link round-up

[cellio]

Maritan Headsets (from Joel on Software) is a long but worthwhile article on software standards -- both not having them early enough, and having them and trying to enforce them. Parts of it made me laugh out loud, like the paragraph containing this passage: "[...] but of course when you plug the headphones into FireQx 3.0 lo and behold they explode in your hands because of a slight misunderstanding about some obscure thing in the spec which nobody really understands called hasLayout, and everybody understands that when it's raining the hasLayout property is true and the voltage is supposed to increase to support the windshield-wiper feature, but there seems to be some debate over whether hail and snow are rain for the purposes of hasLayout..."

Rescue me: a fed bailout crosses a line seems (to this non-expert) like a good analysis of what just happened to the market and the dollar. (Need a login ID? Try BugMeNot.) I am more scared, and more angry, about our government's economic policies than I've been in a while. As someone on my subscription list said (I forget who), the people who actually took personal responsibility and saved rather than spending recklessly are the ones who are going to get hammered by this, while the idiots who bought houses (or corporate holdings) they couldn't afford and racked up tons of debt will be bailed out because we can't stand to say "too bad you were an idiot".

As long as I'm saying "too bad"... too bad, Michigan and Florida. Agreed.

On a lighter note: Garfield Minus Garfield is surreal. And since seeing it a week or so ago, I haven't been able to read Garfield "straight".

Comments

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

We really need some sort of financial education in our high schools.

Yeah, that's what I love about libertarians. I'm a genius; anyone who acts differently than me, and that's most people, is a moron who deserves whatever they get.

Hey, guess what: you can put the 20% down and get the 30 year mortgage and still be on the shaft in this whole situation. On the other hand, choosing when I would have a family that needed a house is about the same as choosing when I would be born. So, as an obvious moron for not being able to do that, or a possessing a crystal ball telling me house prices would decline at the highest rate since the Depression, it's obvious that I have to sell out to geniuses like you or be trapped in my house. That rewards your genius and punishes my stupidity. Which is only fair, right.

[fauxklore]

Uh, having a family doesn't mean you need to buy a house. Plenty of people with families live in apartments or rent houses. My family (Mom, Dad and 2 kids) lived in a 1 bedroom apartment until I was almost 4 years old. And it probably did me some good by teaching me about not living beyond our means.

It might be worth your looking up what the average square footage of American homes and the average size of American families have been historically. People have entirely unrealistic expectations of what they need.

And, by the way, I'm not a libertarian.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Well, since you're omniscient, you already know I'm an American historian and quite aware of historical standards of housing in this bloated country, let alone compared to worldwide standards, though I'm puzzled as to why you then don't live with six of your family members and neighbors in a room, which would be both financially prudent and close to the historical, global norm.

Oh, that's right, it's because your family is my family is everyone's family, ergo you know exactly why everyone does what they do, or rather what they should do based on what your family was able to do.

Unfortunately your omniscience didn't extend to understanding that the comment about when I had my family didn't imply that I ran right out and bought a house when said family arrived. But I'm sure you do already know that we didn't buy a goddam McMansion somewhere but a fairly small house that was reasonably within budget by any conventional standard. Actually we did something pretty similar to your family, it sounds like. Even your genius family found it difficult to have four people in a one bedroom apartment. Of course the difference is that yours lived within your means until they could do better, whereas we lived within our means until we could do better... and then the value of our house dropped 20%.

So, clearly, your family did better than teaching you mere financial wizardry: they also gave you the universal omniscience to know a down market was coming and to actually time your birth to foresee when you could execute the coup of buying in said market. I shudder to think of the implications for dullardry in my own benighted offspring. Their genetic propensity for foolishness is compounded by having a father who thinks that someone who spouts libertarian buncombe might actually be a libertarian, whether they admit it or not.

Really, it's amazing that you know everything about everyone already, but I suppose that because you know everything already, you already factored in my amazement. Which is even more amazing. I mean, it's either that, or you're seventeen years old, so...

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

I'm neither omniscient nor particularly clueful about home ownership, so I'm going to ask a stupid question.

whereas we lived within our means until we could do better... and then the value of our house dropped 20%.

Why is this a problem? Is it primarily that you can't easily move anywhere until you pay down the mortgage to what the house is currently worth? I mean--unless your income goes down as well you're not suddenly going to be unable to afford the payments you had been making before and thereby get kicked out on the street, and if anything you'll get a break on property tax, no?

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Essentially, yes -- I have a job in another city, and would very much like to move there, but the drop in the value of the house means that in order to move, I'll probably have to bring money to the bank that we don't have since the value of the house has dropped enough to cancel out our equity. Nothing is certain until we find a buyer, of course, so we don't know just how unlucky we are. While the payments are the same, the growth in other costs (the heating bill more than tripling since we've moved in) makes it very hard, thus the desire to move somewhere where the housing cost is cheaper to begin with.

As far as property tax... the city's costs will stay the same, it seems to me, so while they might value the house less, I'd imagine they'd up the millage so the tax would be the same. Hey, if we're stuck here, we need the schools to be decent... so there are no real breaks in all this, I think.