glomag

I’m sorry to be pedantic but this is a pet peeve of mine. If you bought a house you would not have any mortgage payment. You (and everyone else usually) are talking about financing a house.

Maybe I’m the crazy one but when I buy something I like to look at the total amount that I’m paying for it.
If I wanted a house listed for $300,000 5-years ago and I wanted to finance it, the rate might have been 3% so the total amount I would be paying would be $455,332.36 over 30yrs. Therefore I would only finance if I thought ~$450,000 was a fair price. If I thought the house was only worth $300,000 then I would need to pay in cash.

Today rates are at 7% so a house listed at $300,000 actually costs $718,526.69 when financed. Do I think the houses I see listed for $300,000 are worth over $700,000? No. Do I have more than $300,000 needed to afford to pay in cash? Also no. Therefore, I’m not buying.
*These calculations are ignoring the down payment but the principle is still valid.

If they’re going to get the same suspension either way, they might as well…

Is your mind on your money?

deleted by creator

Yes it sounds like everything worked out great for you. Good job on timing your investment! But this is a perfect example of the type of financialization of the housing market that I’m against. You used leverage to buy an expensive, risky asset and sold it for a profit just a few years later. This doesn’t always work out so well (ask anyone who bought a house in 2007) and I don’t want to put essentially all my savings into a wallstreetbets style gamble just so I can have somewhere to sleep at night.

I’m not saying mortgages should completely go away. I’m sure a mortgage is the right decision for many people’s situations. It’s just the way that people talk about buying a house, a mortgage seems to be assumed. If it wasn’t just assumed then maybe people would put more thought into whether they want to save for a larger down payment (or the full price) or whether they want to pay $750,000 for a $400,000 house.
I don’t know, maybe people see these numbers and think its a great deal. All I see is a bank making a huge amount of money from me that I would rather keep for myself. Also, if people stopped stretching their budget to the absolute limit with financing nonsense (3% down, variable rate loans, rate buydowns), in aggregate there would be less demand for houses at these high prices and sellers would have to start accepting lower offers.

Your partner wants to finance a house someday. I know I’m on the losing side of this battle but I really wish people would stop associating BUYING a house with taking out a LOAN from a bank.

It just feels like people are only deceiving themselves by saying “I need good credit to buy a house” when what they really mean is “I need good credit so I can take on a lot of debt and pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest over the next 30 years.”

That’s a good point. But the US is not offering this same path to citizenship to anyone willing to buy a house in rural Alabama. I assumed these visa programs were aimed at attracting wealthy foreigners which is why the US has something similar for anyone willing to invest $800K in a commercial enterprise. That’s why I was curious if $263K is considered relatively wealthy in Greece and could buy a house even in desirable areas. The fact that apparently this is not the case makes the goals of this program unclear.

“Greece’s golden visa program requires a minimum investment of approximately $263,000 (€250,000) in real estate.”
Is that enough to buy an average house? Is the economy still this bad over there?

It’s probably bad form to bring this type of comment over from reddit but in this case I can’t help myself.

Username checks out.

Brazil

I don’t have any evidence for this but it seems like the vaccine pushback is at least partially a desire to avoid responsibility. If they choose to vaccinate and their kid is in the 0.000001% who experience adverse effects then it would be their fault the kid was hurt but if they don’t vaccinate and their kid just happens to die of measles or whatever then it was all part of god’s plan and they didn’t do anything wrong.

I don’t think the term media literacy was used but we did learn literary criticism and how to formulate arguments in formal debate. We covered The Onion and adbusters, and we talked about identifying bias. In history class we learned the difference between primary and secondary sources and my history teacher was the first person I ever heard say "follow the money " to understand a person’s motivations. We also had a theory of knowledge class which taught some basics of philosophy.

Good points, I just wanted to mention another database that is useful for finding information about supplements based on actual research studies. Unfortunately it requires a subscription but some Universities and Libraries can provide access.

https://naturalmedicines.therapeuticresearch.com/

You make a good point that people who believe these conspiracies often have an underlying reason making them want to believe. Dan Olson came to the same conclusion in his video about flat earthers which I would recommend to anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.

“Flat Earthers are not otherwise-empty vessels who believe one kooky thing. They believe that thing because it suits their purposes. […] it says something they already believe about the nature of the social world. Flat Earth is a thing people want to believe because if it were true it would be irrefutable proof of everything else they believe.”

Folding Ideas, In Search of a Flat Earth ~29 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44

As for the soy thing, Hbomerguy covered the topic pretty thoroughly.

https://youtu.be/C8dfiDeJeDU?si=-WBPUYTJxhJqbNnQ

Is the purpose of these subsidies to maintain oil and gas infrastructure so that the military can also use it?

If the infrastructure is necessary for defense but not necessary for civilian use then it sounds like it should be paid for via tax, be maintained by the government, and counted as defense spending.

This would increase the military’s fuel cost (to the true cost) and higher gas prices brought about by ending the subsidies would incentivize lower carbon transportation methods for civilians.

Some other publications have commented on the original more recently. For example: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-11-nations-of-the-united-states-2015-7

I thought I had seen one with some more in depth historical analysis from The Atlantic or Bloomberg or something but I can’t seem to find it again.

If you’re using Chrome you can use this plugin to bypass paywalls

There are probably similar plugins for other browsers.

There is a good general summary here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which-of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/

Stairway?

Yes a mortgage is an investment (which can make a profit or loss just like other investments) but it is also an obligation. With a mortgage losing your job could potentially leave you homeless. That is not what I consider “financially free”. If you have a lot of cash up front you could potentially put it into higher yielding investments and make a profit on the difference between yield and mortgage rate at the end of 30 years but that takes some amount of luck and skill with investing. Especially now that mortgage rate are 7%. If you don’t have all the cash up front then taking out a 30yr 7% loan for 300k will mean you’re paying over 700k for the house with interest included.