The Binary Circumstance

The San Francisco Chronicle published an article this morning that supports my contention that housing markets like Bainbridge Island will remain an attractive alternative to Bay Area housing.

According to the article, 40% of Bay Area residents are thinking of leaving because of the high cost of housing there. That’s a lot of people.

Two out of five residents of the nine-county region have given serious thought to moving away — mostly because of high housing costs, according to a survey released today by a business and public policy group.

The Bay Area Council’s annual poll found that concerns about housing ranked as the region’s second-most-vexing problem, behind transportation woes.

Even with some recent cooling in the local housing market, the price for a middle-of-the-road single-family home hovers around $628,000, or about triple the national average. That means many families with two income-earners are having a hard time managing.

As I pointed out before, while housing prices are expensive here they are cheap relative to markets like the Bay Area. Those who sell properties in the overpriced markets can get much more for their money by moving elsewhere. That leaves them with cash to spend on other things which further props up the economy in their new location. Furthermore, with all that cash in the bank, they don’t have to borrow against their new home to buy stuff, making the economy in their new location more stable and sound.

Peggy and Ted Crane moved from San Carlos to Barrington, R.I., last year after nearly a decade in the Bay Area. Although their No. 1 goal was to move to an area with strong schools, they also stepped up to a bigger home.

Where their 1,700-square-foot San Carlos home sat on a 6,500-square-foot lot and was located on a street with some crime problems, their home in Barrington is 3,300 square feet on a three-quarters-of-an-acre lot and is one block from the Atlantic Ocean. The price tag: $650,000 compared with a nearly $1.1 million sale price for their San Carlos home.

“Everyone we run into is moving from California, the Bay Area,” said Peggy Crane, 35. “I thought we’d be exotic.”

Still, the Cranes say other costs — such as property taxes and food — are much more expensive than in the Bay Area. Ultimately, the couple hopes to move back to San Francisco after their two children, now ages 2 and 4, go to college.

For the time being at least, I will spare you a lecture on how government creates such massive distortions in the marketplace. There are currently 1900 posts on my blog and more than a few of them address that issue.

My vision for healthcare is that it is patient-driven just as other markets are consumer driven.

Many basic services like exams and tests would be offered in facilities like medical malls. If you want a test you just go someplace and get it. The fuction of doctors and nurses would be more like consultants to help you decide what tests you need and help you interpret the results.

But in the end, getting good health care would be the responsiblity of the patient.

It seems that Wal*Mart is making a small step in that direction. They will be putting health clinics in some of their stores.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT), which has been facing fierce criticism over employee benefits, said on Thursday it will open more than 50 in-store health clinics this year and make further changes to workers’ health-care plans.

Run by third parties, the clinics are open to shoppers and employees, and are staffed by doctors who can treat non-emergency illnesses such as strep throat. Costs average between $45 and $50 per visit, Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona Williams said.

Wal-Mart said many of the patients who used the clinics in an initial nine-store pilot were uninsured, and would have gone to a hospital emergency room to be treated instead.

The national average cost for a doctor’s visit is about $60, while an emergency room visit averages $383, according to insurer BlueCross BlueShield. More than 40 million Americans have no insurance, and often turn to emergency rooms for care.

As in other free markets, patients will gravitate toward the facilities and treatments that give them the best health for their money.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was surprised when I found out my percent body fat was almost 25%.

Since I wear size 32/32 jeans, I was calculating my percent body fat based on a waist size of 32″.

When the percent body fat number didn’t agree with the scale, I measured my waist around the navel and it was 37″.

How could that be? I’m wearing size 32 jeans.

The designers and manufacturers of women’s dresses have adjusted the sizes over the years so that women who are getting fatter don’t always have to go up in dress sizes. I wondered if Levi Strauss was doing the same thing with their jeans.

So I got out the tape measure and measured both my 501s and 505s which are also called “regular fit.”

My 501s which were marked 32/32 where actually 33/32.

The 505 regular fit jeans are also very clearly marked 32/32 but are actually 35/32.

There’s only one reason why the waist sizes are so far off. Levi’s doesn’t want us to realize that we’re getting fatter. In doing that, they are not only fraudulently labeling their jeans, they are encouraging people to have an inaccurate view of their waist size and percent body fat and consequently their health status.

It’s just as damaging as if food was mislabled to understate the number of calories in it.

In a rational world a crime is only committed when a human being is harmed by another human being. The beasts of Washington State politics see it differently.

The Stranger has the appropriate perspective on laws against actions where no human being is harmed by another.

The government is really protecting its authority over individual lives and also protecting certain people from having their sensibilities offended. Given that it was the most widely read story last year, it seems there are not a huge number of people who were offended by it. Dumbfounded maybe. Offended, no.

The people who were harmed in this story harmed themselves. The trespasser was cited as he should have been for using another’s property without their permission. All indications are that the horse loved it (and probably told all his friends about it).

But if somebody engages in bestiality, the state now has an excuse to steal more money (up to $10,000) and also to force the taxpayers to keep somebody in jail up to five years. It’s a way for the state to steal money from taxpayers to pay for jailtime, when the criminal more than likely needs psychiatric help.

The law is a crime because it harms individual taxpayers who have more important things to spend their money on. I’m sure Washington State Nanny-in-Chief Christine Gregoire will sign it.

With all the important problems we have to solve, we have schoolmarms in Olympia fantasizing about ways to have sex with animals and dreaming of ways to punish, restrain and enslave those who do it. They write their fantasies down on paper at the taxpayer’s expense.

Indeed, reading the law that was drafted by Senator [Pam] Roach [R-Auburn] is very much like reading hardcore porn. Here is the last paragraph of the bill: “‘Sexual contact’ means any contact, however slight, between the sex organ or anus of a person and the sex organ, mouth, or anus of any animal, or any intrusion, however slight, of any part of the body of the person into the sex organ or anus of an animal, for the purpose of sexual gratification or arousal of the person. Evidence of emission of semen is not required to prove sexual contact.”

I’d like to remind my readers that people kill animals all the time. We raise them in very unpleasant environments to harvest their meat (no pun intended). Most of us eat animals every day. None of these activities, which are far more harmful to the animal, can result in a felony conviction, a $10,000 fine or up to five years in prison at the taxpayers’ expense.

But thanks to those great rational minds in Olympia, having sex with an animal, even when it doesn’t harm the animal or force any human to act against his will, now will have all these potential penalties attached to it.

What can you say about a person who thinks that killing animals or using them as free slave labor is perfectly acceptable but having sex with them should be criminalized?

I think this law says a lot about the priorities and values of the politicians that passed it and it’s not a pretty picture. Killing OK. Sex NOT! It’s much more offensive to a rational mind than the thought of a man having sex with a horse.

Is having sex with a politician considered beastiality or is that just plain kinky? Regardless, I think there ought to be a law.