Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> tvoivozhd---If you own your own profitable business it is possible-----but 
> the vast majority of the population works at a job for someone else .  I 
> won't look it up, but the median family income is probably forty to fifty 
> thousand dollars

I think that is correct. With low interest rates and more lenient 
income-to-loan payment ratios, lots of people can buy pretty expensive 
houses, IF their credit history is excellent. In fact, today, if one's FICO 
score is tops, you can buy nearly any price house, without documentation of 
income or expenses.


> tvoivozhd---around here and everywhere else I have been, a large, 
> multiple-story house is for conspicuous consumption, most of the space 
> unused.  Nobody, I repeat NOBODY really NEEDS that.

Conspicuous consumption has become an American value. Look at the cars we 
drive. How many people really need a Hummer? How about these plasma TV 
screens or simply the huge TVs that cost many thousands? Television viewing 
theaters. The latest fad amongst north Scottsdale homeowners with more 
money than anything else is the patio kitchen. Used to be, you had a BBQ 
and a table and chairs out there. Now they have fireplaces, stainless steel 
kitchens with built-in refrigerators, dishwashers, wine coolers, ceiling 
fans, misting systems, gas heaters and more. These are the good Americans 
who keep the economy roiling, creating jobs, paying taxes, electing Bushies.

>   I have also seen thousands of these reduced to tax-foreclosed empty 
> shells big mansions along the Outer Drive in Chicago---even owned one 
> once---a twelve-bedroom on a 3/4 acre lakefront lot forty miles from 
> Madison, Wisconsin.  Had two stoker-fed furnaces to heat it, and needed 
> both. Impeccable shape, built entirely of beautiful oak, dining room 
> could seat thirty comfortably Had a huge kitchen and pantry, cloakroom 
> half the size of the average bedroom and a music room the same 
> size..  Paid $4500 for it.

So, see, you were once as profligate as the ones you now decry. Give them 
their turn.