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| 7/9 |
| 2007/4/20-24 [Transportation/Car/RoadHogs] UID:46389 Activity:nil |
4/20 Why cars suck, reason #48:
http://sfgate.com/columnists/lloyd
\_ Hello libUral!
\_ Hello moron(z - haven't read the article, OP may be a moron too).
\_ Yeah, I really liked living in "mixed-use" areas in Korea. I
never really understood why Americans wanted to like in giant
residential areas. Boring. -jrleek
\_ Americans like a lot of space so they can load up their
big SUVs with tons of supplies they buy from Costco.
They need a lot of space to park their big SUVs. And
finally they need a lot of space so they can listen to
hip-hop without their neighbors complaining. Why live in
the dirty, crammed noisy city when you can have exquisite
country living?
\_ The city is also fucking expensive, unless it's a shitty
slummy area full of violent people.
\_ People with long journeys to and from work are systematically worse
off and report significantly lower subjective well-being,. Stutzer
told me. According to the economic concept of equilibrium, people
will move or change jobs to make up for imbalances in compensation.
Commute time should be offset by higher pay or lower living costs,
or a better standard of living. It is this last category that people
apparently have trouble measuring. They tend to overvalue the
material fruits of their commute.money, house, prestige.and to
undervalue what they.re giving up: sleep, exercise, fun.
http://www.csua.org/u/ij3 (New Yorker) |
| 7/9 |
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| sfgate.com/columnists/lloyd -> www.sfgate.com/columnists/lloyd/ Get expert advice 09/08/2006 In politics, journalism and other image-conscious businesses, insiders know full well how to "craft a deal" in Congress or "frame a story" for the front page, but an uninitiated public often can't tell where the truth ends and the spin begins. Real estate, also a world where appearances often trump content, operates according to a similar couching of reality. "Putting together" a loan package, for instance, or "writing up" an offer or "leveraging" your investment -- all these practices have their customary manipulations that many insiders give the nod to -- even when the practices are illegal, unethical or sometimes just stupid. ka "liar loans") to the over-leveraged portfolio, all collapsing in multiple foreclosures -- it's a confession worth listening to. If Robert Kiyosaki was the pin-up patriarch for the real estate boom, Casey must be the poster child for its fall. "I've had a business ever since we moved to the US" Serin, whose family emigrated from Uzbekistan to Sacramento when he was 12, exhibits the untarnished faith in American capitalism characteristic of some immigrants. When still a teenager he marketed his abilities as a Web designer, but over the years he chose real estate as his path to higher income. After spending a year and upward of $15,000 (borrowed on credit cards) going to real estate seminars and buying home education courses from everyone from Russ Whitney to Bruce Norris and, of course, the aforementioned Robert "Rich Dad Poor, Dad Robert" Kiyosaki, Serin embarked on his brilliant career as a real estate flopper, er, flipper. "I wanted to move toward financial independence," he told me by phone from his home in Sacramento, referring to "passive income," a key tenet of the "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" scriptures ("Don't work for money, allow money to work for you"). Taking a page from the no-money-down gurus he had already ruined his credit scores learning from, he didn't let the fact that he was under-employed with no financial assets slow him down. He bought one house at a discount and sold it for a profit of $30,000, which he used to wipe out his credit card debt and bring up his credit scores. The next house purchase wasn't quite so lucrative -- it had a negative cash flow, but this didn't dissuade him. In fact, the negative cash flow only convinced Serin to think he needed more investments "to keep me busy with profit in the pipeline." In January 2005, he took a three-week leave from his job to get "enough deals in contract" so that he could give his employer two weeks' notice. He quit his job and in the next four months he acquired six more properties. But (surprise, surprise) the profit didn't appear in the pipeline as planned. "I didn't manage my cash flow and the market changed on me," he told me. Young, computer savvy, with the sense of full-disclosure masochism typical of our age, Serin didn't cut his losses, file for bankruptcy and get a job. The ins and outs of his deals, how much he paid, what went wrong and how he is now going begging to the banks for approval to do a short sale (to avoid foreclosure by selling the houses at less than the amount of the debt). He expresses worry about whether he will go to jail for mortgage fraud and posts the distress letters he's written to his lenders. He even explains his strategies for avoiding creditors' nagging phone calls. What Serin reveals about himself is that he's a sucker for every real estate myth that the industry has been feeding us for the past 10 years: that the market will always go up, that if you buy at a discount you're safe from financial risk, that gurus are doling out useful advice for the beginning real estate investor -- and that if you make enough deals, you're sure to come out ahead. But he also exemplifies the way in which real estate has become a spin factory of hedging and hype. Serin bought eight houses in eight months in four states with no money down. admission, he applied for and got no-money-down, stated-income loans by inflating his income, sometimes getting primary residence loan rates by claiming he would live in the houses himself. The offers, he said, often had "cash back" clauses, in which he would get money back from the seller after closing, which the bank didn't know about. His experience as a 23-year-old novice with no assets going out and getting not one but eight home loans in four different states shows just how eager the insiders have become to look the other way when things look fishy. Mortgage brokers are happily packaging applications filled with bogus information. Bank officers are allowing lending guidelines to become as flaccid as wet noodles. Too many real estate agents are willing to do anything to close a deal, and too many appraisers will pony up the numbers expected of them. Most pressingly, the use of liar loans -- once a tool for seasoned investors with high credit scores and low loan-to-value ratios -- has become epidemic. In 2005, Dominion Bond Rating Service reported that mortgages underwritten with minimal documentation sometimes account for as much as 50 percent of subprime (high-risk) mortgages. According to a new report by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute, almost 60 percent of the stated-income amounts are exaggerated by more than 50 percent. A 2004 MARI study maintained that a majority of FBI fraud-related cases on mortgage applications involved buyers lying on their loan applications about their income, their assets or their residency status. Of course, the pundits of the blogosphere seized upon Serin like hyenas on fresh meat. Many of them are infuriated by the fact that he was unabashedly attempting to make big money in real estate by flipping properties. Others find it irritating that he keeps blogging instead of getting a job. But by offering himself up as a penitent whipping boy of real estate, Serin has unwittingly offered us a glimpse into the fast-approaching future in which those high-flying real estate trade secrets come home to roost. Still, he doesn't seem to see those birds crashing to the ground. Serin estimates that even if he can sell all of his properties with short sales, he'll still be $200,000 to $400,000 in debt. "It's pretty scary," he concedes, sounding not at all scared. "I could go back and get a job and just work for a living, but even if I get a Web designer position that pays $50,000 to $70,000 a year, my payments on my debt are still going to be $3,000 to $3,700 bucks a month. "Or I could see if I can do a few more real estate deals." "To succeed in real estate you have to have the right knowledge and the ability to take action. Carol Lloyd is currently at work on a book about Bay Area real estate. She teaches a class on buying your first home in the Bay Area, and another class based on her best-selling career counseling book for creative people, "Creating a Life Worth Living." |
| www.csua.org/u/ij3 -> www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=4 Feeds Drivers often say they prize the time alone--to gather their wits, listen to music, or talk on the phone. They also like the freedom, the ability, illusory though it may be, to come and go as they please; schedules can seem an imposition, as can a crowded train's cattle-car ambience. People tend to behave in their cars as though they are alone in a room. on the street or on the train, people don't generally walk around calling each other assholes. you can listen to lewd evocations without feeling as though you were pushing the bounds of the social contract. You could drive to work without your pants on, and no one would know. The loneliness quotient might also account for some of the commute tolerance in New York. On the train or the bus, one can experience an illusion of fellowship, even if you disdain your fellow-passengers or are revolted by them. Perhaps there's succor in inadvertent eye contact, the presence of a pretty woman, shared disgruntlement (over a delay or a spilled Pepsi), or the shuffle through the doors, which requires, on a subconscious level, an array of social compromises and collaborations. Passengers can sleep or read, send e-mails or play cards. Three years ago, two economists at the University of Zurich, Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, released a study called "Stress That Doesn't Pay: The Commuting Paradox." They found that, if your trip is an hour each way, you'd have to make forty per cent more in salary to be as "satisfied" with life as a noncommuter is. They are not, in the final accounting, adequately compensated. "People with long journeys to and from work are systematically worse off and report significantly lower subjective well-being," Stutzer told me. According to the economic concept of equilibrium, people will move or change jobs to make up for imbalances in compensation. Commute time should be offset by higher pay or lower living costs, or a better standard of living. It is this last category that people apparently have trouble measuring. They tend to overvalue the material fruits of their commute--money, house, prestige--and to undervalue what they're giving up: sleep, exercise, fun. "They have to trade off social goods for material goods," Stutzer said. We are very good at predicting whether we'll like something but not at knowing for how long." People adapt to a higher living standard but not to social isolation. Frey and Stutzer infer that some people, even when the costs become clear, just lack the will power to change. "People have limited self-control and insufficient energy, inducing some people to not even try to improve their lot," they write. In this regard, they say, commuting resembles smoking and failing to save money. This analysis presupposes that commuting represents what economists call a rational choice, as opposed to a constrained choice. Postwar zoning laws aggressively separated living space from commercial space, requiring more roads and parking lots--known to planners as Euclidean zoning (after a Supreme Court decision involving Euclid, Ohio), and to civilians as sprawl. Putnam likes to imagine that there is a triangle, its points comprising where you sleep, where you work, and where you shop. In a canonical English village, or in a university town, the sides of that triangle are very short: a five-minute walk from one point to the next. In many American cities, you can spend an hour or two travelling each side. "You live in Pasadena, work in North Hollywood, shop in the Valley," Putnam said. The smaller the triangle, the happier the human, as long as there is social interaction to be had. In that kind of life, you have a small refrigerator, because you can get to the store quickly and often. By this logic, the bigger the refrigerator, the lonelier the soul. Putnam's favorite city is Bologna, in Italy, which has a population of three hundred and fifty thousand; it's just small enough to retain village-like characteristics. "It would be interesting to swap the citizens of Bologna with the population of New Jersey," Putnam said. Atlanta is perhaps the purest specimen of a vexed commuter town, a big-fridge paradise. Los Angeles, the country's most sprawling megalopolis, may boast a more dizzying array of horrible commutes, but many of them are the result of a difficult landscape--ocean restricting growth on one side, mountains on another. Chicago, Washington, DC, and the Bay Area are worthy candidates, but they, too, owe a degree of complication to bodies of water. But Atlanta, like Houston, sprawls without impediment in all directions, and an inordinate number of the commutes range from one edge of the sprawl to the opposite side. For them, the city itself is little more than an obstacle and an idea. The New Yorker received nine nominations for the National Magazine Awards. newsletter sign-up The New Yorker This Week: Links to articles and Web-only features, delivered to your e-mail inbox. com The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached, or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of CondNet Inc. This Site looks and works best when viewed using browsers enabled with JavaScript 15 and CSS, such as Firefox 2+ or Internet Explorer 6+. |