JayB

"While there have been impressive yield increases, particulary in Asia, these have not been linked with a corresponding decrease in world hunger." Guess what would have happened to the hunger stats without the Green Revolution? By this logic, we should abandon anti-HIV drug development since the arrival of combination therapy hasn't lead to a corresponding decrease in the global incidence of HIV since 1995. Not a big deal when you aren't the hungry one, is it? Guess what happened to the absolute yields during this time? "Hmmm - I'm starving, but the fact that this grain was produced such that yields and fertilizer use haven't grown in unison is so troubling that I'll see if I can dig for some grubs and chew on a piece of shoe-leather instead...." Contemplate the environmental - let alone social and humanitarian - impact of hundreds of millions of additional people in the developing world who are perpetually on the brink of starvation for decades on end and it makes any nominal downside attributable to the Green Revolution look trivial by comparison. There's also the fact that the local farmers assessed the options available to them and chose what to their perspective looked like the best solution. They knew all about traditional crops, local conditions, etc - and selected the crops that in their judgment would suit their particular needs best. If they hadn't worked out for any particular reason they would have abandoned the new crops and grown whatever strains they grew before in the same manner as they did before. I suspect their judgment of what's actually in their interest to grow is a hell of a lot more accurate than judgments rendered by well-fed agro-luddittes making their assessments from several thousand miles away.

Talk about evil. This guy, Norman Borlaug is second only to Hitler/Stalin/Mao in terms of the magnitude of the suffering and devastation that his "science" has inflicted on the planet. "Norman Ernest Borlaug (born March 25, 1914) is an American agricultural scientist, humanitarian, Nobel laureate, and has been called the father of the Green Revolution.[1] Borlaug received his Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties. During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations. These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people from starvation.[2] He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply. More recently, he has helped apply these methods of increasing food production to Asia and Africa. Borlaug has continually advocated the use of his methods and biotechnology to decrease world famine. His work has faced environmental and socioeconomic criticisms, though he has emphatically rejected many of these as unfounded or untrue. In 1986, he established the World Food Prize to recognize individuals who have improved the quality, quantity or availability of food around the globe." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

"The powerful don't need to subdue the people by force anymore--it just tells them how and what to think, believe, buy, vote." Where do you personally fit into this grand conceit?

No it wouldnt and you know that, two completly different things you cant compare it to the most dangerous thing available and say see.. way way way to much tv man, kids who come from good families can experiment and figure shit out with out too much harm. life is about experimenting and figuring shit out, if you subscribe to the do it once and your addicted then your mistaken These were kids from good families. I don't buy the try-it-once-and-you're-automatically-addicted line either, but snorting coke at 15 suggests poor decision making, impulse-control, and peer-group dynamics that don't exactly suggest platonic, clinical-study level restraint is the most likely outcome for teenagers that fit into this category. BTW, which part of the comparison did you object to? The delivery method [Powdered cocaine vs crack vs syringe]- or the equation with meth and/or heroin? I'm certainly no expert, but these seem like relatively fine distinctions to me. The demographics of the hospital that my wife works at skews things to the crack side a bit, but even allowing for that, the level of fucked-up, miserable crack-heads that shuffle through the door seems to be right up there with the fucked-up, miserable junkies that they deal with.

I don't have an actuary handy, Bill, but I'd be willing to go out on a limb here and wager that sustaining the coke-intake has a much better chance of ruining the average teenager's life than the average parent's response. I got caught drinking at a school dance 13 and that was probably the single most painful event of my young life, between ruining the straight-A/boyscout halo-thing that I had going on (10%), and the pain, distress, and embarassment that it caused my parents (90% of the suckage) - and while I still managed to make bad choices and get into trouble at a fairly regular basis - in hindsight I'm glad it happened as it changed the way that I made decisions [taking their potential impact on other people into account, for one] and served as a generally useful inocculation against various other mistakes of a higher caliber. Also took a bit of the pressure off that I'd been putting on myself to maintain the straight-A boyscout thing, which was pretty much toast at that point, which also helped transform the response to future incidents from overwhelming shock and dismay to a weary/stoic "Alright...[sigh]...what'd you get into this time.." kind of vibe, which was also beneficial in the long run.

Remarkably blase' attitude towards 15-year olds getting into coke on display here. Is this a bit of 70's era sentimentalism getting the best of folks, or....? Would the response be the same if the said coke happened to be consumed via crack-pipe or syringe? How 'bout heroin or meth? Not my kids, not my problem, but an unscientific mental survey of the few people that I was aware of in high-school that were into coke or drugs of that strata reveals that ~80% turned into fucked-up losers of the highest order. Like "running off with all of the savings and all of the wife's painkillers to score more coke/meth/oxycontin when she's all of 24-hours post-op" [really happened]fucked up. I know that getting older and putting considerations that rank above the maintenance one's mental image of one's own hipness are...like, a total downer, man...and don't jive well with the mental images of one's future elder-grooviness that one constructed as a teenager a long, long, long, long fucking time ago....but that's adulthood for you.

Used to ride or jog past that thing quite a bit when I was at UW. Public art, supposedly resembles elevated tracks used as part of a motorcycle stunt in a carnival/circus/fair, where the rider would do laps around an elevated, banked track.

True, but this assumes that increasing prices will never have an effect on the number of people who are both willing and qualified to become equity donors for the move-up folks. I'm not so sure that this assumption always holds.

If there are fewer first-time buyers who can qualify for or afford the sub-median home in numbers equal to those who want to sell their sub-median homes for some increment over their initial purchase price then what happens to the equity that the move-up buyers are counting on to afford the more expensive home that they want to move into? Price too many first-time buyers out of the market via any mechanism of your choosing: increases in home price that exceed increases in real income growth for X-number of years, tightening lending standards, increasing interest rates, etc - and this will have a negative impact on appreciation. Do the reverse, and increase real incomes, reduce interest rates, and/or reduce lending standards and the opposite will happen.

I can remember seeing a figure of $429K for detached SFH but can't remember where I saw the figure. Did the Seattle Times data include condos/townhomes? If so, that might explain the discrepancy - or maybe the figure that I saw was just plain wrong. From what I here there's nothing in Ballard south of $400K, and 2BR 1B stuff in Greenwood(!) is going for over $400K, the 425-450K figure doesn't seem too terribly out of line, but perhaps if you toss Ranier Valley, First Hill, White Center into the mix you get into the sub $400K Range. Any effective regulation would have to apply to all originators, regardless of where they hang their shingle. I still think the rules and regs that govern retail investments in securities would be a good model here. Clear professional standards coupled with internal enforcement mechanism (losing license, etc) and backed up with criminal penalties where necessary. Doesn't totally eliminate the sharks, and the greedy/foolish can still lose their asses in a hurry, but they do a reasonably good job of keeping the most flagrant abuses in check. At the very minimum the origination process should require that qualifying for a loan includes the ability to repay the said loan at the fully indexed rate.

I agree, but the list I was referring to the "Senior Scientist" and other positions near the top of the scale that Carl posted, and even the median for those was under $100K. From what I've seen at small start-ups you have almost exclusively PhD's, but once you move from discovery, validation, etc into a realm where part of what you do involves cranking out millions of doses of Flacitrel the skill set mix starts to include "Senior Production Tech" and "Jr. QA Associate," type jobs, as well as admin, shipping/recieving, etc - all of which will shift the median salary down rather than up. I'm not sure what's supporting the $450K median in Seattle, but it certainly isn't the scores of highly compensated folks working in Biotech/Research.

STFU Whitey. When transportation changed from the horse to the automobile we had to update the rules of the road to reflect the changes. Now that mortgage lending has moved from the "originate and hold" model to the "originate, repackage, and sell" model, different regulations may not necessarily equal more onerous and less effective regulations. The regulations that govern the retail securities business seem to have worked reasonably well in terms of protecting the gullible and the inexperienced while still allowing those with the means, experience, and appetite for high-risk investments to play in the deep end. Selling grandma an I/O Payment Option ARM with a 1 month teaser rate is roughly akin to letting grandma speculate on naked currency futures with her pill money. Not good for the market or grandma.

~14K = gross federal taxes on 100K if married filing jointly. Read the first post you responded to and you'll see an estimated tax benefit of ~11K for the mortgage interest/property tax deduction. Might have been confusing since I referred to it as a subsidy rather than as a deduction. The other point was that I'd be surprised to learn that the folks who service the mortgage will allow a borrower to deduct the estimated tax benefit from the monthly payments and send them the difference when the tax refund check arrives. E.g. you need to have the cash in hand each month to pay the monthly expenses associated with owning the property.

No - but where's the error? I think that most back of the envelope type calculations assume that the mortgage interest deduction will generate a tax benefit equal to roughly ~30% of interest paid for the average person in the first 10 years of a 30 year fixed, and progressively less each year thereafter. 0.3*25K = 7500, not too far off from the results generated by the calculator. Whatever the actual value is, I doubt it's sufficent to render a $425K mortgage something that I'd consider "affordable" once you stack the rest of the typical household's fixed monthly expenditures on top of the payments.

The deductions on the interest on a $425K 30-year fixed at ~6% generates a tax savings of ~$8500 if you assume that a $100K salary lands you in the 28% bracket. http://www.dinkytown.net/java/MortgageTaxes.html Unless the assumptions built into that thingy are off. If not, assuming $11K in federal subsidies may have been a bit on the generous side.

a hundred k isn't "far less" than what's needed to finance a standard 30 year fixed for an average price house in king county. Plus, keep in mind that the dual income household isn't anomalous nowadays. If by "finance" you mean "afford." we may have different understandings of the word. Some Simplified Numbers: Gross Salary: $100K Medicare: ~$1500 Social Security: ~$6K Federal Taxes: ~ 14K Net Salary: $78,500. Monthly Take Home: $6541. Monthly Payment on 30 year fixed for $425K (assume ~5% downpayment) at 6.1% ~$2600/mo Property Taxes on $450K, ~$5000, ~416/mo Total Montly Obligation before Federal tax subsidies for homeowners kick in: $3166. $3166/6541 = ~48% of monthly take home pay. This doesn't include PMI, homeowners insurance, maintenance, repairs, utilities, etc. I'd figure roughly $11K/year in interest/property-tax subsidies for the first few years of the mortgage when the amount of principal being paid off is negligible, but I'm willing to bet that these don't help the average household cover the check at the end of each month. Toss in car payments, auto insurance, health insurance, homeowners insurance, utilities, other debt, groceries, gas, etc and you are no longer looking at a situation that's consistent with my personal definition of the term "afford." YMMV.

UW Rock.

Pretty much put most of Montana in the shitter as well. I can remember a scout trip that took us through Yellowstone and the Tetons in the mid-80's when Montana hadn't yet begun to suffer from the tantric-midlife-crisis-emeliorating-zen-state-via-flyfishing vibe . One of the grownups brought along a list of humorous questions that he read aloud to the van full of scouts in order to pass the time during the long stretches of driving. The one question I remember was "Would you rather spend all of eternity in the seventh level of hell or Bozeman, Montana?" We'd just passed through Bozeman, and that country looked like heaven to me at the time. I can remember being both simultaneously puzzled and relieved by the question. Puzzled that anyone would chose Bozeman over, say, Jersey City - for that designation and relieved that the average person in the US would recoil in horror at the prospect of spending time in, much living in most of the places that I loved in the West. Not quite how things turned out.

Straight downhill since "A River Ran Through It." Bummer. Love that river/canyon.

Those jobs are at or near the top of the skill-set echelon in most biotech companies, and the average of those medians is way under $100K. Include all of the AA-degree-or-less-requiring "Jr Production QC Tech" and admin jobs and you end up even further south of $100K.

Average salary is one thing, median is another. No way the median is over $100K unless the entire operation is staffed by senior scientists and execs. Might also be helpful to compare and contrast Amgen with any commerical biotech operation in the PNW.

You can pretty much count-out biotech as a driver of elevated home prices. Capital intensive? expensive? Yes. Mass employer capable of elevating average pay rates region-wide or even citywide - no. Not now, not ever - at least not in Washington. Even in the highest sliver of the non-executive strata in Biotech (the Senior Scientists and whatnot)- which number in the hundreds, at most, in Washington - I'd be mighty surprised to very many pay-packages in excess of $100K, which is far less than you need to be bringing home to afford a home in King-county with anything other than suicide financing. The average guy working in a lab is probably working on a payscale roughly equivalent to that of the average supermarket employee, and will either have to change careers or change locations in order to get within reach of the average one-bedroom condo, much less a SFH.

Counterargument: http://seattlebubble.blogspot.com/2007/03/spot-fundamentals.html The real-estate markets are local, but credit markets are global, so it's hard to forsee a scenario in which any particular metro-market is not impacted by the global appetite for Alt-A and sub-prime MBS. The psychology of market participants is one thing, their access to credit is another. It'll be interesting to see how those two variables influence one another over the course of the next couple of years.

I would think that losing your home would be horrible no matter what tax bracket you are in. Your kids lives' get disrupted, your life gets crazy, etc. Except if your rich you can go out and buy a Mercedes to salve the paing, whereas if you are poor you might be able to buy a Happy Meal. I think it depends where you are defining as LA. I believe much of the unconventional financing for primary residences was the Inland Empire and Orange County. Speculators getting burned are getting their just desserts. I'd be mighty surprised if the current valuation metrics are sustainable in a more restrictive lending environment and/or in the absence of hefty downpayments generated by rapid appreciation. Some LA Metrics: http://www.housingtracker.net/affordability/california/los-angeles When the first time buyer actually has to qualify for the fully-indexed payments instead of the I/O, payment-option, ARM-teaser rate and actually accumulate a down payment in the $50-$100K range through savings generated via earned income - everyone above them on the real estate food chain is going to feel it. First time buyers = the plankton of the real-estate ecosystem.

The important way - it's impacting "the people". LA proper is still sitting relatively pretty - the shitholes of the Inland Empire are hurting. Good riddance. It's early yet. I'll be surprised if the credit tightening leaves LA proper unscathed. How many folks there could have bought their home with conventional financing? Toss in some dwindling appreciation and ARM resets, the challenges that will confront first time buyers in a more restrictive lending environment, etc and it's far from clear that the inland empire will suffer alone.