More about that affordability thing..............

 

Perhaps the largest barrier to housing availability and affordability in places like California are permitting rules, land use restrictions, and construction codes that make it absurdly expensive, or even outright impossible, to construct new single or multi-family housing.  Part of this is a conspiracy of current homeowners to protect and increase the value of their property -- after all, new home construction inevitably reduces their property value (or future escalation) by adding competing inventory and/or by creating congestion and loss of property-value-enhancing open space.  Another part of this is "everything bagel liberalism" where every program has to achieve every Leftish goal -- eg we want new housing but it has to have solar and appliances with a minimum SEER and use recycled materials and have a certain number of units set aside for protected groups and create a conservation easement on part of the land, etc etc -- until even units that can get permitted are too expensive for all but the very wealthy.

-Warren Meyer, from this post

the secret sauce..............

 

It doesn’t matter if you are trying to pick a new skill, or get fit. Discipline is the secret sauce. Do it long enough and it becomes a part of who you are. Then rewards compound. Every seed of talent, when watered with consistent input grows to bear multiple fruits.

-Tanmay Vora, from here

Twenty sentences.......................

 

.......................worth copying and keeping handy.

Can I get an Amen...........................?

 

Sometimes the best financial plan isn’t the one that looks prettiest on a spreadsheet—it’s the one you’ll actually stick with when real life gets messy. 

-Mark Crothers, extracted from here

The Universe is alive.........................

 

from the APOD site, enlargeable with an explanation.

On the lookout.................................

 

............................................for glimmers.

Forever is a long time....................

 

...................but life will definitely be more pleasant.

If you need a reason to have Kindle...........

 

.............this is probably reason enough.

A perfect 10.............................

 

..........................Bolero on a pipe organ.

As wishes go..........................

 

...................this one is worthy of us all.

And it's still the undisputed champion..........

 

We live in a world of unintended consequences.

-Michael Wade, as he posts on technology and AI

P. S.  Check his recommended reading list at the end

Ben Carlson.......................

...........takes a look at the housing affordability crisis:

It won’t make you feel any better as a young person in the U.S. to know that it’s even harder for people to afford homes in other countries around the globe.

But these numbers help put things into perspective that things can always get worse.

If the government doesn’t make this a priority the housing affordability crisis likely will get worse in the coming years.

Editor's Note:   The only thing the government can do to relieve the housing affordability crisis is to remove many of the regulatory barriers to new development.  At the end of the day, supply versus demand still rules.  If it were easier to build new housing, more housing would be built.  Once supply exceeds demand, or even matches it, prices will moderate.  Any attempt to subsidize home buyers or tenants, will only cause prices to keep increasing.  Trust me on this.

Granville Turkey Trot.....................

 

My Sweetie has been co-chair of the Granville Turkey Trot for a while now.  The 5k run/trot/walk/waddle event, held Thanksgiving mornings, draws a good crowd.  Despite temperatures hovering around freezing, over 2,000 friendly folk participated this morning.  This is the twentieth year for the event; it has become a family tradition.  The Granville Turkey Trot is also a fund-raiser.  All of the money goes to the Food Pantry Network of Licking County.  Last year the committee wrote them a check for around $130,000.  My Sweetie is hoping they top that this year.

Happy Thanksgiving................

 

A little bit of psychedelia never hurts..............

The Human Beinz............................Nobody But Me

 

In the background....................

Sven Zetterberg....................Let's Straighten It Out

 

All that is needed.....................

 

     If the nation is generous, governments take it upon themselves to cure all the ills of humanity.  They will revive commerce, they say; they will bring prosperity to agriculture, develop factories, encourage arts and letters, abolish poverty, etc., etc.  All that is needed is to create some new government functions and pay for some new functionaries.

-Frédéric Bastiat, from his Economic Sophisms, Second Series (1848)

no replays.......................

 

It is often said that history provides us with no action replays.  It is not given to controlled experiments.  We only learn what can go wrong after it has already done so, and by then it is too late to put it right.  In fact, the history of freedom in the modern world can be seen as a testing ground for different conceptions of politics.

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

a bad habit...........................

 

 A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

-Thomas Paine, as culled from his pamphlet, Common Sense

the thin fabric...............

 

He had made a hobby of studying the American Civil War and he had always been disturbed by the passions which it had unleashed in the country, the tensions and angers just below the surface, the thin fabric of the society which held it all together, so easy to rend.

-David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest