Posted in Economics & Globalization, tagged affordable housing, American Dream, assets, bailout, banks, bill, bubble, city, community, competitive, consumer spending, cost of living, crisis, demand, dependants, destabilize, Economics & Globalization, entitlements, expense, family, Federal, food stamps, gouging, Great Recession, healthcare, home loans, home ownership, household, housing, housing crisis, income level, inflation, investment, investment groups, landlord, legislators, losses, market, median, metro, minimum wage, mortgage, neighborhood, overpriced, own, pay, percentage, percentage of income, property management, property owners, rates, real estate, recession, Reform, rent, rent control, rent stabilization, rental bonds, rentals, renters, rentership society, residents, retirement, rising, safety nets, savings, security, shortage, skyrocket, social programs, state, study, supply, taxpayer, tenant, trends, underfunding, unemployment, welfare on November 7, 2014|
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Among the lesser-reported impacts of the Great Recession, during which time millions of Americans lost their homes to foreclosure, is the continuing surge in rental housing demand. Demand has inflated rental rates in already costly markets throughout the country. But rental price inflation is not just a problem hitting high cost of living regions in California and New York — it has hit 90 cities nationwide with no end in sight. Rental costs between 2011 and 2012, alone, increased 4 percent nationally, whereas rents in some markets during a broader period — between 2000 and 2012 — have inflated nearly 25 percent, a study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University reports.
High demand and short supply means one thing: higher prices. But housing isn’t merely a luxury people can forgo. Increased demand for rental housing post recession does not merely reflect the fact that mortgage lending standards are more stringent, but the reality that many Americans are still attempting to rebound from a downwardly mobile spiral. Just because rents are rising doesn’t mean renters are in a position to absorb the price hikes. To the extent rental property demand is an outgrowth of the economic meltdown and stagnant wages — in spite of job growth in more recent years — it would appear housing reform is a topic seriously overdue for national attention.
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Posted in Economics & Globalization, Politics & Public Policy, Technology & Science, tagged $2 dollar a day, American Dream, American way, Arab Spring, Australia, badmouth, candidate, character defect, community, competitive, Comptroller, consumer price index, consumers, country, crisis, culprits, David Walker, debt, deficit, democracy, Democrats, dialog, direction, division, Dong Tao, easy target, Economics & Globalization, efficient, election, emerging power, entitlement class, Europe, family, finance, financial aid, First World, free trade, fundraiser, future, gina rinehart, have nots, haves, help, incomes, individualism, insolvency, jobs, labor, lazy, living standards, low pay, middle class, minimum wage, Mitt Romney, money, nation, partisans, policy, political will, president, profits, pundits, questions, race to the bottom, raise all boats, real inflation, recession, Reform, regulations, resentment, scapegoat, solution, stand together, sustainable, Technology & Science, Third World, threaten, trade for a new century, unemployment, unsustainable, USA, voters, wage loss, Wall Street, welfare state, West, whining, work, workforce, world markets on September 20, 2012|
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She’s the world’s wealthiest woman you’ve never heard of and she’s saying something you probably wish you hadn’t: “Gina Rinehart, world’s richest woman, makes case for $2-a-day pay“,the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Australian mining heiress has a problem. The cost of running a mining operation in Australia cannot compete with Africans willing to work a continent away for $2 per day.
There’s a certain elementary logic to Rinehart’s argument. If the two nations are selling raw materials at vastly different prices because of vastly different costs of labor, her operation loses. In a worse-case scenario, it might not even make sense to go on operating. From Rinehart’s perspective, profit is the objective and benevolence is a job — never mind if the jobs she creates fails to compensate workers well enough to keep the lights on. She’s precariously positioned on that slippery slope so common to today’s political and trade debates: It could be worse: no jobs.
The world’s richest woman has a point. But it doesn’t pass the sustainable-future test.
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The Social Critic 