housing affordability is it just australia that is over priced?

demonicpicaxeguy

Senior Member
in all seriousness i think is one of the rare threads techincal hasn't said anything in yet, although the night is young and the the bottle is still 3/4ish full

even though this thread doesn't count as beating the nesbit thread ,i've got an almost complete port extender thats interestingly functional and some luck with a pic16f88 and an sd card and a picaxe
 

Rookie

Member
sorry for ask...
but i feel idiot not do it
you're talking about SD memory card?
instead of yanpp's compact flash module?
used by datalogging?
 

sedeap

Senior Member
**********
WOW !
this turning into a tech thread after all !
but I think IF the SD's proyect really *born* need their own thread to prevent to be loose by anyone who be interested in it.
So if you want *share* your knowledgement with any other, the best is give it a chance to find it.
But is only my opinion.

:eek:)
 

toxicmouse

Senior Member
i watched a Steve Irwin documentary last night, he was putting sattelite trackers on monster crocodiles. i had to laugh when he named one of them Nesbit. coincidence? impossible. is Nesbit an Ozzy name for a pet you can't find? do Ozzy children play "Nesbit and seek" ?
 

D n T

Senior Member
Hey the nesbit thread didn't really end up being picaxe related.

The R&D company idea and the arguments:
Every one is equal, but I'm more equal than any one so what I say goes, we all do the work and share the profits but I will cop the blame and settle fights. I could also "get rid of" useless employees.
Hey, according to the patent laws we were working on it first, this forum would be proof and we could take any one to the cleanners where they could be put into a picaxe controlled washer and cleaned up and the ironed using a picaxe controlled iron, that should straighten them out!!
Maybe we could even have time share villas in argentina where the cost of living is soooo cheap.
We could contribute to saving the environment by making a picaxe based tagging and tracking system.
We could fit one to every child as they turn 14 and if they misbehave we could engage the behaviour modification protocols.

Today PICAXE, tommorrow the world!!!
(insert evil laugh and gloved hand stroking/ strangling a white rabit( nesbit))
Anyway, back to the real world, this thread reads better than a novel, I think I will take my laptop to read it in bed instead of my silicon chip magazine.

 

Dippy

Moderator
DNT:
Quite right, design by committee is fraught. Example Eurofighter/Typhoon.

PICAXE Forum in bed? Geez you ought to get out more mate.
 

moxhamj

New Member
Re the original thread, in the last week hasn't the US housing market gone into meltdown? Type US housing market into google and all sorts of gloom and doom stories appear about the second great depression. It all looks very similar to the Tokyo real estate bubble. Prices go up, people invest in houses, banks are happy to lend against the new 'value' of the house, people borrow more and borrow for a new car and a boat as well because the bank says they can afford them.

And then interest rates go up a few percent.

One or two people default on their loans. Then a few more and the avalanche starts. Suddenly institutions are not safe. I read yesterday there are Wall St banks that won't even lend to other banks overnight for fear they might go broke.

So perhaps the whole thing is soon going to sort itself out and house prices will come down to something that ordinary working folk can afford.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
This is just the type of scenario I was considering earlier in the topic. Interest rates go up or wages fall or disappear, people cannot afford to repay mortgages, banks foreclose, and an avalanche of disaster hits - especially in this case because someone thought it would be a good idea to deal in dodgy investments as some sort of valuable collateral, despite it being obvious that at some point the bubble would burst.

This is what I really hate about capitalistic venture; it's all about reaping in the profits and leaving others to pay the costs, suffer and mop up the mess - "Sod you jack,I came out of it okay".
 

lbenson

Senior Member
Dr_Acula: "It all looks very similar to the Tokyo real estate bubble."

At the peak of the Tokyo commercial real estate bubble, it was said that by the latest valuation, Tokyo real estate was worth more than all the real estate in the U.S. This seemed unplausible on its face. The situation in the U.S. looks somewhat different in that the high prices of housing were brought on by lending to large numbers of buyers who were almost guaranteed to default once the "teaser" interest rates expired. We all feel sorry for the poor banks which won't make as much money as they expected. There is much real pain, of course, for the people who have lost stakes because of perhaps overwishful investing, and a real risk that the liquidity crunch of the lenders will cause a broader meltdown, but the central banks worldwide seem to be moving to avert that. But who knows how it will play out. My $.02 (US).
 

demonicpicaxeguy

Senior Member
an update on the whole going to lightning ridge episode is that we are now not going, we had ww3 with the inlaws that lasted for a few days before i gave up the idea,
i hate to spout doom and gloom but my long term crystal ball tells me that while the reserve bank is predicting interest rates going up over here i'm not looking forward to what my rent is going to be not to mention the forclosure rate after talking to a few people in my street who are already starting to bash the for sale signs in the lawn most of them think they will withstand 1 more 1/4% interest rates rise and that'll be it ,
as it is now around my area you can see the banks famous letter in the windows of quite a few houses for sale
 

manuka

Senior Member
Well DPG, I'm sorry that it's over, but you sure gave us Picaxe posters a run for our money! Thought- make an offer your neighbors can't refuse ? Stan
 

D n T

Senior Member
Just to add doom and gloom, We put an offer on a house and that night we heard that the US housing market has gone bad. We went through a RAMS broker too, but we aren't gettting a loan through them. We might get it of another mob.

And to top all that off, I just let the magic smoke out of my 08 an I can't get it back in. Oh well, evolution, now I have to use my 08Ms

Remember it could be worse, you could have 24 hours to live and know it.

By the way Dippy, I cant afford to go out more so its me and my laptop
(do you have any idea how sad and pitiful that makes my existance sound??)

Any way,
GO HARD OR GO HOME!!

Edited by - D n T on 19/08/2007 15:29:17
 

demonicpicaxeguy

Senior Member
if rams will give you the loan you find most of the others will,

how this for a conspiracy theory though,

you know how everytime the reserve bank puts up interest rates they say we're spending too much and putting too much on credit,

my theory is that the big four banks have been pushing credit card based mortgages where your pay goes onto a credit account and your daily expenses come out of that along with your repayments, the idea being to artificially increase the figures that the reserve bank people look at when they decide that rates are going up.

i hope i'm wrong, but on the other hand they are out to make money
 

moxhamj

New Member
RAMS have been rather exposed to the US market - their share price has gone from $2.49 to $1 in the last month. Perhaps instead of a house you could buy RAMS instead? I gather the big 4 banks in Australia are circling waiting to pick over the corpses of all the non bank lenders.

My grandad was a bank manager and back in the 1960s you had to beg a bank to lend you anything. Now the banks throw money at people so it is no surprise there are more defaults.
 

sedeap

Senior Member
******************

&quot;<i>Now the banks throw money at people so it is no surprise there are more defaults. </i> &quot;

Defaults? in Banks?

i don't think so, only they won less than expect.

Here, some years ago, the banks grab all the money they have, and deliver it to
overborders vault locations, to store the paper&amp;coin.
So when we try to make one withdraw, they says, &quot;sorry, no money available&quot; so the
entire financial structure fall down, and the foreign money never was payed, if you
want your money, only the 10% was available to you but only in local money, and the
exchange (one to one) never was made.
You deposit 100U$S and you only can withdraw 40% of that ! ! ! ! and NOT in dollar
currency.(same for &#8364;, &#163;, &#165;, or whatever)
The 60% rest in peace... the banks (and goverment) STEAL us !
So the people ever pay the &quot;defaults&quot;, the banks never do.

We fired one President (the mob do) in one event called &quot;cacerolazo&quot; (*panpoting*)
where people hitting pan's whit spoons and yelling &quot;go out MF's&quot;, incredible whithout
riots or rebellions, more than a million of people around of the president house,
make him run out by helicopter.
Twenty streets around there still full of mob.
This MF'd, say in TV one hour earlier &quot;Martial law is on effect now&quot;, so the people
go to fired him, against that.

After that, we change several presidents (and their followers &amp; henchmans) in few
months (less than a year) before we can call a vote.
Now is far more quiet here, no big problems, but many small manifest riots run on
the streets, against banks and other foreign companies.

NEVER trust in Banks. Use it, but take your own way, invest in land, gold, &quot;bricks&quot;
(properties), goods, or any you like, but NOT let currency laying inside bank vault,
or they may show you their claws.


:eek:)
 

moxhamj

New Member
Hmm - here in Australia we have an entire generation of Italian and Greek immigrants who came out after world war 2, and who have a real fear of putting money in banks after their money was stolen during the war.

Banks have always lent more than they actually have and it always works fine until there is a &quot;run&quot; when everyone wants their money at the same time. I don't think we have had one of those in Australia since the late 1800s, but I gather they make for &quot;interesting times&quot;, ie mobs swirling round presidential palaces.

I think the financial crisis in the US is actually in the second tier housing finance market, not with the banks. Stock market is up and up today, so maybe it was just a blip in the market. Housing prices will possibly stay unaffordable for a while yet.

When it all seems too complicated, I go out into the shed and solder some more picaxes.

Edited by - Dr_Acula on 20/08/2007 06:29:15
 

sedeap

Senior Member
***********************
Totally agree with them!

Use the banks, but NOT trust on them.

Buy anything you want, a house, land, breed some cattle, raise fruit trees, tomatoes
or any other thing... DO somethig useful and keep it.

:eek:)
 

D n T

Senior Member
Didn't get the loan, we don't earn enough, but the government value us so highly, maybe they will lend us the money, yeh right.
Found a use for PICAXE without its magic smoke. I tied and glued it to a hook and used it as a lure.
It just goes to show, even fish love PICAXE because I caught 4 decent fish before the super glue gave out and the chip sunk to the bottom.

see you all later
 

manuka

Senior Member
You folks must be slow off the mark on this,as chips are naturally associated with fish in many countries. What better lure hence!? Stan
 

D n T

Senior Member
Sorry Stan, your accent.
Over here we say fish and chips not fush and chups my mistake.
By the way, when are you next comming over to this side od the creek?
 

rigidigital

Senior Member
I nearly bought a house in Brisbane just a few years ago for $240,000, now its $520000. whew!

Pouple such as my pare--delete, have 5 pricey abodes, what the rents dont cover they get back in tax reduction:) its the wealthy that have good homes -=trade in housing that is meant for the rest of plebians, simply to make money for buying yachts and to hell with people that need a roof over their head :) A rather simple view a guess! morally I am undecided.

 
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
A fine example of the rich getting richer while the poor getting poorer.

Is it morally right ? There are two fundamental issues - the right of anyone to make a profit, and the mechanisms by which someone is in a position to make that profit. The second closely tied to whether we have a fair society where everyone is equally empowered or where some are favoured while others are deliberately oppressed or repressed to keep the system trucking along.

I guess we can also push out another few pages on questioning who gave anyone the right to claim ownership of land and the right to then sell it on at a profit in the first place.

On the opposite side of the coin though, how could society exist and function if there were no ownership of land ? Are we even able to see &quot;there is another way&quot; when we are so married to what we have and are told we must have ?
 

boriz

Senior Member
Everyone at some time will say to themselves, &#8220;There must be more to life. There must be something better.&#8221;. But then they have to face the reality of debt. This is a debt driven society. I wonder how many people would change their lives completely if they suddenly found themselves debt free, with a few thousand pounds of travelling cash.

I think Tyler Durden said it best in Fight Club:

&#8220;Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy S**T we don't need.&#8221;


Edited by - boriz on 30/08/2007 15:40:32
 

premelec

Senior Member
I haven't been following this thread closely - however it occured to me some time ago that fundamentally the only thing that gives money value is people not having it... if they have it they don't need it... a simple observation with some subtle consequences... [I'm not sure why people who have plenty 'need' more... :) ]
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Dippy : <i>And the solution is .....? </i>

Well, it would have to amount to a fundamental change in society, certainly in the west and for those who have adopted the western model.

How such a major societal change can be brought about isn't something I can easily envisage with so many people believing in what we currently have, and those who do not being out-numbered by those who do. Systems invariable evolve to protect themselves.

Perhaps we'll just have to wait for the cataclysmic event to occur which turns everything on its head, undermines all that we hold as truth, and allows us to start again with a different perspective. Even then it's possible that the outcome will be no different.

Without such a major event, the first step has got to be seeing what is wrong with what we have, accepting it is wrong and understanding why it is wrong. There can be no solution until we can reach that milestone. That will always be an up-hill struggle, because those who currently benefit will be inclined to say there is nothing wrong with what we have, poverty, starving millions, global catastrophes are just an inevitability that canot be avoided.
 

sedeap

Senior Member
******************
Someone says one time: (translated)

&quot;The most rich guy isn't who have too much,
is the guy who need less to be happy. &quot;

:eek:)
 

papaof2

Senior Member
&#8220;Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy S**T we don't need.&#8221;

We had that discussion with our older daughter when she was about 11 (whatever the &quot;gotta have what everyone else has&quot; age was - and old enough to do her own laundry). She wanted &lt;designer name here&gt; jeans but our budget for school clothes was fixed. Her options were one pair of &lt;designer&gt; jeans or several pairs of the not-so-trendy generic jeans. A few months with just the one pair of jeans that required frequent washing was enough to convince her that generic jeans were OK - and much less work ;-)

I also see those who believe every word of the advertising - and are driving around in a 3 year old Cadillac with the windows down on a summer day when the temperature is 102F (and the heat index is 110F) because all their money goes to the car note and they can't afford to have the air conditioning fixed.

John
 

Dippy

Moderator
One thing I always avoid (when I really don't know people) is politics (and religion).

We are where we are, sadly. And political parties are converging.

If enough people had enough similar strong feelings and conviction and oomph they'd start a new political party and get voted in. Can't see it happening. Remember, all political parties started somewhere.
 

BeanieBots

Moderator
C'mon Dippy. Where's your sense of adventure. We probably shouldn't discuss sex so that only leaves politics and religion as PICAXE seems to have gone out the window in this thread.

Sadly, I don't think we are all that far away from the &quot;cataclysmic event&quot; that Hippy mentions. When it comes to evaluating an engineering issue, I always find it helps to drop in extreme values to see what the outcome would be and use that to determine an aproximate equation to describe the problem. For instance is it roughly linear, exponential or parabolic and if parabolic, is it peak or trough.
The same principle can be applied to politics.
Imagine we cleaned the slate and made all people equal with equal resources and funding.
The only thing that can't be made equal is the people themselves. Some will be selfish some selfless, some harworking others lazy. Before long some will start to excel above others and a hierarchy will evolve. The greedy will aquire over and above the passive and lazy resulting in a very similar model if not identical to the one we have now. Be that right or wrong moral or imoral, I don't ever see it changing all the time humans (as we know them) are involved. Whether or not the pits should have been closed or manufacturing moved to China or pensions increased is nothing but tiny little details on the overall nature of the way humans have evolved to behave. It will take many more generations before those fundamentals change.
Anyway, that's my tuppence.
 

Dippy

Moderator
That's an agreeable tuppence worth BB.
And I'd hate to live in a pseudo-Marxist world where everyone earns the same.
Where would be the incentive for starting a business (to employ others btw)??
Whilst I agree that things can go 'too far' we have to have the incentive that if you risk more, or try harder than others, then the potential rewards are there. No entrepreneurs would be a disaster.
I think the ruin of Britain is uncontrolled immigration, though some 'experts' say they should be no limits.
Calling America... please let me in!
 

Rickharris

Senior Member
I would like to see an environment where no one earned anything because they don't need to.

Replication 9fabbers) are getting to b a reality - perhaps everyone can have a fabber that works in different mediums to make furniture, property, clothing etc.

Having worked in the food industry I know that production costs are very low despite the supermarket price we pay -

In actual fact to make any such system work it would take a considerable change in morality/attitude and use of technology.

No need for cars if every road had a post every 100 yards where you could call an unmanned vehicle to take you where you need to go. Not impossible.

Little need for hands on workers if you extend the use of Robots/automation - develop remote manipulation (already they talk of remote medical operations so working a machine should be easy)

Industrialisation had lead us to a live to work mentality. All the great civilisations - Roman - Greek - Egyptian etc built their great discoveries on robot labour - They called their robots slaves but they allowed the &quot;master race&quot; the time to develop great ideas. We of course, at present, call our robots employees.

Even the majority of the great Victorians were relatively wealthy people who had servants, who know what we could do standing on the shoulders of the giants before us if we were freed from the toil of work.

Much of the technology already exists or is on the fringe of development. Perhaps one day in the future we shall see such a system evolve.

 
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