Donate Bitcoin

Donate Paypal


PeakOil is You

PeakOil is You

The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 09 Oct 2021, 14:26:57

Outcast_Searcher wrote:
Very very different from my lifestyle, yet I had a supposedly good job in tech, and worked a LOT of hours and virtually every holiday weekend to keep that good job safe. Started to wonder if I was stupid or doing something wrong.

But of course, I went ahead and retired at age 48 in mid 2007 because though I wasn't "rich" the way most people think of rich, re huge incomes, I knew I could live reasonably comfortably at my chosen lifestyle, and I was getting out before the stress ruined my health.

Any job that lets you retire at age 48 is a pretty good job but it does take the lifestyle choices you have made. I semi retired at age 51 but we had our children when we were in our twenties so they were grown and gone and we built our house ourselves and had it fully paid for by that time. I fail to see the logic of a fifty something couple moving into a second or trophy home with a thirty year mortgage on it with two high end SUVs in the garage parked next to the monster RV or boat they use three weekends a summer.
User avatar
vtsnowedin
Fusion
Fusion
 
Posts: 14897
Joined: Fri 11 Jul 2008, 03:00:00

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Sat 09 Oct 2021, 14:37:26

vtsnowedin wrote:
Outcast_Searcher wrote:
Very very different from my lifestyle, yet I had a supposedly good job in tech, and worked a LOT of hours and virtually every holiday weekend to keep that good job safe. Started to wonder if I was stupid or doing something wrong.

But of course, I went ahead and retired at age 48 in mid 2007 because though I wasn't "rich" the way most people think of rich, re huge incomes, I knew I could live reasonably comfortably at my chosen lifestyle, and I was getting out before the stress ruined my health.

Any job that lets you retire at age 48 is a pretty good job but it does take the lifestyle choices you have made. I semi retired at age 51 but we had our children when we were in our twenties so they were grown and gone and we built our house ourselves and had it fully paid for by that time. I fail to see the logic of a fifty something couple moving into a second or trophy home with a thirty year mortgage on it with two high end SUVs in the garage parked next to the monster RV or boat they use three weekends a summer.

To be clear, my choices were some few Americans would make. First, having no kids. Second, living in a low class apartment because it was cheap and close to work for over 30 years. Third, driving cars until they were literally falling apart. 4th -- frugality and massive savings and balanced persistent investment being "job one" for my finances throughout my career. NOT because of ever having had some big salary though I certainly was always paid comfortable middle class wages.

And re the older people and still massive spending to keep up with the Joneses, etc., I have very little sympathy for well educated people in their 60's who act like they're starving to death because they lose some $200Kish job, like a college professor or highly paid professional, and it turns out that after working for 40ish years, they have only a few months' expenses saved in total. (I have a LOT more sympathy for people making near minimum wage or lacking much education, as well as people under age 35 who figure they'll "save for retirement later".)

For my friends with some brains and self discipline, my advice to only take a 15 year mortgage, and buy the house they could afford with that, was a BIG help getting them to where they could retire before they got too old, since they could plow their entire mortgage payment into investments for an extra 15 years.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
User avatar
Outcast_Searcher
COB
COB
 
Posts: 10142
Joined: Sat 27 Jun 2009, 21:26:42
Location: Central KY

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 09 Oct 2021, 17:59:20

Times do change but consider the Levitt houses of 1948. 1000 square feet for $7,999 or rent it for a year at $65/ month. With a GI loan the payments were less then the rent. Adjusted for inflation that house today would cost $91,000 new including a couple of appliances they threw in. Millions of American families made out quite well in these homes. Today the median home is 2322 ft ^2 and costs $321,000 or $138/ ft^2. Do we really need that much space at that cost? Certainly not ,but average Americans want nothing less and have the means to cover the costs.
User avatar
vtsnowedin
Fusion
Fusion
 
Posts: 14897
Joined: Fri 11 Jul 2008, 03:00:00

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby jedrider » Sat 09 Oct 2021, 18:48:59

vtsnowedin wrote:Times do change but consider the Levitt houses of 1948. 1000 square feet for $7,999 or rent it for a year at $65/ month. With a GI loan the payments were less then the rent. Adjusted for inflation that house today would cost $91,000 new including a couple of appliances they threw in. Millions of American families made out quite well in these homes. Today the median home is 2322 ft ^2 and costs $321,000 or $138/ ft^2. Do we really need that much space at that cost? Certainly not ,but average Americans want nothing less and have the means to cover the costs.


Yes. My house was 1200 sq ft and now is 2400 sq ft and I wonder how they survived in only 1200 sq ft. I think the answer was that they enjoyed the outdoors far more than we do nowadays. Now, we're hemmed in by people and we have too many devices to play with and much of nature is gone as well. Interestingly, we have retained the bedroom and bathroom dimensions and even kitchen dimensions. The living(room) areas were small.
User avatar
jedrider
Intermediate Crude
Intermediate Crude
 
Posts: 3106
Joined: Thu 28 May 2009, 10:10:44

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 09 Oct 2021, 19:37:05

Well at only 0.13 acres per lot (60 ft.X 167 ft.) there was not much room outside but they did build municipal swimming pools (one per 1000 houses) and reserved school and church lots etc. They were not building anything close to a utopian vision of post war housing but it was miles ahead of trying to raise a family in a city apartment.
User avatar
vtsnowedin
Fusion
Fusion
 
Posts: 14897
Joined: Fri 11 Jul 2008, 03:00:00

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby Pops » Sun 10 Oct 2021, 10:56:39

theluckycountry wrote:The US became the world's supplier of machinery etc after WWII didn't it, Huge factory complexes springing up to produce everything from Sulfuric acid to John Deere tractors and TV sets. An expansion from the military industrial base that won the war and saw millions move to factory towns.

The underlying enabler was the US dominance in oil production for the first three/quarters of the 20th century. Virtually unlimited availability of fuel built the capacity to win the wars. I believe anyway.

Take a look at this great animation.

We have lots of land area and huge resources. But the difference between us and say Venezuela, who also has big resources (and other south American countries as well) is they were operated as colonies in the beginning. What I mean is a few Europeans occupied and enslaved the indigenous and shipped whatever booty back to Spain (or whichever).

Colonial America was more of a mercantilist enterprise with Briton providing military protection to the investor-backed colonists, taking their cut in taxes and increased wealth in London. The difference being many of the indentured employees of those British investors received land at the end of their contract and that gives the US it's long history of ownership... and of course with ownership comes resource exploitation.

So simpler: instead of some King granting 6 gazillion acres to the Earl of Gutwater who proceeded to enslave the locals who got nothing from the deal, America was colonized by commoners who became actual owners of the land and resources.

The Earl might want to extract as much wealth as possible, as fast as possible, but because his workers aren't all that motivated he just hits the high spots. In the US, the reason there can be half a million stripper wells is they are owned & operated by "the worker." A little guy can eek out a profit where the big corporation (the equivalent of yesterday's Conquistadors and "governors") just can't take the time to bother.

Point being still today in many places the government owns the resources regardless of whose name is on the deed. Gov. ownership can be either good or bad, depending on the government but in virtually every case if the citizen owns the resource it will be plundered. That is our birthright, the American Dream.

Is that why Detroit was abandoned, because too much industry closed down? What about Akron, Pittsburgh and all those other former industrial towns, how are they faring now the revolution has moved to China? Some say certain cities re-invented themselves and are as good as ever but who can say, with all the manipulation of statistics, government aid and debt is it just so much lipstick on a pig?

Private ownership capitalism demands a profit, and doesn't care where it is from. Once the easiest resources are depleted and the price rises, you need to import material anyway, so there is no reason to stay in one particular location.

Originally, Detroit and other "rust belt" towns were near iron, wood (for early auto chassis) water for and rail for transport. Back when the ICE was displacing farmers, they were the perfect source of cheap labor. Once some low level of displaced farmers was reached, their price began to rise too. Containerization eliminated labor on the docks and made transport less of a consideration. Automation enabled less skilled labor so cheap labor became the profit imperative. It was inevitable everything would simply move where the cheap labor was.


What matters is your standard of living, with the embellishments of personal debt taken out. And from what I see there, and even here in OZ, the equation is not good. Millions of people crammed into cities, loaded down with personal debt. It's a recipe for disaster without cheap energy.

Don't know much about debt in the abstract except that it is a lien on the future. A tomorrow built on today's reality of gross waste of resources. Because we don't have much of a shared ethnicity Americans aren't very homogenous. We were never a much of a society, hence the ease of splitting us along every possible identity line. At heart we're merely a mercantilist collection of extractors. That served us well in the growth phase when even the commoners shared in the booty. But it is already hurting us badly before the real pinch even occurs.


---
*A majority of the natives were conveniently killed-off by European disease with patient zero being the conquistadores. I've been doing lots of genealogy and apparently quite a few of my people came over indentured and worked off their debts, not the same as slaves but not members of the peerage with a Kings charter either. There is a surprising number of Dukes and Earls just a generation or two before
my earliest immigrant ancestors 9 or 10 generations back.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
User avatar
Pops
Elite
Elite
 
Posts: 19746
Joined: Sat 03 Apr 2004, 04:00:00
Location: QuikSac for a 6-Pac

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby evilgenius » Sun 10 Oct 2021, 11:35:11

Nice post, Pops.
User avatar
evilgenius
Intermediate Crude
Intermediate Crude
 
Posts: 3729
Joined: Tue 06 Dec 2005, 04:00:00
Location: Stopped at the Border.

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sun 10 Oct 2021, 12:40:39

evilgenius wrote:Nice post, Pops.

Yes a nice post Pops.
No barons in my family just a sheriff in York back in 1216.
Then a reverend John left the Kings church for the Puritan side of that religious conflict and got himself and some of his parishioners thrown into the Clinc prison in Newgate until 1634 when they let him out on condition He and thirty members of his church get on the boat to Massachusetts. They ended up founding Barnstable Mass. on Cape cod where his house still serves as the town library.
User avatar
vtsnowedin
Fusion
Fusion
 
Posts: 14897
Joined: Fri 11 Jul 2008, 03:00:00

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Mon 11 Oct 2021, 01:57:28

vtsnowedin wrote: Today the median home is 2322 ft ^2 and costs $321,000 or $138/ ft^2. Do we really need that much space at that cost? Certainly not ,but average Americans want nothing less and have the means to cover the costs.

That's true. Like many other things they want and pay for, which they don't really need.

And it's great that they can "afford" it (today), but at what price? Never being able to retire securely? Hoping that Social Security and Medicare takes care of their needs as they age? A form of self-inflicted corporate indentured servitude, as they constantly work harder and longer to pay larger monthly living expenses so they can keep up with standard X they saw on TV?

And of course, it also produces a lot of GHG's for people to HAVE all that stuff and keep it running in the way they expect. Just what the world needs...

Somehow, culturally, the Nordic countries seem to have done a lot better with a system not demanding so many things and so much stress to be "happy".
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
User avatar
Outcast_Searcher
COB
COB
 
Posts: 10142
Joined: Sat 27 Jun 2009, 21:26:42
Location: Central KY

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby Pops » Tue 12 Oct 2021, 18:09:36

vtsnowedin wrote:
evilgenius wrote:Nice post, Pops.

Yes a nice post Pops.
No barons in my family just a sheriff in York back in 1216.
Then a reverend John left the Kings church for the Puritan side of that religious conflict and got himself and some of his parishioners thrown into the Clinc prison in Newgate until 1634 when they let him out on condition He and thirty members of his church get on the boat to Massachusetts. They ended up founding Barnstable Mass. on Cape cod where his house still serves as the town library.

That's cool. Hard to know what you've got unless you have tracked them all. 10 generations back there are 1,024 ancestors, that would be what, 7th Great? I've been spending time on Ancestry the last couple of years trying to at least follow each line back to when they immigrated. Turns out most of them go waay back, Plymouth and Virginia colonies in the early 1600s, they are 7th, 8th, even 9th Great-greats lots of ghosts. I think I'm getting close though. I try to document as is possible, lots of Ancestry family trees are just copy and paste with no real evidence.
enough OT LOL
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
User avatar
Pops
Elite
Elite
 
Posts: 19746
Joined: Sat 03 Apr 2004, 04:00:00
Location: QuikSac for a 6-Pac

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Tue 12 Oct 2021, 18:34:32

I have the advantage of an older cousin (now deceased) that got into genealogy back in the 1970s and searched our families history the old fashioned way by taking trips from her home in Oregon back to New England to visit town clerks offices and cemeteries collecting data etc. . She compiled all she found into a book which I have a copy of and if you research my family name that book comes up as a top reference.
I have gone to the now popular computer genealogy sites but have seen nothing she did not already have in print.
Going back on my mothers side her father was an orphan with no clue as to his father and his mother died of TB before he was four. Going back on his mothers side you get back to old New England pretty quick but real records are few and far between.
User avatar
vtsnowedin
Fusion
Fusion
 
Posts: 14897
Joined: Fri 11 Jul 2008, 03:00:00

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby Newfie » Tue 12 Oct 2021, 22:36:19

Incan trace one tree back to Bern Switzerland when William Penn brought over a bunch of Plantains to settle Philadelphia.

It seems the folks in Switzerland were originally from the Plantain but moved because if the incessant wars there. They could not have had it too good because buy their manumission before being allowed to leave. Apparently they that area had some rough weather which washed out fields creating sever hunger at that time.

So they came to the new land and worked, Gods work, and became successful.

I believe one can make an argument that our Puritan work ethic is behind a lot of our current structural problems. It was an adaptation at the time that worked for their favor. Now not so much.

Its a really complex topic with a lot of conundrums.
User avatar
Newfie
Forum Moderator
Forum Moderator
 
Posts: 18458
Joined: Thu 15 Nov 2007, 04:00:00
Location: Between Canada and Carribean

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Wed 13 Oct 2021, 01:59:23

I have no idea where the Plantain region is and a google search just goes bananas. :)
Perhaps Auto correct having the best of you?
As to the Puritan work ethic I think it still works well today for those that use it. I would not work six twelve hour days a week and spend four hours in church on Sunday as they did before steam power etc. made that unnecessary for survival. But a forty hour work week with intelligently applied effort produces more profit then any other system I know.
User avatar
vtsnowedin
Fusion
Fusion
 
Posts: 14897
Joined: Fri 11 Jul 2008, 03:00:00

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby Pops » Wed 13 Oct 2021, 12:40:31

vtsnowedin wrote:I have the advantage of an older cousin (now deceased) that got into genealogy back in the 1970s and searched our families history the old fashioned way by taking trips from her home in Oregon back to New England to visit town clerks offices and cemeteries collecting data etc.

That's great.

The documented line of my surname only goes back to a marriage license in 1839 and is the shortest on my tree. That is my 2nd GGF who would have been born around 1810 though I have yet to find a US birth record. He appeared in 5 census rolls after 1840 and in each he gave a different birthplace, NY, OH, IL, VT, PA. I did find a man with the same name and correct age and sibling names in an an early Irish census, who immigrated in 1835 via England. I vaguely remember family tails of the first ancestor in the line being "asked to leave England." LOL Makes sense he would obscure his origins as the Irish were the Mexicans of the day, especially after the famine.

It's a lot of fun to me. I've been at it a while and don't even have a full list of the first immigrants yet - even those tentatively documented. Puritans, Patriots, Revolutionaries, hints of witches, soldiers in every war, slaveholders and indentured servant, likely 3 cousin to Abe and tentative first cousin to Washington— if only half. One thing interesting is that I found is when you start getting near a famous person there are lots of people wanting to finagle their family into a relationship. We have Hanks in our family and a relation to Abe's Mom was the legend so that wasn't hard. But I stumbled across the tie to GW while sifting through lots and lots of dubious claims just trying to get to the first immigrant.

Oh and unless you're too paranoid (which my family was surprised I wasn't) Ancestry DNA test and ethnic estimate are a hoot! As I say, we've been here so long I had no real clue to our ethnicity —I have blue eyes and dark hair and most of my ancestors seemed to come from the British Isles. So no real surprise: Scottish 40% / English 40% / Irish 10% —which jibes pretty well with what I have in my documented recent ancestors.

Feel free to move this OT stuff.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
User avatar
Pops
Elite
Elite
 
Posts: 19746
Joined: Sat 03 Apr 2004, 04:00:00
Location: QuikSac for a 6-Pac

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Wed 13 Oct 2021, 18:58:20

Pops wrote: We have Hanks in our family and a relation to Abe's Mom was the legend so that wasn't hard. But I stumbled across the tie to GW while sifting through lots and lots of dubious claims just trying to get to the first immigrant.

.

I have Hanks relatives in "the book" with reference back to 1655 and numerous Vermonters. Glad to meet you distant cousin. :)
User avatar
vtsnowedin
Fusion
Fusion
 
Posts: 14897
Joined: Fri 11 Jul 2008, 03:00:00

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby Newfie » Wed 13 Oct 2021, 19:28:01

VT,

Yup, screwed the spelling once again.

The Palatinate (German: Pfalz; Palatine German: Palz) is a historical region of Germany (Deutschland). In the Middle Ages it was known as the Rhenish Palatinate (Rheinpfalz) and Lower Palatinate (Unterpfalz),[1] which strictly speaking designated only the western part of the Electorate of the Palatinate (Kurfürstentum Pfalz), as opposed to the Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz).[2] It occupies roughly the southernmost quarter of the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz), covering an area of 2,105 square miles (5,450 km2) with about 1.4 million inhabitants. Its residents are known as Palatines (Pfälzer).
User avatar
Newfie
Forum Moderator
Forum Moderator
 
Posts: 18458
Joined: Thu 15 Nov 2007, 04:00:00
Location: Between Canada and Carribean

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Wed 13 Oct 2021, 19:47:42

Interesting. While I knew Germany was a competing group of princedoms (for lack of a better title ) until quite late in European history I never had, Who held what, when ,pushed on me as needed knowledge during my education. Post WW2 all German prehistory was just water over the dam and of little concern to US students being educated to resist the communist domino theory.
User avatar
vtsnowedin
Fusion
Fusion
 
Posts: 14897
Joined: Fri 11 Jul 2008, 03:00:00

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby Revi » Sat 16 Oct 2021, 07:26:41

Back to the death of suburbia. Do you think it's dying lately? Seems to be thriving. Due to Covid a lot of people went back to a car centric lifestyle somewhere outside of the cities. Will they go back to the cities? Hard to tell.
Deep in the mud and slime of things, even there, something sings.
User avatar
Revi
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 7417
Joined: Mon 25 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: Maine

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby Pops » Sat 16 Oct 2021, 09:42:22

Revi wrote:Back to the death of suburbia. Do you think it's dying lately? Seems to be thriving. Due to Covid a lot of people went back to a car centric lifestyle somewhere outside of the cities. Will they go back to the cities? Hard to tell.

This guy has some ideas, although this paper is from last year...
https://bisoninterests.com/content/f/wh ... oil-demand
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
User avatar
Pops
Elite
Elite
 
Posts: 19746
Joined: Sat 03 Apr 2004, 04:00:00
Location: QuikSac for a 6-Pac

Re: The Death of Suburbia Pt. 2

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 16 Oct 2021, 22:27:17

Our city house has been appreciating nicely over the past year. I don’t know any place that is not.

Not that there are not any. I heard NYC was hit hard. But that happened with 9/11 and Sandy before.
User avatar
Newfie
Forum Moderator
Forum Moderator
 
Posts: 18458
Joined: Thu 15 Nov 2007, 04:00:00
Location: Between Canada and Carribean

PreviousNext

Return to Economics & Finance

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 49 guests