The Economy

Anybody else seen their car insurance rise lately? I haven't had an infraction since 2015 yet my premium has gone up $20 a month in the last year.

 

My renewal just came in the mail, next bill is up $8 per month

 

My current insurance has gone up about $3 over the last few months.
It will certainly go up if I ever take possession of a new truck. I've documented that saga on here before, and it continues.

In January, I was finally able to put down hold money on a '24 Toyota Tacoma. It was supposed to be here day before yesterday. I had been tracking it since it was in the assembly phase. Last week, it was shown as in freight to the dealer. Sweet. As of yesterday, updates and ETA were wiped clean. I called the dealer to find out what's up. He said Toyota has all the new trucks in QC inspection, and it could be another 30 days. I wasn't mean to the deal, flat out telling him I know it's not his fault, but WTF? I said, "I know you'd be happy to sell 10 of them this afternoon, but I've been trying to buy a truck since September." Ordinarily, new model years should roll out in the fall, and we are dang near to spring.
He said he really didn't think they'd be held for 30 days, but come on. Maybe if I hadn't been nursing my current truck for the last year, wanting to get it traded before something happens, it wouldn't be a big deal. It's frustrating.

 

Mine went way up but my daughter had an accident and was cited, unfortunately, so hers or the 2015 Jetta she’s on skyrocketed. We have four vehicles with two sons just out of college (one doesn’t drive) and my HS daughter. Shopping around is a pain, but I think our next step is to sell our 2015 Pilot to my son, let him start adulting, put my daughter on his old 2005 CRV and have my wife or me drive the Jetta. Our (my) other car is a 2020 CRV.

 

Anybody who pays $300,000 to live in a 600-square foot house better not complain about grocery stores shrinking the box size of Frosted Flakes.

 

Thanks, had missed that one.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/21/china-economy-demographics-us-china-trade/

For the past decade, Americans have worried increasingly about China, not least because Chinese President Xi Jinping has centralized power, silenced critics, stalled private sector reforms and taken an increasingly combative posture toward the rest of the world. China was set to overtake the United States as the world’s largest economic power by 2035, Mr. Xi predicted; China would then retake its rightful position at the center of world affairs.

Instead, Mr. Xi’s China is less free, less prosperous and less competently governed than it would have been had he taken a different course — one not inspired by rivalry with the West or fear of his own people. Economic and demographic data show that a China-dominated world is even less likely than it ever was. Economists have started revising their predictions on when China might overtake the U.S. economically — and if it ever will.

 

Crazy thought. What if we take a bunch of those single family homes and stack them on top of each other? We’d be able to fit more people in a smaller area and it will mean more people have homes.

 

Most people in single family homes don't want to share ceilings/floors any more than they want to share walls.

 

Behold, The Stacks!



Stacks

 

OK

https://www.washingtonpost.com/clim...=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

“Out in the middle of nowhere” in Moore County, N.C., developer Ron Jackson said he is building what America needs — more affordable homes for the nurses, police officers and teachers struggling to find housing they can afford amid a nationwide shortage.

That’s why Jackson and others from North Carolina’s home building industry say they came out in force last year against a state plan to tighten energy efficiency building codes so new homes would waste less energy, reducing their carbon footprints. The builders succeeded in blocking the new standards, helping to maintain the status quo.

“All that energy code was going to do in my price range is make it to where the working man and woman would not be able to buy a home,” Jackson said. He sells homes in the $250,000 range and estimated the changes would have increased his costs by more than $20,000 — a figure that comes from a survey of North Carolina builders conducted by the state branch of the National Association of Home Builders, the housing industry’s largest lobbying group.