Not far from where my parents and I currently live is a brand new development. It is full of big, fancy looking houses that likely have little or no craftsmanship in their builds. I think there are at least a dozen houses but there are likely more.
It is one of many new developments that have been built here in the Camas, WA area. There is one not far from here that makes me think of the Muggles houses in the Harry Potter movies - every house looks exactly the same.
As I was walking the extra-wide sidewalks of the development closest to me, I started doing the math in my head. $400,000 - $800,000 or more for each house. Few if any of these houses have been paid for in cash - it is most likely that loans were taken out to buy them.
Well things don't add up. In order to be approved for a house loan at your local bank or credit union you have to go through a bunch of hoops, you can't be hugely in debt and you must have some sort of collateral. I am pretty sure I am right about these general terms.
So that means each individual or family buying a house in the development would have had to have shown enough collateral or earning potential to get the initial loan for the first payment. Say 10% or so of the houses full cost. Likely it is far more. That means folks have at least $40,000 - $80,000 worth of whatever value is required.
Minimum wage is roughly $12.00 an hour. If you work 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, you earn $480 a week, $1,920 a month. You probably don't have 40k of assets lying around. That means anyone earning minimum wage can not afford these houses.
In fact, it is likely that the monthly payment for each house before interest is around $4,000. I can't imagine there are many folk who are earning $4,000 a month. They would have to be in the minority, wouldn't they? I don't think all these houses are owned by business owners, lawyers or doctors. Can't be that many in this area.
But here is what doesn't add up... If you drive around this area, you will find a LOT of traffic, from the early morning to midnight. All these people driving around, and certainly most of them live in these houses. That means they are not going to work, earning the money needed to build any assets or pay their monthly bills.
If you add up your house payment, utilities. internet, cell phone bills, health insurance, life insurance, housing insurance and car payments - that is a LOT of money that folks should be working hard somewhere to earn. Yet they are all driving around during the day!
How is it these people are earning money? And how is it they got approved for loans to live in these houses? And how could an average hard working minimum wager ever hope to get themselves into one of these houses? What is it these people are actually doing during the day, other than going out to shop, eat or spend more money to go on vacation or buy toys?
I am confused by this. It seems to me that these people are living in some other reality than my own, even my parents and the lady they rent space from. How is it they found their way to jobs where they do not have to report to work somewhere, or even if they do, they are paid so hugely and well for whatever it is they do?
How do they pay all their bills, and at the same time managed to gather enough assets to use as collateral they can get a fancy new house? I heard children playing in one property. That's even more of an expense, a couple hundred more each year at least, and still more than that if their children have good medical and dental plans.
It doesn't made any sense! Going to college is not the solution either. A lot of influential people will tell you that going to college is how you get the higher paying jobs. But I am an honors graduate and I can't find any work at all, much less high paying work. I simply can not see how these folk somehow went from my position when they were younger and now have the kind of money to throw around to get these houses, without any equally great commitment to some workplace somewhere.
I know that somewhere in this development there are multiple families living together, sharing the load. Maybe they have connected friends who co-signed for them. And there have to be a few folk who work 80+ hour work weeks somewhere. But these are in the minority.
Most of those who live in these homes are a couple, some with children, most without. Usually they are middle-aged. Two-people in a sprawling, 4,000+ square foot house, 3-4 bedrooms including a master bed and bath with a walk-in closet. All that extra space they neither use nor need. Yet my parents couldn't even afford to rent a 1-bedroom apartment.
The worst thing about this is that nobody questions the system. Nobody spares a thought as to the ecological and economical impact these developments have. Nobody wonders how people are affording to live in these places. Nobody wonders why there is so much traffic during normal business house, when people should be at work. Everyone drives along, lost in their own little world, many trapped in a different reality than the one others seem to be living and thriving in. Why is that?
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Friday, March 22, 2019
Save the Save The Internet Act!
It currently says this livestream is scheduled for March 26th:
https://player.vimeo.com/video/325672146
The source page is here, at Fight for the Future:
https://www.battleforthenet.com/#watch
OK, so what is going on here? Didn't we pass Net Neutrality laws over a year ago? Well, we did. The people spoke loud and clear, and our government passed the proposed bill. But a man named Ajit Pai, the Chairman of the FCC, basically reversed the decision. It has since come to light that he was working on behalf of what FFTF (Fight for the Future) calls Big Cable.
The end result is that the Net Neutrality laws we asked for and voted for were thrown out. Now there is a new bill called the, "Save The Internet Act" which will be voted on my congress in the next few days. Big Cable is trying to add some amendments to the bill that would ruin it, and we need to join together, in a, "The Internet is watching You" movement to be sure that the bill is passed unaltered.
Why is this important you ask? If you have Netflix look up a series called Adam Ruins Everything. In that series is an episode that broaches, lightly, on this subject. All backed up by legitimate research. Basically America has the slowest and most expensive internet of any developed country. This has occurred due to a variety of mistakes our government has made, including allowing cable companies to merge instead of promoting healthy competition.
Basically, in some areas of America, you only have Comcast to choose from, or Verizon. And these companies want to throttle your internet usage even more to give priority to businesses and companies that pay more. Comcast has already been monitoring its customers, as you may know. All these things that Big Cable have been doing, and want to do in the future, will serve only to slow down the internet even more, and, make it even more expensive.
You don't have to just accept things as they are. You don't have to resign yourself to slow internet speeds and high internet access prices. You don't have to just take it. You are the customer, and there are more of you than there are people working for Comcast, Verizon and other big cable companies. You have choices. You could boycott Big Cable. Or you could fight back in other ways, and showing your support for the Save The Internet Act is one way in which you can do this.
The details are on Fight for the Future's main page:
https://www.fightforthefuture.org/
Share the link to this livestream with your social media connections. Get the word out there. Donate even a dollar or two if you have that to spare. Whatever you can do to get the word out, and help the folks at FFTF get the word out, do it. And make it clear to your government - the folks representing the area where you live - that you want this bill to be passed, unaltered.
Here is a link to their social media materials:
https://www.battleforthenet.com/media/
More information here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13mf9BpKFS0Z-Z4hXZ9lvy8EG7qVqe2tOxwyhlirk6Sc/
https://player.vimeo.com/video/325672146
The source page is here, at Fight for the Future:
https://www.battleforthenet.com/#watch
OK, so what is going on here? Didn't we pass Net Neutrality laws over a year ago? Well, we did. The people spoke loud and clear, and our government passed the proposed bill. But a man named Ajit Pai, the Chairman of the FCC, basically reversed the decision. It has since come to light that he was working on behalf of what FFTF (Fight for the Future) calls Big Cable.
The end result is that the Net Neutrality laws we asked for and voted for were thrown out. Now there is a new bill called the, "Save The Internet Act" which will be voted on my congress in the next few days. Big Cable is trying to add some amendments to the bill that would ruin it, and we need to join together, in a, "The Internet is watching You" movement to be sure that the bill is passed unaltered.
Why is this important you ask? If you have Netflix look up a series called Adam Ruins Everything. In that series is an episode that broaches, lightly, on this subject. All backed up by legitimate research. Basically America has the slowest and most expensive internet of any developed country. This has occurred due to a variety of mistakes our government has made, including allowing cable companies to merge instead of promoting healthy competition.
Basically, in some areas of America, you only have Comcast to choose from, or Verizon. And these companies want to throttle your internet usage even more to give priority to businesses and companies that pay more. Comcast has already been monitoring its customers, as you may know. All these things that Big Cable have been doing, and want to do in the future, will serve only to slow down the internet even more, and, make it even more expensive.
You don't have to just accept things as they are. You don't have to resign yourself to slow internet speeds and high internet access prices. You don't have to just take it. You are the customer, and there are more of you than there are people working for Comcast, Verizon and other big cable companies. You have choices. You could boycott Big Cable. Or you could fight back in other ways, and showing your support for the Save The Internet Act is one way in which you can do this.
The details are on Fight for the Future's main page:
https://www.fightforthefuture.org/
Share the link to this livestream with your social media connections. Get the word out there. Donate even a dollar or two if you have that to spare. Whatever you can do to get the word out, and help the folks at FFTF get the word out, do it. And make it clear to your government - the folks representing the area where you live - that you want this bill to be passed, unaltered.
Here is a link to their social media materials:
https://www.battleforthenet.com/media/
More information here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13mf9BpKFS0Z-Z4hXZ9lvy8EG7qVqe2tOxwyhlirk6Sc/
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Possible Live Stream at YouTube Tomorrow!
I am considering doing a Live Stream tomorrow morning at YouTube around 10AM PST. Should start by 10:30AM. I will be reading a chapter from a book I am currently studying, entitled, "The Book of Knowing and Worth" by Paul Selig.
Look for a link here just before it starts. The Live Stream will only start after I have posted a link to it below:
https://www.youtube.com/c/DreamBlissFlows/live
UPDATE: Running a bit late, rushing through a bowl of cereal, will start in 15 minutes. Link will appear soon! Thank you for your patience!
UPDATE 2: The Live Stream is now over. Ran out of time and I don't think my computer can handle it. Looking into other options now.
OK, so I stupidly thought that the Live Stream would process on the servers of YouTube and all I needed was an internet connection. I mean others are doing it on their phones! But no, I have to use OBS to start the stream, then it is "capture" through YouTube or something like that.
Anyhow I had to quit my idea for a Lets Play for Minecraft because my laptop simply can't handle recording and playing a game at the same time. I will go so far as to say it can barely handle recording inn real-time at all. It's a Dell Inspiron N5110, and it has a lot goin' for it - i3, 6 gigs of RAM. But I need an i7 and 8 gigs of RAM at a MINIMUM, and ideally I would have a modern 6-8 core processor and 16 gigs of RAM.
I have a desktop computer that could, theoretically, handle everything. But I have no room for it where I currently live. Also my computer was made, by me, about 5-7 years ago, so it will likely fail without some upgrades.
So yeah, Live Streams and Video Tutorials, and especially Let's Play, is off the agenda. Have to figure out some other content to share with you all, besides a blog.
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