The Next American Dream

Earlier in April 2012 a traditionally strong home-buying month, we saw a positive turning point in the US house prices as mortgage rates were record low. This led us to believe that the housing market was on its path to recovery since the bubble bursted more than five years ago. Not only was this news a short-term glory that lasted only until June before consumer confidence was announced to have remained low, success in the real estates industry was not mirrored in the wider US economy.

Why the lack of confidence in real estates? 
With about two-thirds of the trillion dollars student debt belonging to those under 40 year-old, young people are graduating from college this summer deep in debt. The current employment growth does not help them to much extent. In April and May, employers have added a little over 70,000 jobs on average, which is a significant slowdown from the 200,000 job additions from January through March. Like many of my graduating friends from Berkeley, many of these kids will move home to live with their grandma, teach English abroad in Asia, or go to grad school and continue renting shared apartments. They are not looking to start a home.

Is renting the next American dream? 
Housing isn't as simple as renting textbooks for the semester - many still believe that buying is hands-down the better deal. Rents are high, mortgage rates are low, foreclosures are everywhere. Forbes has listed ten best cities where buying beats renting right now. Below are the top 5:

1. Detroit, MI
2. Oklahoma City, OK
3. Dayton, OH
4. Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, MI
5. Toedo, OH

Would you buy or rent?

ObamaCare (Part II)

Continuing from "ObamaCare (Part I)": http://student-eyes.blogspot.com/2012/06/obamacare-part-i.html

The first case of mumps in Berkeley's academic year broke out from the house I was living in. This was inevitable for a house, called Cloyne Court Casino Hotel, roofed over 200 hippies. But I'll save the discussion of Cloyne's hygiene, or the lack of it, in another post. Waking up one morning with a sore throat and runny nose, I immediately checked myself in with the health center. I left the center with a dozen paracetamol in a white paper box and with $10 less in my wallet. Five dollars for the consultant and another five for the prescription. 

One would have hoped that the $1626 insurance could tide me over a common cold. What is the cause to such an advance country's bank-breaker healthcare? Later on, I downloaded onto my Kindle "Believe in America: Mitt Romney's Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth" for the price of $0.00. This generosity is currently still available here: http://www.amazon.com/Believe-America-Romneys-Economic-ebook/dp/B005LEY5Q0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1339491089&sr=1-1

The book says that the Obama administration aimed to 'radically change health insurance and healthcare'. How? Below are the two main objectives of ObamaCare:

1. Insure everyone (legal American citizens, that is). 
2. Impose greater government regulation over insurance policies and medicare. 

So why don't Americans buy into the change? 

To ensure that all Americans are insured, employers are now required to either provide their employees with insurance or pay out to the ObamaCare. Is this mandatory fringe benefit going to encourage employment? The simple answer is no. This increases unemployment rate and  Besides, if the unemployed are also given health insurance, someone must be paying for them. Tax payers are paying for them. The reform is projected to cost about $1000 billion in the next decade. The middle class and small businesses are hurting most when tax in US is higher than majority if not all of Europe. 

What about giving the federal government the power to decide that you take the blue pill instead of the red pill because it's half the price of the red pill and works just as fine? Would you be willing to let the government be the judge of you taking painkiller instead of having surgery? Those rooting for ObamaCare say that a tougher regulation raises competition amongst insurance providers. The only problem is that the White House is the big player and the big ref - another piece of evidence of Barack Obama's skepticism for the private sector. 

So unless you're like the Chinese guy I sat next to in class, you might just have to swallow the ObamaCare pill.