[Grovenet] America's Trillion-Dollar Baby
Ron D'Eau Claire
rondec at easystreet.com
Wed Feb 7 17:19:44 PST 2007
That's twisting the issue Carol. Builders build where people will buy.
People will buy where they are within reach of their jobs.
Empty homes and value deflation has gone on since shortly after WWII
somewhere in the USA. At one time you couldn't give away a home in the
Houston Texas area, now it's one of the hottest markets in the USA. The
reason again is jobs. No one working in Portland Oregon is interested in
buying a home to sleep in at night in the middle of Nebraska. They simply
can't do the commute. If the could, some people would.
For more than two millennia, millions of people have flocked to metropolitan
areas because that's where the greatest opportunities to make money were. To
a large extent that is still the case.
I've watched a home in California that sold new in 1947 for $5,000 sell for
over $1,000,000 in the 1990's. Same 3 bedroom/1 bath house. A few appliance
upgrades. A room added on the back. Sold in days.
I've been hearing that the California real estate market is going to crash
for half a century. It's never even burbled. Why? Jobs. People scrambled to
get them. It didn't hurt that most people found it a nice place to live.
Will it crash some day? Perhaps. As well the San Andreas fault produce
another huge earthquake, or our subduction zone here will make an earthquake
so big that no building in western Oregon will be left standing, etc. etc.
When? Who knows? And so people continue on with the same faith they climb
aboard an airplane. They know another plane will crash one day. They are
betting it isn't the plane they are on today.
In the meantime the Midwest job market has been dropping steadily as huge,
automated mega-farms give us more produce for less money by not requiring so
many people. No jobs, no people and empty houses.
I see statistics saying that the birth rate is declining, but that the death
rate is declining even faster, so the overall human population is still
growing. One example is here:
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Who is documenting a decline in our national or world wide population? I've
seen a lot of discussion about whether we can sustain the current population
and, if so, asking how many more we can sustain, but I've not seen any data
saying the population is declining. I'd appreciate your sources.
Ron D'Eau Claire
-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of Carol Morgan
Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2007 7:01 PM
To: Forest Grove local interests list
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] America's Trillion-Dollar Baby
This is exactly right. Usually builders say something akin to 'well, we
have to build somewhere,' because they know that people have grown
comfortable with the assumption of indefinite growth on the horizon. The
fact is that we are very close to the very first time in our country's
history where growth, particularly rapid growth, may not be the reality.
When I bring this up to people they are nearly mute with incredulousness,
because though the numbers themselves are everywhere, popular culture still
retains a population explosion scenario for the future.
The empty homes and real estate deflation is already happening in the great
plains states, and it is rather painful to its residents. Towns are
shuttering left and right as the population leaves for metro areas and
particularly those along the coasts and in milder weather.
In fact I have concluded that the fact that many in this country think it is
crowded because a greater and growing proportion of them live in high
density metro areas where people have always stepped on each other's toes.
But they move to those areas precisely because of the high population and
the economic activity that happens as a result. Those who think space is a
big problem probably don't drive more than six hours in any given direction
on a regular basis. Much less 20.
I could imagine that if your projection were accurate, we would not need
to expand our growth boundaries at all.
This could start to turn real estate prices. 100 years from now, empty
homes could be close to 30% of total homes.
Ron might know what would happen to real estate.
Carol Morgan wrote:
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> Not to suggest that your numbers are wrong, but many growth
> projections are made by taking the current growth rate and multiplying
> it by number of years, and this ends up being incorrect. The rate of
> growth is itself slowing, and that rate of growth is accellerating at
> a rate that won't always be predictable, and many believe by 2030 the
> growth rate will actually be 0 and start declining. That is because
> we are only a few decades behind the trajectory of Europe's
> demographic trends, which have resulted in negative population growth
> (declines) in several of Europe's biggest countries: Russia (and
> Soviet block countries), Italy, Spain, and Germany among others are
> already shrinking. World population will start to shrink by 2050 at
> the latest.
>
> The US will slow because our indigenous birthrate is already
> negative--we only grow now because of immigration. And the countries
> that we get people from are themselves slowing down. Mexico's
> birthrate is about replacement and shrinking and so in a few decades
> they will need their own labor and not send it so us so readilly.
>
> As to the water prediction, who is to say that in 43 years, whatever
> the population, the scenario for obtaining drinking water will be
> significantly different? There are many technologies looming on the
> horizon, only waiting for economic feasibility created by a lack of
> cheap ground water that we now have. And one would bet that if Middle
> Eastern populations still have water by then, (they are growing faster
> and are in worse situations with respect to water supply), they would
> have made some contributions to that technology by the time we get to
> that situation.
>
> Hate to spoil the doomsday predictions, for some reason many find them
> fun, but the points I have made are consistent with what usually
> happens to these types of predictions. Many have predicted that we
> would run out of food, using the assumptions of many more people and
> less food. But technology has resulted in a situation where right
> now, nearly every country in the globe is a net food exporter. This
> country could feed the entire world if its crop capacity were
> reached. Obesity is becoming a much more common food problem than
> starvation, even in poor countries, and especially in poor populations
> within rich countries.
>
> I imagine that since the assumptions underpinning the lack of energy
> and water are themselves so Malthusian, they won't materialize, just
> like mass starvation didn't.
>
>
> On an alternate path. The USA is projected to be over 400 million by
> 2050. We don't have enough water for that many.
>
> Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
> > Neither the anti Prop-37 activists or those who are trying to make a
> > windfall from Prop-37 are in charge. They're both noisy, but it's only
> > noise. The legislative and legal systems are now in charge. Claims
> are being
> > filed, and the legislative branch of the government will make a
> > determination on each one.
> >
> > We have a system that works. Don't get distracted by the people on the
> > street corners (of Grovenet or the streets) waving signs. The best
> they can
> > hope for is to change the rules some day in the future, if enough
> people
> > agree with them.
> >
> > Where did you get this figure?
> >
> > "To answer your question, Ron. We will need 20% less than what we now
> > consume to be competitive in the future. What will the future be
> like to
> > achieve that? Who decides the best path?"
> >
> > I think you're saying we need 20% more energy, not less. If it were
> less
> > we'd already have a surplus. So we need 20% more? If so, then we
> know what
> > we need to do.
> >
> > Who will decide how to achieve that number? In the USA it will be the
> > scariest body of them all. It will be the same group who elected James
> > Carter, Bill Clinton and both Bushes to the Presidency: the American
> voter.
> >
> > And that's why I campaign for a better informed, better educated voter!
> >
> > But, please, before we rush to the polls, where did you find that
> number?
> >
> > Ron D'Eau Claire
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
> > Behalf Of Steven
> > Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 8:13 PM
> > To: Forest Grove local interests list
> > Subject: Re: [Grovenet] America's Trillion-Dollar Baby
> >
> >
> > I was thinking of the prop 37 landowners vs county and FG's Morelli vs
> > Metro stuff. We can't seem to get the 'who is in charge' thing
> straight. I
> > notice that we seem to be focused on commuting to work. Live close to
> > work. Stuff us all closer to work.
> > Is that the largest consumption of energy? Is the goal to have a
> > bazillion employees making widgets? Who would be the consumer ins
> such a
> > world?
> > Is the goal to stuff us in close to a job?
> > We could easily live in 300sqft per person units. A building 320' x
> 320'
> > would have about 100,000sqft of living space. Enough for over 340
> > people. Multiply that by 30 floors and you have enough room for 10,000
> > people. If it costs too much to have this in the cold north of
> Oregon or
> > North Dakota, we could decided to move all living to temperate
> climates.
> > The entire population of Oregon and Washington could live in less than
> > 1000 of these buildings in eureka, CA. We could move all manufacturing
> > from the northwest to there, too.
> > Food transportation? Convert all organic mater to hydrocarbons. We can
> > recreate the perfect food, EcoFu. It would have all the nourishment the
> > body needs.This could be manufactured local to the residences so that
> > transport would be minimal.
> > Manufacturing needs would be minimal, there isn't a lot that will
> fit in
> > my studio apartment.
> >
> > Now, on the other hand. I remember a book about how to be self
> > sustaining on 40 acres of land. Maybe it is more or maybe it is less.
> > What if the answer is for each person/family unit to have a certain
> > amount of land that they are in charge of. Oxygen production from
> plants
> > might be a bonus. Or maybe we could each have a garden, like a Victory
> > Garden. Maybe we don't commute to work, but use technology to work from
> > home.
> >
> > Metro has set us in motion for one of these viable options. Which one?
> >
> > To answer your question, Ron. We will need 20% less than what we now
> > consume to be competitive in the future. What will the future be
> like to
> > achieve that? Who decides the best path?
> >
> > Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
> >
> >> Man, Steven, you become absolutely paralyzed at the idea that anyone
> >> might tell you what to do!
> >>
> >> How do you survive a day knowing there are laws that you must obey or
> >> you'll be arrested, or work you must do or you'll lose our job, or
> >> that the choices of where you live, what you wear and where you go on
> >> your 'own time' are in large measure limited by the choices of other
> >> people?
> >>
> >> And what do such phobias have to do with wanting to know how much
> >> energy the USA will need to regain a competitive position in the world
> >> for our children while protecting the qualities that make life here
> >>
> > attractive for us?
> >
> >> Ron D'Eau Claire
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
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