America's Migratory Elderly population

[FaxModem1]

NPR Think

NPR had an interesting program last night, with a huge undocumented population becoming migratory workers in their elder years, moving from location to location in RVs and campers, so that they could have money to survive, since an RV is cheaper than a house or apartment to own. Companies like Amazon and farms take advantage of this situation for necessary labor for their companies.

Thoughts?

[LadyTevar]

When senior citizens can't afford a house, something in your culture and society is WRONG.

[The Romulan Republic]

something in your culture and society is WRONG.

Yes. Its called the Republican Party.

[Gandalf]

something in your culture and society is WRONG.

Yes. Its called the Republican Party.

There's more to it than the GOP. It's the entire capitalist system that causes these sorts of problems.

[Elheru Aran]

something in your culture and society is WRONG.

Yes. Its called the Republican Party.

There's more to it than the GOP. It's the entire capitalist system that causes these sorts of problems.

I concur. While certainly the Republicans probably contributed to the problem, I don't think you can honestly pin the blame solely upon them. That IMO more likely rests upon the poor social safety net in the. US, the rapacious real estate market and gratuitous mismanagement of the financial industry perpetrated by big business in the name of profit. If the government is to blame here, it is in not being proactive to prevent things like this from happening.

[Simon_Jester]

The entire capitalist system causes problems.

A reasonably healthy democracy is capable of fixing these problems- notice how chronic poverty among the elderly declined sharply in America as a result of New Deal and Great Society reforms.

The Republican Party as it has existed these past forty years has been extremely persistent about obstructing all efforts to fix capitalism-created problems. So saying the Republican Party is the problem may not be strictly accurate, but the Republican Party is very much the lock on the toolbox that contains the tools needed to fix the underlying problem.

Some other countries have similar organizations and similar barriers to improvement. The US has really big ones.

I concur. While certainly the Republicans probably contributed to the problem, I don't think you can honestly pin the blame solely upon them. That IMO more likely rests upon the poor social safety net in the. US, the rapacious real estate market and gratuitous mismanagement of the financial industry perpetrated by big business in the name of profit. If the government is to blame here, it is in not being proactive to prevent things like this from happening.

And think about why we do not have such a proactive government?

We have a poor social safety net because Republicans and their voter-base oppose it, even when it would benefit that same voter-base. We have a rapacious real estate and financial sector because of deregulation that Democrats tolerate but Republicans push.

I'm not saying that the US would be a paradise if the Republican Party just got out of the way. But it would be vastly less bad, and in many ways much closer to the average of the developed world or maybe even better than average, instead of trailing behind on so many indicators.

[Elheru Aran]

You're not wrong, but the Republican party would not be the way it is without certain... pressures, IMO. I would elaborate but a.) I probably don't know *quite* enough about what I'm talking about to not look like a fool eventually (which honestly is just a roundabout way for me to say I won't contest it too much because) and b.) I don't really have the time today to get into it too much. Suffice it to say I believe corporate forces have largely pushed the R's into achieving what they wanted (deregulation, lack of oversight, minimal government intervention into private institutions, etc). Did the Republicans enable this state of affairs? Definitely, though the Democrats back in the day bear their share of guilt, the two parties did have a polar shift over the past half-century or so.

So focusing *solely* on the Republicans isn't quite right IMO. We could address, for example, the private health care industry which is quite willing to bankrupt people for the privilege of living, private senior care facilities that offer a bare minimum of service for a ridiculous price, the increased distances that people are willing to move from families and thus lack of access to elderly family members for assistance, etc...

[The Romulan Republic]

The entire capitalist system causes problems.

A reasonably healthy democracy is capable of fixing these problems- notice how chronic poverty among the elderly declined sharply in America as a result of New Deal and Great Society reforms.

The Republican Party as it has existed these past forty years has been extremely persistent about obstructing all efforts to fix capitalism-created problems. So saying the Republican Party is the problem may not be strictly accurate, but the Republican Party is very much the lock on the toolbox that contains the tools needed to fix the underlying problem.

Some other countries have similar organizations and similar barriers to improvement. The US has really big ones.

I concur. While certainly the Republicans probably contributed to the problem, I don't think you can honestly pin the blame solely upon them. That IMO more likely rests upon the poor social safety net in the. US, the rapacious real estate market and gratuitous mismanagement of the financial industry perpetrated by big business in the name of profit. If the government is to blame here, it is in not being proactive to prevent things like this from happening.

And think about why we do not have such a proactive government?

We have a poor social safety net because Republicans and their voter-base oppose it, even when it would benefit that same voter-base. We have a rapacious real estate and financial sector because of deregulation that Democrats tolerate but Republicans push.

I'm not saying that the US would be a paradise if the Republican Party just got out of the way. But it would be vastly less bad, and in many ways much closer to the average of the developed world or maybe even better than average, instead of trailing behind on so many indicators.

Pretty much this.

There are other countries that have capitalist businesses and semi-capitalist economies that handle inequality better than America does. Certainly, the Republican Party did not create hardship or inequality, but it is the single greatest organized impediment to addressing hardship and inequality in America today, and has been for several decades.

[Starglider]

House prices escalating towards infinity is not a captialism problem. In capitalism there would be regular crashes, which would cause some repossessions but the overall impact limited as the total price of homes would be controlled. House building would continue until virtually everyone is housed, albeit in sprawl with highly variable quality based on how much the buyer can pay.

What we actually have in the US and UK is massive government support for house prices, because home owners keep voting for it. Trying to prevent crashes will make the eventual unavoidable crash much more painful and in the mean time greatly inflate housing costs. We also have planning controls and building regulation that constantly increase demands on constructors and reduce the available land; seemingly without consideration of the impact on buyers. The argument 'Wouldn't you pay 5% more on your house price to 30% reduce the chance of dying in a fire / causing global warming / having black mould etc' is hard to object to in isolation, but a couple of those 'common-sense regulations' per year for a decade and construction costs have doubled.

[Simon_Jester]

You're not wrong, but the Republican party would not be the way it is without certain... pressures, IMO. I would elaborate but a.) I probably don't know *quite* enough about what I'm talking about to not look like a fool eventually (which honestly is just a roundabout way for me to say I won't contest it too much because) and b.) I don't really have the time today to get into it too much. Suffice it to say I believe corporate forces have largely pushed the R's into achieving what they wanted (deregulation, lack of oversight, minimal government intervention into private institutions, etc). Did the Republicans enable this state of affairs? Definitely, though the Democrats back in the day bear their share of guilt, the two parties did have a polar shift over the past half-century or so.

So focusing *solely* on the Republicans isn't quite right IMO. We could address, for example, the private health care industry which is quite willing to bankrupt people for the privilege of living, private senior care facilities that offer a bare minimum of service for a ridiculous price, the increased distances that people are willing to move from families and thus lack of access to elderly family members for assistance, etc...

If your point is simply that the Republicans operate within an incentive structure (and that this same structure also affects the Democrats somewhat), that's true, but trivially obvious. Everyone operates within an incentive structure.

The question you generally have to ask yourself is, which is more likely to achieve good results?

1) Focusing on overcoming the group that presents a problem?
2) Focusing on realigning the incentive structure? Or...
3) Doing this funny little two-step where whenever someone talks about overcoming the group, one says "but the problem is the incentive structure," then turning around and saying "but the problem is the group" whenever anyone talks about realigning the incentives...

[Yes, (3) is a joke option...]

House prices escalating towards infinity is not a captialism problem. In capitalism there would be regular crashes, which would cause some repossessions but the overall impact limited as the total price of homes would be controlled. House building would continue until virtually everyone is housed, albeit in sprawl with highly variable quality based on how much the buyer can pay.

What we actually have in the US and UK is massive government support for house prices, because home owners keep voting for it. Trying to prevent crashes will make the eventual unavoidable crash much more painful and in the mean time greatly inflate housing costs. We also have planning controls and building regulation that constantly increase demands on constructors and reduce the available land; seemingly without consideration of the impact on buyers. The argument 'Wouldn't you pay 5% more on your house price to 30% reduce the chance of dying in a fire / causing global warming / having black mould etc' is hard to object to in isolation, but a couple of those 'common-sense regulations' per year for a decade and construction costs have doubled.

There's at least one huge driver of inflating house prices in the US that is very far separate from what you mention here:

School districts. Middle-class Americans really want to get their children into good schools in secure neighborhoods, especially with the rise of the two-income family meaning that they can't directly watch their own children as much and have to rely more on the innate stability and safety of the area they're in.

This drives up demand for houses in premium locations, irrespective of the quality of the house itself. Correspondingly, prices rise.

I won't say regulation and zoning has nothing to do with it, but in the US we've seen skyrocketing house prices even in areas where new land is regularly being put under development to build new housing, and where building regulation is being held largely constant (at least on a timescale of, say, twenty years).

[The Romulan Republic]

House prices escalating towards infinity is not a captialism problem. In capitalism there would be regular crashes, which would cause some repossessions but the overall impact limited as the total price of homes would be controlled. House building would continue until virtually everyone is housed, albeit in sprawl with highly variable quality based on how much the buyer can pay.

What we actually have in the US and UK is massive government support for house prices, because home owners keep voting for it. Trying to prevent crashes will make the eventual unavoidable crash much more painful and in the mean time greatly inflate housing costs. We also have planning controls and building regulation that constantly increase demands on constructors and reduce the available land; seemingly without consideration of the impact on buyers. The argument 'Wouldn't you pay 5% more on your house price to 30% reduce the chance of dying in a fire / causing global warming / having black mould etc' is hard to object to in isolation, but a couple of those 'common-sense regulations' per year for a decade and construction costs have doubled.

Yeah, if we just give capitalism free reign and allow periodic catastrophic crashes, everything will be fine.

Except for the people who lose everything in those crashes, and the corporate monopolies that can and will price-gouge the hell out of working class families, but who cares about them? They're poor.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm going to be honest, we could avoid a lot of the problems that (at least in the US) afflict homeowners by just going back to the pre-WWII model where you don't automatically make home equity your life savings. As a consequence we'd probably also end up accepting a model where more families live closer together (i.e. row houses) or if they can't stand the idea of not having space for themselves accept living out in the sticks (i.e. not in suburbs that try to maintain urban levels of amenities at a small fraction of urban population densities).

On the other hand, we'd also have to go back to not having a supercharged financial sector driven in part by the vast amount of mortgage debt held by basically all Americans in the middle class... So it's not like large corporations wouldn't take some hits in the process of transitioning to a more tenable model.

Starglider is pitching it as a "too much regulation" problem because he likes to troll on behalf of market libertarianism, but that doesn't mean you're obliged to give the stock "fuck libertarianism" answers.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm going to be honest, we could avoid a lot of the problems that (at least in the US) afflict homeowners by just going back to the pre-WWII model where you don't automatically make home equity your life savings. People didn't used to lose their life savings because housing prices went down, because people generally didn't have underwater mortgages with payments thta would go 'boom' as soon as the economy went south.

As a consequence we'd probably also end up accepting a model where more families live closer together (i.e. row houses) or if they can't stand the idea of not having space for themselves accept living out in the sticks (i.e. not in suburbs that try to maintain urban levels of amenities at a small fraction of urban population densities).

On the other hand, we'd also have to go back to not having a supercharged financial sector driven in part by the vast amount of mortgage debt held by basically all Americans in the middle class... So it's not like large corporations wouldn't take some hits in the process of transitioning to a more tenable model.

Starglider is pitching it as a "too much regulation" problem because he likes to troll on behalf of market libertarianism, but that doesn't mean you're obliged to give the stock "fuck libertarianism" answers.

[Simon_Jester]

[Crap, I meant the contents of the second post as an edit to the first, and I can't figure out how to delete/edit the posts..]

[LadyTevar]

[Crap, I meant the contents of the second post as an edit to the first, and I can't figure out how to delete/edit the posts..]

Editting may be turned off

[Simon_Jester]

What I meant is, I was able to access the first post for editing, but accidentally posted a second post instead, and the whole thing turned into a mess I couldn't fix.

[LadyTevar]

What I meant is, I was able to access the first post for editing, but accidentally posted a second post instead, and the whole thing turned into a mess I couldn't fix.

Would you like me to delete the posts, and you try again?

[Patroklos]

House prices escalating towards infinity is not a captialism problem. In capitalism there would be regular crashes, which would cause some repossessions but the overall impact limited as the total price of homes would be controlled. House building would continue until virtually everyone is housed, albeit in sprawl with highly variable quality based on how much the buyer can pay.

What we actually have in the US and UK is massive government support for house prices, because home owners keep voting for it. Trying to prevent crashes will make the eventual unavoidable crash much more painful and in the mean time greatly inflate housing costs. We also have planning controls and building regulation that constantly increase demands on constructors and reduce the available land; seemingly without consideration of the impact on buyers. The argument 'Wouldn't you pay 5% more on your house price to 30% reduce the chance of dying in a fire / causing global warming / having black mould etc' is hard to object to in isolation, but a couple of those 'common-sense regulations' per year for a decade and construction costs have doubled.

Yeah, if we just give capitalism free reign and allow periodic catastrophic crashes, everything will be fine.

Except for the people who lose everything in those crashes, and the corporate monopolies that can and will price-gouge the hell out of working class families, but who cares about them? They're poor.

The point you are smart enough to understand but willfully choose not to is that markets are naturally cyclical. When you actively circumvent its mechanisms for periodically enforcing the consequences of investment risk you are just delaying them so they manfest concurrenty and catastophically vice sequentially and tolerably.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Markets are not "naturally" cyclical, they're stochastic. There's a difference. Claiming they are cyclical is just subscribing to a fallacy of helplessness, where you basically just shrug and say that everything is outside of our control and there's nothing we can do about it and there's no point trying. Understanding how stochastic processes work provides a more nuanced and less dogmatic perspective (and it's how all economic models actually operate, anyway). It's true that there can be downturns (or upturns) in a market that require no corrective action, but it is also true that exogenous or endogenous factors may exert pressure on the system that can alter the trajectory of the process that DO require corrective action. Distinguishing between the two requires careful consideration of the evidence and your model; not stubbornly claiming that any and all market downturns are "sequential and tolerable" without any evidence.

[Patroklos]

I said nothing about not managing the cycle, only that you can't straighten the wave indefinetly. The fantasy that there should never be losers or we can all be perpetual winners in the market is just that, whatever your motivation acting like you can avoid periodiic downturns inevitably leads to more extreme downturns.

You agree with this, you just like being turgid apparently.

[The Romulan Republic]

House prices escalating towards infinity is not a captialism problem. In capitalism there would be regular crashes, which would cause some repossessions but the overall impact limited as the total price of homes would be controlled. House building would continue until virtually everyone is housed, albeit in sprawl with highly variable quality based on how much the buyer can pay.

What we actually have in the US and UK is massive government support for house prices, because home owners keep voting for it. Trying to prevent crashes will make the eventual unavoidable crash much more painful and in the mean time greatly inflate housing costs. We also have planning controls and building regulation that constantly increase demands on constructors and reduce the available land; seemingly without consideration of the impact on buyers. The argument 'Wouldn't you pay 5% more on your house price to 30% reduce the chance of dying in a fire / causing global warming / having black mould etc' is hard to object to in isolation, but a couple of those 'common-sense regulations' per year for a decade and construction costs have doubled.

Yeah, if we just give capitalism free reign and allow periodic catastrophic crashes, everything will be fine.

Except for the people who lose everything in those crashes, and the corporate monopolies that can and will price-gouge the hell out of working class families, but who cares about them? They're poor.

The point you are smart enough to understand but willfully choose not to is that markets are naturally cyclical. When you actively circumvent its mechanisms for periodically enforcing the consequences of investment risk you are just delaying them so they manfest concurrenty and catastophically vice sequentially and tolerably.

Yes, I've heard the standard libertarian economic line before. Trust in the magic of the free market, government involvement in the economy will lead to an inevitable catastrophic collapse, etc., etc. (be deeply wary of any political philosophy which presumes to predict an "inevitable" future result that suites its agenda).

But I'll grant you that markets tend to be cyclical by nature. In my opinion, that is all the more reason why the government should step in to, if not soften the blow for the big corporations, at least soften it for the individual workers. At least for those of us who don't consider thousands or millions of families' hopes, security, and sometimes even lives every decade or so acceptable "collateral damage".

All the more so because the last hundred years have shown a clear pattern of unaddressed economic disasters leading to a rise of totalitarian regimes.

The implication of dishonesty (that I "willfully choose not to" understand your point, because obviously it is so self-evidently correct that no one could honestly disagree with you ) is also unwarranted.

[Simon_Jester]

What I meant is, I was able to access the first post for editing, but accidentally posted a second post instead, and the whole thing turned into a mess I couldn't fix.

Would you like me to delete the posts, and you try again?

Just delete the first and third. The only problem with the second is that it looks like I'm quoting myself; the text as written is the correct version.

The point you are smart enough to understand but willfully choose not to is that markets are naturally cyclical. When you actively circumvent its mechanisms for periodically enforcing the consequences of investment risk you are just delaying them so they manfest concurrenty and catastophically vice sequentially and tolerably.

That is very, very much not a given for anyone who understands second-order differential equations, or to pick a practical example of second-order differential equations in action, shock absorbers.

Cars have suspension springs so that you don't break bones every time you go over a bump. Cars have shock absorbers so that each random bump in the road doesn't cause your car to go "boingoingoing" up and down forever in a series of constant wild oscillations that would be as damaging in their own way as hitting the bump would. A sensibly designed vehicle has both, and often integrates them such that the shock absorbers are the springs.

An economy has markets so that you don't have to experience the nasty consequences of NOT having a market. However, this does not mean that the market will fail to function, or somehow blow up uncontrollably, if you attempt to install shock absorbers. The market cycle may always be present, just as the bouncing spring-like behavior of a car's suspension springs is always present. But there is a great deal that can be done to damp out the wild oscillations, reduce their consequences, and make sure the economy's passengers and cargo aren't destroyed accidentally while the economy is driving on a bumpy road.

I said nothing about not managing the cycle, only that you can't straighten the wave indefinetly.

Shock absorbers don't "straighten the wave indefinitely" either, but there is a vast difference between having them and not having them on your car. And it is much better to have than to not have.

The fantasy that there should never be losers or we can all be perpetual winners in the market is just that...

It is doubly a fantasy. Not only is it a fantasy on the part of the people who believe it, but the idea that anyone participating in the conversation actually believes it is a fantasy on your part. You might as well be writing paragraphs condescending about the fallacy of believing in unicorns.

[Patroklos]

Its funny watching you guys agree with me and not realize it.

Your shock absorbers illustrates MY point. They take the forces and distribute them predictably to avoid catastrophic damage, but they don't make the shocks they absorb disappear, even as forces you feel. You can mitigate the cycle, but you can't eliminate it. Maybe you have some magical 100% efficient shock absorbers on your car, but then you would be engaging in the fantasy I noted earlier. Engineers understand you can't just wish away the forces of physics, and when they don't people die. Economists worth their salt understand you can't wish away the highs and lows in a market, and when they don't economies and the people in them are screwed.

Note this conversation was based on price supports for home prices in the UK. That's not an example of mitigating market fluctuations, thats creating extreme market fluctuations via a bubble.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I said nothing about not managing the cycle, only that you can't straighten the wave indefinetly.

*Ahem*

You said:

The point you are smart enough to understand but willfully choose not to is that markets are naturally cyclical. When you actively circumvent its mechanisms for periodically enforcing the consequences of investment risk you are just delaying them so they manfest concurrenty and catastophically vice sequentially and tolerably.

You very clearly warn against "actively cirumventing" the "cycle". Now you are claiming you are fine with the "cycle" being "managed" (or "mitigated", as you say in your reply to Simon). Either you miscommunicated in your first post (in which case, you should be providing the additional clarification without acting like a jackass) or you are just moving the goalposts and backpedaling off of your first post. Either way, it's on you, not on me. You said that there should be NO circumvention of the cycle, so that's the point I responded to. If you really meant something other than that, the onus is on you to actually clarify what you are trying to say, because so far all you have done is provide empty buzz-words without any particular specifics to give us a hint as to how you define "circumvent" and "manage" and what the differences are.

The fantasy that there should never be losers or we can all be perpetual winners in the market is just that, whatever your motivation acting like you can avoid periodiic downturns inevitably leads to more extreme downturns.

I never said that anything about "never losers" or "perpetual winners". Did you even read my post?

You agree with this, you just like being turgid apparently.

Yes, I agree with this, since "this" represents you backpedaling off of your original point after I pointed out that it was inaccurate. Congratulations?

You know, if every person responding to you in this thread interprets you as saying one thing, and you claim you actually meant another, maybe the onus is on you to communicate more clearly rather than just stamping your foot and saying "Everybody is stupid except me" like Homer Simpson?

[Patroklos]

You very clearly warn against "actively cirumventing" the "cycle". Now you are claiming you are fine with the "cycle" being "managed" (or "mitigated", as you say in your reply to Simon). Either you miscommunicated in your first post (in which case, you should be providing the additional clarification without acting like a jackass) or you are just moving the goalposts and backpedaling off of your first post. Either way, it's on you, not on me. You said that there should be NO circumvention of the cycle, so that's the point I responded to. If you really meant something other than that, the onus is on you to actually clarify what you are trying to say, because so far all you have done is provide empty buzz-words without any particular specifics to give us a hint as to how you define "circumvent" and "manage" and what the differences are.

The only confusion here is on your part, apparently due to not understanding what words mean:

cir-cum-vent [sur-kuh m-vent, sur-kuh m-vent
1. to go around or bypass: to circumvent the lake; to circumvent the real issues.
2. to avoid (defeat, failure, unpleasantness, etc.) by artfulness or deception; avoid by anticipating or outwitting:
He circumvented capture by anticipating their movements.

To circumvent something is to avoid it entirely, which is nothing remotely close to mitigating or managing something, both of which require the active participation in whatever you are applying it to.

In the context of this discussion someone was talking about how artificially inflating housing values was preventing normal market forces ("crashes" as he put it) from moderating home prices. TRR immediately went from that pointing out of a bubble, to declaring the only other alternative was unbridled capitalism and denouncing market cycles (the avoidance of which being what Star Glider referenced as the problem) specifically .

My point, my obvious and well communicated point, is that market cycles are not bad. I said nothing about whether said capitalism should be heavily or not at all regulated, only that trying to CIRCUMVENT (see the definition above in case you forgot what that means already) the market cycle entirely is a bad idea and leads to wore outcomes.

The fantasy that there should never be losers or we can all be perpetual winners in the market is just that, whatever your motivation acting like you can avoid periodiic downturns inevitably leads to more extreme downturns.

I never said that anything about "never losers" or "perpetual winners". Did you even read my post?

You didn't but the person my comments were in response to heavily implied it. You are not the only person in the conversation you barged into. Perhaps you should have actually read what TRR said before you started white knighting. Me pointing out there is something between "massive government support for house prices" and "just give capitalism free reign and allow periodic catastrophic crashes" was made in response to those specific comments.

The fact that my comment about allowing market cycles to happen quite specifically mentions both enforcing risk consequences (avoiding bubbles) AND catastrophic crashes makes this clear as day.

You agree with this, you just like being turgid apparently.

Yes, I agree with this, since "this" represents you backpedaling off of your original point after I pointed out that it was inaccurate. Congratulations?

You know, if every person responding to you in this thread interprets you as saying one thing, and you claim you actually meant another, maybe the onus is on you to communicate more clearly rather than just stamping your foot and saying "Everybody is stupid except me" like Homer Simpson?
[/quote]

Both you and Simon just repeated what I said, only in more verbose and inefficient fashion. You because you don't understand basic English words, and Simon because, well, restating things at length for dubious purposes is sort of his shtick.