The bar in the picture says it’s a kilo which is $65, 344. While I could agree with OP that 10 kilos would give you an average house in higher priced areas like new York or LA, it would definitely buy you several nice houses in 1920.
I’m seeing $412K as the average price of a home in 2023, not $495K. And gold was $2,135 in 2023. The price in gold is still higher in 2023, though about 193 bars for a home.
Couple other notes, more related to the post.
1920 is an oddly good year to use. It’s just after WWI. Industrialization and modernization are taking off across the US. Worker’s rights are beginning to take hold and working class people are now able to afford homes. It’s before the Roaring 20s, so you’re not going to get the actual details obscured with the market rush and subsequent depression.
There is a couple important downsides though…
Firstly, mortgages didn’t really exist back then. I mean, they did, but they were horrific. You’d have to go to an insurance company because banks wouldn’t offer them. The terms would give the insurance company full ownership of the property. If you were lucky, it would be a balloon loan - pay only the interest during the 5-10 year term and then pay the entire balance at the end. If you were less lucky, it was a lifelong contract where you only paid the interest plus fees every month.
There was an alternative but most people didn’t have access to it: membership in a Savings and Loan corporation, also known as Building and Loan or thrifts. You’d join as a member and agree to buy X shares every month. If you give a notice (30-90 days usually), you would be allowed to cash out the shares plus interest earned for their actual value. When you wanted to buy a home, you would be allowed to use your shares as collateral. Each monthly payment would pay for the interest and a certain number of shares. Once you had enough shares, you would redeem them to pay off the loan. A bit complicated, but S&Ls were fantastic for the common person. They were owned by the members of your community and all loans went to support said community.
Secondly, kind of related to the first point, there were no 30 year mortgages. Home prices are virtually tied to the monthly payment and a thirty year mortgage allows for lower monthly payments. Prices might get out of line a bit, such as right now, if people believe that interest rates will drop and they can refinance later. Personally, I don’t think we’ll see any drops for at least two years and, even then, we won’t see anything like the 2020-2021 rates unless we experience an economic catastrophe like 2008. You want higher rates when the macro environment is strong and lower rates when it’s weak. Cheap debt in a good economy is basically a handout to the rich - makes you wonder why Trump pushed the Fed to keep them low back in 2018-2019…
They’d actually also be very likely to get you targeted by thieves as well. Even if you tried to keep quiet about them, there would be an entire chain of custody which would be required inform when such a large quantity of gold bullion where sold or bought, as well as their transportation and the transportation’s insurance, if you don’t get scammed in the process.
This is always my question. Like you see these movies about gold and diamond heists, but then… Wtf do you do with them? Who are you selling this shit to at retail value, or anywhere close to it?
I feel like if somone handed me a bag of diamonds right now I’d have no idea wtf to do with them.
You’d have no idea what to do with them because you’re not in organized crime. I would go look at Larry Lawton on YouTube. I think he posts a lot but if you go to his earlier posts he talks about his organized crime life. Wild.
I’m reminded of so many fiction subplots where a character has acquired an extremely valuable XXX they want to sell.
More often than not, it’s such an important object that any interested parties would sooner hire mercenaries to get it, and kill its owner as a witness (and in many of those stories, exactly that happens). Past a certain value, many items are not actually valuable for common people.
Well I think goingToCrashIntoEachOther needs to return another drone object. Then don't can take that object. Based on self.serialNo and other.serialNo a mutually beneficial avoiding manoeuvre could be executed.
If you're about to crash into more than one other drone.. Good luck the function specifies "EachOther" meaning just one other drone!
someone at 24 has several more years of experience in the adult world. someone at 24 has several more years of neurological development (which isn’t complete until around 25). in other words, at 24 someone has better context for decision-making and better decision-making ability than someone who is 18.
it’s illegal. the blm will come with guns and force you out. i know this for a fact. not can i just find some land and grow my food and raise animals. it’s either owned by someone or it’s govt land.
Absolutely. So instead of building up on that, declaring everyone may own something, making them mini billionaires in principle; yeah, make owning land illegal. That would be the natural conclusion.
You are basically saying: other people owning things and keeping me from building a house and a live should be illegal. Your solution: Make everyone own something, so they can build a house! Houses for everyone, hurray! But hey, my family is twice as big as yours, my house should, by right, be bigger. And hey, my farm supplies for ten families, it should, by right, be bigger. You don’t want to farm, let me buy your land and provide for you. And so the circle begins.
I’d say, that thinking is what got us here in the first place.
i’m pretty sure that native americans were able to not own land and work this out. i do think owning land is absurd. also, all i need to do is look around to know that how we are doing things has to change if our species wants to keep living. i don’t mean what you think but it’s the wee hours here, the key word being “wee” as that’s why i got up for a sec. so…back to sleep it is.
Well, it takes some time to grow up to be able to find food and water. How long until we can walk even?
Food, water and means to provide an upbringing until offspring can care for themselves, those could be considered basic rights.
Housing is so far into the technological advancements, building up on so many other systems, I fail to see how that can be a right.
Air and food on the other hand, and sensible means to acquiring those. Well. There certainly is room for discussion. When people start owning land, keeping others to effectively do those things, they should have to provide alternatives. Or we have to abolish ownership of natural resources at all. Both can’t work together. That’s ineffective, of course, and makes planning and advancement difficult.
The price of capitalism and ownership of nature should be compensation. Nothing natural about social structures. If they want to continue those money games, they need to play by the rules of nature. Or they’ll go down with chopped-off heads at some point.
That’s right. Nothing is a human right. Many humans have rights outlined in their countries constitutions but even those are easily stomped on with usually little consequence
I’m just saying what is. If you want what I think should be, I’m a non Randian libertarian. Big on personal responsibility and the risk of consequences and consequences of risk, less on being a whiny bitch about everything.
Article 25 of the declararion of himan rights: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family
Seriously, do you think human rights are somehow just a feeling what should be? They are written down and you can look them up.
I don’t think ppl getting married is wierd before 24 risky sure. Having kids before 24 is crazy. Like 2 years in workforce at minimum. Barely time to be able an adult before a parent.
I much prefer being a young parent, than the idea of raising teenagers in my 50s or 60s. I much rather have all my fun, travel and adventures with my kids or will do with my wife when we’re older and the kids moved out
That’s fair. My mom was a teenager when she had me so it’s interesting watching her going from rebel teen staying up watching horror movies to ultra Christian as she got older. I feel like my siblings which are all 5 years apart benefited from less beatings and more income. I will say my mom had sooo many marriages (she’s on #7). It would’ve been nice if she found the one before they got baby trapped into our lives. 1-6 were dumb as f. Personally I loved the huged age gaps between us. Never felt the siblings issues we saw in Malcom in the middle but that wasn’t in the cards for me to have as a parent. So there are plus and minus to it overall.
I’m in Canada. 25 years ago my parents bought a home for $130k, they sold it 15 years ago for $500k, it’s now listed for $1.1 million. We are so fucked.
Housing can’t be an investment (i.e. exponential growth above inflation) AND an affordable place for people to live for future generations. This mentality is absolutely brain-dead.
Still a tough bind for someone who isn’t already a homeowner. I’ve put a lot into index funds which have performed really well, but if I sell them now to buy a house and the real estate market shits the bed (which it really should), then I’m in an even worse place. I remember talking to people in 2007 who complained they would “never be able to afford a house”, but three years later their local listings fell by 30-40%.
Look, unless you’re renting it out, your house isn’t an investment. It grows in value and that’s nice, but you’ll spend more on maintenance and improvements than it will increase in value.
For sure, it just illustrates that as much as the market can feel fucked up, as an investment housing isn’t necessarily the best. I’ve checked the numbers many times when I hear people talking about their parent buying a house for X$ in 19XX and it’s very rare that they beat the market. It’s the people that bought in 2009/2010 or right before COVID that are the real winners when it comes to real estate as an investment because they made a lot of money for the amount of time, but people who buy as an investment to hold it long term? Nah
I married at 22 over 20 years ago did not regret a day… I think a happy marriage is just a lot of luck a lot of self reflection and effort. No matter the age it is not a self running maintenance free system
I met my wife in high-school, we married at 21/22, it’s going to be our 19th anniversary this year. So yeah, definitely go lucky, and I would discourage my kids from doing the same even though it worked great for us.
Very interesting perspective that you wouldn’t encourage your kids to do the same as you, why’s that?
To be honest if my kids married at 20 it’s not like I’d try to stop it, despite my reservations about it. I’d think it was a potential mistake but that’s coming from me as concern rather than disapproval.
Your town likely doesn’t need a tank, but the major metro area within range of that tank is gonna need to call upon it next time the cops decide to kneel on someone’s neck.
My local force recently bought a used armoured personnel carrier (APC) for $100,000 which didn’t go over well with the community. They posted a message explaining they were coming up on fiscal year end and had excess budget they wanted to use up so their budget wouldn’t be reduced next year. That didn’t really help.
It’s mostly used to park next to public events. Arts in the Park? Don’t worry! We got an APC here to protect you! Weekly farmers market? Don’t worry! The APC is here! Sometimes the emergency response team (our version of swat) will also put out a table with all their rifles and gear so they can look cool in front of any teenagers in attendance. It’s weird.
There are way better things to spend your money on so that your budget doesn’t shrink next year. Arguments of whether they need they money or not aside, that’s a real problem for them. Ideas off the top of my head that probably wouldn’t signal to the town that they’re under occupation:
• Ammo and range time • Conflict management training • Public relations block party • Solar panels on the roof • Diet, exercise, and lifestyle training • Law review classes
“we have to irresponsibly spend the remainder of our budget so it doesn’t get reduced next year” followed one month later by “we need more money because we maxed out the budget last year”
Fuck this atrocious cycle. It’s everywhere. Military, police, any other government branch, corporate politics, 501c orgs pretending to be charities… The greatest crime is stockpiling unsent capital, apparently.
If you had of invested the equivalent amount of money in the Dow Jones index instead of purchasing 10kg of gold and kept it invested from 1920-2024 you would have ~$15 million.
So I get the idea of a hedge, but I guess the question on my mind whenever I hear talk about hyper-inflation is “what are you going to do with the gold if society collapses?”. My thought is that if the world economy got so fucked up that the US dollar was worthless, and the government didn’t step in, then wouldn’t we sorta be in a failed state? And if we were in a failed state is the plan to sit on the gold in some sort of fortress to wait for civilization to come back? Hoping that you can defend it and that the incoming civilization doesn’t just take it?
I’ve always assumed you’d melt the gold down and create coins or other tradable sub-amounts of the gold that you could exchange for goods and services. If people are still peopling, they’ll still want a currency to transact with; if the dollar has failed then gold has a historical precedent that would probably make it easier to convince people to trade with you using it as a medium of exchange. It always seems like it’s more suited to be an emergency measure than a plan A to me.
That’s camping with all the shitty parts and a really nice cot.
Wind, rain, dust, falling shit, bugs, animals, etc. You can get a similar atmosphere by having a tent and opening the vent flaps. Or like, sleeping under a tarp to mitigate rain if you really want that outdoorsy feel. I knew a guy who slept in a hammock on nice nights but I fear the skeeters.
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