Democrats cave on ACA shutdown.

[zazen]

On 11/26/2025 at 3:04 AM, Elliott said:

I think all of your worries are purely based in a super-consumer mindset.

Wanting affordable housing, healthcare or education isn't being a super-consumer. Going into debt to wear Loro Piana clothes with a Patek watch and eat at Nobu every weekend is a super consumer lol. People don't go to fancy colleges and in debt themselves to the degree they do because they want to simply party though. The path to higher living standards can and often does require going to good schools to gain access to credentialed professions that you can't do otherwise. Those cluster in more expensive cities - and those jobs and career paths require working and living in those same cities.

The fact that those same people can't afford to or struggle to live in the same place they work is where the major disconnect is. Moving to a cheaper city can work on a individual level but it's not a mass scale solution to something which is structurally constrained. The fact they need to move shows the system isn't working.

Re-locating moves the pressure to elsewhere which then causes prices to increase there. Those areas become mini-Austins or Denvers. The main issue is cheaper cities are disappearing faster than new ones can emerge. If you magically invented a machine to make houses super fast and cheap - would the government allow you to use it? Or would they regulate it away because the value of housing as collateral underpins the entire financial system and thus the empire? You wouldn't only meet demand but exceed it (flooding supply) thanks to your new genius invention - which would threaten the system itself. That's a good thought experiment.

On 11/26/2025 at 3:04 AM, Elliott said:

Sure, I'm suggesting people, some people, could live a "poorer" lifestyle, move to Albuquerque, or the south, but not poorer in the sense of lower standards than the near past, just poorer than today's commercialized standards.

Individuals can re-locate, as many already do due to high prices and affordability. The issue is other places don't offer the same opportunities and the prices in those area's also increase as more people relocate. The issue just gets kicked down the road without being resolved structurally. This happens within cities also ie gentrification.

Take your example of Albuquerque. 

''According to HUD, no more than 30% of monthly household income should go to housing costs, including utilities and insurance, to be considered affordable. To afford the median sale price of $345,000, a household must have an annual income of $108,935. Currently only 12% of the state’s population can afford the median priced home, assuming an interest rate of 6.5%, and 5% downpayment.

The state’s median household income increased 22.2% (from $48,059 to $62,125) from 2018 to 2023, while the median home price increased 72.5% (from $200,000 to $345,000). As home prices outpace wage growth, the ability to achieve homeownership becomes more difficult.'' Source https://housingnm.org/uploads/documents/2025_Housing_Needs_Assessment_Key_Facts-_final.pdf

The price to income ratio is 5.5x which is much better than other cities but still worse than baby boomers had it or the healthy 2-3x ratio.  4x starts stretching, 5x is stressful, 6-8x becomes un-affordable, and over 8x income is crisis (when 2008 hit).

''Housing affordability remains a critical issue, with 74.9% of U.S. households unable to afford a median-priced new home in 2025, according to NAHB’s latest analysis. With a median price of $459,826 and a 30-year mortgage rate of 6.5%, this translates to around 100.6 million households priced out of the market, even before accounting for further increases in home prices or interest rates.'' https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/news-and-economics/docs/housing-economics-plus/special-studies/2025/special-study-households-priced-out-of-the-housing-market-march-2025.pdf?rev=557833ecb28e410c983deb86813645a8

On 11/26/2025 at 3:04 AM, Elliott said:

This is not a systemic problem, it's cultural. How many grandparents and parents hand down their houses, any kind of inheritance, and those that do their kids sell the houses and blow the money, houses should stay in families, grandparents down to grandkids or whatever, making life easier for successive generations, this isn't a government problem. In 50 years, every family only needed to build 1 more house, the population has doubled, is 50 years too short to build one house for a family!

 

It only makes sense that relative home prices would increase in a rapidly growing area, it's ridiculous to suggest otherwise, all while homes are getting bigger and better too. The 08' crisis was caused by something that was producing more houses than people could actually afford, a band-aid, perhaps there was a better way to increase housing units but perhaps not. Either way, Americans are lazy and entitled, and completely capable of changing this dynamic without special governmental acts of god; go into construction, quit buying garbage, live in as cheap an area as you can practically find, honestly, no need for college right now for most people, learn at the library(don't be an idiot(not for a degree or anything)). Of course raise taxes on the rich, and invest in schools, infrastructure, healthcare, ban risky banking, and corporate home ownership, yadda yadda, normal democrat stuff, I agree with all that. 

- You ended there with systemic intervention - so it is clearly systemic and not just cruelly cultural - although they feed into each other to varying degrees. You underestimate the structural causes and how it takes away the available choices ''free individuals'' have to choose from to better their lot. If people are drowning in water the systemic lens finds out why the water level is so high, the individualist lens says the people should just swim better so they don't drown. Both can be true - but as we know not everyone is of equal ability and we can't expect everyone to deal with unfavorable conditions well - it isn't a workable solution at scale. Which is why left leaning, socialist type policies exist (though they can't be so utopian either) and which is why the libertarian every man for himself capitalist worldview flops in reality because in reality a rising boat doesn't just lift the tide for all boats but drowns many.

-  Americans work more hours than almost any developed nation, have less vacation time than any developed nation, and run around doing multiple jobs and "side hustles" these days. Don't think their lazy in that sense. It's indicative of a broken system. You can't become a credentialed doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer etc at a library.

- If they built so much in 2008 we'd have a surplus and prices would have remained low. But the issue isn't that things are built - its that demand was artificially pumped to outstrip supply ie more money chasing few goods = hike in prices. Fraudulent finance caused both high construction and the inevitable crisis - no supply can satisfy artificial demand. Real demand should be met with real supply to avoid that.

-  The inheritance math doesn't work because people have more than one child. So say your parents have a house but you are two children - now your not just one household but two households needing to share a single house. This also doesn't include the fact that people live longer, live alone, get divorced etc. The housing demand multiplies non-linearly rather than simply being added to. People also require moving to where the jobs are in a much more mobile world. Maybe population decline solves that, but not so easily as I'll explain with Japan:

On 11/26/2025 at 3:04 AM, Elliott said:

Japans growth is slower, u.s. doubled in last 50 years.

Watch the video. Tokyo built more homes (140k) than California (80K) whilst both have similar population size. Godzilla must be the demolition man.

Demand for housing in Tokyo grew just as much as London and New York in the past 50 years. But they built to keep up with supply and don't rely on housing a collateral to uphold their entire system which is supported by industry, tech, exports etc instead. They didn't financialise housing which should remain shelter. They actually suffered a property bubble pop and then fixed the cause structurally. They overrode NIMBYism and zoning restrictions. Per capita - Tokyo builds 3x the US, 4-5x the UK, 7-10x more than Aussie or Canadian cities. https://www.centreforcities.org/blog/can-tokyo-show-us-how-to-solve-britains-housing-shortage/

About population decline solving the issue. Even if national population declines or stagnates, metro populations still grow because of urbanization, opportunity etc. Cities attract people and everything clusters there in the modern world. Even with the rise of remote work - people crave connection and proximity beside just opportunity. We do have digital nomad types making their own communities in Bali, Thailand, Mexico etc but again its not a scalable solution and that works for certain types. For most people they don't want to uproot themselves.

Japan as a example - the population peaked in 2010 (128 mill), stagnated and has slightly decline now to 123 mill. But Tokyo's population increase from 37 mill in 2010 to 41 mill now. Like wise the GDP of Tokyo has increased also even if nationally it hasn't increased the same as the entire GDP of the US.  Urbanisation cancels out population decline  - and if the national economy struggles that only causes people to further need to go to where the jobs are ie cities. So unless the structural constraints aren't resolved - the affordability issue remains and will be crushing.

Edited November 27 by zazen

[Elliott]

23 hours ago, zazen said:

Wanting affordable housing, healthcare or education isn't being a super-consumer.

But that's not all that people want. You don't want affordable housing, you want affordable housing in Austin or Chicago. The mass of people wanting this has a compounding effect.

 

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/46-Hubbard-Rd_Sylacauga_AL_35150_M88874-61173

 

Medicaid pays medical costs for poor people, most workers get medical paid for. Education is free at community College for poor people through Fafsa. And CHEAP for non-poor. Most people do not need college for income.

It's being a super-consumer. People want this, a newer car, entertainment, dining, not working on their house or car, not growing any of their expensive food, not fixing their expensive clothes. And at mass scale, this has a compounding effect, the more super-consumers, the more prices snowball.

 

Quote

 

Going into debt to wear Loro Piana clothes with a Patek watch and eat at Nobu every weekend is a super consumer lol. People don't go to fancy colleges and in debt themselves to the degree they do because they want to simply party though. The path to higher living standards can and often does require going to good schools to gain access to credentialed professions that you can't do otherwise. Those cluster in more expensive cities - and those jobs and career paths require working and living in those same cities.

Super-consumer. And you're not doing it out of effort, but by buying something, a degree, and residence in expensive locale.

You can also just start a business with zero degree, go build houses, sub-contract, remodel....

Quote

The fact that those same people can't afford to or struggle to live in the same place they work is where the major disconnect is. Moving to a cheaper city can work on a individual level but it's not a mass scale solution to something which is structurally constrained. The fact they need to move shows the system isn't working.

Re-locating moves the pressure to elsewhere which then causes prices to increase there.

Not true, some areas need more people, population increases actually bring down relative costs in some situations. Let alone lowering the costs in Austin and Chicago. Houses are vacant in areas. Piling into select cities is extremely inefficient, it also increases taxes because infrastructure needs grown.

Quote

Those areas become mini-Austins or Denvers. The main issue is cheaper cities are disappearing faster than new ones can emerge.

 

Quote

If you magically invented a machine to make houses super fast and cheap - would the government allow you to use it? Or would they regulate it away because the value of housing as collateral underpins the entire financial system and thus the empire? You wouldn't only meet demand but exceed it (flooding supply) thanks to your new genius invention - which would threaten the system itself. That's a good thought experiment.

Individuals can re-locate, as many already do due to high prices and affordability. The issue is other places don't offer the same opportunities and the prices in those area's also increase as more people relocate. The issue just gets kicked down the road without being resolved structurally. This happens within cities also ie gentrification.

Take your example of Albuquerque. 

''According to HUD, no more than 30% of monthly household income should go to housing costs, including utilities and insurance, to be considered affordable. To afford the median sale price of $345,000, a household must have an annual income of $108,935. Currently only 12% of the state’s population can afford the median priced home, assuming an interest rate of 6.5%, and 5% downpayment.

The state’s median household income increased 22.2% (from $48,059 to $62,125) from 2018 to 2023, while the median home price increased 72.5% (from $200,000 to $345,000). As home prices outpace wage growth, the ability to achieve homeownership becomes more difficult.'' Source https://housingnm.org/uploads/documents/2025_Housing_Needs_Assessment_Key_Facts-_final.pdf

The price to income ratio is 5.5x which is much better than other cities but still worse than baby boomers had it or the healthy 2-3x ratio.  4x starts stretching, 5x is stressful, 6-8x becomes un-affordable, and over 8x income is crisis (when 2008 hit).

''Housing affordability remains a critical issue, with 74.9% of U.S. households unable to afford a median-priced new home in 2025, according to NAHB’s latest analysis. With a median price of $459,826 and a 30-year mortgage rate of 6.5%, this translates to around 100.6 million households priced out of the market, even before accounting for further increases in home prices or interest rates.'' https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/news-and-economics/docs/housing-economics-plus/special-studies/2025/special-study-households-priced-out-of-the-housing-market-march-2025.pdf?rev=557833ecb28e410c983deb86813645a8

 

 

You cannot go by median income, most retired people own the most expensive homes, own, no mortgage.

Quote

 

- You ended there with systemic intervention - so it is clearly systemic and not just cruelly cultural - although they feed into each other to varying degrees. You underestimate the structural causes and how it takes away the available choices ''free individuals'' have to choose from to better their lot. If people are drowning in water the systemic lens finds out why the water level is so high, the individualist lens says the people should just swim better so they don't drown. Both can be true - but as we know not everyone is of equal ability and we can't expect everyone to deal with unfavorable conditions well - it isn't a workable solution at scale. Which is why left leaning, socialist type policies exist (though they can't be so utopian either) and which is why the libertarian every man for himself capitalist worldview flops in reality because in reality a rising boat doesn't just lift the tide for all boats but drowns many.

I'm not a liberterian, I believe in cooperation, social programs like medicaid, education, temporary housing, and taxing the heck out of corporations, Community ran free hospitals, something like California producing it's own insulin now, state level, not national, medical should be done at a local level, with federal funding to poor states like west virginia.

Quote

-  Americans work more hours than almost any developed nation, have less vacation time than any developed nation, and run around doing multiple jobs and "side hustles" these days. Don't think their lazy in that sense. It's indicative of a broken system. You can't become a credentialed doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer etc at a library.

I don't mean lazy workwise, I mean lazy in terms of putting effort into your life. They just go into debt to buy a new car and mcmansion after they get their gold-plated degrees and work 60 hours screwing off halfVirginia. I would argue the work culture you refer to is more of the "super-consumer" ideology, an infantilizing, 'go to work, buy everything and every service', 'only know your job'.

Quote

- If they built so much in 2008 we'd have a surplus and prices would have remained low. But the issue isn't that things are built - its that demand was artificially pumped to outstrip supply ie more money chasing few goods = hike in prices. Fraudulent finance caused both high construction and the inevitable crisis - no supply can satisfy artificial demand. Real demand should be met with real supply to avoid that.

-  The inheritance math doesn't work because people have more than one child. So say your parents have a house but you are two children - now your not just one household but two households needing to share a single house. This also doesn't include the fact that people live longer, live alone, get divorced etc. The housing demand multiplies non-linearly rather than simply being added to. People also require moving to where the jobs are in a much more mobile world. Maybe population decline solves that, but not so easily as I'll explain with Japan:

The population doubled in 50 years, so each family, say from a grandparent level, building one house, would have kept housing at the same level, that's it, one new house per family(1 apartment per renting family, but we have more apartments now which is the problem) each family has two kids, but most couples have 2 people from 2 different families.

Quote

Watch the video. Tokyo built more homes (140k) than California (80K) whilst both have similar population size. Godzilla must be the demolition man.

Demand for housing in Tokyo grew just as much as London and New York in the past 50 years. But they built to keep up with supply and don't rely on housing a collateral to uphold their entire system which is supported by industry, tech, exports etc instead. They didn't financialise housing which should remain shelter. They actually suffered a property bubble pop and then fixed the cause structurally. They overrode NIMBYism and zoning restrictions. Per capita - Tokyo builds 3x the US, 4-5x the UK, 7-10x more than Aussie or Canadian cities. https://www.centreforcities.org/blog/can-tokyo-show-us-how-to-solve-britains-housing-shortage/

I'll watch the video. Does it say why they build more? If not, why do you believe they do? NYC and London are older in regard to their population boom, see charts. Tokyo started in 1960, London and NYC started 100 years earlier, it's much younger so I think you would expect a greater capacity for new construction.

Quote

About population decline solving the issue. Even if national population declines or stagnates, metro populations still grow because of urbanization, opportunity etc. Cities attract people and everything clusters there in the modern world. Even with the rise of remote work - people crave connection and proximity beside just opportunity. We do have digital nomad types making their own communities in Bali, Thailand, Mexico etc but again its not a scalable solution and that works for certain types. For most people they don't want to uproot themselves.

Japan as a example - the population peaked in 2010 (128 mill), stagnated and has slightly decline now to 123 mill. But Tokyo's population increase from 37 mill in 2010 to 41 mill now. Like wise the GDP of Tokyo has increased also even if nationally it hasn't increased the same as the entire GDP of the US.  Urbanisation cancels out population decline  - and if the national economy struggles that only causes people to further need to go to where the jobs are ie cities. So unless the structural constraints aren't resolved - the affordability issue remains and will be crushing.

 

 

Edited November 28 by Elliott

[Elliott]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-extend-obamacare-subsidies/story?id=127900310

"Trump says it 'may be necessary' to extend Obamacare subsidies that fueled shutdown"

[zazen]

On 26/11/2025 at 1:55 AM, zazen said:

Housing will be the toughest to handle. Tech deflation provided cheaper consumer goods that elevated peoples lifestyles the past decades. Essentials got monopolized and financialized - education, healthcare and housing. AI and tech breakthroughs will most probably bring down the cost of healthcare and education - not without a political fight from big pharma and academia - but when the costs go down so much it just won't be politically viable to demand extractive profits the way they do.

As far as I understand it - housing is the key collateral that holds up the entire Western financial system. The US was on the gold standard before - that placed a hard limit on credit and the money supply (finances). Then the dollar moved off the gold standard and in came the petro dollar and fiat currency - which meant the US could run trade deficits and issue more debt without runaway inflation. Then housing was financialized into a new collateral base via mortgage-backed securities - which scaled the debt even further by turning suburban mortgages into global grade collateral. Real estate being the largest asset class in the world meant insane amounts of collateral to issue debt against.

Housing turned from shelter into a asset class - ie got financialized. Each transition removed the old constraint and unlocked a larger credit system. That’s why the system grew so large - gold set limits, oil loosened limits, housing removed limits.

As to why that's a issue that will get in the way of bringing housing costs down in the same way other technological breakthroughs might: basically - the value of housing can't deflate like the others because the system depends on their value remaining high - against which they are collateralised for debt. So housing is bidded up instead of built up - its engineered and maintained scarcity to keep the entire system afloat and far away from imploding. Beside that - zoning, NIMBYism and asset holders (boomers) and the real estate industry represent a important and powerful bloc of voters.

It's a catch 22 of sorts for the West - particularly the US and UK who's backbone is reliant on housing asset values. And what's worse is that with AI coming to displace plenty of jobs (according to a lot of people apparently) - that threatens the entire system too. Because if incomes go down or away - that threatens house prices - which threatens the collateral upon which the entire system depends. This is why the bankers were bailed out in 2008 and protected instead of the citizens - to protect the system. This is why a UBI or emergency basic income is almost a structural necessity in order to keep the system alive.The hard thing to know is how much hardship will be allowed to occur until they step in to do so. Whats the precedent for that? 2008 showed us citizens got crumbs or nothing.

This is the bind that financializing housing causes - or a FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) based economy. The other catch 22 is that the West have no choice but to go all in on AI to maintain tech primacy against China (geopolitics) - but this causing labor displacement means citizens will need to be socialised into a techno-feudalistic welfare system to maintain the system itself - like discussed earlier = asset housing values must remain propped up, which requires incomes. But the problem with that is - the tax base from which that will be funded can only come from the same mega corps and techno-garcs that have influence over the state. And we expect the state to discipline them and close the loopholes from which they avoid tax. Which goes back to our discussion - capital influencing the state vs the other way round as in China - where capital is contained and directed to socialise its gains down to the people.

To put it bluntly - do we think capital elites give a fuck .. and does the state capacity exist to exercise control over these parasites? Only incentives will shift them - and the sobering realization that they must work with the state in order to keep the entire platform and system upon which they depend afloat - by maintaining domestic order and preventing a revolution from burning their asses. I heard someone say - to beat China the West will need to become more like China - in a way that's true. American with Chinese characteristics.

It seems like two paths the West has - Sinification or Japanifcaiton. Either become more like China and discipline capital (but this requires a cultural  / political orientation the West lacks, including the social cohesion for it) or become a techno-fuedalist power that stagnates like Japan and rides off its past glory as a empire into the sunset, whilst hollowing out and cannablizing its own atomized, polarized citizens living within their virtual worlds that sedate them like dopamine junkies.

@Elliott Cane across this and remembered our convo:

 

[Elliott]

3 hours ago, zazen said:

@Elliott Cane across this and remembered our convo:

 

What would you say is a typical income for say a 30 year old American, and how much is a minimum level house for 4 people, in your opinion, your minimum standard?

Edited 9 hours ago by Elliott

[Elliott]

 

Politico

https://www.politico.com

"Hakeem Jeffries says Obamacare subsidy extension 'will pass with a ...

2 days ago — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday he remains confident that Congress will extend expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits"