Quote:
Originally Posted by UGAalum94
Housing: I think we all just have to live with the consequences of how our decisions pay out without expecting to be somehow delivered from them. I think the word on the housing bubble was out there before the bubble burst; most of us just ignored it and did what we wanted to do. All of us may owe more on our homes than they are worth if you bought in the last five years. There's no government fix for this really. On some level, what a lot of people seem to want is a restoration of the bubble.
The "where's my bailout" thinking comes in when you see that if you quit paying your mortgage you might get something: adjustment of the loan value, new terms, something. At some point, you feel like a sucker for just plugging away at life while people who made dumb decisions or decisions with unfortunate consequences, depending on how gracious you want to be about it, end up doing as well or better in terms of material possessions. I think it was AKAMonet who first mentioned the Grasshopper and the Ant fable.
I have a whole lot less faith that we can bail society out because human nature won't fundamentally have changed a lot with a couple of months of economic downturn, particularly if the ants have to share with the grasshoppers.
(Personally, I think I have some Grasshopper traits too, so I'm not trying to present myself as all dedicated and financially cautious, but I would expect there to be individual consequences and resolutions to my own mistakes, rather than that everyone else was obligated to pitch in.)
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My point about bailing out society is the repercussions on the rest of us when all these houses end up abandoned. Blight is not a good thing for a neighborhood and only makes your own home value continue to decrease at an alarming rate. If my neighbor's house is auctioned off for $20,000, that completely kills my own property value. The more people who lose their houses, the worse it's going to be. It seems like a neverending downward spiral. I'm concerned about where "bottom" is. As I've said, I don't know what the answer is. Maybe a depression is inevitable.
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