Crash Course: Chapter 14 - Assets & Demographics (1 of 2) by Chris Martenson

[jraiv3]

If you have two houses, or you inherit gramma's old house, then the increase in real estate CAN liberate wealth. You sell one house, continue to live in the one you are living in. This is particularly true if you have "invested" in real estate. ... which includes investing in homes, buildings, etc...

So the situation where you can't liberate wealth from your home applies to NON investment and those who don't have two or more houses... which is pretty much 99% of your middle class.

[TWSceptic]

This guy is a scientists, that's why he can see the problems with the US economy, he looks at it scientifically. Compare that with economists like Krugman, who use outdated theories like keynesianism.

[stocktradinginvestor]

Synergy is a concept that so many people ignore. The scientific method trys to isolate all variables and compare the cause and effect of ONE variable upon another, but within a system of many variables the observed effect may not even matter due to the combined effect of variables. For example, if you have 1000 people seeing product A and 100 buying for $100 and you double the people seeing the product, double the conversion rate and double the cost, you've far more than doubled the result.

[stocktradinginvestor]

The housing myth is because of a concept of "synergy". The sum of all parts (at recent market value) is not equal to the whole. If you add up the price of each home individually based on what it went for last you get 1 number we'll call X. But if an alien race wanted to buy up all houses on the earth and started to do so, the cost would be MUCH more than X because after it bought 90% of the properties, the remaining 10% would have no alternative on where to live.

[doktorhipp]

you americans need to understand that paying tax is not a bad thing.

[stocktradinginvestor]

@doktorhipp from 1776 when this country was founded until 1940 this nation did fine with less than 5% of the population paying taxes.

[stocktradinginvestor]

@doktorhipp Also, if we paid more taxes, we would just be feeding the exponential machine even more. The system is set up so the government spends more than it receives, (to inflate away the real 'cost') and so if it receives more, it will spend all that much more (inefficiently) driving costs up, making more people dependent on it. The government isn't bound by laws of money much like the corrupted banks because they get more whether they do a good job or not. It's actually very bad policy.

[pismo10]

How did we get here?? Politicians learned it is easiest to buy elections by handing out welfare by the bucket full.Spend, spend, spend is all they understand on the left and right. Easiest way to get elected so......

[enotdetcelfer]

Well there *is* one way for the entire nation to downsize and that's for us to sell our houses to china and buy their houses, using the net gain in liquid to pay off our bonds to them.... We move to china, and they move here, and everything is square .oO(yay?T_T)

[LOLDISNEYLAND]

People if you need to borrow, don't borrow without planning to repay the debt properly and in a regularly scheduled manner. If you need to borrow, borrow as little as possible to fulfill a need especially one that turns out to be an asset. Assets can die simply due to the lack of market interest, but if you buy assets that you predict will live for a long time, that is the wisest thing to borrowing for.

[kikrlbs]

It's unfortunate that by the amount of comments, most people didn't make it this far in the crash course

[airharm]

@kikrlbs

or going by the views.. first video has like 150k views, this one only has 15k :/ Sad.

[followyourgut]

Debts are fixed, nevertheless you can devalue that debt if you devalue the currency in wich it is denominated.

[lucinos19]

good point. destroy dollar. That will solve everything!

Note that something small like dollar loose half value will only devalue the debt half. That doesnt solve much, You have to completely destroy dollar, completely loose dollar as a an international reserve system and US become a third world country,

Note also that US government have not the power by itself to do it, The power belongs to the FED cartel. FED must do it for government or government must destroy FED too.

[sgrouge]

@lucinos19 a 3rd wolrd country that owns the bomb 

[corvus1970]

@sgrouge , a dubious asset to be sure. "The Bomb" will gain us little in potential wars for resources

[mintoo2cool]

@followyourgut there is interest on the debt that is compounding exponentially .. so ... debt is not really fixed