70 Thoughts to “Economic Triage Now Needed”

  1. kgotthardt
    April 25, 2008 at 6:48 pm

    How very, very, sad.

  2. Censored bybvbl
    April 25, 2008 at 6:51 pm

    Ruby…as well as the rose garden that now exists at Ben Lomond Manor House.

  3. Firedancer
    April 25, 2008 at 9:52 pm

    kgotthardt said on 25 Apr 2008 at 2:43 pm:

    LOL!!!!!! Yeah, I can see human sacrifices there……a pentagram drawn in the middle and candles all around.

    Wiccans wear pentagrams and burn candles, but there are no human sacrifices…just a reverence for nature.

  4. Parker
    April 25, 2008 at 10:20 pm

    PWC has more problems than just this. For years the building industry has been allowed to do what ever they wanted. They have created a landscape that is not endearing to say the least. They didn’t want to invest in parks and transportation that help create lasting value. Developers routinely break environmental, historical and labor laws. The reason we don’t have hardly any parks is the same reason there is a large illegal immigrant population. It’s all about the bottom to the detriment of the long term interests of the community.

  5. Michael
    April 25, 2008 at 11:37 pm

    Legal ditch diggers make more money than “illegal” ditch diggers admin. More money means a higher standard of living for ditch digger families. A higher standard of living means a higher standard of living, simple basic economics.

    Low pay (and “illegal” pay, below miniumum wage) means a lower standard of living and a community suffers. How could you possibly want that?

  6. Michael
    April 25, 2008 at 11:43 pm

    We saw a house of cards housing boom, that collapsed like the .com boom, because it was so overvalued. I would not say either of those events ever benefited us, it was not stable, not sustainable and resulted in great economic consequence, like de-valuing the US dollar on the international market to the point our oil prices are sky-high. We can directly attribute high oil prices to “illegal” alien home buying scams and defaulted loans they made very unwise purchases for. I would call that a huge bust instead of a boom.

    That in my opinion is not a positive contribution to our society “illegal” aliens have made, or are continuing to make as they live multiple families to a home.

  7. Michael
    April 25, 2008 at 11:45 pm

    Multiple families to a home does not make an affluent neighborhood grow, it actually makes one decline in property value.

  8. Michael
    April 25, 2008 at 11:50 pm

    So KG are you saying we don’t want any rich people living in our neighborhoods, only poor people? That does not make economic sense. It is the affluent that create growing societies around the globe and pass that wealth on to others in the local community. Try living in a little ole town with no wealthy people and see how far your paycheck goes or “grows”.

  9. Anonimo
    April 26, 2008 at 2:15 am

    So now I find out I am kicked off of bvbs.net.

    Anyways, the gentleman in the 9500Liberty video is great. Does anyone know if he works for or has close relationships with anyone in the research industry? It would be great to pull some hard facts out of this mess from a study.

  10. Censored bybvbl
    April 26, 2008 at 8:41 am

    Michael, it seems ridiculous to blame skyrocketing oil prices on home buying by illegal immigrants. Who is responsible for those loans being made? Don’t you think our over-consumption of oil creates a demand? How about the rising demand by the Chinese and or Indians? There are many factors at play here.

    I’d say that a vibrant community requires a mix of people with different skills, different income levels, different educational levels and an accompanying mixture of housing and employment sources. Don’t expect affluent families to bail PWC out of this mess without paying your share in higher taxes to support the infrastructure, schools, parks, cultural attractions that more affluent people demand. Don’t expect them to wave their money like a magic wand over PWC and transform it for you. You have to ante up and pay/play too.

  11. EricByler
    April 26, 2008 at 9:28 am

    Anonimo, there are a lot of hard facts in this study from Dr. Fuller’s Center for Regional Analysis.

    http://www.cra-gmu.org/forecasts.htm

    I’m editing a follow-up video featuring Dr. Fuller today. Perhaps I’ll include some of these charts and graphs. In the first video I guess I assumed people would take him at his word because of his reputation. Maureen Caddigan and John Jenkins both told me they have a great deal of respect for him. His video broke 10,000 hits a lot faster than our average video does.

  12. Elena
    April 26, 2008 at 10:56 am

    Anonimo said on 26 Apr 2008 at 2:15 am:

    Welcome! You can now join the ranks of the rest of us who have been kicked off 🙂

  13. Elena
    April 26, 2008 at 10:57 am

    Wow Eric,
    10,000 hits……that is truly amazing!!!!

  14. EricByler
    April 26, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    This is a new Dr. Fuller video addressing the housing market in a little more detail.

    Meanwhile, I wrote to Dr. Fuller to ask about Greg Letiecq’s point at Citizens’ Time on Tuesday that there was a spike in home sales in PWC last month, and that PWC has the best housing market in NoVA and possibly the state. Here is Dr. Fuller’s reply:

    Eric, it is true that the number of sales increased sharply in March
    but what the speaker did not say is that prices were dramatically
    lower. Two things are working here. First, foreclosure sales are
    contributing to the higher number of sales and that prices have come
    down so much in the County that its housing stock is the most
    affordable in the region; low prices are generating increased sales.
    Still, the county has a 15 month excess backlog of unsold houses and
    the highest foreclosure rate in Northern Virginia, and possibly the
    state.

    Stephen S. Fuller, Ph.D.
    Dwight Schar Faculty Chair and University Professor
    Director, Center for Regional Analysis
    School of Public Policy
    George Mason University

  15. kgotthardt
    April 26, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    “So KG are you saying we don’t want any rich people living in our neighborhoods, only poor people?” No I am saying there is nothing wrong with working/middle class neighborhoods and that we don’t need to be showy and ostentatious. Sure, be wealthy if you want (and pass some over here to me while you are at it LOL) but I just have never understood nor appreciated that apparent need to keep up with or be superior to the Jones’s. It’s a ridiculous waste of space and money that makes the communities uglier and less inviting because of the obvious lack of planning to integrate the area as a whole.

  16. Elena
    April 26, 2008 at 5:33 pm

    Cool, PWC if finally number one is something, oh wait, my bad, its for being the highest forclosure rate. Now that is a number one spot ON ONE wants to be awarded!

  17. Michael
    April 28, 2008 at 9:25 pm

    Censored at 8:41 High oil prices are a direct consequence of the plummeting value of the US Dollar on the international market. We pay more “money” to buy the same quantity of oil, not more oil. The plummeting US dollar Internatinal trade value is a direct consequence of the mortgage lending and mortgage default crisis. The mortgage lending crisis is directly relation to the significant numbers of “illegal” aliens buying ARM mortgages they new they could not keep up with and did not intent to pay, or did not anticipate a housing glut on the market price of ARM mortgages. Simple cause and effect, Dr. Watson.

  18. Michael
    April 28, 2008 at 9:30 pm

    Eric Byler at 2:15. And what the good Dr. Fuller stopped short of informing all of us, is that it is a recovering market and growing market with prices stable, soon to rise and some real economic growth on the horizon. We have less debt to spend on our schools and social services with less demand on it and more money available for capital improvements now. That equates to a growing opportunity.

  19. Michael
    April 28, 2008 at 9:36 pm

    Agree nothing wrong with working class neighborhoods, in fact I desire the “working class and middle class and high class wages scales to be very close if possible, it makes the entire neighborhood more affluent. That takes market innovation and government suppport to keep small businesses incentivized with fair and equitable laws not based on gender, religion, race or ethnic group special priviliges and hand-outs.

    I think keeping up with the Joneses is an Urban “myth”. People just have diffeent egalitarian tastes and differnt points of view of what “art” is in the form of architecture and landscape”. It seems you do not like some forms of this any more than I like “Van Gogh” over Rubens or Rehmbrant.

  20. Michael
    April 28, 2008 at 9:49 pm

    Casual observer at 1:09

    What management company would not come into a neighborhood and see that the people who make the least money in that community are leaving and people who make more money are coming back into it. They will bulldoze those poverty level businesses and put a new face on the city, because they know a more affluent group of people will be moving in. They see that as a business opportunity, buy cheap and sell high!

    That is how you take a decaying community and put it back on a growth path.

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