One thing that America should teach you is that anything that isn't a personal starts as a product for the wealthly and then moves down into the range where average people could afford it (assuming there is enough demand for it).

BTW: This should include housing to but market shortages and mis-allocations are created by government interferance such as zoning regulations, and tax deductions on mortgage interest.

BTW: This should include housing to but market shortages and mis-allocations are created by government interferance such as zoning regulations, and tax deductions on mortgage interest.

You know, complaining about the system that subsidized the creation of all the wealth you Libertarians types try to hoarde is one reason capital "L" Libertarians are so STUPID.

One thing that America should teach you is that anything that isn't a personal starts as a product for the wealthly and then moves down into the range where average people could afford it (assuming there is enough demand for it).

Please...rephrasing my complaint don't make you sound wise.

After your "cancel your vote" stupidity I've decided I don't have to be nice to you when you get pompous enough to try to tell me something I don't know.

Especially when I've just demonstrated that I know it.

in orginal post it should have read "personal service starts"

so exactly why are you so pissed at my comment. I pointed out something rather obvious that things like cell phone and pc's and cars were only for the rich but over time they became affordable to everyone.

Then I made a comment about one of the obvious counter examples housing when price has been going up not down and i mention two things that hurt the production of low cost housing.

So please explain to me why this put you into a hissy fit ?

I pointed out something rather obvious that things like cell phone and pc's and cars were only for the rich but over time they became affordable to everyone.

Because it's too damn obvious.

Also, the toys you mention aren't comparable at all to the species-shaping that will, if let go, turn the wealthy into an objectively different species. They WILL be superior, and it will have nothing to do with merit.

As technology improves, even given a lifting of all boats (which is also nonsense, but…) poor folks get left further and further behind. Gene therapy can produce inequalities that can't even conceptually be overcome by the poor. To equate that with the arrival of cellphones is absurd.

Then I made a comment about one of the obvious counter examples housing when price has been going up not down and i mention two things that hurt the production of low cost housing.

Also nonsense. Housing costs did not explode when VA loads etc. came into play. It was when the surrounding society because brutally mercenary that housing costs blew up.

You see, my hissy fit has several root causes. Primary of them is your rhetoric, which would be damaging in the extreme to everyone. And I've dismembered those same arguments so many times, I'm just tired of them.

So you want discussion, bring a topic. Don't bother with the standard Internet debate format (open with an empty tautology). Don't say shit if you have nothing to say. Don't bring no falsehoods posing as history.

Your alternative is to get someone more skilled at plucking people's nerves assigned to this site. Because this is my last response to an insubstantial comment.

"Reducing the Cost of New Housing Construction in New York City"
http://www.law.nyu.edu/realestatecenter/CostStudy_intro.htm

"The analysis begins with an overview of housing problems facing the city of New York, and then compares construction costs in New York to three other major U.S. cities - Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas. A wide variety of factors contributing to high construction costs are explored, including the availability of land, rent regulation, environmental regulation, zoning regulations, land use review processes, building codes, permit approval processes, taxes, labor, and extortion and illegal practices."

Now I don't have a report for NYU but mortgage deduction was designed to benefit home purchasing over renting. Thus increasing the market for home purchasing over creation of rental properties. But I am sure that seems like empty retoric to you.

And about HGH and gene manipulation its is not anything that hasn't happened before. People without good nutrition as children are often mentally deficent compared to well fed.

I am sorry you find my comments to simplistic. I was trying to make a simple statement. Not everything is complex.

Not everything is complex, but those things that are complex should not be presented as being simple. Like Economics.

Now I don't have a report for NYU

And yet you have the URL.

You really should read it before mentioning it here. Arguing from something you haven't even read gets you summarily dismissed.

but mortgage deduction was designed to benefit home purchasing over renting. Thus increasing the market for home purchasing over creation of rental properties. But I am sure that seems like empty retoric to you.

No, it seems like the right policy. The only flaw in it was not extending it to Black folks. Read my conversation with Mark, a libertarian.

You don't seem to understand that The American Dream required government intervention. Or you're just going to hold forth, which would be unacceptable. The only reason I don't think you're being willfully ignorant (MUCH less tolerable than mere stubbornness or unknowledgeability) is I know Americans don't do history and are therefore startlingly easy to fool.

And about HGH and gene manipulation its is not anything that hasn't happened before. People without good nutrition as children are often mentally deficent compared to well fed.

Exactly. You find that tolerable when we have the means to make sure there are no people without good nutrition? I don't. It's a waste of humans, a waste of mind and potential.

Things change. Times change. Capabilities change. Fighting that only works if you don't care about anything beyond your own lifetime, but even then it sets your kids up for grief.

We CAN keep every citizen in this country healthy There's no reason not to.

Oh, that's right. Profit is more important.

Feh.

Yes, I find your arguments simplistic.

You I can respect as any human. Your arguments and positions are weak, though, because what you argue for error. And it's difficult to take seriously a Black person who actually is pro-Bush. Not just pro-Republican Party platform, though that's bad enough, but runs Blacks-For-No-Reading-Divider-Not-Uniter.blogspot.com.

Gene therapy can produce inequalities that can't even conceptually be overcome by the poor.

The answer to that would be to have germline gene therapy, then you have to pay only once and all your descendants get the genes for free.

An excellent suggestion. That way, the wealthy save money by only needing it once, poor and middle class folks STILL can't pay for it, and you now have a documentable hereditary aristocracy.

Quite the brave new world THAT would bring about, eh?

Just to clarify. I am pro-Bush 2 not republican party. Bush has done a number of things that break signifantly from the Buchannan Reagan wing of the party that have or will help Black Americans today and in the future.

Specially NCLB which finally forces schools across the country to measure how well their students are preforming and penalize those who fail. It is not a cure all but like Nixons affirmative action and set aside contracts it will help a lot.

And it's difficult to take seriously a Black person who actually is pro-Bush.

And you were the one talking about "giving up your power by voting Democratic."

Your take on gene therapy only being available for the super rich is not persuasive cos unsubstantiated. The cost of drugs is for the most part the fixed research cost, while the marginal cost is very low compared to the research cost. It really wouldn't make much economic sense to artificially restrict the output.

Your take on gene therapy only being available for the super rich is not persuasive cos unsubstantiated.

I didn't say the super rich, I said the wealthy.

We've been through the drug pricing thing. Your take is unconvincing.

Am I the only one here who sees P6's point?

The premise of libertarians and "bootstrap" conservatives is that markets if untrammeled by state intervention will maximize the satisfactions of anyone dilligent to participate.

Scott, I'm sorry to second P6's indignation, but you really should be familiar with people like Ricardo and Mill if you're going to hold forth on housing and the cost thereof. Ricardo is hardly someone a libertarian could seriously take issue with, but he introduced the concept of rent (he did NOT invent it; von Thunen wrote about it earlier, but Ricardo made the idea famous and collected existing knowledge about rent). Rents are high because the thing you pay the rent for is unique and irreplaceable. Hence, housing in NYC was high back when residents lived in dire squalor.

I really haven't got the time or energy to explain something as obvious as this; and I can't post photos of the appalling squalor of those wretched tenements from the glorious days when there were no pesky building codes or safety regulations. Without them, you'd scoff anyway; if you and a roomful of bystanders got a whiff of those days and the odor of decay, I very much doubt you'd have the temerity to say the thing that offended P6 so much.

Zoning laws, indeed! Excuse me while I retch!

The point is that markets are supposed to allocate resources to merit. But this is going to create a class that can buy its way to perpetual mastery. It drives me to distraction that defenders of monopolies use the argument that "monopolies got that way by superior efficiency, therefore they should be left alone"--just like the Habsburgs, no? Hey, the Middle Ages [in Europe] were a libertarian paradise. Private armies; no public services of any kind; social welfare was purely discretionary; I could go on, but I have a life to lead.

I suppose the Habsburgs could have afforded to put their show eternally beyond the invisible hand. That's what every monopolist wants. Indeed, it's why white underclass groups are so frequently bitterly racist as well: they're in a crowded labor market, they desperately need a racial "monopoly" to hang on to the shred of self-esteem they've got.

Nor have I changed the subject. Suppose by some fluke I get ahead momentarily--say it's an accident of history. TOTALLY hypothetical situation, of course. Do I want the same for my children? You're correct, I do indeed. In 1900, or 2000, the way I could do this is with some sort of monopoly--white privilege was a honey of monopoly, wasn't it? A firm with special political privileges? A patent over something absurdly obvious? Perhaps Standard Oil of New Jersey?

In 2050, my grandson might be able to enjoy a monopoly on certain biological traits that put him forever beyond the riffraff. In 1900, at least in a DH Lawrence novel, his high-born privilege could have been defeated by some strapping villein with manly pectorals...Not in 2050.

Anyway, please listen to what we're saying--don't think about how you're going to save face and get the last word. Give your vanity a holiday.