Re: Yachts and McYachts


Straydog wrote:
On Thu, 17 Aug 2006, Kamal R. Prasad wrote:


Straydog wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2006, Russell.Martin@xxxxxxx wrote:


in less expensive areas, plus you need to pay for
upkeep and a berth at a marina to hook up to
utilities if you want those.

My brother's wife's parents lived on a sailboat for 1+ years. Resale value
on boat (about 45 feet, and I was on it) was 90+%, and slip rent was like
$2,000/year. About 1/10 of rent at the time. A little crowded and tight
but no rent, no taxes, no insurances, no homeowner's fees.

isn't that cheap -and more imp without a 30-40 mile commute?

Most people travel with the herd. Part of herd instinct. A few people do
unusual things.

coz it takes brains to figure out a better strategy than everybody
else.

No insurance? What if it sinks?

Next to the dock? The keel sinks into the mud. BFD. Get the boat rescue to
raise it! Piece of cake. Dry it out. Electric hair dryers. Piece of cake.

insurance isn't all that costly.

Its a very big business in the USA. I have a book with the title
"Invisible Banks" and its all about insurance companies. You could say
they are also "invisible fountains of wealth" too. Here, title insurance
is also a fountain of wealth. AIG, one of our biggest insurance companies
says its makine tons of money in China. Or, do you read any newspapers?


I was referring to the insurance premium -not the profitability of
insurance companies.
Insurance is tough business -and most insurance companies either die
out or get acquired.

Land prices in the US have gone
through the roof.

Several articles I've read recently say land prices everywhere are going
through the roof. Shall I quote some for you? Do you have any idea at all
what land prices are in Japan?

very high -thanks to their population density.

The good part is that many will wager a bet that it
can go even higher.

How about oil?

thats a trade-able commodity, which can remain untapped if required.

The bad part is that one needs to earn a salary to
finance that -without which it will be like castles in the air.

You have to aim for a high paying job.

and for that you need higher levels of productivity. The fact that
housing prices have doubled in some parts of the US doesn't mean that
people living there have doubled their working hours, or increased
their skill levels manifold all of a sudden. If neither has happened,
then the guy with a larger mortgage will require a larger salary in
relation to workers in other countries -and that will put him at a
disadvantage i.e. affect the financial viability of the american
workforce in such hot housing markets.

A 45 footer is not cheap,

They told me $66K (back when)

even if its $100K, its cheaper than a condo in manhattan or some other
US metropolitan water fronts.

And, even a good, used, fiberglass boat will resell in ten years for more
than you paid for it. Just like real estate if you avoid the down cycles
(or, buy low, sell high). Another fountain of wealth. Corporations love it
when the market goes down: they buy back their inventory at a discount AND
the executives get back-dated option grants. Another fountain of wealth.

It isn't.

especially new.

Need to shop around. Sometimes find a distressed buyer.

Lot of place have no homeowner's fees.

And, if you don't take it out, then no gas is needed to run the little
engine inside, and if you do, on a breezy day, then sailpower is
freepower. And, quiet and non-poluting!

yep -nothing like a boat that is totally static. Not many people move
their trailers -so why move the water trailer?

Oh, you may have to scrape off the barnacles. Dirty work. If the boat is
wood, then it needs maintenance. Fiberglass, no.

there are various types of materials withour without the nano prefix
being created all the time -that can gracefully degrade..


I saw a story on TV years
ago about people who live in house boats on the
Mississippi River, just anchored along the shore.

Out in SF bay (San Francisco) all the rich people up on the hills with bay
view get pissed looking at all the "freeloaders" with their "chinese
junks"; cheap living, no taxes, etc.

they are jealous.

Absolutely. Right. Yes. True.

not sure if it was even legal, but nobody was hassling
them at that time. It is more of a lifestyle choice than
a practical money saving approach, IMO.

In one of the weekly rags (U.S. News? I can't remember) the micro-house
is a big deal. Some with 80-90 SF of space, and if on wheels, then no real
estate tax. One woman built her how, parks it on a space in garden of
friends; she says she's happy. Cheap living. Showed pics inside, not too
bad. But if you get claustrophobia, it might not be a good idea.

Like I told Kamal, if you want to live cheaply you can probably
do better dollar for dollar on land than on water.

not necessarily.

We've had some discussion here, already, about sleeping on park benches,
and in subways. Late at night, when I was younger, I've seen lots of
people sleeping on our mass transit, especially on long routes and all the
way to the end. Safer than the streets. Back when 50 cents was cheap
(today, rides can be $5 one way, and miniumu wage did not go up much).


The food chain is like a pyramid. As you go higher, number of rich
people i.e. higher up the food chain decreases in quantity but their
wealth increases (quality), and as you go lower -the number of poor
people increases. In a capitalist economy, people higher up the food
chain have a lot more money(quality), and the number of poor people
(quantity) lower down the food chain is a lot more i.e you have more
disparity of income in capitalist countries.

somewhere out in the southwest was "trailor city" that sprung up out of
nothing and a bunch of RVs started showing up, and just parking out in the
middle of nowhere. They all hung together for years. It did get hot, but
it was all free (and people set up their social security deposits in a
nearby town, bought all their hot dogs there, drove back to their roost,
and cooked up the hot dogs), and they all had CB radios and did a check-in
every night in case anyone had a heart attack inside and no one noticed.

do they relate their lifestyle to that in the first world?

We've always had a fraction of our population that was poor, another
fraction that were independent-rebelious, and even today, we have some 2/3
of our retirees that have no income besides their Social Security. If you
can get your housing costs to zero or near zero, then SS is enough to buy
decent food and have money left over for other things, like
transportation.


don't think its going to work out all that well -not that I don't want
it to work out well and let retirees live in place, but it defies
economic fundamentals for the whole freaking baby boomer population to
stop working and enter paradise.

why will so
many people gate crash into the US -if it couldn't get worse in their
home country, unless there was a scam involved?

Thomas has the theory, based on his perception, that the illegals from
Mexico are less educated, more willing to break the laws, and can't "make
it" in Mexico. Me, I'm not so sure, but I also know that Mexican truck

No -that isn't the case. It is possible to have self-sustained
communities in mexico and numerous other countries without having
proper education. After NAFTA was enacted, agri-businesses in the US
dumped food products in Mexico and that killed such self-sustained
commnities. It increased the number of unemployed people rushing to
cities for employment and that lowered their wages for unskilled
people. It also increased the number of gate-crashers (where to go if
your livelihood has been killed by powerful corps) even if it meant
foregoing their civic rights. When they were living in their own
country, they had full civic rights and now, they cannot. It gives
corporations more power as more people get desperate for survival i.e.
workers without rights in the US can be made to work harder under
threat of deportation and their women can be coerced into prostitution
on account of their illegal status and threatened with conviction of
the same -should they refuse at a future date. If you say that they
could never have stood up on their own feet, then you need to explain
why illegal immigration was not a problem before MNCs dumped
agricultural goods in Mexico. The same amount of land was available as
today, and population was as good or as bad as today. This procedure
has been replicated in some other countries by the US and this is where
the WTO talks are currently stalled. Its not to do with India being
unwilling to open its markets coz there are 20 countries in the G-20
group, which wants the US to dismantle agricultural subsidies and
pre-empt dumping.


drivers are allowed to drive trucks into the USA. I don't know the
details. But, we have a lot of businesses that know that the illegals can
be exploited.

Both your govt and their fnanciers i.e. businesses know whats
happeneing and are involved in this game. The US govt is like a
profit-making corporation that provides services to businesses by
creating legislation to suit business requirements in return for
campaign finance.

Today, I met my first Russian girl, working behind a cash register in a
major grocerty store. I'm sure she was legal (with visa). Young, blond,
and almost not noticeable from any US born person except that her name was
unusual and so I asked her. We have a lot of these. All from East Europe

well -you have the cold war to thank for that. You can say they lost
and the winner takes it all -and nobody is forcing them to come to the
US.

to Ukraine to Russia. Almost all are young women. Many are also going to
schools here, and, in what? Business majors.


Not surprising. American manpower has a tough time competing for jobs
globally and they would rather vote out politicians who won't get them
jobs to finance their splurge than work for it.


If one can
afford a livable size boat it is probably cheaper to buy
a trailer and an acre of rural land, and that is visible a
lot in rural areas. But the problem is finding a job in
such a place. The reason some real estate markets
are so expensive is that people want to live in those
places, in part because the jobs are there. BTW the
real estate market is slowing according to recent
reports.

Down about 8-10% from the grapevines I read.

hardly a correction.

And, the default rate is up to about 2% now. That is terrible. Usually the
default rate is about 1.2%.

Its going to get more worse for sure. At least that is what the
fundamentals say.


Big article in today's Financial Times about how if our economy tanks, it

'if it tanks' is a bad word. A better word would be 'if we can sustain
our splurge..'. Read this:-
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/08/15/dobbs.august16/index.html

Better to read the business media, not CNN. Even better: read some books.

the author is a proponent of doing away with offshoring. H1B visas etc.
-so that is coming from someone you would like to hear.

will hurt India more than us.


Their analysis is incorrect. Exports don't form a significant portion
of India's GDP. They just add some froth to our fast growing domestic
economy.

Maybe I'll type up the section that deals with their assessment of how it
will hurt India.

go ahead.

I'll have to rub his nose in it.


Tough luck. We have been written off and wished for dead innumerable
times and survived innumerable disruptive forces in the past 5000+
years.

I know. You all can dissolve back down into the spaces between the grains
of dust and keep reproducing yourselves and overpopulating your land, too.
Looks like Singh has dissolved back down between the spaces between the
grains of dust, too.

No -the economy is inward looking by design. Things like
globalization/WTO have been thrust on the govt and they responded by
trying to improve the competitiveness of the domestic industry before
opening the flood gates. The intent was to fend off MNCs from selling
goods if it can be done locally. I have seen and read the speech quoted
below in entirety.

regards
-kamal

--------------
Financial Times, Weds, Aug 16, 2006, page 3.

title: "Indian PM offers little hope of revived reform"
by Jo Johnson in New Delhi

partial quote

"Manmohan singh, India's premier, yesterday left reformers little hope
that the government planned to revitalise a stalled programme of economic
liberalisation in the second half of its term in office.

***

Many economists fear strong growth has lulled India into complacency,
leaving Mr. Singh little chance of overcoming opposition to liberalisation
from within the Congress party and its coalition partners.

Commenting on his recent upgrading of India's sovereign debt to investment
grade, Paul Rawkins of Fitch Ratings noted the apparent 'glacial' pace of
reform and said the 'jury was still out' on whether India could sustain
growth rates of 8.5 per cent. 'India needs to accelerate reforms soon if
the media and market hype encapsulated in such slogans as "India
Everywhere" is to be translated into reality,' he said. India's weak
finances leave little scope for investment in infrastructure, health, and
education.

But opposition from the Congress party's coalition partners has forced Mr.
Singh to abandon hope of using privatisation receipts as a means of paying
down the public debt (84 per cent of GDP) and of reducing the burden of
interest payments.

It has been a grim month for Mr. Singh, who has been politically hurt by
repeated attacks on his uncharismatic style of leadership. K. Natwar
Singh, dismissed as foreign minister last year, described Mr. Singh as
'weak' and 'indecisive.'

Mr. Singh spoke from behind a bullet-proof screen, flanked by four
bodyguards reflecting heightened security in the capital following the US
embassy's recent warning of terrorist attacks around Independence Day.

end of partial quotes

.

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