Golly, guess I'll just have to save money under my bed for 20 years to buy my house!

I think you're right, but then I own hardly anything. Would maybe think differently if I had a house and a car and so on.

I've seen TV shows here in England about the same thing.

Retarded people are everywhere. Enjoy trying to make a troll thread.

>Americans can't be that retarded.
I used to think this untill I actually went and spoke to some.

>>3570371

apart from the house thing yeah. How would anyone be able to buy a house. Of course they could rent, but okay.

You have to remember that Americans were raised with hypocritical ideals.

Fuck, I don't want to have a credit card at all, because I never want to buy anything if I don't have the proper money for it, but fuck, I might end up having to at least own one at one point or something.

>>3570360
Did you just now realize this?

Credit is useful, but when you buy more than you can afford to pay off, that is where the problem lies.

The problem with credit cards is, it gives you a false sense of security. You think "Oh, I'll just put it on my card and pay it back later". But then you realize you're stretched beyond your means and the repo man takes your shit.

That lady could have taken the bus and saved up for a decent car, but she instead chose to be greedy.

>>3570384
I have one, but i only use it to buy gasoline. So gas sort of becomes a bill. i can manage my spending easier than just dropping money whenever i have to fill up

It amazes me really how far people will go just to look richer than the next man.

>>3570379

Your opinion of humanity sinks when you work for an answering service.

You get parents bitching at you because their son has a fever and the nurses on call are running behind because every moron who's kid has got the sniffles has to call the goddamn doctor. So he has to (shock) wait!! But he's the only person with a sick child that deserves to see a doctor!! Forget about that girl who has weakness, seems confused, and has pain in the back of her neck. Forget the baby who is unresponsive after it's stupid mother gave it a tylenol for it's fever, YOUR KID has to be seen RIGHT AWAY!!

>>3570365
Not really. It's perfectly fine to get a mortgage and buy the house on credit, but only if you know for damn sure that you'll be able to pay all of it back plus interest. The point of credit isn't to have free money, and bitch when you have to pay it back. It's to be able to borrow money knowing you'll either be able to pay the thing in full or in installments in the future.

This is what happens when you have banks getting freely printed money, so they can extend credit they don't actually have from deposits or returns on investments, or from interest. Then, since they get their fake credit from the government printing press, these fucks fail, then get bailed out AGAIN, then the government take on THEIR debt ect. ect. ad infinitum.

most these people should never have gotten the loans they did. a lot of these bullshit little retail co's and yogurt shops shouldn't have been opened either.

mal investment up the cunt

Is it these stupid cunts fault that interest rates were so low? No. Malicious cunts in the treasury are though.

>>3570524

That's not bad. It just shows that American can and will disregard the mechanics of economy to protect her interests. Other countries can't afford to piss off the world like that, but do *we* need to give a fuck? I mean, if worst comes to worst, we can just invade Mexico and Canada and takes their resources.

>>3570573
Mexico has resources?

>>3570591

tortillas, dude.

>>3570573

Vietnam - lost
Iraq - lost
Afghanistan - left Canada holding the bag and ran

Amerifag here.

Stories like this are why it's so hard for me to sympathize for my fellow countrymen. People spent way, WAY beyond their means for so long (with credit, so fucking stupid) for shit they don't need, and now they got us all fucked over. I hate financially irresponsible over-consuming fuckers. My gf's mom lives off of welfare and her 3 ex-husbands (i.e., she only gets a few thousand a month) yet bought a $45k SUV and a 4 bedroom house. Now they're completely fucked. I can't sympathize.

>>3570603

shittons of oil too. and the best food in the world.

Think of Americans and credit the same way you might think of niggers. It's not that they don't have the potential to actually know how the world works. It's that they were raised in a culture of ignorance and nobody ever taught them the right way.

>>3570591
petroleum, silver, copper, gold, lead, zinc, natural gas, timber

Credit is a tool. It's to be used to string out long purchases that you know you will have the money for. Pretty much limited to houses and cars. The only other good uses for it are sudden expenses like a plane ticket to visit a dying relative and the like.

The problem with credit as it is now isn't so much credit itself, but rather our "instant gratification" culture. A lack of planning makes it far to easy to essentially engage in what is essentially financial procrastination. People see something, notice it's within their (intentionally inflated) credit card limit and go "oh, I can buy this," without pausing to give any thought to the long term ramifications of the purchase.

Actually, I'll spare your from a tirade, but almost every problem in this country can be traced to a complete lack of foresight. Dwindling education budgets, I'm looking at you.

>>3570625

fellow amerifag.

i kinda think this whole crisis and recession is gonna be a good thing for us in the long run. we're a nation of debtors and obsessed with consuming. it needs to stop, and i think this is going to (hopefully) be helpful in changing our ways.

>>3570384
You need a credit card because you need a good credit rating, and you need to borrow consistently, and pay off consistently, and not approach your credit limit.

A mortgage is the only absolutely vital loan, I find. You don't need a credit card because you'll only use it to buy small things here and there, which add up to debt. If you must use a credit card, only use it for purchases which you know you'll be able to pay back soon but don't have the money for at the immediate moment, and that's large purchases, like a computer or something. And if you won't be making the money to pay that back within so many months, then don't even go for that. Always pay things back at first opportunity, too, or they'll catch up to you in the future.

If you're a student in Britain, a student loan may also be acceptable, since if you're not earning so much within 15 or so years it gets written off anyway.

Can't afford a car? Buy pre-owned. Yes, you'll have to spend on maintenance and repair probably, but that still adds up to less in the short term than it would to pay 10,000 or so for a brand new one. And if it does go to shit, you can buy another pre-owned one. Hell, you may end up going through three or four pre-owned ones for less than the price of just one.

>>3570415

Where did she live, how far was it to work? There aren't buses everywhere in America. I grew up in Wyoming, living about 30 km from town. It snows like a motherfucker there and without a 4wd vehicle, you aren't going anywhere a good part of the year. That's an extreme case, but it's not as simple as, "Just ride the Metro, dude!"

I agree with you, OP. That's why I refuse to get a credit card and I won't go to college until I can pay for it out of my savings (most likely never).

I refuse to go into debt because debt is the same thing as slavery to an institution.

>>3570697

You're an idiot then. Education is an investment, not a purchase. You will end up making a net profit faster getting a low-interest, deferred payment student loan and getting an education that lets you get a higher paying job than doing a shit job to save up for an education.

Unless of course you want to get a degree in photography or fine art history or whatever. Then you should just pile the money up and set it on fire, because at least that way you can invite friends to the show and be cool for a day.

It isn't that hard to buy a home when the prices are a bit more reasonable. Near me it isn't that odd for a small home to be sold for about $50K. The fact is that it was people becoming accustomed to get gigantic loans for homes which caused the people selling to see it as normal to sell a dumpy house for $500K-$1M.

Personally I'm just living at my Mom's place for a few years while I save up for a home.

Credit is fine if you make the payments on time. Otherwise, it's a complete rip off and only an idiot would make major purchases on a credit card.

>>3570696
It's still kinda fucked up for someone to buy a brand new car on credit. I've bought a car for my brother for about $300, it was a bit beat up but it did get him from point A to point B.

Someone living outside their means just seems generally undeserving of empathy when it is perfectly possible for them to have chosen from less expensive alternatives.

>>3570718
I'm fully aware that education is an investment.

More than anything I don't feel comfortable specializing.

There are too many things I'm interested in and I'm not sure specializing in more than one field would be a logical step to take.

I'm also not entirely comfortable letting my parents spend money to put me through college if I don't know what I want to do yet. I'd rather not have them throw their money away for me to end up with nothing more than a Liberal Arts degree.

Thanks for putting me down for stating my opinion, though. I appreciate that.

Newsflash faggots, credit is bullshit and you don't need it.

If I've saved dilligently over the years to the point that I'm in a position to purchase a home (as in no faggy payment plan, just cut the check and give me my house you faggot banker), then who the fuck is a creditor to say I don't have enough "credit" to get what is righfully mine.

The sad part about all this is some faggot will probably defend the creditors. Sad really, defending a bunch of queers in suits who would not think twice about repo'ing you and your family out of house and home.

>>3570746

I'm not saying even I needed a new Humvee. More just raging at the "She can ride the bus" bullshit. The rest of the world doesn't understand that cars aren't some kind of fetish in America, they're often a straight up necessity.

I also question whether a $300 beater is a real car. Reliability isn't just a monetary issue. When you need to get your ass to work or the doctor or something NOW and your car is broken NOW it doesn't really matter that your total cost of ownership was ultimately lower because you bought a bondoed out piece of shit and fixed things every time they fucked up.

If you buy used, get a vehicle with legendary reliability, like a Tacoma (Hilux) or a Golf, not somebody's 86 Oldsmobile Cutlass (okay, so I'm projecting a little bit, but damn I hated my first car.)

>>3570742

Actually it's making smaller purchases on a credit card you want to worry about, unless "major" in your book is upwards of a few grand. If you only use your credit card for the occasional large purchase which you pay back at first opportunity, you're probably better off than the person who uses their credit card on a multitude of smaller things "here and there", because eventually the small purchases add up, and while you think you haven't spent much, when you see the statement you may be surprised.

>>3570773

An education that is perfectly capable of running a price tag into the six figure range isn't FOR what you're "interested in." It's not a PS3 game, it's supposed to be training so that you can go out and benefit society.

I swear if I ever have a kid who isn't going to either engineering school or accounting I'm going to smash him or her in the head with a shovel and plant the little bastard. Beautiful fucking snowflakes who can't decide what kind of precious adventure they want their lives to be....

>>3570773
>I don't know what I want to do yet

It's called a Business Major. It's basically what you major in if you're not good enough at anything else to pursue it. You'd probably be surprised how many jobs don't care which degree you have as long as you have one in SOMETHING. More than anything it shows that you at least went through the general ed and have (theoretically) some work ethic. Besides, face it, a lot of people go to college and you will ALWAYS rank below them in the eyes of a perspective employer.

Failing that, if you still feel like being a retard, at least pick up an Associates Degree from a community college or something; they're dirt cheap and it'll at least put you slightly ahead of every other schmuck with a GED.

Loans and borrowing, it all works on the concept that REAL money is involved.

Forget that and you're fucked.

>>3570365
?? HOW ABOUT YOU RENT SHIT THEN SAVE MONEY UNTIL YOU CAN BUY A HOUSE? HOW IS THAT A TERRIBLE IDEA AGAIN?

>>3570804
Calm down there guy-who-should-never-rear-children. There's plenty of other areas of study that are in demand, if not a bit lower-paying. I would rather have a kid go into any of the sciences or teaching than something like accounting or law. Sure, you make a pretty penny, but at the end, you're just some part of the red tape that slows down progress.

I agree, engineers are the best of both worlds, but I'm a bit biased.

>>3570837
You're spending money for a place to live that could be spent on the more permanent place to live. If your mortgage payment would be the same as your rent, you're essentially tossing away money.

Do americans not get any kind of math or economics education during high school? Why aren't you people being taught the value of money?

>>3570837
The mothly rent for an apartment could be higher than the monthly interest payment for your mortgage?

>>3570816
Ok. You win. I'm going to college to be a quantum physicist.

>>3570853

You have to pay to live anyways. Frivolous objection. You can rent a better unit, and not have to take care of maintenance while putting your savings into income producing assets, whereas you're relying on equity & the market value of the house to inevitably go up instead of down . . . the money goes to the fucking banks still.

>>3570783
It was a real car. It was a 20 year old car, but it was a decent car.

To be a bit more specific about the circumstances: The first owner smoked a ton of weed and tobacco inside so there were funky stains and smells inside, plus various band stickers on the dashboard for some reason. The battery was iffy which caused the car to have trouble starting, but the first owner wasn't familiar enough with what was in front of him to notice.

It's lasted fine for the past few years.

My mom and grandmother had a lot of trouble with credit cards, they went as far as to tell me to never ever get one because they are bad/a scam/whatever. I

I actually have one now, just for the purpose of building up credit. I pay it off every month, and I don't buy anything over $100. They're all freaking out about it, but honestly - how the hell am I supposed to build up credit without one of these?

>>3570861

Because the fascist overlords enjoy their printing press, and we mindless herd animals love easy credit. simple as pie. APPLE PIE :d

>>3570682

That's something I've never understood about people in this country. They "need" to have a brand new car. my very first car was a '98 Ford Taurus in good condition with 100k miles on it that I paid $2,000 cash for back in 2004, and with regular maintenance, oil changes, etc, it's still running perfectly with nearly 200k miles on it.

One thing I find funny and pathetic about Americans is the way they rely almost exclusively on cars, they are unable to use public transportation, bikes, or even GASP! walk!

>>3570844

Future Dad of the Year again,

Got a degree in Psych from a good school, got a degree in Bio from another good school. Highest honors. I can't get into grad school or get a job with either. The only time I ever made respectable money was as a fucking pipefitter in the oil patch. Now I'm teaching Engrish for three million yen a year alongside a thousand other losers who qualify for a visa because all you have to have is some college degree - any degree.

Sciences may be real, but society doesn't value them. Business may be fake, but it's valued. You don't get paid for being real, you get paid for playing the game by the rules society has laid out.

As for "rent til you can pay cash" fucker, I would direct him to a dictionary where he can learn the word "equity." There's nothing wrong with a good fixed-rate partial mortgage on a house. It's the subprime ARM bullshit that is fucking people over and killing the market. When shit settles down, homeowners are still going to come out ahead. People who shouldn't have tried to play along will be fucked, and should be. Fuck the subprime borrowers.

>>3570911

I am an American. I love walking. Shit sucks here, yeah.

If you do get a credit card, keep the limit at $1000.

>>3570861

Most districts have 2 years of required math courses, usually algebra 1 and geometry, with algerba 2, trig, and calculus for the "advanced" students. Economics? What the fuck is that?

Government policy, particularly in the US and UK is now about protecting debtors by devaluing currencies, and even if you are responsible the govt is running up debt on your behalf. Anyone in these countries with savings is just as fucked.

The problem is not so much credit itself- but the amount of credit people take.

I doubt there are many first time buyers that can afford to get on the property ladder without a mortgage, but anyone taking a out a 125 per cent mortgage deserves what's coming to them.

>>3570861

At least at the school I went to they required economics, but that doesn't really help some people. People have generally become accustomed to the idea that wages would be increasing for themselves fairly rapidly if they successful in their various careers, mostly due to inflation. So often people assumed that if they locked themselves into a loan now that the relative cost of the loan would be less meaningful down the road when they'd be making dramatically more. Many people saw their neighbors purchasing things based off this strategy, and assumed it meant that buying on credit wasn't really that bad a thing to do in general even if it didn't actually make sense for them in particular.

I remember more than a few doctors that had huge houses and flashy cars due to trying to keep up appearances, yet still had huge debt they were working off with their still fairly large salaries.

>>3570911

You have no fucking concept of the distances involved in the average American's daily life. For Americans who don't live in Manhattan, walking and biking are not feasible and public transportation does not exist. So fuck off, you parochial Eurofag.

>>3570884
Right, but with a mortgage, you'd be paying to live in a house where you'd live constantly WHILE you were paying it in full.

If you rent first, you'd be paying for a temporary place to live WHILE setting aside even MORE money for a longer period of time to eventually buy a house.

Either rent indefinitely or go for a mortgage when you're at a point to afford it in the long term. Renting while saving up the money for a house in full is absolutely retarded (unless you're getting INSANE interest on the for-house money)

>>3570939
>and public transportation does not exist

Oh why would that be?

I could pay almost twice the minimum on my motorcycle financing and still pay off literally all of my credit card each month. I would save up before I got something on the card, (rewards points) and then immediately pay it off.

However, no I've lost my job, so I'm back to minimum payments. However, this was kinda planned, so I'll be alright for another 8 or 9 months.

I don't understand how these full grown people with families and careers can be stupid with their credit when some 19 year old kid can keep up while being unemployed.

>>3570911

America is a big fucking country, and we love spacing things far apart.

>>3570911
In more metropolitan areas, many of us do. Even where I live (since it's a college town) everything is within walking distance.

In other parts of the state, some people have to drive for an hour one-way just to get to where they work. You could argue that they should just move, but then you run into a tricky little situation where the housing market is such that making that commute is still cheaper than living near their job.

>>3570962
Here's a crazy idea: buses.

>>3570958

Because the population density is too low. Take a state like say, Alabama for instance. Five million people at 32 per square kilometer. Subtract a couple of million who live in a half dozen cities, and you're left with maybe 3 million at 10 per square kilometer. Design me a subway system to service that area. It can't be done. Trains work for you, they don't for us.

I live in Japan now and I LOVE the trains. It would be great to ride trains everywhere in America, but I know how to crunch the numbers, and it wouldn't work.

My town had 40,000 people when I lived in Tennessee. I lived 12 km away in a "neighborhood" that consisted of eight houses. How often should a bus run through there to pick me up and take me to town?

>>3570991

Mass transit? In MY America?

CREDIT buys TIME when you dont have it, at a price of higher value.

It`s useful, but only if you use it with that in mind. If you use it because you just WANT something, you`re doing it wrong.

>>3570962

Give up dude. This Eurofag or Yankee carpetbagger or whatever the fuck he is doesn't have any notion of what rural or suburban America is like. He thinks however it works where he lives is how it'll work everywhere in the world. There's nothing for his naivete but years and miles, although I wonder if even they will have any effect.

>>3570996
Wait, my English isn't that good, but are you really suggesting that having busses to constantly cover a 12km range isn't viable?

>>3570360
Sadly, the way it works over here is that you NEED credit. The system is designed to put you in debt, to train you to be dependent on it. You can't even buy a shitty used car unless you have the cash in-hand, or you have a good credit history.

I myself have begrudgingly had to finally get a credit card of my own, but I keep it at a low $500 limit that I can pay back relatively quickly if I need to. Just for an emergency injection of cash when I need it.

>>3571016
Fuck yankees and carpetbagger faux-cosmopolitan fucks

ahahahahaa!

>>3571036

It would certainly be viable if his was the only neighborhood in this situation in the entire country. There are tens of thousands. Perspective, broski. Learn some.

>>3571016
Have you seen a bus? Do you know what it is? A bus is basically a big fucking car, where many people can ride together. The beauty about buses is: they are a viable option wherever cars are a viable option, because, I repeat: a bus is just a big car.

Now all you have to do is have your Government start giving authorization for private companies to provide public transportation service. Make them work within frequency and maintenance standards so they have their authorizations renewed every two years or so. Problem solved.

>>3571036

Let me try again:

EIGHT HOUSES
TWELVE KILOMETERS FROM TOWN.

At say, four people per house, there were 32 of us. How many times a day would you run that bus? How many people should ride at a time? What should tickets cost? How much fuel will be consumed? Is it really in the best interest of my and the city's finances, not to mention the ozone layer, for a fucking BUS to take me by myself or with one of my neighbors to town every day? Wouldn't it be easier for me to buy a car and drive to town when I need to go?

This is not some science fiction scenario. This is where I lived.

Credit is a massive con.
It makes people more willing to work for less to buy items that cost more than they are worth.
I have news for you. If you have spotless immaculate credit and can borrow huge amounts of money but no actual cash on hand or the ability to attain cash that you don't have to pay back then you are broke. You're living paycheck too paycheck.
Having better toys does not change the fact that you are essentially broke.
The next step is to force people to use a credit system instead of actual cash. People are already used to paying with credit instead of money anyway.

>>3571074

Wow, somebody who wasn't even there gets it. Now look at say Wyoming where only 550,000 people live in an area around 130 percent the size of France. Does each ranch get its own bus stop?

The population density in a lot of the Western states is comparable. The population density of the whole country is only 31 per square km, same as Alabama. Subtract a couple hundred cities, and you still are left with over a hundred million people who need a fucking car.

Honestly at around 750 automobiles per 1,000 Americans, I think we've already seen public transit reach its maximum possible penetrance at this time. When the population density increases, maybe car ownership will go down a bit, but right now I think the quarter of the population that doesn't need a car doesn't have one, and the rest of us who do, do.

>>3570996
Quoted for truth.

Also, I live in a nice town that's based around a large university. We have our own bus system, however it doesn't go everywhere, not even close. It covers the university, the mall, a small hospital, a few small businesses and the park. That's it. I could probably take that half-way to work and I'd have to walk the rest of the way. I could do that, but only when we have decent weather. In winter I would be screwed.

>>3571065

Hi. Unless you live in an island, a bus can go from point A to point C passing by point B, where B is the place your house is located. Considering that people from A want to arrive at C and people from B want to arrive at C as well, they can SHARE the same vehicle. Now imagine that between A and B there are many other points, and then some more between B and C. It doesn't look like such a lonely trip anymore, does it? Now have those buses leave according to a schedule, all you have to do is to be ready to catch it at B in time to arrive at C at time for work.

Sup nigga. I don't use a credit card.

>>3570783

she didn't need to buy a brand new car, but that doesn't mean she should have gone out and got a $300 piece of shit. You can get a decent used car for $3-4k instead of buying a new car for $20k

>>3571151
Now imagine that the city area follows a star topology and that all the other suburbs are at least 12km from the city proper. Find me a route that covers all the stops well, keeps itself funded, and somehow makes itself superior to a 7 minute drive.

Blame it on the way cities and housing are designed around here if you must, but that's just the nature of what we have. Now, you can argue that the cities are that way because of our existing reliance on cars, but that's just a chicken/egg argument and will never be resolved.

As an American, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
If I recall correctly, buying things on credit excessively has caused economic troubles in America before.

America started out with the idea that gas was near-as-free and built a country on that.

Now finding out that it (and credit etc) is not, has fucked it somewhat.

Mass transit is wonderful, but only works in countries that were developed BEFORE the industrial revolution. America cant really support country-wide mass transit due to the above reason.

>>3571266

Because, you know, America didn't exist before automobiles.

>>3571332
The parts that did exist were tightly clustered and enjoy mass transit.

enjoy your capitalism, oppressed idiots

I agree with the OP.
I just sit back and laugh as all the idiots scramble as all their goods are repossessed. I don't even have a bank account!
I pay my landlord in cash and get paid in cash!
HARHARHAR
I DON'T EVEN EXIST ON ANY GOVERNMENT REGISTERS AS I WAS BORN TO AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT AT HOME
TAKE THAT STATE

>>3571602

ever been to school? you're in the system.

>>3571332
Sure it existed but how similar was it then to now? It also didnt exist much.

>>3571602
What kind of job do you have?

>>3570996
They could build railway stations. Expand Amtrak to every city that has a population of 5,000 people.

America has created massive fortunes for people because of speculation (largely a product of credit). If you want to slave away and live without credit go ahead.
I'm not talking about buying a cadillac suv or outrageously expensive clothing ($1000 bags, etc). Use credit to buy a dependable car, a nice suit for work, a house with real value to you (location and amenities), and whatever else enhances your ability to generate wealth in the future.

Imagine yourself as a company. It would be stupid not to invest in equipment or technology which is going to make you money. You need income to pay for it over time, but once the investment matures you shouldn't have a problem paying it off early. If it fails you just end up paying it off over a longer time period.

Again, credit is good when used by smart people. It crashed when they gave uneducated poor people relatively huge credit lines. Even in the best economy those people's prospects of generating wealth are low. The credit card companies expecting 30% interest rates is also killing the economy. Who the hell can get a 30% return on investment in this economy? even pre-crash the market was not even close to that rate. then they act surprised when people decide to default on credit cards, and then raise everyone's rate to several points because of mysterious market conditions.

>>3571956
If poor people didn't get credit then the system that you are touting wouldn't be near as large as it is now. The uneducated people are getting shafted by the credit companies left and right. You know it I know it.
Hopefully people will give up on credit cards all together and insist on raising the living wage.

ITT: Unemployed, 18 to 21 year old college students still living with their parents passing judgment and making baseless claims with little to no knowledge on a subject.

>>3571956
>>created massive fortunes for people because of speculation

Similar things can be said for drugs and slavery.

>>3571935

l2math

>Similar things can be said for drugs and slavery

if drugs or slavery were run by the jews they would be legal

>>3572149

Actually, the anon you're referring to is correct. We need better transit in general.

luckily my parents taught me their cheapness to never rely or borrow any types of money. I used to think they were just idiots, but now I see how right they were. THE MORE YOU KNOW!

>>3572163


Yeah, whatever. Conservatives bailed out the Jews in the first place. Bitch at them.

>>3572205


Ah good. It's nice to see good sense is actually being taught at home for some people.

<crosses fingers>

Are you an American?

>>3571935
While I'd like to see it, it would be hard to pull this off in the US. Our train lines are so horribly out of date that they would essentially need to be rebuilt from scratch. There's only a few lines that are kept up and most of them are for bulk movement rather than public transit. On top of that, trains are incredibly unpopular. There's actually a station in my town, but it only goes north/south and has one train, arriving at the station a bit after midnight. Otherwise, the track is only used for moving items.

>>3572387
So what's the solution? There are some places where even if you have to get a car, you can't because you're disabled.

But really the only solution to the problem is to redirect most highway funding to railways. Or if they don't want to, you might as well tell everyone to resettle to cities.

The credit crisis has nothing to do with consumer spending.

Stop spreading this sycophantic bootlicking nonsense.

Debt as money is the basis of the entire corrupt system.

Everything I know about handling debt and credit I learned by watching my parents. I do the opposite of what they would do. I got a school loan and paid that off way early. I got a car and paid that off way early. If I want something I wait until I have the money then only use my credit card if its over $700 and pay that off immediately. my parents spend thousand and I don't see what they get from it. its just waste.

Housing Crisis = What happens when you let fucktard democrats bully banks into loaning money to people who can't pay it back.

>>3575460
Hasn't this been rehashed several times? Banks were never forced to give out loans that would cause them to lose money.

It's amazing how that point is repeated over and over again by bleating pundits while economists will point to securitization of mortgages as the root cause. Of course, economists went to 'collage' and are 'elitists that are out of touch with the common people', right?

My parents abused my credit when I was younger so I shall never have this problem.

>>3575460

This.

Average Americans don't know anything about money, so when they go to the bank, they expect the bank to take care of them and do all of the hard work for a fee. Thanks to the dems, our economy is in the shitter because banks were told to let people who have no idea what the fuck they are doing get loans, even if they couldn't pay them off. Ignorance and corruption, OP.

how does i live with my means?

America, I am disappoint.

>>3575502
what the story?

>>3575506
Why would the banks go along with this then? If the banks knew they would lose money on the deal, why wouldn't have there been a massive wave of bank failures right after the CRA was passed in 1977?

Reason: You're trolling, 0/10

>>3571935

And how far will how many people have to drive to get to the station? Millions of people don't live in a town at all. If you aren't turning the country into a pedestrian paradise, you're just half-assing it.

It sounds great, doesn't it? Just build the system. I use my current country as a means to measure, but look at Japan again. I can't find the reference but I read once (and it doesn't sound unreasonable) that adjusted for inflation the total price tag for Japan's current awesome railway system was around $1 trillion U.S. in today's dollars. The United States is thirty times the size of Japan. Do you have 30 trillion dollars lying around? That's 40 stimulus plans, when we don't know if we can afford to pay for one stimulus plan (No, I don't want to talk about the stimulus plan). We're twice the size of the European Union and you want us to build a rail system from scratch.

Mass transit can improve in the US, absolutely. The social stigma attached to using mass transit in the US can and should be combated. Cars aren't going away though. Improving the power source of the personal automobile and increasing motorcycle ownership would be a far better way to start dealing preparing for the post-oil world than just building train tracks all over creation.

Blame Reaganomics and Neoliberalism for this. People have always been that stupid. But at least before they had a decent wage so they could pay off their stupid debt.

Don't worry OP, the bailout and stimulus package is going to save us. Our leaders are fine upstanding people that would never throw us under the bus for personal gain.

>>3575087

You going to buy everyone's land from them your resettlement program or just tell them that they have to go and let them figure out what to do about their miserable state of affairs when they get there?

I'm assuming you can go ahead and solve all the urban housing problems in the US while you're at it, not to mention the health and resource issues inherent in your new megacities. Maybe we can just build skyscrapers...yeah, that's it...giant 500 story arcologies where people live out their days without ever seeing the sun. That's the ticket!

Your ridiculous oversimplifications of complex issues astound me. Keep up the good work.

>>3575129
Sub-prime loans ring a bell for you?

>>3575622
You got a better idea? I like to hear it from you.

Privatize Everything. That should help alleviate this crisis.

>>3575750

Hypothetically, let's say we actually have plenty of funds available and our economy isn't heading for collapse under Obongo.

All major cities would fund their own transit systems, so people wouldn't need cars. The rest of the population would fly cheap helicopters around and cars would be a quaint little relic of the past.

Wow, OP. You sure haven't told me something that I don't already know and haven't heard a thousand other times in a thousand other ways.

Thanks, OP.

>>3570819
Wrong. A legally enforceable contract to pay money is money. The "real money" in the modern economic system is not federal reserve notes, but bank loans.

>>3571602

I make free money because my money's in my bank account, getting interest.

>>3571935
The problem isn't in making a workable train system. The problem is making a workable feeder system for the trains. Its how the cities are built. A good train system makes a lot more sense in Japan where people can access it on foot or by bike. It does not make sense in America, the most suburbanized and car-dependent nation on the planet.

>>3575902
Major cities already fund their own mass transit systems. None of them are close to profitable except for N.Y. and all of them are taking money from the Federal and in most cases state governments to survive. Mass transit is a money pit, plain and simple, even in the higher density areas of America. It would be an abject failure to bring it to places like where I like now (East Alabama)

>>3575947
You got told.

>>3576151
That's why your Government should authorize private companies instead, fail american.

>>3576097
You are getting paid for allowing the bank to hold your money. Its not free, its interest.

>>3576180
Private companies are authorized to do so. None of them take the offer because a private company is smart enough to look at the numbers and stay the hell away from money losing operations like Mass Transit.

>>3575538

They would sell the mortgages in stacks to outside countries(China) and skim money from the sale as a sales bonus.

>>3576225
the real problem is that banks could restructure a group of mortgages that had 200 bips over the risk-free rate in profit so that it appeared to have more than that.

Speculation and financial wizardry don't create wealth, they create liquidity. The problem was that bank-held mortgages got a combination of opaqueness and liquidity that lead to being able to claim a profit for influencing your bonus amount by making losing bets that didn't appear losing under current models.

the banks are only failing because the people who borrowed money from them are not able to repay it. AIG didnt cause the economic crisis, stupid niggers and stupid fuckers who live outside their means did.

/never in debt
/make more money this year than i ever have

I don't know the exact wording, but Benjamin Franklin made the point:

Debt is Slavery

>>3570861
We generally take an economics class during the second semester of senior year in High School.

That means a class full of seniors who
a) are already going to college and don't care about HS anymore.
b) only cared about HS enough to barely pass.

Thus, we do take an econ class, but it doesn't matter. In mine I think we played guitar hero in class more than we learned about economics. :\

My dad works in the used car industry and let me tell you this: YOU CAN BUY A USED CAR WITH STRAIGHT UP CASH.

No B.S. if you have the money for all the fees, including tag/plate fees and processing fees.

>>3576359
Banks are failing because they thought that they could break up a pile of loans worth (say) $10mil into parts worth more than the whole. Then they used those parts as reserves to make more loans to glue and slice into more loans together into more CDOs whose slices are worth more than the whole, etc, etc.

>>3576566

You can buy anything with straight up cash. The point of credit is cause you don't have the cash. Fucking retard.

Economics could be better taught, but the fundemental problem with most people is that they just memorize and forget after tests. Very little is actually learnt. The FICO score is there for a reason. Ignoring it like we did was stupid, and what we are doing now is stupid.

>>3576209

Free relative to the money sitting in a drawer. And when I want the money, I withdraw it.

It's free.

>>3576580
People thinking credit = cash is the problem.

>>3576667
credit is cash though. A legally enforceable obligation to pay money is money.

>>3577281
Actual money is money. What you're describing is nothing but sophisticated IOU's.

>>3577324
"Actual" money nowadays is paper with a silly little design on it and nothing more. It only holds value because of debt and because of legal tender laws.

buy more silver, gold, platinum.

tinfoilblox

if i had some moeny idk id buy some books nad drugs prob well talkk to u later

Hate self righteous faggots posting like you.

Acting like you are entitled to take some sort of yelling stance

Fuck you

Be careful OP, I think it's a trap.

>>3577324
and the vast majority of transactions today are settled by those "sophisticated IOUs".

The only thing that gives federal reserve notes value is the fact that banks and the US government are forced to take them as final settlement of debt.

>>3577362
You're right. But I would feel safer with the paper with funny designs on it instead of nothing but debt.

>>3577362
or, you know, you could buy, let's say, land, maybe....a house? idk.

>>3577486
using leverage to buy real estate is actually a much better anti-hyperinflation bet than buying gold. Keep house, pay back loan with wheelbarrow dollars.

>>3570776

You'd have to be filthy fucking rich to buy a house cash.