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Thread: Brexit

  1. #121

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    Re: Brexit

    Sitten, did you go and add a couple paragraphs onto #117 after I read it??? I didn't see the last part until just now.

    I don't agree with that part. I believe that a LOAD of people are colluding (generally not intentionally) in running up the prices. It's just such a deal that you CAN'T lose money...honest...it NEVER drops. The fact that we saw that fail doesn't really matter. I've known people who believe this to a greater or lesser extent. My father dated a woman who believed that the ONLY wise investment was property, so she saddled herself with a mortgage she couldn't pay without still working multiple jobs in her 70s. I also have a buddy who kind of buys into it, as well, so his goal was always to have multiple houses. In his case, it's ok, because it's not his sole investment and he's living within his means, but the point is that he's still a believer in owning houses as a good investment. I think that's driving the prices up as much as anything else.

    Interest rates are poo, at the moment, so mortgages are pretty cheap as is debt. Furthermore, there just isn't any other good place to put the money. So, it could be a hard-nosed business dealing, too. I just don't think it's the real estate industry that is driving this. I would say that they are simply responding to a demand that is a bit nuts.
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  2. #122
    MS SQL Powerposter szlamany's Avatar
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    Re: Brexit

    All of this US real estate talk just points out further the differences that the UK has with a housing shortage and a government subsidized housing shortage on top of that.

    Over in the UK apparently there is little chance of becoming a homeowner.

    In the US that still seems a very easy thing to do for any age. I've got relatives of all different ages that are home owners.

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  3. #123
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    Re: Brexit

    I don't really get why the UK leaving the EU is such a big deal... they are merely on their way to becoming the 51st state!

  4. #124
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    Re: Brexit

    Quote Originally Posted by jayinthe813 View Post
    I don't really get why the UK leaving the EU is such a big deal... they are merely on their way to becoming the 51st state!
    Associate state - much like Puerto Rico.

  5. #125
    Superbly Moderated NeedSomeAnswers's Avatar
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    Re: Brexit

    All of this US real estate talk just points out further the differences that the UK has with a housing shortage and a government subsidized housing shortage on top of that.

    Over in the UK apparently there is little chance of becoming a homeowner.
    Lets be clear, both me and Funky are home owners, the problem is not for us but for the younger generation. Many 21 year old's today will struggle to get on the housing ladder.

    If you live in London the problem is even more acute, i have a friend of mine who moved back to Manchester 2 years ago and sold there 2 bedroom apartment in Brixton London for over £500,000 ($663650) !!!

    How is a young person ever supposed to be able to afford an apartment or house at those prices.
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  6. #126
    MS SQL Powerposter szlamany's Avatar
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    Re: Brexit

    Quote Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers View Post
    How is a young person ever supposed to be able to afford an apartment or house at those prices.
    The way it's worked here for decades - in CT anyway (an hours ride from NYC)...

    You buy a starter home for $200,000 when you first get married. You only need $40,000 cash (20% down).

    You pay down that note - you build equity - the home used to go up in price.

    Then when you are 30 you purchase the next house up - your prior $40,000 is still available as cash along with probably another $40,000 to $60,000. Now you have a $100,000 down and can buy that $500,000 house.

    In my city right now I can find houses for under $200,000 and houses for just over $600,000.

    I asked about your housing issues because it kept coming up as a Brexit point and I could not understand how people were lining up for housing and fighting for pole position.

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  7. #127
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    Re: Brexit

    Another video:

    Mark Blyth on the Brexit vote

    Mark Blyth, professor of Political Economy at Brown University, talks with ‎AthensLive about the Brexit vote and the ramifications on the ‎UK and across ‎Europe. He also considers the current situation in ‎Greece and the long run effects of what he calls "Trampism".
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  8. #128
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    Re: Brexit

    Only $40k cash? What a steal!

    That's kind of a fantasyland number for a bunch of 20-somethings today. The average college grad's exiting with $37k in student debt. The ones that don't are fighting for something like $13k-$30k worth of salary. That's minimum wage through $15/hour, the level at which many people say "workers without degrees are moochers". Even if you're landing the low-end professional jobs at $20-$25/hour, raising $40k in cash while making $52k before taxes isn't a small prospect.

    In my area, they aren't building starter homes, and the last ones built are now nestled in very high-value neighborhoods. It's more common for 'young' buyers to take on a high-interest loan for the down-payment. That kind of creditworthiness is only accessible to the kinds of young professionals who, 20 years ago, would've had 90% less debt at graduation and just paid cash instead.

    This is the thing that frustrates me. The current young generation has almost no wealth, and they leave college with enough debt to stunt their development of wealth. I feel like in the 80s and 90s, someone who worked 2 jobs was "hustling" and you'd expect them to eventually live a life of luxury. Now it's "what you have to do". Something's wrong. Something's very wrong if that's "how you're supposed to live".

    (SH: I do tend to go back and edit sometimes. Bad habit. I need to, instead, let these posts sit 10-15m before I post them.)

    The part I don't know how I feel, and the thing that tends to make people emotional, is categorizing homeownership. Is it a right? A luxury?

    If it's a right, it's the government's obligation to regulate the market so starter homes affordable to some segment of 20-somethings exist. That's... a complicated prospect, but I think overall our world would be better if we planned cities instead of letting the free market do what it wills. Some realtors and developers are going to have to lose some value, because in this world we decide "accessibility of property ownership" is more important than "profit margins for wealthy speculators".

    If it's a luxury, well, then, tough cookies. But we need to stop writing articles about how entitled the youth is for not wanting it. I won't ever afford a Ferrari, and don't need people acting like I'm an idiot for not trying.

    I sort of side somewhere on the spectrum like a 3, I feel "basic property ownership" is a right that should be accessible to anyone who can manage money reasonably well and no, don't ask me to define that. I think the "lost profit margin" is worth it, because I think if more of the country is "slightly more wealthy", we're in better shape than if we put all the money at the top.

  9. #129
    MS SQL Powerposter szlamany's Avatar
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    Re: Brexit

    My fantasyland seems to be everyplace else other then Texas.

    You're state seems to be in a unique situation

    http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles...l-estate-boom/

    Have you thought of moving to someplace with better wages and lower cost of living?

    btw - I feel that property ownership is an option that people with enough cash/creditworthiness should be able to entertain.

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  10. #130
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    Re: Brexit

    Back in 1984 or so things weren't great either.

    I bought my first home with my wife (both working) only by finding a VA mortgage on a small place that we could assume with 10% down (about $10000). 11.5% interest (Reaganism was in full swing).

    We finally built a place after that with 20% down (about $30000) by scrimping and saving and putting all we had into it. A new mortage at a slightly better rate of 8%.

    Rates are at incredible lows now, at least in terms I'm used to. Pay is higher in high-cost areas anyway, so I still don't think 20% down is asking too much. For a solo buyer or single-income family I agree that can be a lot of scratch to scratch together, but I just don't see how that's anything new. With current low interest rates it feels like they're giving real estate away to me.

    Ditch the pricey cellphone contracts, cut back on cable/dish TV and Internet (cut it off if you can manage it). That's $2400/year or better alone in savings. Stop eating out, stop buying crap, stop going to movie theaters, wash your own clothes (no cleaning bills), stop leasing cars and buy one that'll last 15 years... it all adds up.

  11. #131
    MS SQL Powerposter szlamany's Avatar
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    Re: Brexit

    This pile of stats seem to indicate home ownership still works well in the US in general

    http://www.realtor.org/sites/default...2015-03-11.pdf

    I could not find a state by state comparison.

    Oddly enough no cities in Texas were in the TOP 10 "worst" places to buy/afford a home. So other places in the country have huge problems as well.

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  12. #132
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    Re: Brexit

    local government (maybe in hand with housing associations) should be given specific ring-fenced budgets to build affordable housing based upon the local need.
    I think it's our generation too. I could afford to buy because, at the risk of coming across as pompous, I earn a ridiculous amount of cash as a contractor. Very few of my friends are so lucky and they're almost all renting.

    I doubt that will change unless they want to move to a completely different part of the country. I'm talking about Southampton which is roughly 80 miles from London. London affects prices but it's not really a feasible commute. The sort of move they would have to make would also involve giving up their job so it's hardly a viable proposition.

    You buy a starter home for $200,000
    I hope you find the lock up garage you just bought comfortable. When we say property's expensive in and around London we mean EXPENSIVE. You actually can get a livable property for similar money but it would be a single room studio flat. Welcome to 12 by 11 feet of sheer magnificence. The standard route for getting on the property ladder in the South these days seems to be to wait for your parents to die. That assuming some snake oil salesman didn't manage to convince them to "release their equity".


    Edit>I should say, I based those property searches on pre Brexit exchange rates. If the pound carries on heading down you'll probably be able to buy a 4 bed in Knightsbridge for $200K by next weekend
    Last edited by FunkyDexter; Jul 2nd, 2016 at 12:23 PM.
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  13. #133
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    Re: Brexit

    There are sections of my city (and many other rust belt cities) where you can get a house for $1. Literally one freakin' dollar. Of course it'll need some work...

    But that's what happens when 60% of your population moves elsewhere.
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  14. #134
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    Re: Brexit

    You buy a starter home for $200,000 when you first get married. You only need $40,000 cash (20% down).
    Yeah following on from FD, the problem being you can maybe buy a garage for $200,00 in London, there are Zero houses for sale for that price.

    In the North you can just about get a house for that price but the large majority of people wont be earning the wages required to build up the deposit to buy one.
    Last edited by NeedSomeAnswers; Jul 2nd, 2016 at 03:03 PM.
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  15. #135
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    Re: Brexit

    Amazing how different things look if you aren't a Thatcherite or a Blairite.
    Just so you know i am neither.

    The problem i have with that guys argument in the video is he starts of by talking about why he dislikes the Euro which we don't have and was nothing to do with the referendum, then he talks about globalisation as if that is the fault of the EU.

    We as a country were pursuing it before we joined the EU and outside of the EU we wont be pursuing globalisation any less, the genie is out of the bottle and i don't know of anyone who knows how to put it back.

    In the video you posted it is notable that he offers no real solutions to any of these problems.
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  16. #136

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    Re: Brexit

    Yeah, but you should see our gas prices

    The one that kills me is college tuition. My undergraduate college now costs...let me look it up...oh nice, it's $57,000/year if you want to live on campus and eat in the dining halls.

    I think DDay had a good point about housing. If you are willing to live in a mobile home or a trailer (and I lived in a shower for a month, so a trailer would be a step up), then you could buy for a truly small amount and build equity in that which would make the down payment on a better place, and so forth up to wherever you aspire to. I just don't see how a student can afford to live when they start life with a debt load so high.

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    Re: Brexit

    Tuition loans, depressed wages, and dwindling non-wage benefits are the biggest financial hits younger generations face. If you add housing shortages which drive prices up it can all look pretty daunting. With all of that retirement saving becomes an even tougher sell than it is to youger workers to begin with, so in a few decades things could look even uglier for those cohorts.

    Just four generations back some of my ancestors worked and lived on dairy farms in Friesland. They and their peers' "quarters" were little more than stalls in the cow barns.

    I can only wonder if the future holds something similar in store for the growing ranks of "service industry" workers. A sort of cold-water tenement group home with communal facilities. Of course the elite will live higher than ever before because there is plenty of wealth, it just isn't shared around very evenly.

  18. #138
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    Re: Brexit

    The rent here is so high that a single bedroom apartment costs just as much as a monthly mortgage on a three bedroom house. I do not think most newlyweds are in a position to come up with $40,000 to put down on a house - Then again, CT is one of the wealthiest states in America.

  19. #139
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    Re: Brexit

    I saw something today in comments on an article about how the US income inequality is higher than it's been in the country's history.

    It started with a pretty interesting point: "People need a basic standard of living in order to compete in a free market." It's part of a comment thread starting with these sobering statistics that paint a picture of corporations being the only thing making money for the past 30 years.

    That initial quote strikes me as something like what I've been feeling, and the entirety of what's frustrating the working class. Everything about our class structure right now feels like the rungs get further apart as you climb the ladder, and the people at the top are busy stretching them further. There's so much non-competition, especially in tech, it feels like a joke to think it's a free market. Who's going to disrupt Youtube, with the might of Google behind it? Who can take on Amazon, when they've negotiated special behaviors out of the US Postal Service? (Try getting a package delivered on Sunday if you aren't Amazon.)

    I think where the comment points out offshoring as a cause, a lot of people also blame immigration for shallowing the pool of what jobs do remain. Immigrants, also, don't tend to fight so hard for higher wages, because when you're moving away from a war-torn country just about anything seems great. That puts natives and immigrants on uneven footing: in theory, an immigrant will work harder, longer, for less money. It doesn't have to be an illegal wage, just the notion that they won't ask for a raise as quickly.

    But they're not doing it out of evil. They want to feed their families, too. And they can't "go back home", because there aren't jobs there, unless you count the kinds of things people do during wars as jobs. They tend to hurt the soul, and aren't conducive to climbing the wealth ladder.

    I don't think "tax the wealthy" will work, anymore. They'll just move elsewhere. Or put their money in places where it can't be taxed. They've spent the last few decades adjusting the laws to make that easy enough for them, and extremely difficult for the average Joe. The only way it could work is if every economic power agreed to do it unilaterally. I don't think we'll achieve that.

    So it feels like the only things left that might work are dramatic, scary changes like basic income. We might be forced into it, anyway, if driverless cars keep advancing. There's a terrifying number of jobs in the trucking industry. If that folds, immigration will be the least of any developed country's problems.

    (I can't tell if I'm off-topic, anymore. What I mean to be the related factor here is I think the UK and US have a very similar problem: wealth inequality is causing increasing pressure on an ever-growing lower class. Politicians have grown adept at redirecting their anger and distracting them from realizing the true causes, but it seems with each decade the pressure builds closer and closer to the point where no amount of rhetoric will prevent upheaval. And it feels the only mitigation the ones in power want is "try to make it next generation's problem".)

  20. #140

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    Re: Brexit

    When it comes to tech, I think we are to blame. After all, do we really want a competitor to YouTube? Do we really want a competitor for an OS? Some people would certainly like to have competition for operating systems, and there is a bit, but that competition becomes a whole lot less fun when you want program A and it only runs on the OS that you don't have. That's how it was back in the 80s into the early 90s. Some cool game would come out, but if you weren't running the right OS...well, no game for you.

    We moved away from that with the MS monopoly. Apple and Linux were bit players and always have been. Part of the way they even managed to hang on was by adding the capability to run most Windows apps in some fashion, as well as by being protest brands.

    Now we are seeing the same kind of thing when it comes to tablets. Do you have iOS? Android? Is there a version of the app you want for that OS? No? Well, sucks to be you, then.

    The same kind of situation is true for most of tech. We want the "yeah it will work with that platform" experience that only comes from a monopoly. What we don't want from a monopoly is stagnation, but in this forum, we can also see that changes can be bitterly opposed, as well.
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  21. #141
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    Re: Brexit

    Nigel Farrage - racist, political patsy, hypocrite and human used prophylactic - resigned today.

  22. #142
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    Re: Brexit

    You now have your own UK Independence Day!

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  23. #143
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    Re: Brexit

    No one wants to hold the hot potato.

    It's almost like they can't believe the voters were stupid enough to buy it.

  24. #144

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    Re: Brexit

    It sure seems like everybody is running away from this one like it was a live grenade.
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    Re: Brexit

    I suspect that the media in the UK as well as in the US (and probably Canada and even Australia and New Zealand for that matter) are all under the thumb of globalists and globalist corporations.

    So it is no surprise at all that everywhere you turn you get these dire messages about what a poor idea it was.

    If you think an "EUist" is not a globalist, you are fooling yourself. Same thing, somewhat smaller scale.

    The US has the same situation but workers here all lost the battle generations ago through invokation of the Commerce Clause. This was used to drain off jobs from unionized states to "right to starve" states where people are happy to live in trailers and tar-paper shacks at the whim of the bosses. It is funny to see residents in those states now whinge about those jobs being moved out of the country through lopsided trade agreements.

  26. #146
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    Re: Brexit

    I was watching Farage's (sp? - too lazy and possibly tipsy to go look it up) "I'm outta here" speech... all I could think was "sooo... he breaks things up, and then doesn't bother to stick around to help clean up the mess" (and it is going to be a mess for the next couple of years.

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    Re: "TEXit" - Could Brexit happen in Texas?

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve R Jones View Post
    "... disenchanted residents of the second largest U.S. state have been building a coalition of voters in the hopes of finally putting the matter of Texas independence up for a state referendum vote."
    So, you guys are seeing that in Texas and it's already making the news. Wow.

    My hunch is that the first areas to leave the USA will not be Texas or any other state; rather, it will be the wealthier cities in the SF Bay area will form a modern Hanse with the surrounding tougher areas supplying the manual labor for them. But I also see Texas and some other entire states making their moves soon afterward.

    There seems to be nothing unifying about being American anymore, not the way there was even in the 90s. Whoever goes, there won't be any war to stop them this time. Although bureaucrats and elected officials may clamor for it, I don't see anyone lining up to offer their children's lives to keed it together.
    Last edited by Shaggy Hiker; Jul 5th, 2016 at 09:53 AM. Reason: Closed the quote tag.

  28. #148
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    Re: "TEXit" - Could Brexit happen in Texas?

    Quote Originally Posted by chip-cook View Post
    So, you guys are seeing that in Texas and it's already making the news. Wow.
    What do you mean "already" ... there's been a Texit movement for... as long as I can remember... it comes up every so many years....

    When it comes to the state of the States, there are two things you can always count on... Texit talk... and splitting Calif into two or three states (on a more local note, San Bernardino County (Calif) talks about splitting into two counties every 5 years or so.)...

    Come to think of it, I think this is the third time I've heard of Texas leaving in the last couple of years... hell, they threatened it 4 years ago when Obama was up for re-election...

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    Re: Brexit

    Those prices you quote are like NYC prices. Just frightening.

    Just curious from Kansas, but is what I understand correct, that getting permits to demolish something old or build something new are just really difficult to get in the UK? If the government is holding back can't be helping. Also, isn't the UK about the same size as Wyoming? Except there are only three people in Wyoming versus 64 million? Surely, population density also is a factor.

    One more question: Has you government treated mortgages similarly to the way the US federal government has by allowing the interest to be deducted from your household income, and the resulting financial advisor "wisdom" that you should treat your house as an investment, rather than just a really expensive consumer item?

  30. #150
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    Re: Brexit

    Yeah, but you should see our gas prices
    Shaggy, you owe the guy who sits opposite me an apology. Because when I read that I spat tea all over him and it's your fault. You guys really have nothing to complain about where fuel prices are concerned. You tuition fees, on the other hand, are truly ridiculous. Worryingly we seem to be moving to remove fee caps over here and I can see us heading down the same path as you guys if we're not careful.

    getting permits to demolish something old or build something new are just really difficult to get in the UK
    Depends what you mean by old. Knocking down some crumbling 60s high rise to replace it with affordable modern housing would get waved through. A Scottish castle or Georgian terrace... not so much. Us Europeans have this stuff called history and we quite value it.
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    Re: Brexit

    Quote Originally Posted by chip-cook View Post
    Just curious from Kansas, but is what I understand correct, that getting permits to demolish something old or build something new are just really difficult to get in the UK? If the government is holding back can't be helping. Also, isn't the UK about the same size as Wyoming? Except there are only three people in Wyoming versus 64 million? Surely, population density also is a factor.
    Much of Europe (Germany, Belgium, Holland) has a much higher population density than the UK.

    Quote Originally Posted by chip-cook View Post
    One more question: Has you government treated mortgages similarly to the way the US federal government has by allowing the interest to be deducted from your household income, and the resulting financial advisor "wisdom" that you should treat your house as an investment, rather than just a really expensive consumer item?
    Yes - but also there is a policy of deliberate restriction of land supply (via "Green Belt" restrictions around cities and zoning instead of allowing integrated mixed use districts) which has pushed up the cost of housing - in many areas the cost of the land is preventing houses being built.

  32. #152
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    Re: Brexit

    To elaborate on that, none of our cities are even close to as densely populated as your inner cities. However, we've got a much more limited amount of open space outside of the cities. So although we're more densely populated than the US, London does not yet look like Megacity 4.
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    Re: Brexit

    Early land development in the US was weird and seemed to be driven by very little planning, much avarice, and a lot of stupidity.

    Here in Michigan the earliest major French settlements like Detroit saw peasants being imported and dumped onto land allocated in strange long and narrow strip lots to be farmed like something from the Middle Ages. The Church was the major tax collection agency and between the tithing sent on to Rome and the taxing sent on to Paris (later Versailles)... these folks were kept pretty impoverished with little strength left for ambition.

    After the territory changed hands first the Brits got it and left the peasants there for a bit, until the Revolution placed it into the hands of the (new) US. Most of the peasants got pulled back to Quebec within less than a generation and then Yankees moved in and began expanding shortly after. During the transition many relatively wealthy French traders stayed on and got hired as "Indian Agents" and cheated the poor natives at every turn, later they began mediating treaties that gradually pushed them out in favor of Yankee settlers. As that era faded several Agents went on to found some of our larger cities using their accumulated lucre, typically importing a cousin from France to marry.

    These rubes were mostly 2nd and 3rd generation English settlers of New England. They came in and their idea of harvesting nuts from trees was literally to chop the tree down. We lost a lot of native species that way. As they wanted farmland they clear-cut or burned forests and dramatically altered the landscape. Many rivers that were once navigable are now 100 to 500 mile long gashes in the Earth with little more than a trickling brook at the bottom.

    While rare now, farmers still occasionally turn up rusty old 17th Century French Cavalier armor while plowing a field, mostly head and chestpieces.

    Later on, to the north the boreal forests mostly went under the axe and much iron, copper, dolomite, sandstone, limestone, quartz sand, and glacial gravel was quarried commercially to build out Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, etc. By then there was quite a mix of European ancestry here, lots of Germans, in some pockets many Dutch or Finns.

    250 years later a lot has been re-forested (much of this by the Civilian Conservation Corps after the Great Depression) but of course urban development has taken its own toll.
    Last edited by dilettante; Jul 5th, 2016 at 08:43 AM.

  34. #154
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    Re: Brexit

    The TX secession movement is practically as old as the Civil War. It's a stronghold of some of the most conservative people in the nation. Brexit's encouraged it to resurface. It's noisy, but doesn't actually have a lot of traction because most mid-range idiots realize there's a lot of problems they'd have to face if we weren't a state, like needing a passport to hop over to the casinos in Louisiana.

    There's also the fact that the "Texas Economic Miracle" is based on the state doing everything it can to have minimal corporate taxes and regulations, no matter what the cost to the citizen may be. If TX were to separate into its own country, the US could make it very painful for those corporate entities to exist. Heck, the patent troll industry is practically headquartered in Tyler, and it relies on the US legal system. I don't think our overlords would let this vote pass.

    I wouldn't say it's impossible, but I think TX would need a much more volatile government for the movement to grow legs. TX is run by businesses, and they recognize how much it would cost. If we had a string of Trump-like 'self-funded' candidates show up, we might hover closer to that point. But I think most intelligent self-funded people recognize it's safer to control politicians than to be one.

    I think dilettante's right, it's much more likely we'll see secession from a tech cartel, it'll be fiscal conservatism disguised as radical liberalism. I can't even speculate what it'll look like, other than I'd never want to live there.

  35. #155
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    Re: Brexit

    Over here there's a movement for Cornwall to be given autonomy. Nobody takes it very seriously. Their major exports would be pasties and surfers.

    Most of us jokingly refer to it as the KLF (Kernow Liberation Front) and point out that it's battle song would be "Last Train to Tintagel" but you probably need to be a fan of the mid-nineties rave scene to understand why.
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  36. #156
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    Re: Brexit

    Quote Originally Posted by Sitten Spynne View Post
    The TX secession movement is practically as old as the Civil War. It's a stronghold of some of the most conservative people in the nation. Brexit's encouraged it to resurface. It's noisy, but doesn't actually have a lot of traction because most mid-range idiots realize there's a lot of problems they'd have to face if we weren't a state, like needing a passport to hop over to the casinos in Louisiana.

    There's also the fact that the "Texas Economic Miracle" is based on the state doing everything it can to have minimal corporate taxes and regulations, no matter what the cost to the citizen may be. If TX were to separate into its own country, the US could make it very painful for those corporate entities to exist. Heck, the patent troll industry is practically headquartered in Tyler, and it relies on the US legal system. I don't think our overlords would let this vote pass.

    I wouldn't say it's impossible, but I think TX would need a much more volatile government for the movement to grow legs. TX is run by businesses, and they recognize how much it would cost. If we had a string of Trump-like 'self-funded' candidates show up, we might hover closer to that point. But I think most intelligent self-funded people recognize it's safer to control politicians than to be one.

    I think dilettante's right, it's much more likely we'll see secession from a tech cartel, it'll be fiscal conservatism disguised as radical liberalism. I can't even speculate what it'll look like, other than I'd never want to live there.
    Don't forget...Texas would also end up on the "wrong" side of Trump's fence
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  37. #157
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    Re: Brexit

    Quote Originally Posted by Sitten Spynne View Post
    I think dilettante's right, it's much more likely we'll see secession from a tech cartel, it'll be fiscal conservatism disguised as radical liberalism. I can't even speculate what it'll look like, other than I'd never want to live there.
    I believe that was chip-cook, but you could be right that he has a good point.

  38. #158

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    Re: Brexit

    Quote Originally Posted by FunkyDexter View Post
    Shaggy, you owe the guy who sits opposite me an apology. Because when I read that I spat tea all over him and it's your fault. You guys really have nothing to complain about where fuel prices are concerned. You tuition fees, on the other hand, are truly ridiculous. Worryingly we seem to be moving to remove fee caps over here and I can see us heading down the same path as you guys if we're not careful.
    Whenever our gas prices rise, somebody seems to complain...until those from across the pond start comparing their prices.

    Tuition is an odd one, because it isn't being driven by any normal economic force.The college I went to was quite clear that they were raising tuition because they wanted to be priced similar to a certain set of other schools. It wasn't that they needed the revenue, and it wasn't inflation, it was purely a goal of appearing as exclusive (economically, at least) as a set they wanted to be compared to.

    So, now they are awash in cash and the facilities are getting better and better all the time, because they have to make increasingly gaudy facilities as a partial justification for the huge price tag, which isn't being driven by need, but by the drive to compete with certain other schools. You can't compare cost-benefit, because there isn't one, so all they are doing is competing to appear more prestigious by appearing more expensive.

    It's a sick world.

    By the way, Vermont held a referendum on secession about two decades ago and it passed. I believe that the governor was the one speaking against the motion, so it wasn't just a bunch of cranks (aside from the fact that eccentric cranks are the largest single item produced in Vermont). It didn't matter, though. It was nothing more than an act of cantankerousness.
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    Re: Brexit

    BTW: Is a "chip cook" anything like a "burger flipper?"

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    Re: Brexit

    Argh, you're right, I lost my mental stack when reading through the thread.

    Don't forget...Texas would also end up on the "wrong" side of Trump's fence
    Fat chance. Texas fought really hard for its own independence from Mexico. And, being a stronghold of current conservative values, it blames Mexico for most of our current troubles.

    Now, it's possible the cartels could make some inroads and claim places like El Paso if TX is slow to organize some kind of militia, but the US itself would have a more-than-passing interest in beating that back, and that'd probably be the first land they reclaim from TX via military force.

    TX is well-armed, but most citizens stockpiling AR-15s and similar weaponry aren't really thinking about the kinds of armament their opponents will have. The drug warlords are in possession of armored vehicles and explosives. The US government has radar-stealthed drones that can deliver bunker-busting payloads remotely and autonomously, along with missiles that operate at intercontinental ranges. There won't be "taking guns from my cold, dead hands" because there won't be any hands left.

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