The Creeping Horror Of Real Estate

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[straining to attach suitbot #2's new head with wrench equivalent] Ow! This is difficult.

medbot says your activity level has been higher.

Yeah, I'm glad I could fix the extruder. I can't imagine carving a whole new one. I imagine Herr D could, but I'm no artist.

You are not blogging about the political situation?

No, I'm not sure there's anything that needs to be said about all that's happening with that right now. I AM interested to know how they will go about healing and restoring their lives after all this.

Unsure of meaning.

Well, you know, all those who now have degrading nicknames? How do they go about gracefully ignoring them? Do they put people in their place verbally instead? Do they somehow spin things to their staunch supporters as how they were 'robbed' of chances, opportunities?

Continuing on with a tactic mentioned by many pundits.

Well, there are somewhere around 25,000 people, according to my figures, who really are being robbed of job opportunities in the greater tri-state area.

That figure seems low.

I mean ultra-deserving people like Herr D, who are being ignored by recruiters, job boards, hiring managers.

The work ethic you have defined is too subjective for programming. This situation will continue harming American business, as you have posited. 'Robbing' America of further economic growth. Is there a larger problem you are aware of?


I figure there are about 3 million people being robbed of financial stability by pseudo-gentrification scams. That's perfectly legal, by the way.

Unaware of meaning.

Oh. Well, picture a quiet subdivision with affordable homes. Three developers come in in competition to buy the homes. They buy them, they tear them down and build higher-end or flip them, raising the tax rate on the nearby properties.

Then this domino effect happens. Homeowners and renters near them move out because it costs too much to live there. Eventually the whole subdivision is more expensive to live in.

This does not appear to be a unified force, therefore it should help capitalism.

Well, no. You see, those three developers were given 'special attention,' usually in the form of lower-interest business loans--"Hey, because it's YOU, Tom." They were baited into place! Two of the developers will make money, and one will go bankrupt. 

This will harm the intended outcome?

No. That was part of the plan. The financially-interested parties have it rigged so they make money on the one going bankrupt AND the two that make money. Then they take over by building condos or selling the whole thing to a mall builder or something else. It's carefully planned so that they make some money at every stage while dozens of homeowners lose equity if they haven't an exit plan or the means to pay more than planned or some other individual way to not lose in the process.

You speak of a money-making scheme that would take years to complete.

Oh, decades! But the thing is, no one does this just once. The parties concerned arrange for stockholders or other investors to make dividends on their plans and manage dozens of these plans at once for payout on cyclical schedules.

Perhaps a more concrete example.

Like say Bill lives in a house he got on the cheap.  He gets edged out, moving farther from the bank he works at, never realizing that his employer financed the developers that built the Frankenmansions that raised his taxes that drove him out. He never realizes that the special rate he got on the condo he moved into was not because he worked at the bank, but because the bank saw that the rate would get him to move. Bill also never realizes that six out of those fifteen Frankenmansions sat empty ON PURPOSE as a tax writeoff for the receivership of the shell company that foreclosed on the homes that wouldn't rent or sell. Bill doesn't know that the grocery store and his favorite hangout closed down because of the same reason he had to move. Real estate pressure.

Now Bill still works as a teller in the same bank, but he has a longer commute to a condo he didn't want over the house he loved, his social life is not what it was because of that commute and his favorite hangout closing and the new ones being too expensive.

He has been unknowingly victimized.

That's not all. His boss talked him into investing in a 401k at work.

This would help Bill prepare for retirement.

Yeah, but the part of it that invests in real estate was part of the scheme. He got ten dollars toward retirement over the course of six years by paying seven into the 401k and losing about sixteen thousand dollars over twenty years because he was gentrified by THE SAME PEOPLE

And this is legal.

Yep. [resumes straining]

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