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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:When my wife went to Berkley there were some tree sitters but it was for oak trees, not eucalyptus. For a lot of the people who participated in this it was less about the trees and more about stopping the university from spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an athletes-only training center and new stadium for a mediocre football team.
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Nov 19, 2014 00:43
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Papercut posted:San Francisco had a measure this year that was basically this and it got annihilated. Yup. Unfortunately, the majority of people who vote in SF are crotchety old people (mostly so they can say "NO!" to something...typical NIMBYs), property owners/landlords (when there's something that will lead to raising their property values and rents, otherwise who cares), and ignorant people who easily get tricked into voting against their own interests, often by said crotchety old NIMBYs. Everyone else doesn't pay attention, unless the election involves the ability to vote no on extra taxes for soda or something. And that's why last year the city passed development restrictions on the entire waterfront, all because some rich people didn't want to lose a few views and their precious tennis club to a new and relatively small apartment building filled with badly-needed housing units. They tricked quite a few people into supporting them with a well-funded campaign to "stop the wall on the waterfront", that was filled with all kinds of hilarious and scary-sounding lies about shadows and traffic and evil greedy developers hurting the working man (nevermind that half of said NIMBYs live in or own even taller neighboring buildings than the building in question, and were obviously just trying to preserve their own views/property values, at the expense of the working man). But the voter turn out in that election was a record low anyways. Except for the NIMBYs, of course! They all made sure to vote, and they got their way with yet another anti-development proposition that will contribute even more to rising housing prices in SF. At least they aren't getting away with that stuff as frequently as they did in the 1970s and 1980s, which is when a lot of dumb anti-development stuff was passed (as a response to the building boom back then) that led to SF's current housing crisis. Kobayashi posted:The thing about poor people is that they don't remain frozen in time. They fall in love, have children, break up, grow up, and lose their jobs just like everyone else. With the San Francisco rental market, the only choices they have after major life events are to 1) deal with it or 2) move out of San Francisco. It's not really social mobility if their current, rent controlled place is their only option. Trust me, I know. I'm low income myself and know all too well what it's like to live in SF these days with very little money (loving depressing, at least it's home and a beautiful/awesome city). I can't afford to move out of my current rent-controlled place unless I get lucky as one of the first in line for another low-priced rent-controlled spot (like I was for the one i'm in now), or unless I want to share a room in an apartment with 5 other people (I don't...and that bullshit often involves needing to be first in line too! this loving city). In that post I was mostly just ranting about lists of stuff in the media that are badly done, and give people the wrong idea about things. I guess I've heard and read one too many people claim in the past that poor people can't afford SF. Because look, the median rent is so high! It says right there on this list that i found! In conclusion, SF (and the rest of the Bay Area) needs a lot more housing. Since 1980, SF has added only 50,000 housing units, yet the population has grown by 150,000, and is now at an all time high with no signs of slowing. We needed to have built 150,000 units since 1980, not 50,000. Rah! fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 01:03
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Rah! posted:At least they aren't getting away with that stuff as frequently as they did in the 1970s and 1980s, which is when a lot of dumb anti-development stuff was passed (as a response to the building boom back then) that led to SF's current housing crisis. Yeah the whole fear of Manhattanization ended high density infill attempts in the past. Of course SF in general has such lovely mass transit I doubt it will ever truely be like Manhattan.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:24
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:Los Gatos has apartments? Los Gatos covers some area north of Saratoga Road, all the way up to Hwy 85, so yes. The plebes are hidden back in that area behind the Safeway on Santa Cruz Road.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:28
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etalian posted:Yeah the whole fear of Manhattanization ended high density infill attempts in the past. It'll never be as dense as Manhattan, unless literally half the city is replaced by wall-to-wall highrises....which will never happen. SF is estimated to hit 1 million residents by 2035, and even then Manhattan will be over three times as densely populated as SF. And Paris, a city that I've heard more than a couple NIMBY SF residents compare SF to, and hold up as an example of a city with "proper" form/density that should be emulated, is three times as densely populated as SF. "Manhattanization" was always a dumb and overblown term, meant to scare people. And you're right about mass transit. Thankfully improvements are being done, and others are being planned, but like everything it's all so drat slow and expensive. But even then, it'll probably never be built up enough to support Manhattan-style density. Rah! fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 01:40
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Trabisnikof posted:Well, seeing how 30%+ of luxury condos are second homes, the impact of new luxury building will be highly mitigated. That's only the case if those second-home-buyers would otherwise not have bought a second home in SF. Which may be the case for some of those units, I don't know. computer parts posted:Though this is ignoring the unique costs associated with the California market (ie, rent control and Prop 13 makes it so that vacated properties might be more expensive than the ones they move into). Definitely that affects the ability of some renters/buyers to move and take over the vacated properties: but, some buyers/renters aren't moving out of rent control, so there's still a market for the vacated properties. The net affect may be marginally different, but you are still adding to the total supply of units. As with the above, there's a demand, which is growing; the demand comes from a variety of sources, including out-of-towners, but pretending it's not there and just building lower-income housing would not actually lower rents appreciably, because those lower-income houses will just become the ones being competed-over by everyone who needs a place to live. The rich folks will buy whatever they can, the middle-income folks will rent whatever they can, and the overall market demand is what it is. You can see this with the "artists loft conversions" that were done back in the 90s; they rapidly became luxury housing, either before or after the initial sales. Again, though: I'm not saying that supplying only high-end housing is as good as development that addresses all the different segments of the market; but it's not bad, especially when the alternative is that nothing gets built. SF, and the Bay Area, need to address regulatory obstacles to developing housing in every possible segment, and that includes the attitudes of voters and the people who attend/protest at planning meetings against literally any kind of development. Until that happens in a major way, prices are not going to get better, period.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:41
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Trabisnikof posted:Also some people wanted them to use a thinning-out process rather than a clear-cutting one so that views wouldn't be effected, which I actually do feel has some ground. The FEMA report actually addressed this alternative, and it was decided against because (apparently) thinning out eucalyptus groves doesn't really reduce their fire hazard due to the way the trees burn. (I can't personally speak to the science there, but they at least pretended to consider it.)
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Nov 19, 2014 02:09
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I think the science is basically that foreign, oil-soaked, torch trees don't necessarily need to be touching each other for a fire to spread.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:12
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withak posted:I think the science is basically that foreign, oil-soaked, torch trees don't necessarily need to be touching each other for a fire to spread. Yeah but I don't want to sound like I'm trying to be more authoritative than "a guy on the internet" 
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Nov 19, 2014 02:13
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withak posted:I think the science is basically that foreign, oil-soaked, torch trees don't necessarily need to be touching each other for a fire to spread. Yeah basically the oil is really flammable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScJPrzYTQfg Also the leaves are basically unappetizing to fungi/bacteria which means piles of dried leaves accumulate around the base since they don't decompose. etalian fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 03:45
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etalian posted:Yeah basically the oil is really flammable: To anyone who watches this video, please do not emulate this family in using flour to put out a fire. Use baking soda. Flour is flammable, and when it is heated and suspended in air (say by someone throwing it at a grease fire in a panic) then it will explode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIkk0D2tUU8
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Nov 19, 2014 04:33
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http://www.dailycal.org/2014/11/19/breaking-tuition-increase-policy-passed-uc-regents-committee/ Aaaaand the regents passed the tuition increase. gently caress the privatization of the UC system and the increasing unaffordability of it. If Germany can send their kids to school for free, isn't there a way to offer higher education without families having to sell their entire life savings to do so?
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Nov 20, 2014 08:09
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AYC posted:http://www.dailycal.org/2014/11/19/breaking-tuition-increase-policy-passed-uc-regents-committee/ Good on you for being at the protests! This tuition hike sucks, and unfortunately it's looking like it's going to be "the new normal" for a while. As an undergrad I knew multiple people who had to drop out because they could no longer afford UC tuition, and it's just going to get worse. There's not even a lot we can do about it, because the Regents are completely unaccountable to non-billionaires, and can dodge the PR issue by blaming lack of state funding (which is admittedly a huge part of the problem). I wonder if it would be possible to organize huge protests at the capitol next time they pass a budget. It'd be hard since there's no UC Sacramento, but I could see organized carpools bringing people in from Davis, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz.
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Nov 20, 2014 08:49
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VikingofRock posted:Good on you for being at the protests! This tuition hike sucks, and unfortunately it's looking like it's going to be "the new normal" for a while. As an undergrad I knew multiple people who had to drop out because they could no longer afford UC tuition, and it's just going to get worse. There's not even a lot we can do about it, because the Regents are completely unaccountable to non-billionaires, and can dodge the PR issue by blaming lack of state funding (which is admittedly a huge part of the problem). I wonder if it would be possible to organize huge protests at the capitol next time they pass a budget. It'd be hard since there's no UC Sacramento, but I could see organized carpools bringing people in from Davis, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz. I wish we could find some influential billionare with some sympathy towards us who could fund a ballot measure that would limit tuition to $1500/yr at all UC campuses (which is what I pay w/ my CalVet fee waiver). They can only gently caress us over for so long before it becomes unsustainable.
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Nov 20, 2014 09:03
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AYC posted:They can only gently caress us over for so long before it becomes unsustainable. Four words: government-guaranteed student loans. 
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Nov 20, 2014 09:05
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AYC posted:I wish we could find some influential billionare with some sympathy towards us who could fund a ballot measure that would limit tuition to $1500/yr at all UC campuses (which is what I pay w/ my CalVet fee waiver). They can only gently caress us over for so long before it becomes unsustainable. It won't stop. With tuition rising AND non-STEM departments being slashed? UCs are slowly turning into elitist trade schools.
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Nov 20, 2014 09:06
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Forceholy posted:It won't stop. With tuition rising AND non-STEM departments being slashed? UCs are slowly turning into elitist trade schools. What can we do stop this? A general strike against going to all classes?
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Nov 20, 2014 09:10
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AYC posted:What can we do stop this? A general strike against going to all classes? There's probably not enough support for that, and it'd just be a symbolic effort because the Regents already have the money you paid for the classes you'd be skipping and they are very adept at dodging bad PR. Honestly I have no idea how to stop it, but it literally can't go on forever. At some point, non-wealthy people will stop being able to pay for college, and they either won't go or won't be able to pay their debts after graduation (the government can only garnish wages so much). Either way the bubble will pop when the UCs can't pay their bills, and we'll probably have another Great Recession on our hands. Edit: I really should say there's not enough support for an effective general strike without a big PR campaign. You could probably accomplish a lot with a general strike if you got enough people in on it. Basically I think you would need enough that the press is forced to frame the anti-tuition-hike people as "all students" instead of "a small group of students". VikingofRock fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 09:37
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VikingofRock posted:There's probably not enough support for that, and it'd just be a symbolic effort because the Regents already have the money you paid for the classes you'd be skipping and they are very adept at dodging bad PR. Honestly I have no idea how to stop it, but it literally can't go on forever. At some point, non-wealthy people will stop being able to pay for college, and they either won't go or won't be able to pay their debts after graduation (the government can only garnish wages so much). Either way the bubble will pop when the UCs can't pay their bills, and we'll probably have another Great Recession on our hands. It would have to be well-planned several months in advance; since UC students use the quarter system, we could make it so that it starts at the beginning of winter quarter (5 Jan this year). Just throwing ideas out there.
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Nov 20, 2014 09:43
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AYC posted:Just throwing ideas out there. Yeah I made that edit because I didn't want to poo poo on your brainstorming too much. I like the idea in general but I think it's hard to make it practical, especially this time of year. How do we avoid losing momentum over the holidays, etc? Anyways, if you belong to any student activist organizations, you should probably bring this up at the next meeting. They're going to be the ones with the resources and experience necessary to get the numbers you need. If you don't belong to any student activist organizations you should join one--more manpower is always good and it sounds like you are ready to get involved.
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Nov 20, 2014 09:53
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VikingofRock posted:Honestly I have no idea how to stop it, but it literally can't go on forever. It can go on for a long loving time, though. Government student loans are guaranteed, and the amount offered will continue to rise each year in proportion to increasing tuition & financial need of students. Since it's student loan debt, it can't be discharged or forgiven outside of the student being dead/in a coma. Even if these people can't make their payments, the government can and will garnish wages, withhold tax returns, and basically do everything they can to squeeze that money out of you. So the government really isn't in danger of having a sudden huge wave of defaults bursting the bubble like you had with mortgages back in '08. Yes, this leads to a situation where poorer and poorer students are graduating each year with more and more debt. Eventually you may enter a situation where there are so many graduates who can't afford their payments & aren't making any money to garnish that the government stops loaning to anybody who puts out their hand. That would crash the system since suddenly a huge chunk of the student body couldn't afford to go to university. But I don't see that happening for a looooong time unless the economy takes another serious tumble.
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Nov 20, 2014 18:41
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If you go all the way back to the financial crisis / CA's budget crisis 5 years ago, you'll see that the state substantially divested itself from the UC. The state chose K12 / prison / Medicaid funding over UC funding, mostly because of voter demographics (I think). Anyway, the only way to reverse the tuition hike trend is to raise taxes or push down costs in one of those other sectors.
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Nov 20, 2014 18:51
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Sydin posted:It can go on for a long loving time, though. Government student loans are guaranteed, and the amount offered will continue to rise each year in proportion to increasing tuition & financial need of students. Since it's student loan debt, it can't be discharged or forgiven outside of the student being dead/in a coma. Even if these people can't make their payments, the government can and will garnish wages, withhold tax returns, and basically do everything they can to squeeze that money out of you. So the government really isn't in danger of having a sudden huge wave of defaults bursting the bubble like you had with mortgages back in '08. The economy will take a serious tumble eventually, probably within the next 5 years. It's not like the long-term structural problems of the American economy have been addressed at all within the last 20 years. Even if it doesn't, when this wave of college graduates is unable to purchase houses at the existing expected prices, and the older generations are expecting to sell their houses to fund their retirement, they'll be a massive crunch, barring massive foreign investment in real estate, or some other way of keeping prices afloat. Economic immigration will slow down greatly if the economy tumbles. What's the saying? You can't get water from a stone - eventually we'll have so many people in so much debt that they'll never, ever, be able to repay that something will have to be done. While some parts of the state will happily sit on their rear end and talk about how they worked through college (effectively no longer possible for 95% of folks) or how obviously they should have known better than to take out a student loan for degree X (ignoring that an increasing number of degrees are being put in that category), they'll still be so many people impacted by this, personally, that something will be pushed through to change the system. Alternatively immigration reform will get pushed through to increase the number of foreign degree holder visas (to make up for decreased # of graduates) or foreign wealthy students to continue pumping money in to the schools to make up for the decreased enrollment from the middle class. There's way the system can continue going on, but not as it operated successfully in the past.
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Nov 20, 2014 18:57
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Pervis posted:and the older generations are expecting to sell their houses to fund their retirement I really don't think this is very common. And in any case, CA housing prices are supported mostly by immigration (the state's population growth continues to outpace its housing development) so a bunch of college grads being unable to afford to buy is not going to trigger pricing collapse. Retirees expect to live in their houses, and not sell them until/unless they are forced to move in to some form of group living with medical supportive care... and that is going to be a big boomer industry that will supply lots of jobs. It's a very common error, made again and again, for people to look at previous financial/economical crises and predict that the next one will be similar. It never is. We're not going to see an economic downturn in the next thirty or forty years based on house price collapses (or underfunded banks with excessive mortgage liabilities, or a savings and loan crisis, or an oil crisis, etc. etc.) As always, the next serious recession will catch us by surprise because it will originate in some sector or marketplace that everyone currently takes for granted as being healthy. e. I should say though that I agree the current rate of rising tuition and student debt is unsustainable. But I think it's more likely that the rate will slow, than that it will continue or accelerate to a crisis point.
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Nov 20, 2014 21:06
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Leperflesh posted:I really don't think this is very common. And in any case, CA housing prices are supported mostly by immigration I would argue that, at least in SoCal(and possibly SF/SJ) institutional investment purchasing plays a significant part. I've seen numbers of 30-50% of homes being sold in cash and above asking.
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Nov 20, 2014 21:10
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Leperflesh posted:I really don't think this is very common. And in any case, CA housing prices are supported mostly by immigration (the state's population growth continues to outpace its housing development) so a bunch of college grads being unable to afford to buy is not going to trigger pricing collapse. Immigration is mostly dependent on the economy being OK, at least in the bay area. The early 00's definitely hit some of that, until things started picking up again. Of course a lot of this is based on whether or not we're better off than their country of origin, so I'd still expect Indian immigration to continue and some amount coming out of China. Even if we're a source of immigration house prices are still dependent on demand being possible at a given price, which is based on wages (or flows of money from corruption elsewhere). I don't think the current growth in wages will continue indefinitely although I certainly wouldn't mind if it did! I don't think housing will be the next source of a crisis, but at some point the tech bubble will stop expanding and reach some correction, or the federal government will go in to a serious shutdown or something. Recessions are part of the business cycle, and we're definitely going to hit something eventually. Lots of startups are all targeting 1-1.5 year range for some sort of liquidity event, or are going public now. It doesn't feel like we're in '99 territory yet where there was lots of shops setup specifically to suck in investor money and siphon it to founders/insiders, but there's definitely way more money being pumped in than there are actual long-term business plans to sustain those investments. Eventually the amount of speculation will slow and the new markets will become saturated, but it's been a great run so far, provided you are in the industry and have contacts/experience. Zeitgueist posted:I would argue that, at least in SoCal(and possibly SF/SJ) institutional investment purchasing plays a significant part. I've seen numbers of 30-50% of homes being sold in cash and above asking. Yeah there's definitely some of this going on. Especially at the bottom of the last bubble, there was a lot of money suddenly flowing in to distressed housing in my area, mostly all cash offers. Given some areas are up 60-80% from the bottom in SF/SJ it was a pretty good move, but I'm not sure how much more of this will happen or what the long term plans are. There was talk about institutions renting houses, but that seems strange for a long-term plan.
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Nov 20, 2014 21:33
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Slobjob Zizek posted:If you go all the way back to the financial crisis / CA's budget crisis 5 years ago, you'll see that the state substantially divested itself from the UC. The state chose K12 / prison / Medicaid funding over UC funding, mostly because of voter demographics (I think). Anyway, the only way to reverse the tuition hike trend is to raise taxes or push down costs in one of those other sectors. The state did make some serious budget cuts during the crisis, but the UC system has more than filled the gap that was left through previous tuition hikes. This latest increase isn't out of necessity, it's because they've realized the demand is going to be greater than supply no matter how much they raise tuition rates, so why not go hog wild with it.
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Nov 20, 2014 21:37
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:The state did make some serious budget cuts during the crisis, but the UC system has more than filled the gap that was left through previous tuition hikes. This latest increase isn't out of necessity, it's because they've realized the demand is going to be greater than supply no matter how much they raise tuition rates, so why not go hog wild with it. Whenever someone asks for the government to run like a business, I laugh. Because most businesses will end up with ever-increasing middle and top-end bureaucracy that exists to perpetuate itself (and their friends/contacts) without outside pressure or competition.. which doesn't really exist when demand is so inelastic. Finding the raw data of UC administration % budget over time is eluding me, but someone made a nice graph: http://californiareview.net/2011/08/24/graph-of-uc-administrative-growth/ The best part is (much like in the corporate world) the growth of people at the top and middle management is amplified by generally larger compensation increases at the top (to remain 'competitive' with the private world) compared to those elsewhere. Accompanying that is a general push away from the tenure system towards adjunct professors which are cheaper, so an even larger % of the budget will be consumed by those not actually doing the work directly. That graph says there's more senior management than ladder-ranked faculty in the UC system, as of 2011. Wow.
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Nov 20, 2014 21:59
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I met a couple this weekend that moved from New York to San Francisco just over a year ago after they both landed positions at Twitter. We got to talking about the many recent changes that have occurred throughout San Francisco, how insane rent prices have become, etc., and they at some point mentioned that because they recently purchased a home in the Mission, they "feel good about not adding to that mess." San Francisco. We later asked how old they both were (25 and 26) and man, this tech bubble is gonna hurt when it goes.
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Nov 20, 2014 22:26
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Zeitgueist posted:I would argue that, at least in SoCal(and possibly SF/SJ) institutional investment purchasing plays a significant part. I've seen numbers of 30-50% of homes being sold in cash and above asking. This happens when rents are high, and rents are high due to housing shortage. The institutional investors are also looking to diversify their investments because the stock market appears to be overbought, and bond yields have been abysmally low since 2008. That's not to dismiss it as a factor, but essentially, whether the people buying houses are individual families wanting a home, or institutions wanting an investment, housing prices are sustainable at high levels as long as demand for a place to live outstrips supply of places to live. Investors do not want to own vacant property; the homes they buy are still occupied, by renters instead of buyers. So it's a factor that shifts houses between the rental and the owner-occupied sides of the real estate market, which probably affects prices but isn't going to contribute to (or mitigate) any potential for a "crash." Pervis posted:Immigration is mostly dependent on the economy being OK, at least in the bay area. The early 00's definitely hit some of that, until things started picking up again. Of course a lot of this is based on whether or not we're better off than their country of origin, so I'd still expect Indian immigration to continue and some amount coming out of China. Even if we're a source of immigration house prices are still dependent on demand being possible at a given price, which is based on wages (or flows of money from corruption elsewhere). I don't think the current growth in wages will continue indefinitely although I certainly wouldn't mind if it did! California is projected to absorb several million immigrants over the next fifty years. That projection assumes cyclic economic downturns. It would take sustained, decades-long economic hardship to curb the rate significantly over the long term. One possible cause could be a collapse in California's agricultural sector due to climate change and depletion of ancient aquifers... but our soil is what it is, and I think those forces are more likely to shift the ag sector to less water-intensive crops, rather than destroy it utterly. In any case, a big chunk of ag jobs are migrant workers who aren't "counted" when we consider the state's permanent population and its growth over time. Much of the state's immigration is from Mexico and central america, and I think it's easy to look at our domestic problems and think that things are pretty bad... but when you look at the domestic problems of the rest of the world, you start to realize that actually the US is doing extremely well by comparison. We have more or less completely avoided austerity measures. We haven't even raised taxes in any significant way! Violent crime remains on a decades-long decline. Unemployment never got much higher than around 10 to 12 percent nationally, and has declined a lot. Yes, wages are stagnant, the national debt is still growing, we have a national healthcare crisis, we're still largely ignoring the climate change problem, and we have a serious higher education cost/debt problem. But it'd be tough to name more than maybe ten other countries in the world that are doing as well or better than we are. The bay area's housing prices proved to be fairly resilient to local economic downturn. Throughout the latest recession, despite higher unemployment rates than the national average, housing prices dropped only to levels similar to the current national average cost of housing. Certainly there were lots of foreclosures, and the highest-end properties lost more value than the lowest-end segment of the market. But San Francisco's median price lows in late 2011, at the bottom of the market, around $670k. Very briefly, you could buy a modest 1950s tract home in Concord for as little as $190k. That did not last. I think what this shows is that the housing situation in the Bay Area is so dire that even during the worst months of the biggest recession since the great depression, the Bay Area was still considered a highly desirable place to live, and there was still plenty of support for the real estate market. quote:I don't think housing will be the next source of a crisis, but at some point the tech bubble will stop expanding and reach some correction, or the federal government will go in to a serious shutdown or something. Recessions are part of the business cycle, and we're definitely going to hit something eventually. Perhaps there's a terminology problem. A recession or downturn or correction is not a "crash," which is the word I was addressing. We may well see a tipping point with student loan debt/tuition prices, we are likely to see a pull-back in venture capital investment in high-tech, it's likely that there will be some idiotic games of chicken in Congress over the next two years (as it's now the Republicans who have a majority but not enough of one to overcome a fillibuster, and the senate democrats are probably absolutely salivating at the chance to give the Republican leadership a taste of its own medicine). But a bubble that is ready to "pop" is different from a situation where some market segment or trend is due for a reversal. Crashes are so devastating not only because they're difficult to predict, but because the precipitous, catastrophic change happens too fast for ordinary market forces, regulators, investors, banks, or whoever to react to. Domino effects take place as the side-effects of one thing crashing catch related industries, companies, or government agencies/regulators by surprise. In the latest crash and recession, the sudden rash of mortgage defaults (caused by a downturn in employment) caught huge banks by surprise, as they were severely undercapitalized and did not have time to raise the capital needed to deal with their losses: and this caused a general contraction of credit across all banking sectors, which killed business activity, squeezed borrowers, and crushed employment, a feedback loop forcing a snowballing foreclosure rate. And the banks' insurers then began to fall apart as they couldn't cover the undexpected liability, and the collapsing stock market from these huge companies going into default started killing the ability of companies with large pension programs to meet their obligations, sending the major automakers (among others) into bankruptcy, etc. etc. A slower downturn, however, is much less severe. If mortgage defaults had simply crept up at some reasonable rate, banks would have had time to adjust, recapitalize, declare and realize losses over a period of multiple quarters, shifting the burden onto shareholders. Pensions and investment companies could have divested their holdings in that one sector without trying to sell into a panicked market. Homebuyers could afford to put their homes on the market and sell them before they went underwater, or refinance into fixed-rate loans they could actually afford to pay. Pullbacks and downturns happen in many different sectors and industries all the time. The market and the government have mechanisms to cope. So agreeing that x y or z are unsustainable isn't the same thing as predicting a catastrophic crash or a popping bubble. Which takes me back to the tech industry: quote:Lots of startups are all targeting 1-1.5 year range for some sort of liquidity event, or are going public now. It doesn't feel like we're in '99 territory yet where there was lots of shops setup specifically to suck in investor money and siphon it to founders/insiders, but there's definitely way more money being pumped in than there are actual long-term business plans to sustain those investments. Eventually the amount of speculation will slow and the new markets will become saturated, but it's been a great run so far, provided you are in the industry and have contacts/experience. Exactly. Unlike 99, though, the Internet has actually saturated a vastly larger portion of the population, and bandwidth is available. Consumers are much more comfortable with e-commerce. And while there are plenty of big tech companies that do not turn profits, there are also plenty that do, some of them enormously so. And yet there's still massive growth potential, particularly overseas. The VCs are still throwing money at shakey ideas (that's what VC is all about), but we're also at an all-time high in terms of the total market's profits. There really has been a major economic recovery: it's not been seen in real wages, but it's absolutely been seen in corporate profits, and profits provide a pretty powerful barrier to a sudden, catastrophic market crash. California has major problems, but I don't find the catastrophe-predicting to be useful. I think it distracts from getting to grips with all the annoying little details that actually matter and that can be addressed and that, by addressing, can lead to real (but small, and incremental) improvements. To wit: if the student loan/tuition "bubble" is going to "pop" and bring about the next depression, then there's nothing we can do but hunker down and get ready for it. On the other hand, if we recognize that it's "unsustainable" and that more marginal stuff like convincing Sacramento to restore some of the higher education cuts, encourage families and students not to borrow for degrees with poor employment prospects, and (perhaps most importantly) build more schools to reduce competition for limited enrollment at the most expensive schools, the trend can be gradually slowed and perhaps eventually reversed. Or something else, I don't know, I'm not a higher education fixer genius guy.
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Nov 20, 2014 22:32
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AYC posted:http://www.dailycal.org/2014/11/19/breaking-tuition-increase-policy-passed-uc-regents-committee/ I've always felt like the UC was basically a private college institution that conned the state into giving them tax payer funding meant for public schools over a century ago. I know it's probably not the real reason but I've always felt like that was why there is a CSU system versus UC. jeeves fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 22:35
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Leperflesh posted:This happens when rents are high, and rents are high due to housing shortage. The institutional investors are also looking to diversify their investments because the stock market appears to be overbought, and bond yields have been abysmally low since 2008. I don't know that the timeline follows that. Rents have been consistently going up as investors buy property and rent it out. Even back in 2008 it was cheaper to rent than buy in LA, but that's not really the case in most of the city.
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Nov 20, 2014 22:39
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jeeves posted:Fun fact (more like opinion but yeah): The UC system are basically private colleges that conned the state into giving them tax payer funding meant for public schools over a century ago. Honestly the CSU's aren't far behind. They're experiencing the same admin bloat & tuition hokes, with the added bonus of intentionally taking in more and more out of state students at the direct expense of in-state and local students, simply to increase their tuition revenue. The CSU I attended took the comically awful step of rescinding their policy of accepting any HS graduate from the local unified school district, so long as they met the minimum requirements for CSU admittance. The reasoning for this policy was that locals were subsidizing the CSU through a local tax, with the trade of of their children having guaranteed enrollment. But those kids don't live on campus or buy meal plans and are blocking the way towards accepting more out-of-staters paying inflated tuition, so gently caress 'em. What's that, does that mean your local taxes will stop subsidizing us? Don't be silly. 
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Nov 20, 2014 22:47
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:The state did make some serious budget cuts during the crisis, but the UC system has more than filled the gap that was left through previous tuition hikes. This latest increase isn't out of necessity, it's because they've realized the demand is going to be greater than supply no matter how much they raise tuition rates, so why not go hog wild with it. Here's the current budget justification: http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/nov13/f6attach.pdf There story is that the Master Plan forces them to accommodate all eligible CA residents as freshman, and now there are more college-ready students than ever (through improvements in K12 policy and immigration?). Anyway, the state cut funding to levels that couldn't sustain this access, and so the UC is forced to raise tuition or raise standards for admission. Edit: Basically the UC is screwed -- it is competing with private universities that have tons of private donors and huge endowments. The UC can cut staff or salaries, but that will just make the quality of their universities lower. They can raise tuition, but now the middle class can't afford it. The only way things can go back to normal is if the state robustly increases support. Slobjob Zizek fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 22:47
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Slobjob Zizek posted:Here's the current budget justification: http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/nov13/f6attach.pdf It's sad how California used to have a european style higher education for all system.
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Nov 21, 2014 00:37
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etalian posted:It's sad how California used to have a european style higher education for all system. Europe has a highly stratified educational system and much worse universities. Your point???
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Nov 21, 2014 01:01
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Zeitgueist posted:I don't know that the timeline follows that. I guess I don't understand what you're saying. Rents have been rising because demand for housing has been rising. During the housing crisis, every family that was foreclosed on had to move into the rental market, while thousands of foreclosed units were sitting vacant, putting a horrendous squeeze on rents. Population continues to rise, so even with a housing recovery, rents have not fallen. But I don't know what specifically I said that conflicts with whatever you mean by "the timeline".
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Nov 21, 2014 01:09
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Leperflesh posted:I guess I don't understand what you're saying. Hmm, I must have misread something, my response doesn't make much sense, as you say. I guess my point was that investment purchasing is specifically driving rents up in LA. Rents have been rising sharply in the past year or two. Anecdotal, it used to be you'd pay a lot of money to buy in LA, and you'd have competition, but now you have almost no chance versus the cash buyers.
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Nov 21, 2014 01:24
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Slobjob Zizek posted:Europe has a highly stratified educational system and much worse universities. Your point??? [Citation needed] The US has some world-class graduate educational institutions available to the rich or extremely talented, but it also has a whole lot of pretty terrible undergraduate education.
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Nov 21, 2014 01:36
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Zeitgueist posted:Hmm, I must have misread something, my response doesn't make much sense, as you say. I guess I don't understand how the former causes the latter. Surely if investors are buying non-rental properties and converting them to rental properties, that would be adding units to the rental market and thus a downward pressure on rents? I can definitely see how it'd drive up property values, since the all-cash offers force financed buyers to substantially overbid in order to make their offer attractive to the seller('s agent).
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Nov 21, 2014 01:37
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