$18 for a beer at the 2022 PGA Championship (Tulsa Oklahoma)

[Leo Enticknap]

Besides, even if all cars were powered by electricity, there would be no pollution from the tailpipe but pollution near power plants would increase.

That in itself would be beneficial, especially in inner cities where freeways cut through densely populated residential areas, and if the power plants are placed well away from densely populated areas.

[Frank Cox]

"Drive less" is more possible in large cities with readily available public transportation than in rural areas and small towns where it's not uncommon to have to drive ten or forty miles to get to a grocery store and even further for things like doctor's appointments and the like.

"Don't live in a rural area or a small town" is a possible answer and many people are actually following that advice since towns are shrinking while cities are growing. But folks who push for everyone to live in a city shouldn't forget that rural areas are where your food comes from.

[Bobby Henderson]

One thing that may cause less driving: fewer people and a greater percentage of elderly people in the population.

Birth rates have been declining in all developed nations. The US has been a late arrival to that party. Conditions are right for the emerging baby bust in the US to worsen dramatically. For quite some time the costs of parenthood in the United States have been escalating to ever more unrealistic levels. That alone forces many young adults to put off starting a family. Teens and young adults are living more through their phones and computers rather than meeting in person. They're hooking up and getting into relationships at a declining rate. Women are doing more to pursue careers of their own than simply get married and let a man do all the providing. There is a lot of men who just aren't reliable at that. A lot of young people are holding out for that "perfect" partner. There is a debate about apps like Instragram worsening that problem. The US seems determined to repeat the same errors as Japan and South Korea -two nations with stubbornly very low birth rates.

It's still going to take awhile before America's population begins to shrink. But it may start happening within the next 20 years. Meanwhile the Supreme Court appears determined to overturn a certain court ruling from 50 years ago. The rationale one justice is using to overturn the ruling could be used by others to invalidate laws that legalized things like interracial marriage, access to contraceptives and even the simple right to privacy. That justice promises that things like interracial marriage won't be affected. Yeah, right. Not that it will make any difference. If that one ruling gets overturned it may create a boom of business at clinics providing long term contraceptive measures. There may even be lots of men getting snip-snipped. Women who have the resources to get long term contraception will get it. If any growth of birth rates in American born women occur it will be from women in low income groups, typically ones who aren't white. Overall, people of fertile age will just get more isolated. Even immigrants coming into the US are having fewer children. The cost is just too damned high.

Africa is the only continent with nations that have high birth rates. There isn't a hell of a lot of infrastructure for cars there. At least not like there is in the United States or other developed nations. Of course this could all change if African nations have some explosive economic growth. They have plenty of youthful manpower. But they're still lacking on blue collar and white collar skill sets.

[Randy Stankey]

...if the power plants are placed well away from densely populated areas.

Just moving the pollution to a place where you don't have to think about it is only a short term solution.
The earth is a finite place and pollution will eventually catch up with us.

Driving less is the only real solution but there are problems with that.
Our infrastructure and even the layout of our cities often requires the use of cars.
You can't get to work without a car. If you don't drive to work, your ability to earn income is severely limited.
Even then, how will you get to the store? How will you visit other people or go places for recreation?
Our daily lives revolve around driving to get places.

We need to rethink the way we structure our lives.
We need to build cities and towns in a way that people can get from place to place without having to drive.
Public transportation is one way but we will eventually need to do more than that.

We need to start thinking about reshaping the way we live so that people can get to their jobs, to the grocery store and all the "little places" they need to go without having to drive. We need to start thinking about the "Fifteen Minute Community."

Ideally, all the basic things that a family needs should be within a fifteen minute walk or bicycle ride from home.
Although some things will still require driving, most of the things people need should be close enough for them to get there without driving.

I live half a mile from my workplace. The grocery store is less then two miles away.
I can walk to work in about ten minutes or ride a bike if the weather is nice. I can bike to the grocery store and can carry groceries in a backpack or saddlebags attached to the bike.

My girlfriend and I each have a car but, in the interests of saving money and reducing consumption, I have mothballed my car and we only drive hers.
I'm actually thinking of selling my car and putting the money in savings. Maybe I'll buy another but that's a question for another day.

I don't do this for purely altruistic reasons. Mainly, it is for practical reasons. Living close to work makes life easier. Driving only one car means less money spent on insurance and maintenance, let alone gas money.

I also do it to put my money where my mouth is. It's not right to go around saying things like this if you're not willing to back up what you say with your own actions.

I tell you, right now, we are coming to a point of no return. We are, soon, going to over pollute our environment beyond its ability to recover by itself. We are also going to run out of ways to get energy. When that happens, we are all going to be screwed.

We all need to start taking action, now, before it's too late.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Every time you start your car, you pollute. It doesn't matter what powers your car.
Every time you drive your car, you use energy and there is a finite amount of energy on the earth. Every bit of that energy, no matter what form, ultimately comes from the sun. We are never, ever, going to be able to extract more energy from our environment than the sun provides. We can't just go plug a power cable into the sun. We can only take what the sun gives us.

Nuclear energy doesn't technically derive its energy from the sun. Both fission, which is readily available right now and fusion don't. The problem is that the first one is embroiled in prejudice and the other simply isn't here yet.

Technically, the sun should be able to provide for all our energy needs, but our principal problem is getting the energy there were it's needed when it's needed. While that's partly a technical problem, as we don't have sufficiently advanced and cheaply, universally available energy storage solutions, it's also partly a geo-political issue. Nowadays, we do have the means to transport electricity efficiently over VERY long distances, but geopolitical realities don't make it trivial to get your energy from the other side of the globe when the sun isn't shining on your half.

Honestly, I've never really believed in battery driven cars as being the solution. Where do we get all the raw materials needed for all those cars? How are we going to generate the electricity we drive our cars with? Is it really cleaner to burn fossil fuels in a power plant at max 40% efficiency, while a modern gas driven engine can be upwards of 80% efficient? Personally, I see hydrogen as a more feasible solution, as it can be easily stored and transported. Also, you can fill up a car in minutes, not in hours. The problem is producing sufficient hydrogen, but it's the most abundant molecule on earth and solutions like silicon based solar cells that can directly split water into O2 and H2 show some promises.

Another thing is that we probably really want to do is redesign the places we live in. Especially the U.S. and Canada has many places, designed in a way that a car is the only option to get around. But even small communities can be organized in a way that 80% or more of your daily activities can be done by foot or bike.

[Leo Enticknap]

The problem is that the first one is embroiled in prejudice...

Not just prejudice. While nuclear fission energy can be safe if done right, the consequences of doing it wrong are uniquely nasty, namely:

• Catastrophic malfunction of power generation reactors or infrastructure as happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
• Reprocessing (think Sellafield) or disposing of used nuclear fissile fuel is horrifically expensive, and the stuff needs to be secured and managed for centuries
• The by-products of nuclear fission can be used to make bombs, meaning that every nuclear power station is a potential geopolitical security issue

A convincing case could be made that, all factors considered, electricity generation using a nuclear fission reactor hooked to a steam turbine is preferable to doing so by burning fossil fuels, but I wouldn't agree that reluctance to embrace nuclear fission energy is pure prejudice.

Veering slightly OT, one of the few pleasant memories I have of my schooldays is in a middle school science lesson, when Mr. McAdam pulled the blinds down, hauled out the 16mm projector, and showed us this. Needless to say, it made quite an impression on a classroom full of 11-year olds! The UK's nuclear power authority made the film as part of a PR offensive to convince the public that the transportation of spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing by rail was safe. It played on national TV, and copies were sent unsolicited to many if not all schools in the country (the idea being, I guess, to influence the next generation of voters). Ironically, they needn't have bothered: while adolescents across the UK were being entertained by the staged train crash, Chernobyl blew up. I also remember reading later that sales of train tickets dropped by 5-10% in the year after the film's release, which, if the two events are linked, would definitely have been an unintended consequence (the message being received from the movie being that it's a good job that the nuclear waste flasks are able to withstand a catastrophic train crash, because they'll likely need to).

Honestly, I've never really believed in battery driven cars as being the solution.

I agree with you for as long as lithium ion and li-poly remain the state of the art. These chemistries are too heavy, lack the necessary energy density compared to gasoline, and have a significant safety drawback (thermal runaway). It seems that every month or so I read a story about a totally new battery chemistry that is going to solve all these problems. It doesn't need rare earth metals that China has a strangehold on, it's cheap to manufacture, super light, charges very quickly, holds its charge very well, and has a huge energy density. It works great in the lab, but the gotcha is that they can't scale it up to volume production - yet. I'm hopeful that one of them will come through sooner or later. It'll need to, in order to make electric cars viable replacements for ICE-powered ones for most motorists.

[Lyle Romer]

Honestly, I've never really believed in battery driven cars as being the solution. Where do we get all the raw materials needed for all those cars? How are we going to generate the electricity we drive our cars with? Is it really cleaner to burn fossil fuels in a power plant at max 40% efficiency, while a modern gas driven engine can be upwards of 80% efficient? Personally, I see hydrogen as a more feasible solution, as it can be easily stored and transported. Also, you can fill up a car in minutes, not in hours. The problem is producing sufficient hydrogen, but it's the most abundant molecule on earth and solutions like silicon based solar cells that can directly split water into O2 and H2 show some promises.

There is no internal combustion engine that is anywhere near 80% efficiency, let alone upwards of it. The theoretical maximum thermal efficiency for the Otto Cycle is 56% I believe.

Hydrogen (or synthetic fuels using it as a main ingredient) is definitely the way to go in the future IF technologies like directly splitting water can be developed to operate economically.

Without some significant advance in battery technology, battery-electric vehicles are not really sustainable. Taking into account the efficiency improvement and the charging losses, I think we would need to produce something like 70% more electricity if all gas/diesel vehicles were replaced with battery-electric vehicles.

[Randy Stankey]

I think that nuclear power is the way to go.
It pisses me off that we haven't done the research and development to make it work. All we know how to do with it is boil water and blow things up.

Robert Oppenheimer and most of the others who worked on the original Manhattan and Trinity projects wanted to use nuclear energy to generate power. They only gave in to the government on the promise that, after the war, they'd be allowed to work on making nuclear energy. When the government didn't follow through on their promise, Oppenheimer started complaining... So they blacklisted him.

If we had kept the Manhattan Project (or something like it) going after the war, we would probably have usable nuclear energy or, at least, we'd be a lot farther along than we are, now.

Fossil fuels have killed BILLIONS of people by their emissions and, now we are on the path of destroying the entire earth.
Toxic emissions from power plants and automobiles permeate our atmosphere, pollute our water, destroy our infrastructure and degrade the health of people.
All we do is shift blame and make lame excuses.

Carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, mercury, nitric oxide and countless other poisons belch forth from power plants and vehicle tailpipes by the tons, every minute of every day. Those poisons contaminate our water, our air, our land and our food. We can't see them because it would take complicated laboratory testing to detect them but they are there... slowly killing us, every day of our lives.

People complain about nuclear power because accidents can cause radioactive materials to be released. Yes, that's bad. Yes, radiation kills people but it has killed far fewer people than fossil fuels, even considering Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island, combined.

Compare the ratio of people who die in vehicle accidents compared to the number of people killed in airliner accidents. The ratio of people killed by fossil fuels compared to the number of people killed by nuclear power is even smaller. If memory serves, it's less than a hundredth.

Also, atomic pollution is easy to detect. You can buy a pocket sized radiation detector from Amazon, et. al. If it beeps or clicks, you have a pretty good warning that there might be hazardous radiation and you can run away from it. You can't detect pollution from fossil fuel that easily. It takes a laboratory, knowledgeable people to run it and it takes a long time (hours or days) to detect that kind of pollution. When you find it, you can't easily run away from it because it is everywhere.

No... Instead, we poison our planet and blacklist people who are trying to make a difference when they complain too much.

If we had only kept working on the problem of nuclear power at the end of the war like the government promised, we wouldn't be in this mess, in the first place.

Even if we wouldn't have developed viable sources of nuclear power, we would still be a lot farther along than we are, now.

[Mike Blakesley]

We need to start thinking about reshaping the way we live so that people can get to their jobs, to the grocery store and all the "little places" they need to go without having to drive. We need to start thinking about the "Fifteen Minute Community."

Walt Disney had that figured out in 1967, when he came up with Epcot. It was going to be a circular community with the business/entertainment hub in the middle, and everyone would live on the perimeters. He planned to have electric people-movers to haul folks around. Of course he died before he got to see it realized and well, we know what his survivors did with his plan.

[Bobby Henderson]

We need to rethink the way we structure our lives.
We need to build cities and towns in a way that people can get from place to place without having to drive.
Public transportation is one way but we will eventually need to do more than that.

The problem is the business models of too many interests run totally contrary to the ideals of New Urbanism.

Take residential real estate for starters. That's the biggest problem. Homes are supposed to serve the practical purpose as shelter where human beings can live. Unfortunately homes are used just as much as investment vehicles for making money as well as brick and mortar jewelry to show off one's status and level of wealth. So we have exclusive neighborhoods for the most wealthy. The poor are excluded to the most shitty, dangerous neighborhoods. And then there is all kinds of separate Balkanization for the income classes in between. Vital services, retail, leisure, entertainment, etc all locate as close as they can to the neighborhoods with money. Suburbs were born out of the need of middle class people trying to find the right balance of living space and quality of surroundings to price. New Urbanism sells the dream of having people from all income classes living closely together in densely developed areas. That's completely impossible with how our society is structured.

Over the past 20 years America's housing market has turned into a morally disgusting disgrace. We obviously didn't learn a Goddamned thing from the mid 2000's debacle. We are in an even worse market bubble now than we were 16 years ago. It's insane. My town (Lawton, OK) was mostly unaffected by the previous bubble. Hardly anyone wanted to move here. Today they still don't want to move here, yet the prices of mortgages and rent have both been going way up beyond what local income levels can justify. There are houses that have been bought up by "investors" from God only knows where that are just sitting empty. The only new houses getting built in Lawton are ones on the far East and West sides of town for high income earners. The "missing middle" is turning into a GIANT problem. It's a problem that threatens to crater the basic functions of our economy and society.

Most people have to use automobiles to commute to work. They have no other choice. It's rare to live within walking distance of one's workplace. I can ride my trail bicycle from my house to my workplace in about 10 minutes. But it's dangerous as hell thanks to all the motorists obsessed with their phones. We don't have shit for dedicated bike paths in Lawton. Too many people here think spending money on such things is "communism." Mass transit is extremely expensive to build out. Even the cost of running a bus service is sky high. We have a bus network in Lawton, but it only runs Monday-Friday during the day on a very limited number of routes. Mass transit rail is expensive to an obscene extreme. The United States in general is quickly losing its ability to build any big things, even new bridges and highways.

When I hear New Urbanists talk about walk-able cities, mass-transit, etc I feel as if they might as well be talking about fantasies such as "utopia." That ideal is going to remain a fantasy as long as so many people in power are motivated more by filling their pockets with money than doing anything for the greater good. We're not going to make foundational changes until we are forced to do so. I'm afraid it's going to take a chain of severe events to make such changes possible.

Carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, mercury, nitric oxide and countless other poisons belch forth from power plants and vehicle tailpipes by the tons, every minute of every day. Those poisons contaminate our water, our air, our land and our food. We can't see them because it would take complicated laboratory testing to detect them but they are there... slowly killing us, every day of our lives.

Another thing I find especially disturbing is how much pollution we're eating and drinking. So many Americans, especially here in Oklahoma, are blissfully unaware of things like micro-plastics. It's literally getting into many of the things we eat. People are wondering why children are hitting puberty earlier or why so many more people have all sorts of allergies. Our actions of turning our environment into a toilet has an effect on that.

[Mike Blakesley]

Homes are supposed to serve the practical purpose as shelter where human beings can live. Unfortunately homes are used just as much as investment vehicles for making money as well as brick and mortar jewelry to show off one's status and level of wealth.

Gee, I always thought the idea behind working your butt off and being able to afford a nicer house was, oh I don't know.....HAVING A NICER HOUSE. Not "showing off status and wealth," just improving your station in life. Who put you in charge of deciding that the only reason for a home is to shelter people? A home is for LIVING in, not just eating and sleeping in.

Apparently your ideal is, we should all live in giant barracks, get our ration of food delivered by the government every couple of days, and quit striving for our own betterment, because doing a little better than somebody else is now seen as a bad thing.

[Bobby Henderson]

Apparently your ideal is, we should all live in giant barracks, get our ration of food delivered by the government every couple of days, and quit striving for our own betterment, because doing a little better than somebody else is now seen as a bad thing.

Wrong. Thanks for missing the entire point.

Are you even aware of the "missing middle" syndrome in residential real estate? Right now, even tiny little shit-box houses are getting priced way the hell out of sight in many locales.

There is nothing wrong about someone with plenty of money buying a really nice house. The thing that is morally wrong is when even ordinary housing gets priced out of reach. The median home price in the United States is now over $400,000. Not every American is a business owner earning a six figure income. Most Americans have to work for someone else to make a paycheck.

There's a lot more worker bees than queens in our population. What are those employees supposed to do if they need to find a new place to live? I've had my house for quite some time. My mortgage is pretty cheap compared to what other people are shelling out for a similar property. But if I lost my house for some reason and had to move under these market conditions I'd be screwed. There's not a hell of a lot of "inventory" for people in lower and middle income brackets. When it comes to new construction home builders are only interested in building big homes for buyers with big wallets.

Most financial advisors recommend not spending more than 25% of your income on rent or a house payment. Many home owners and renters are forced way above that level. It's common for a married couple to both work and see one of their paychecks totally consumed by the house payment. I've seen married couples get divorced yet still be stuck living in the same home together. There's two families doing a co-habitation thing in one of the houses next door to me. We have military people moving into the area, reporting to Fort Sill, but struggling like hell to find housing. They don't build enough housing on post for the military. That's all on purpose by the way. Troops don't get a blank check from the Army for housing. Like anyone else, they have to find what they can afford. I think it's ridiculous that young adults can graduate from college or career tech, get jobs yet still be stuck living with their parents. Get married, start families and have kids? Gotta have a family-sized home for that. And those aren't cheap.

[Randy Stankey]

Why can't we build homes in small-ish neighborhoods where there are groups of buildings arranged in quads?
Driveways would be in the back and, in the front, could be grass, trees and parkland. There could be common areas between groups of buildings. There could be smaller, centrally located stores and conveniences. "Pods" of homes could fit together like puzzle pieces and there could be bus stops, tramlines or "Park-and-Rides" connecting the whole thing together into a cohesive "Fifteen Minute Community" where people can walk or bicycle to most of the places they need to go.

It would be something like the retirement communities you find in Florida where folks ride around in golf carts and hang out in recreation centers. My idea would be more "homey" and less like an old folks home. More like, as Mike mentions, Epcot, except without all the futuristic, Disney "whiz-bang."

There's no reason we can't do something like this. If we had started building like this fifty years ago, we'd be a lot better off than we are now.

The reason why we don't is because of our belief in Manifest Destiny and our sense of Rugged Individualism.
People believe that it is their right to strike out on their own and reshape the land according to their own vision because they are, somehow, blessed by God.

Unfortunately, that is a 150 year old sentiment that isn't in sync with the way the world works, today.
People have to realize that they can't bulldoze their way through the world, anymore. There's nothing wrong with seeking one's own fortune and making a life for one's self but people have to consider that there are other people in the world who don't necessarily believe in the same things.

The world is a much more crowded and complicated place than it was even fifty years ago.
Manifest Destiny was bull crap when it was first conceived. Rugged Individualism has gone the way of the Dodo. Where, once, we had to live by our own devices, by necessity, we, now, have to live in sync with millions of other people, all around us.

There isn't a cubic centimeter of this earth that hasn't been polluted by human waste, from the outer fringe of our atmosphere to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Yes! There is garbage at the bottom of the deepest place in the ocean! The top of Mount Everest is covered with human shit! (Feces!)

Once upon a time, a person could start a fire to burn his garbage and smoke would billow up, into the sky, until it seemed to just "go away" but not really. It just disperses until you can't see it and you don't have to think about it, anymore. In reality, that pollution builds up until it poisons your neighbors who might be miles away.

There's no reason why people can't still have nice houses and live in pleasant communities but we all need to remember that we're not the only ones.
We have to live together, like it or not.

People intuitively know that it's not right to throw their trash into their neighbor's yard but why can't they understand that automobiles belching toxic exhaust fumes do the exact, same thing?

We've all dealt our own hands in this Game of Live but we can't change the cards. We have to play the hand we've got. As it is, right now, almost all of us have unplayable hands and there's nothing we can do about it.

The stark reality is that we're all fucked! Rich people, poor people, men, women, children and underprivileged minorities. Fucked! Every one of us! And, we did it to ourselves! We can't just plow everything under and start again. The only thing we can do is change the way we operate. We have to play the hands we've got for the best outcome.

Here's the thing... We WILL change the way we operate, either by choice or by necessity. We can do it ourselves or we can wait until we are forced to.

We can either do things like drive our cars less, consume less, waste less and just, generally, think about the fact that there are other people all around us or we can keep on going as we have been until Mother Earth shakes off Mankind like the way a dog shakes off fleas.

[Lyle Romer]

People believe that it is their right to strike out on their own and reshape the land according to their own vision because they are, somehow, blessed by God.

Unfortunately, that is a 150 year old sentiment that isn't in sync with the way the world works, today.
People have to realize that they can't bulldoze their way through the world, anymore. There's nothing wrong with seeking one's own fortune and making a life for one's self but people have to consider that there are other people in the world who don't necessarily believe in the same things.

The beauty of a free society is that we can all believe in whatever we want to believe in. If you want to live in a tiny house and create a walkable community of tiny houses then you are free to do so. If I want to live in a 50,000 sq foot mansion on 1,000 acres and commute everywhere by helicopter than I am free to do so if I could afford it (which, unfortunately, I can not). People who believe as you do have to also consider that there are other people in the world who don't necessarily believe in the same things.

Per your prior post, I 100% agree that the biggest failure of humanity since the industrial age began was not developing nuclear energy. If the best nuclear scientists were allowed to advance the technology we could have been at the point where 100% of the world was powered by nuclear energy by now in a safe manner. The extraction of the nuclear fuels could also be powered by the energy produced via using the electricity to produce hydrogen to power the mining equipment.

Wrong. Thanks for missing the entire point.

Are you even aware of the "missing middle" syndrome in residential real estate? Right now, even tiny little shit-box houses are getting priced way the hell out of sight in many locales.

There is nothing wrong about someone with plenty of money buying a really nice house. The thing that is morally wrong is when even ordinary housing gets priced out of reach. The median home price in the United States is now over $400,000. Not every American is a business owner earning a six figure income. Most Americans have to work for someone else to make a paycheck.

There's a lot more worker bees than queens in our population. What are those employees supposed to do if they need to find a new place to live? I've had my house for quite some time. My mortgage is pretty cheap compared to what other people are shelling out for a similar property. But if I lost my house for some reason and had to move under these market conditions I'd be screwed. There's not a hell of a lot of "inventory" for people in lower and middle income brackets. When it comes to new construction home builders are only interested in building big homes for buyers with big wallets.

Most financial advisors recommend not spending more than 25% of your income on rent or a house payment. Many home owners and renters are forced way above that level. It's common for a married couple to both work and see one of their paychecks totally consumed by the house payment. I've seen married couples get divorced yet still be stuck living in the same home together. There's two families doing a co-habitation thing in one of the houses next door to me. We have military people moving into the area, reporting to Fort Sill, but struggling like hell to find housing. They don't build enough housing on post for the military. That's all on purpose by the way. Troops don't get a blank check from the Army for housing. Like anyone else, they have to find what they can afford. I think it's ridiculous that young adults can graduate from college or career tech, get jobs yet still be stuck living with their parents. Get married, start families and have kids? Gotta have a family-sized home for that. And those aren't cheap.

A lot of the blame for the ridiculous housing price inflation has to be placed on the banks that approve the mortgages. People can only possibly purchase a house that is more expensive than they can afford if a bank loans them the money to do so. If there were strict regulations on mortgages that set a maximum percentage of verifiable income that could make up the total yearly payments, housing prices would not be able to get so out of whack with wages. Investors wouldn't invest in homes because the price growth would be capped so that would help with the inventory situation which also contributes to the price inflation.

There's no way I could afford my house if I had to buy it today instead of 20 years ago. Clearly we're going to end up with a repeat of 2008 at some point soon because, especially with the other inflation going on, lots of people won't be able to pay their mortgage. Buy food or make mortgage payment? Food. Buy gas to get to work or mortgage payment? Gas.

[Bobby Henderson]

Why can't we build homes in small-ish neighborhoods where there are groups of buildings arranged in quads?

Why can't we do that? American practices of ZONING.

The most common form of zoning in American cities and especially suburbs is "R1": single family, standalone (or "detached") houses. City councils and city planners routinely place strict rules on what kinds of homes can be built in specific neighborhoods. Typically an entire subdivision will have homes all of the same type for people all in the same income class. No developer is going to build a neighborhood where there is a mix of mansions, modest sized homes, town houses and apartments. The well-off home buyers won't put up with that because they don't want any lower income riff-raff living anywhere near them. That will negatively affect their property values. They don't want any kids from riff-raff people going to the same schools their kids attend either.

Over the past 15 or so years mixed use development has been a very trendy thing in city centers. This is a little closer to the New Urbanist ideal. There is a mix of commercial, retail, leisure and entertainment activity on the ground level with apartments built above or condos and town homes built nearby. Unfortunately, the prices of those apartments and condos are high as fuck. What typically happens is rich folks with giant McMansions in the suburbs buy up those downtown properties as crash pads for when they party. It's not like someone working as a server in a downtown restaurant would ever be able to afford buying or even renting one of those properties. That server has to commute to work from some lesser part of town. This is one of the key reasons why the New Urbanism trend is a failed lie.

I feel really sorry for kids hitting adulthood today. They're coming of age in a pretty fucked up mess. Many who attend college have the prospect of paying on student loans for most of the rest of their adult lives. Never mind being able to scrape together enough money for a down payment on an over-priced home, much less find a spouse and have kids. A lot of young adults see the financial math of it and are choosing to opt out of buying into that "American Dream." It's easier and cheaper to stay single.

Us older assholes will eventually get our comeuppance. The grim comedy of the baby formula crisis is an example of how America's gerontocracy has grown too big for its britches. No one in power gave two shits about the baby formula market in the US getting cornered by 3 companies until it turned into a massive shit show. The older, richer classes have had a very bad habit of punching down at the younger yet poorer groups. Here's the thing: 20 years from now a bunch of these middle aged farts who've been running up the costs of housing everywhere are going to want to sell. And they may have problems finding buyers. Not everyone needs a 4000 square foot McMansion, especially a single adult without any children. I could barely afford the utility bills on such a home. Single adults with no kids is a rapidly growing demographic.

A lot of the blame for the ridiculous housing price inflation has to be placed on the banks that approve the mortgages. People can only possibly purchase a house that is more expensive than they can afford if a bank loans them the money to do so.

Which reminds me that a lot of the bank lending laws that were enacted after the mid 2000's housing bubble and Great Recession were effectively eliminated. It also reminds me of those Countrywide Mortgage TV commercials, particularly the one where the wife is brow-beating the living shit out of her husband to buy a home they obviously can't afford. She's practically calling him a coward and a pussy, claiming "we can do this" as he finally caves in. Yeah, fuck that TV commercial and that lending company.

There's no way I could afford my house if I had to buy it today instead of 20 years ago. Clearly we're going to end up with a repeat of 2008 at some point soon because, especially with the other inflation going on, lots of people won't be able to pay their mortgage. Buy food or make mortgage payment? Food. Buy gas to get to work or mortgage payment? Gas.

I'm in the same boat. I certainly don't like gasoline prices being at new all time highs. However it kind of pisses me off to hear certain people, well-off people in particular, bitching about gasoline prices. Yet they're saying nothing at all about so many people getting financially crushed by housing prices. My house payment is relatively low, but I still pay considerably more for that than I do the gasoline in my pickup truck.