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York — combined to receive more than 75% of the deduction’s benefit.

“When you turn the light on and see what’s really under the bed, I don’t think there’s really much there,” said Glenn Kelman, chief executive of online real estate company Redfin, which is based in Seattle.

“When you turn the light on and see what’s really under the bed, I don’t think there’s really much there,” said Glenn Kelman, chief executive of online real estate company Redfin, which is based in Seattle.

Good thing I just cleaned the house on Thanksgiving. I’d hate to see what’s under the bed if I hadn’t.

Lovely high desert area, charming little town, and I knew immediately there was no way I could live there.
YUP! My thoughts exactly.

What a bunch of crapanzano!

I have to bookmark that one in my memory…

Ain’t that the truth. As outrageous as I think my property taxes are on the little ranch house we have lived in for 23 years, the taxes on smaller and/or cheaper homes for sale in the area are invariably higher.

BTW, if I was going to move to a small isolated town, it would be Ouray, Colorado. I think it is cool sharing the town with the bears, bighorn sheep and deer. One downside you have to keep your dogs on a leash in the town since even during the day,deer are everywhere and sheep can be seen occasionally on the road.

Silverton can be even more isolated. Some years ago we drove the Million Dollar Highway from Durango, through Silverton/ all the way to Ouray (and beyond). From what I read Silverton is one lonely place in the winter.

http://ourayicepark.com/ice-festival/

a-dan, she was too stupid to look up the nearest ocean, how would she anticipate future water rights. There has to be something we don’t know…. maybe some re-al-tor whispered in her ear?

That is a great road, but yes Silverton might be considered even more isolated despite the “train” service part of the year. The narrow gauge train is a great sight. Have you ever hiked over the mountains between Ouray and Telluride? I want to do that some day.

Have you ever hiked over the mountains between Ouray and Telluride? I want to do that some day.

Afraid not. I imagine it’s a great hike. Just the drive along the road was gorgeous, though we needed a brake job when we got home.

between Ouray and Telluride

We summited 14er Mt Sneffels in June:

http://www.summitpost.org/mount-sneffels/150272

And 13er Vermilion Peak this October:

http://www.summitpost.org/vermilion-peak/152743

The hike up to Ice Lakes basin near Silverton is highly recommended.

Heh, small world, we’re actually renting a house in Kanab for spring break next year. Lovely part of the country but even me (outdoorsy guy-stuck in Chicago) would last about 2 weeks living there. Of note, much cheaper to rent there than last year when we went to Moab (literally 1/2 price for same type house).

Goon, those peaks are gorgeous. I’ve done all my Colorado hiking in the Rocky Mountain Park area but it seems I have a lot more places to see and hike in this lifetime.

Riverside slide…ouray county….great song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW1CKRnsUF8

I drove the Ophir Pass road this past summer. Once I started I could not back out; scared the bejesus out of me! This area of Colorado is awesome.

Oxy - boyoboy. When you are on your game, you are REALLY on. That was sidesplitting-funny, thanks for the laugh.

I envision a new yorky type with a Joisey accent, demanding her rights and complaining loudly about home delivery soivice. In Kanab. Amongst the Mormons.

It must have been true love.

She couldn’t have chosen a WORSE place to live.

Might make a good sit-com, though.

Median income: $35K

Town has 2006 statement advocating Full Quiver

I’m guessing that you see a LOT of SNAP cards at the local grocery stores.

a LOT of SNAP cards

Not true. Only black and brown people (who voted for Obama) get SNAP cards. We read that in a story linked from the Drudge Report

House prices detached from median incomes some time ago. Even in the hardest hit areas, prices are still out of line with what people can afford. Families bringing home $40k per year are expected to afford $150k houses. Speculators from afar think $150k houses are the cheapest thing ever, and they buy them by the dozen. Not sure when it will all work out, but I may be dead by that time. I’m in my early 40’s.

Older people seem to hate snow. And there doesn’t seem to be anywhere warm and cheap with jobs. Older people don’t need jobs, but their extended family does.

“Cheap with jobs” is an oxymoron. It’s part of the whole “raise prices to what the market will bear” meme that I’ve been flogging. If there are jobs, then the market can bear price hikes, because… there are jobs.

I’ve got cheap with good job. But I had to buck social norms and put up with a few inconveniences to avoid spending every available dollar on shelter.

Old people + ice = broken hips.
Broke hips + high cost of living = poor medical care.
Poor medical care + old people = dead by December.

My mother-in-law broke her hip when she slipped and fell on a polished floor at a funeral home. In Florida. Old people can break a hip pretty much anywhere.

That’s true, but I know how often my grandma fell in Wisconsin and how often she’s fell in AZ, and the numbers dropped significantly and stopped clustering around winter time.

My mother broke her hip and wrist this past February. Crumbling walk in front of the house, which was fixed this fall. That walk was scary to me while I was back there in February/March. And, wouldn’t you know it, weather was too cold to fix it then.

Any-hoo, Mom made a fine recovery. And, for that, I am grateful.

Lots of small towns out here on the Plains dominated by long time Catholic/Lutheran churches.

Good luck moving into them, unless you are related to someone. Even then, you’ll be under observation/scrutiny 24/7/365.

My brother had a solution. Moon them. To file a complaint, they would have to admit to spying on you.

You’ve got to be kidding. I live in Catholic & Lutheran Land, and I find it hard to believe any of them give a rip. Sounds like paranoia to me.

spying on you

The difference is, the Catholics are making sure you are drinking.

Lutherans drink too.

Lutherans drink too.

Yeah, but not enough.

I meant the difference with the LDS spies, though.

I just queried my wife (half-asleep on the couch) for the correct (local) pronunciation of Tooele.

It’s “toowilla” (not “toowillow,” as my failing mind thought earlier in the day)…

“Lots of small towns out here on the Plains dominated by long time Catholic/Lutheran churches.”

You are talking about my roots, brother. Both mom and dad grew up in small Lutheran towns (under 400 population) in flyover country.

The advantage was an incredibly tight-knit, mutually supportive, self-sustaining society. During GD1, they had no cash, and had to be extremely resourceful (e.g. “flour-sack drawers” = underwear made out of those large burlap bags in which flour is sold), but they had farmland and livestock, and they could throw a barn-raising party as needed to build a structure. Despite the lack of cash flow, they had pretty much everything they needed to survive within the confines of their small community.

The disadvantages?

1) If you weren’t a Lutheran, you were a highly-suspect, economically ostracized nobody. (Hence everyone in town was a Lutheran.)

2) Entertainment was rounding up the neighborhood gang for a game of baseball (not all bad here — for instance, my uncle managed to get himself a contract offer from the St Louis Browns at the age of 17).

3) There were three career paths (for men, only): Farming, teaching school or leading the church. And picking doors number two or three meant moving away, as there was only one school teacher (K-8) and one pastor for the town’s only church congregation. Women had only one career path: Running the household, which entailed multitasking over cooking, cleaning, tending the garden (if there was one), having babies and caring for children, getting together with the other ladies for quilting, canning or pickling fruits and vegetables for the cold months, etc etc etc.

4) Everyone had to instantly switch from German to English as their sole mode of communication during WWII, in order to avoid the fate of Japanese U.S. citizens (interment camps). Luckily for the Germans, they blended in perfectly well with other Midwest descendants of white European ancestors.

In light of all of the above, I am way impressed with my maternal grandmother, who somehow survived life in this milieu despite her early training as a concert pianist and her college degree in Latin from Washington University. I couldn’t have done it…

“Lutherans drink too.”

Bad Lutherans drive other Lutherans to drink.

True story: One of my uncles smuggled beer into his private preparatory school for entering the Lutheran ministry and got caught. He entered some kind of terrestrial purgatory as a punishment, but survived to enter the seminary and become a pastor.

P.S. Mormons drive Lutherans to drink, too. I know, because I live with a bunch of Mormons, and I am drinking and typing this very moment.

Tooele has a “suburb” called Stansbury Park, which where my wife lived with her parents (her dad was a mining engineer). Stansbury became a near ghost town in the 1980’s. Even the streets were crumbling. We passed through in the late 1990’s. I didn’t recognize the place. All the empty lots were gone and were full of McMansions. The golf club was spruced up. I can only imagine how the bubble further changed the place.

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

Adam Smith

“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. ”

Adam Smith

Yes, well, we have people in this country who demand a rent just for existing.

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

Smith’s point is that the original purpose of governmentwas to protect those with property from those without. People like Jefferson agreed with this, and sought to establish a commonwealth of property owners, all of whom would have an interest in maintaining the state.

I often think of this when I hear people say we should be a nation of renters, ready to fly at moment’s notice to the next job site anywhere in the country.

who demand a rent just for existing

That’s what “to each according to his needs” means.

http://obamaphone.net/how-do-i-get-an-obama-phone

“…who demand a rent just for existing.”

They are the 47 percent!

“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”

Our boy Adam Smith again.

“…love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”

Fawkin’ equity locusts…

those who have paid for property should be defended against those who would take it. most would not try to take it, but the few who would, must be defended against.

without that simple principle, a civil society would collapse into tribalism or worse.

nah - how do you think national socialists or obamas come to power?

It will all collapse eventually. It always does.

Now pay your fair share.

those who have paid for property should be defended against those who would take it

The key is to have enough fellow property owners to have numerical superiority over the those who do not own property. This will result in a society that naturally values private property rights, and force will rarely have to be used in their protection.

alpha, that is precisely what we have now. The defense is called HARP and HAMP and FHA 3.5% and all the rest. There are enough fellow property owners who want to keep house prices high that they can elect officials who promise to keep house prices high. That prevents those who would “take” the property at a lower price, from taking the property. Except for the odd eviction in the papers, there has been very little force.

I often think of this when I hear people say we should be a nation of renters, ready to fly at moment’s notice to the next job site anywhere in the country.

I think this is the plan. Whether is was from the start of the bubble is grist for the conspiracy theorists, but the top 1-5% buying up as much as possible in order to rent it out to everyone else is the plan now.

Whether it will pan out is another story.

Big Money Bets on a Housing Rebound

As the foreclosure crisis grinds on, knowledgeable, cash-rich investors are doing something that still gives many ordinary Americans pause: they are leaping headlong into the housing market. And not just into tricky mortgage investments, collateralized this or securitized that, but actual houses.

Two Harbors now plans to spin off Silver Bay into a separately traded public REIT. The new company will combine Silver Bay’s portfolio with Provident Real Estate Advisors’ 880-property portfolio. Silver Bay will focus on homes in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada, states where prices fell hard when the bottom dropped out.

The key is to have enough fellow property owners to have numerical superiority over the those who do not own property.

no, that’s just ‘might makes right’. the key is understanding that society has a responsibility to protect all people against theft.

This will result in a society that naturally values private property rights, and force will rarely have to be used in their protection.

no, it would result in a society that does whatever it thinks it can get away with. which is precisely the direction we’re moving in. in society we need honor and standard morality. moral relativism is killing us.

‘Two Harbors now plans to spin off Silver Bay into a separately traded public REIT’

These funds all plan to sell, either right away or in a few years. All of them; sound familiar?

I have been getting proposals to do contract work for and around these guys. They are at baby steps. They don’t even know exactly how to go about this and are cold calling people like me to do the various jobs. I can tell from their applications and such that they don’t really know what to expect. There’s no proven model, no economies of scale, and they all have the same exit plan.

Since we are going back into another housing bubble and the government is NEVER going to stop pumping housing up, up and up.

Maybe this is a way to make a buck off of it by investing in TWO (Two Harbors).

————————

In January, Two Harbors branched out into buying actual homes and placed them in a unit called Silver Bay. It offered few details at the time, leaving analysts guessing about where it was headed.

Two Harbors now plans to spin off Silver Bay into a separately traded public REIT. The new company will combine Silver Bay’s portfolio with Provident Real Estate Advisors’ 880-property portfolio. Silver Bay will focus on homes in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada, states where prices fell hard when the bottom dropped out.

That’s definitely investing in #2.

“People like Jefferson agreed with this, and sought to establish a commonwealth of property owners, all of whom would have an interest in maintaining the state.”

That’s a great idea. Let’s through out the foreign equity locusts before they suck America dry of the last few pennies worth of wealth we collectively own.

Seriously, folks: How does America benefit by letting all these foreign equity locusts in to outbid us on residential real estate purchases?

And what’s to stop us from kicking them out and repossessing their properties? It would hardly be the first time America experienced a land grab…

“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”

All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

– Animal Farm, George Orwell

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;
and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun.

– The Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:9

‘That prevents those who would “take” the property at a lower price, from taking the property.’

You changed the subject, because the posts before yours were talking about stealing land, while your post insinuates the government has some kind of mandate to intervene in the property market and prop up prices.

I don’t believe they have, unless you count Ronald Reagan’s unrepealed Executive Order 12631 as law.

“…they don’t really know what to expect. There’s no proven model, no economies of scale, and they all have the same exit plan.”

I know what to expect, and I can’t wait for it to happen!

How does America benefit by letting all these foreign equity locusts in to outbid us on residential real estate purchases?

And what’s to stop us from kicking them out and repossessing their properties?

Thank you for illustrating my point:

“The key is to have enough fellow property owners to have numerical superiority over the those who do not own property. This will result in a society that naturally values private property rights, and force will rarely have to be used in their protection.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/08/03/Obama-administration-paves-the-way-for-sharia-law

A google image search for “white trash” is the best you’ve got?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfGLB8LO1aM

Point is that they come in “all” colors Goon…You seem to be laser focused on blacks…

That’s Racist®

One-fifth of South Carolinians want late-night comedian Stephen Colbert to replace Jim DeMint in the Senate, according to a poll released Monday.

This is an actual poll conducted by PPP last week. Colbert leads the pack with 20% while the Tea Party favorite trails at 15%. If Colbert were to fill the empty senator’s seat it would double the IQ of the states current roster of legislators instantly. Gov. Haley could use the help of a well-liked appointment. Forty-nine percent of voters disapprove of her job performance, and only 42 percent approve.

http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/ppp-sc-voters-want-colbert-84849.html

In the article that alpha posted, the Fed isn’t doing the manipulation. The stock market has been Pavlov-trained to manipulate itself on anticipation of Fed actions. It’s de facto.

I feel sorry for the actual OPM dogs. Lots of slobber, no food.

Does the Fed’s charter actually authorize it to manipulate stock prices?

All they have to do is print money and stock gets repriced accordingly.

50%? try 97%

Does the Fed’s charter actually authorize it to manipulate stock prices?

We’ve discussed this before, but the “President’s Working Group on Financial Markets”, otherwise known as the “Plunge Protection Team” includes the Chairman of the Federal Reserve…

True story: My father’s father was a bonds analyst on Wall Street. And, sad to say, he had more than a passing acquaintance with gambling.

“True story: My father’s father was a bonds analyst on Wall Street. And, sad to say, he had more than a passing acquaintance with gambling.”

Wall street is driven by two primal emotions, fear and greed.

The stock market IS gambling.
Seems more like organized crime to me.

I can already see the new cities, housing 10 million Foxconn workers, rising in the not for long pristine Russian steppes. The Chinese will have to build a lot of infrastructure though.

Without question; Russia and China are NOT allies for this very reason. Russia isn’t foolish, they know that the Eye of Sauron in Beijing will gaze upon Siberia sooner rather than later.

Gay marriage is Racist®

The most interesting part of the case is whether states that don’t let homosexual couples marry will have to recognize the marriages from other states. Loving vs. Virginia got rid of everything at once for the anti-miscegenation laws, but I could see this possibly going a little more piecemeal. States rights are on every side of this thing. One of the more interesting arguments is that banning gay marriage denies a woman the right to do something that a man could do (marry a woman) and denies a man the right to do something that a woman could do (marry a man). Then again, we don’t have an equal rights amendment based on gender.

Justice Kennedy is going to have a lot on his plate. Then again, he wrote Lawrence vs. Texas, so he has been in that position before.

It’s economics, plain and simple. Most long-time gay rights activists will confirm that gay marriage as an issue was the furthest thing from our minds when the movement got going.

Gay marriage and gays in the military as a rallying point?? Most of us were surprised. It was an agenda that picked us, not the other way around.

Victory for lesbian, years after her longtime partner’s death

It was a wonderful life.

That’s how Edith Windsor describes her partnership with Thea Clara Spyer. Theirs was not a fleeting romance — the women were together 42 years sharing ups and downs, laughs and tears. They also shared what they’d earned together, including from Windsor’s job as a programmer with IBM and Spyer’s work as a psychologist.

“We were mildly affluent and extremely happy,” Windsor said. “We were like most couples.”

But even after they married in 2007 in Toronto, some 40 years into their courtship, the two women were not “like most couples” in the eyes of the state of New York, where they lived, nor in the eyes of the U.S. government, which under the Defense of Marriage Act mandates that a spouse, as legally defined, must be a person of the opposite sex.

This fact hit Windsor hard in 2009, while in a hospital after suffering a heart attack a month after Spyer’s death. As she recovered and mourned, Windsor realized she faced a hefty bill for inheritance taxes — $363,053 more than was warranted, she later claimed in court — because Spyer was, in legal terms, little more than a friend.
DOMA would deny soldier’s wife benefits

“It was incredible indignation,” Windsor recalled feeling. “Just the numbers were so cruel.”

SF: Maybe if gay people looked at marriage as a JOBS bill, maybe people might get it.

How can any Repub be against creating JOBS?

Having played string quartets at gay marriages, I agree with you dj — legitimizing gay marriage would offer economic stimulus, at least in the few liberal-minded states that adopted it.

If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t marry a gay. How is there any confusion?

Suzanne researched this!

That’s what makes Mormons unusual. Even today the ones with money tend to marry as undergrads and start having kids right away, even while still in college. Usually means they’re living pretty poor through their 20s, but I think once they’re established they tend to have better lives than those you describe. Staying with the same spouse makes them financially better off, and they seem to enjoy having grandkids while still young enough to do things with them.

I’m in a ward that includes the local university grad students so I get to watch it in action.

Carl
We bought our fixer from a wonderful Morman gal. The ward in our area had a Christmas Music event last night (Dorothy is in the choir), but I started to get sick. I told her I would be there, but I am under the weather for sure.

When I think of Dorothy, I think of a radiant light of love. She practices her faith. Our buyers were Mormans as well.

Even today the ones with money tend to marry as undergrads and start having kids right away ??

Key word…..Money….

This does not sound right to me, re: people with money marrying early. I went to an HYP Ivy and out of our class of 1300, I’m unaware of anyone who married prior to graduation. Moreover, as said above, I only know 1 couple that married reasonably soon after graduation, which was while she was in grad school at Columbia. The vast majority waited quite a bit–as I said, usually after grad school. The most common trajectory was to date for several years (3, 4, 5…) before marrying.

I also see very few birth announcements in our monthly alumni email. One or two a month. And my classmates are 30-31 now (’03). I’ve gone to reunions nearly every year–the average person from my college class is in a relationship but childless, despite coming from money and making a lot of it as well. I’m not as active with my law school’s alumni network, but I doubt it’s much different. LS is also different people some people in my LS class took time off between college and LS and some were even in their 30s.

The quickest to marry and breed in the US these days are the poors. And that’s a fact.

If you’re replying to my post, the ones without money do it too. My use of the word “even” is because most people with money are the ones who avoid that path outside of the Mormons. Mormons are the only ones I know of that are consistently marrying and having kids early whether they are elites or laborers.

having kids early whether they are elites or laborers ??

I have come to know a few…Getting married & having a family is a natural extension of their faith…But it cannot happen in a vacuum…They must have money, support, a good job or all three….Mormons help each other…Even if not related…

“Mormons help each other…Even if not related…”

Commie talk!

“The quickest to marry and breed are the poors….”

Any why is that? Maybe they need to get out of dysfunctional households, and the only way to do so in an era of Lucky Ducks $8/hour jobs is to shack up with their boyfriends. Or, in several cases, kids have been kicked out of the house at 18, because “I supported myself when I was eighteen….”

(Yeah, that was then, back in the days when just about anyone could hire on at a factory job and make $10/$15 hour, plus decent benefits. And gas was a buck a gallon. And you could rent a decent place for a few hundred bucks/month. Things are a little different now.)

And for some reason, around here there is significant pressure from the parents/grandparents for them to start kicking out kids, so that they “can see their grandkids before they die” or to “pass on the family name”.

XGSfixr -

It seems like such a bad trade off to get married to get out of a dysfunctional family. Why not have a roommate or two?

I think the real reason has something to do with idleness and boredom. For women, it’s a much easier route to appear successful to be married and start popping out kids, compared to going out into the world and having some success and getting an education before settling down.

From what I can tell, the accepted wisdom today is to wait until your 30’s to marry and 40’s to have children. This seems to be because it is assumed that by then you will be financially stable and you want to give your child every advantage (which costs money).

The problem is the risk of birth defects increases dramatically as women approach 40 and over. And don’t get me started on the idea of being 40+ with a newborn, being 60+ with a high school age child.

joesmith, your post implys that there is some actual thinking, some actual planning involved in these people’s lives.

If only that were so…

“I’m not as active with my law school’s alumni network, but I doubt it’s much different. LS is also different people some people in my LS class took time off between college and LS and some were even in their 30s.”

This isn’t going to be popular, but it’s because of the group that you’re looking at. Law school grads are mostly high IQ. IQ and children have an increasingly steep inverse relationship, the higher your IQ, the fewer children you are statistically likely to have. I have a feeling if you looked at any self-selected high IQ group (MENSA, MIT engineering graduates, etc) you’d find a very similar number (small) of children among them.

Sad thing for people who want children, but, frankly, children are (have?) becoming the ultimate luxury item. Average cost for 18 years is going to run you 250K. College another few 100K. Not many people can take that kind of hit, even if they really want children.

becoming the ultimate luxury item

Posted this the other day:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/in-a-slow-economy-baby-is-a-luxury-item/article6063363/

Sad thing for people who want children, but, frankly, children are (have?) becoming the ultimate luxury item.

Yet somehow the poor afford them. Perhaps what you really mean is that having children that you can give everything to has become a luxury? Maybe what the country really needs is more good people who will have children and raise them right, knowing that they will not be able to send them to the schools that rich people send their kids to?

“Key word…..Money….”

Things were nasty in the early seventies, so it was off to the military for me. Looking back it was still the right move.

Perhaps what you really mean is that having children that you can give everything to has become a luxury?

What is the one thing dual career, upper middle class would be parents lack?

A: Free time.

Having kids can really get in the way when a smart couple is busy climbing the career ladder.

Of course, this is the same problem (lack of time) your “Joe and Jane 6 Pack” couples face as well. Plus they can’t afford daycare. And the lay off monster is always nipping at their heels.

These days the people I’m seeing cranking out kids are the military families.

But given that our birthrate is falling, and fast, I’m guessing that even the poor are having second thoughts. Reading about them rioting over a lack of section 8 vouchers, maybe they too are getting the message that it ain’t all that.

In the United States, almost half of all pregnancies are unintended. (according to the CDC).

Having two kids myself, and knowing how challenging it is to raise kids - even when you go into it fully prepared - it blows my mind that 50% of children have parents that were not ready for them.

“I have a feeling if you looked at any self-selected high IQ group (MENSA, MIT engineering graduates, etc) you’d find a very similar number (small) of children among them.”

But due to better survival odds and job prospects later in life, this select group may have a disproportionately large population footprint relative to their numbers. (I’m reminded of my fifty-year old stat professor and first-time father, himself the son of a famous mathematician who had his first child at age fifty…).

Key words are “birth control pill”.

The real difference people don’t get married in their early twenties like they did fifty years ago — they don’t HAVE to.

“So, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m into crisis management.”

“Crisis management? You mean you solve crisises?”

“No, I create them. That’s where the money is, in creating them. The money begins to flow to me when I create a crisis and the money stops flowing to me if the crisis ever gets solved. So I have to make sure, for job security reasons, that the crisis I create never gets solved. Coped with, perhaps, but never solved.”

“It is absolutely critical that our compensation is competitive in the market,” a Fannie spokeswoman tells The WSJ.

Anyone who disagrees with the Fannie spokeswoman is obviously racist and a supporter of the war on women.