quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN if i was living with a rapist i'd fucking leave the lights on too.

LOL.

She's only started wearing glasses in the last year or so, so I give her shit about it. "Do you leave the lights on because you can't see? Just wear your glasses".

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quote:

Originally posted by Fledz That blog has been doing the rounds for a week now. It is decent but flawed because it doesn't even take into account house prices. Most of the perceived person wealth is tied into that market, it it crashes we're fucked.

this is true. and obviously the heat is out of that market big time.

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz That blog has been doing the rounds for a week now. It is decent but flawed because it doesn't even take into account house prices. Most of the perceived person wealth is tied into that market, it it crashes we're fucked.

City and coastal prices are beyond bent, as much as two-bit journo scum try to create panic every once in a while about how 'such and such' is going to depreciate house prices, some areas just remain unstoppable and the rest. They just have a little bump and go back to being crazy.
At some point I have to diversify more in terms of investments, but that might mean I have to go back to doing that dirty word starting with 'W' that rhymes with 'erk'

quote:

Originally posted by Sushipunk A rip off, lol. My quarterly electricity bill is more than $800, more in summer because of air-con. Gas is about $180 per quarter.

Ow crap! Mine was 650 combined and that's with 2 of us, a small tribe of brats, 2 tv's, couple of computers and various appliances. Course, it helps if someone leaves anything on I scream at them...

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz That blog has been doing the rounds for a week now. It is decent but flawed because it doesn't even take into account house prices. Most of the perceived person wealth is tied into that market, it it crashes we're fucked.

I don't get how house prices are a reflection of wealth exactly. Elaborate? Don't housing prices go up when people get wealth? They don't cause wealth... Prices here are so high because we're relatively wealthy--

In the US for example, houses are worth nothing because nobody has any money to buy them with. Here they're expensive because people are buying them no matter the cost, these people having more dollars than sense...

If people stop having money the prices will go down. If people keep having money they'll stay the same. It seems like you're suggesting that the housing market effects people's incomes, but I don't get how the housing market would not be dependant on people's incomes (the reverse then)...

I'm pretty sure I'm not making sense...

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-Everything I Say is a Lie-

what fledz is saying is that in the data represented, the wealth calculations largely depend upon the perceived value of housing assets. so if prices crashed, so would the relative amount of wealth as recorded in some graphs.

i think dirt cheap prices in certain areas of the US are indicative of a massive over-supply due to defaults moreso than nobody having any money. but yes, unemployment certainly affects housing prices.

Ohh ok, I thought the stats were from income, not 'worth'-- true enough if that's the case!

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-Everything I Say is a Lie-

PKC has it. It's not income wealth, it's perceived wealth.
What you just mentioned is wrong. People aren't buying houses because they have the money, they are buying them because they have to. Demand is high but how many people do you know that are actually paying for the most of it? Not many, instead they are all getting loans.

So essentially people are borrowing money that they can't actually pay back properly and investing in an asset that is overvalued and can depreciate by 5 times within a very short period of time. Some areas in Sydney are a very safe bet and probably won't but you never know. If the mining boom dies or our exports dry up due to other countries cutting back on imports, our market collapses. If our market collapses, so do house prices eventually.

What that blog is missing is the fact that it looks at perceived wealth. If I own an 800k house and my earnings and assets are about 200k, my perceived wealth is around a million. Ok it's not really that simple but bear with me. So it all looks fine and dandy and look how awesome it is to be in Australia.

Now what if my house drops to 200k? What is my perceived worth now? A fraction of what it was before. That blog doesn't address that, which is why it's poor. I've seen the blog trotted out everywhere over the last week like some fucking piece of brilliant journalism, but it's not because it's incomplete and has very flawed logic.

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quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN if i was living with a rapist i'd fucking leave the lights on too.

Fuck.

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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

quote:

Originally posted by EgosXII So apparently Australia does not suck on a relative scale. At all. In fact, we dominate most first world countries. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3726692.html

I love this article. Not for the article itself, because it's rather flawed, but because all the hundreds of responses from Aussies are generally agreeable and well-articulated.

If you posted a similar article about the US on, say, abc.com(lol), 70% of your responses would be like WOO! USA! OF COURSE WERE DA BEST! and most of the rest would be bickering contrarians staunchly opposed to any positivist viewpoint whatsoever.

___________________
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

quote:

Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On I love this article. Not for the article itself, because it's rather flawed, but because all the hundreds of responses from Aussies are generally agreeable and well-articulated. If you posted a similar article about the US on, say, abc.com(lol), 70% of your responses would be like WOO! USA! OF COURSE WERE DA BEST! and most of the rest would be bickering contrarians staunchly opposed to any positivist viewpoint whatsoever.

haha yeah, I mostly liked the article for the introductory statements about how negatively aus perceives itself, fairly true and funny

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz What that blog is missing is the fact that it looks at perceived wealth.

Yeah I know all about that, but I thought the sources were about income, not perceived wealth

I still don't think its the worst thing ever. As Lilith said, these same irresponsible journalists have been going on about the bubble popping for what, 6 years now?

I don't know about Aus as a whole, but the worst I can see happening in Melburn is a stabilisation, not a drop, and that's been happening lately. But houses that would have been 400k four years ago are still going for 850 now... I do agree with you that its just a shady bizness looking at this mythical perceived wealth; perceived wealth has never done anyone any good; but the income of aus was only a section of the article. It wasn't going "Look, Australians have the most cash out of anyone anywhere", it was jsut saying in many departments we're doing pretty fucking well, and that's fairly true really. Aus was like the only first world country to not get pwnd by the evonomic crisis, and it also has one of the lowest debts out of any country.

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-Everything I Say is a Lie-

Estate is a slightly different animal to most other kinds of investment and you can make a living off it, I do. While it does have the same economic influences that stock markets do, you have to remember that stock markets are full of tin pot traders, ill educated dimwits, mom & pop investors and people prone to knee jerk reactions. They're always volatile, if you're prepared to really loose sleep then you can make money out of shares but its a tough way to do it and you can be destroyed in it.

Nothing like that happens anywhere nearly as quickly in the estate industry, the people in it have larger stakes and are prepared to be patient before offloading something for a profit, its heavily regulated to keep a lot of the riff raff out and significant trouble coming is so much easier to forecast.
You can go completely insane in shares, commodities and currency trading, just researching all the holistic variables that will affect something you own...

Plus, if something really does begin to depreciate it can be factored into various taxes so you're not going broke, but the only real downside is upkeep. Houses are expensive for rates, maintenance and insurance. Hence by some peoples definition I'm 'not rich' for perceived wealth.

quote:

Originally posted by EgosXII I don't know about Aus as a whole, but the worst I can see happening in Melburn is a stabilisation, not a drop, and that's been happening lately. But houses that would have been 400k four years ago are still going for 850 now... I do agree with you that its just a shady bizness looking at this mythical perceived wealth; perceived wealth has never done anyone any good; but the income of aus was only a section of the article. It wasn't going "Look, Australians have the most cash out of anyone anywhere", it was jsut saying in many departments we're doing pretty fucking well, and that's fairly true really. Aus was like the only first world country to not get pwnd by the evonomic crisis, and it also has one of the lowest debts out of any country.

Oh totally, we're in a very good position currently. There's no doubt about it.
It isn't as comfortable though as that article makes it out to be. Like I said, it's written well and I partially agree with it, but it is flawed.

quote:

Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On I love this article. Not for the article itself, because it's rather flawed, but because all the hundreds of responses from Aussies are generally agreeable and well-articulated. If you posted a similar article about the US on, say, abc.com(lol), 70% of your responses would be like WOO! USA! OF COURSE WERE DA BEST! and most of the rest would be bickering contrarians staunchly opposed to any positivist viewpoint whatsoever.

The latest example is the two Korean towers that are designed to look like they are in the clouds. The design is bloody fantastic and is an ingenious way of adding green sections more than half way up both skyscrapers.

The comments on various sites are just full of Yanks complaining about how it's disrespectful to Americans because it resembles the WTC collapsing and how the whole fucking world revolved around the US.

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