Unburdened by what has been

Conversations with friends can be difficult. One of my friends is burdened by the inequity of the world.

Because he is conservative and a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, his issues with inequity are putting him in serious mental anguish.

What Has Been

You struck out, westward, when you found a place to your liking, you made it your own. This included clearing the land, building your home, cultivating your ground, hunting, and surviving.

If you were lucky, you might find an abandoned homestead to take over. You paid for that home with the sweat of your brow. Nothing was easy.

In other cases, you might be close enough to civilization that you could purchase your home. Be that the wood to build it, or the house itself. You could also buy a house from the previous homeowner.

As time went on, the areas around the towns became more built up. The houses within the towns became more valuable. People invested in their homes, making them still more valuable.

Still, it was almost always a buyer’s market.

With vast amounts of “free” land, land was cheap, if you didn’t want a big house, your house was cheap too.

When you start seeing more expensive homes, they were passed down from father to son, as was the land. The family’s wealth was tied up in their land.

It’s NOT Fair!

But that means that those who came first got it easy! They got it cheap! There’s nothing left of ME!

My grandparents bought their home in the early 1900s. If I recall correctly, they paid around $5k for it. According to the googler, the average house price in 1929 was $6k. In 1929, my grandfather was likely earning about $1700/year. So a house would cost about 4 years worth of labor.

My house cost about one year of labor, the year I bought it. My house is actually cheaper than my grandfathers house. And my house is huge in comparison.

My grandparents, with their three daughters, lived in a two bedroom, one-bath house. There was a living room and a dine in kitchen. There was a full, unfinished basement. My grandfather built the detached garage later. It had a massive porch that extended the entire width of the front.

Grandpa added a back porch that was closed in to make it 3.5 seasons. Oh, there was a big mudroom off the back entrance.

When we were looking at houses, our minimum requirement was two full baths, four bedrooms, large kitchen, dining room. What we ended up with was larger than that. And it was still cheaper than my grandparents’ home.

It is fair.

But they didn’t have to pay as much!

It is all relative. My grandparents didn’t spend as much on entertainment. When they did go out, it was often very cheap dates. A nickle movie with popcorn and a soda was a 1/2 hour of labor. A movie with popcorn and soda is about 3/4 of an hour of labor today.

My friend wanted to buy a house for 2 years of labor, while having “needs” that would cost him 5 to 6 years of labor. And being upset.

His argument is that if they people that had come before were to stop being “evil” and “greedy”, there would be more houses.

The issue is that the housing market is currently a seller’s market. The demand is higher than the supply. This means that sellers can demand more money. When they get to where they are going, they will have to pay more as well.

Listening to people dancing at the “profit” they made selling their homes on Monday, and bitching about how unfair it is on Friday when they have to pay more for a new home, makes me giggle. I feel for them. I don’t understand why they don’t get it.

If we were just to…

We have a small lot, for the area, which backs on a few acres of forest. I do not want somebody to build a house right behind us. My options are to purchase the property behind us, risk it, or get the government to zone the land to stop new building.

I would like to purchase the land outright. That would be the best option for us. The risk is fairly low, there isn’t much demand for new housing in our area. But going to the zoning board…, now there’s an idea.

The wonder of the zoning board is that you can often convince the zoning board to put limits on the uses of property to protect the community.

We will zone land as noncommercial to keep traffic out, we might zone an area for single family dwellings to give people a sense of space and property, we might zone an area for high density housing or even trailer parks.

Zoning laws help protect the community from things like semi-trailers driving down the road in front of your house. The government put a US highway through my grandparent’s town. It was the street in front of their house. When they moved in, the road was a tree—lined boulevard. The first time I saw it, it was a four lane road with street parking on both sides and big rigs running through town all day and all night.

Occasionally, we find zoning laws designed to protect our farm land. The farm up the road was on the market for 10 years. Nobody was willing (or able) to buy it. In the end, they were able to sell off about 5 acres of the 100+, which became 3 lots with big houses on it.

Zoning laws kept that farm from becoming a huge apartment complex, or a subdivision.

If we were just to allow people to build as many houses as densely as they want, then house prices would be low enough for me.

Conclusion

I’m wealthy, by world standards. By world standards, I’m part of the “1%”. Then again, so are you.

The people of the United States are unbelievably wealth. The poorest of the poor in America are obese. They are not starving. Some might be hungry, but they are not starving.

I’ve been in section 8 housing to service computers. At a time when large, flat screen TVs were running 1000 to 2000 dollars, they had three.

When I was in high school, at one bus stop the “poor” kids would get off, they would run into their tar paper shacks. These were the kids who got to go to gym class as their first class. So they could use the showers.

They were so poor that they didn’t have enough running hot water for showers. I don’t know if they had showers in those shacks.

I do know that there were always two or three late model Cadillacs in the driveway.

The “poverty line” for the United States is higher than the average income of most countries in the world. Even some 1st and 2nd world countries.

If what you want as a home isn’t here, you need to look further afield or change your specifications.

Crying over what has been isn’t going to change anything.

Complaining that the people with wealth are “greedy” and “evil” isn’t going to change anything.

If it is the government standing in the way of lower costs, then we can get the government out of the way. That doesn’t mean that all zoning laws are bad, some might be.

In general, being upset that some people have things you want and are unwilling to give it up, or are willing to fight to protect their property or the value of their property, is only going to make you mad.

Stop stressing over what others have. Take stock of what you do have and give thanks.