All Forum Posts by: Susan Maneck

To be honest my knowledge of real estate investing is limited to that little niche I made for myself in Mississippi. What I see here are mostly small LLC's buying homes, not big institutional buyers. As I said towards the beginning of this thread, I'm not really impressed by what I see of Kamala's economic policies so far and I've always known that politicians can't deliver on half of what they promise. At most it might indicate where their values lie. I do think the 25K of down payment assistance is likely to drive prices up. I keep thinking what effect this will have on my own houses which are currently worth about 70-75K a piece. Might be good for me, but is it good the country? Not so sure. What I've been reacting against is the strong sentiments expressed here that treat any sort of social welfare program whatsoever as communism, even measures like increasing the minimum wage which would make such programs less needed. What needs to be thought through is what works and what doesn't. It seems to me the child credit worked wonders, lifting most of the children in our country out of poverty, and I'm gratified to see that even the GOP are now embracing the idea. But if we raise minimum wage, do we really need to do much more right now? I'm not sure we do, other than continue to invest in infrastructure, fix Social Security (principally by removing the cap), and don't renew tax cuts that were stupid to begin with. The Fed flubbed by reacting too slowly to the rise in inflation but I still think they are better positioned to manage those kinds of issues than are politicians. I remember when Carter tried to impose priced controls. I don't recall it accomplished much other than bringing us the Big Mac which could be marketed as a new product not subject to controls. And it seems to me that Carter had better reasons for imposing those controls than Kamala does at present.
Probably doesn't answer you questions, just my musings. I have bought some silver, by the way, though not because of Robert Kiyosaki. Precious metals are a commodity, they aren't money. And right now gold is too high and silver (which is more useful) is too low. As for bitcoin, I haven't figured out why it isn't a ponzi scheme. Most of my retirement is in index funds. I'm better at picking individual houses than individual stocks. I had a decent amount in an REIT but got out of it just in time. Might go back in when I think the time is right.

You are delusional if you think this is the way poor people live. If you grew up in dirt poor projects then you too were receiving federal aid. And why would you parents have to work five jobs to afford a place in the projects unless their labor was being exploited by the greedy? And why are you assuming that Dan is getting all these benefits? The only way you can come up with a figure of 50% of Americans being on "these programs" is by including Social Security in those programs, something we all contributed to. 

In fact, that has never happened. Trickle down economics is the lie. Even Reagan had to resort to Keynesian economics to get us out of recession. And the only job losses that result from raising the minimum wage are youth jobs and that's because adults will take them if they pay well enough to make them worthwhile. Automation has been going on as long as the Industrial Revolution and it wasn't because people were paid too much. It's made our lifestyles what they are today. I would have no objection to lower wage youth minimum wage, but if you haven't trained them in 90 days then obviously they aren't really trainable. Either pay them a living wage or let them go. The labor participation rate keeps going down, not for a lack of jobs but because of our aging population. Us boomers didn't reproduce ourselves. Not a popular idea right now, but increasing immigration is the solution to that. 

The reason I call it "so-called" communist is because of the increasing amount  of private enterprise going on, something not permitted in a fully communist state. The same is true of Vietnam There is no doubt that both China and Russia remain totalitarian governments, but as I said totalitarianism can be on the right or the left. 

I'm sorry it is not the Dems who are banning books, but since you think the problem that led to communism was the spread of ideas, I can see why you would find books dangerous. It is not the Dems who destroyed academic freedom in Florida.  It is not the Dems engaging in voter suppression.  It is not the Dems who are depriving women of control over their own bodies. It is not the Dems who violently attempted to destroy our Democracy on J6. Anyone who think it is Dems who want dictatorial control over our government has not read Project 2025. 

You are too young to remember how Russia became communist. There was no creeping socialism. There was a coalition government that lasted only a few months. After that the communist victory was total and complete. Cuba, likewise was the result of an armed revolution. China became communist because they stayed and fought the Japanese while the nationalists fled. I'm a historian, I know what why and how certain countries fell to Communism. 

Every country on the face of the earth nowadays has a mixed economy, none more so than so-called communist China. The only question is what kind of balance is best. But when it comes to government what we should be most afraid of is totalitarianism and that can come from the right or the left. Russia is not a better country today because it gave up communism. Just ask the Ukrainians. 

One of my tenants was an assistant manager at Family Dollar. She made $8 an hour. People who work at the Nissan Plant in Canton, Mississippi start out at less than $11 an hour. When I say it's a 'right to starve' state I'm not kidding. The politicians here stole food stamp money to fund things like a volleyball court. They refused to provide food for low-income students during the summer even though the federal government was paying for it.