On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American politician tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.
Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. We look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.
1)The housing industry has been a mess since Biden became President. His failed economic policies have caused mortgage rates to skyrocket, pricing many people out of the market. The latest housing results verify these failed economic policies:
Sales of previously owned homes fell in May for the 3rd straight month.
Sales fell in May by 0.7% from the previous month.
Sales are down 2.8% from May, 2023.
And yet, home prices continue to climb from the same time last year, up 5.8% from last year, an all time high median cost of $419,300.
The median price is up 51% in the past five years.
Current average mortgage rates are about 7%, almost three times higher than when Biden was installed as President.
There were 1.3 million unsold homes last month, up 6.7% from April and up a whopping 18.5% from a year ago.
What a mess: home sales are down, mortgage rates are up, home prices are up, home inventories are up, the numbers do not lie. Seems Biden could not have screwed things any worse in this part of the economy if he tried.
2)And the housing numbers in California are even worse:
Traditionally, a family earning the median income usually were able to afford a median priced house by putting down 20% of the purchase price, a tried and true adage for many, many decades.
But now, under Biden’s economic policy, that number is probably closer to 35% than the long running 20% rule of thumb, i.e. under Biden’s economic policies, housing prices are going up quicker than household income, meaning a larger down payment is needed to reduce the monthly mortgage payments.
Unless you live in Los Angeles where, according to analysis by the Zillow real estate website, a median income family in that city would have to put down a whopping 81.1% down payment to fund an affordable median priced home there.
The median price of an LA home is currently around $962,000 according to Zillow.
Thus, a median income family in that city in order to afford this median priced, $962,000 home would have to put down a down payment of $780,000.
While LA has the highest down payment scenario, other areas of California are also very bad housing price wise since buyers would need 61.4% or a $358,900 down payment to purchase an average priced house in Riverside and 75.5% or $723,500 down payment in San Diego.
In fact, according to Zillow, the old 20% down payment rule now only applies to 10 out of the top 50 housing markets.
Biden and the Washington nitwits are making the classic American dream of owning a home more and more impossible.
3)We have a continuing discussion that wonders if, or more likely when, a major city or even a whole state will go bankrupt in the near future, given the fiscal mismanagement of city and state politicians. Our top candidates to go bankrupt city-wise include:
New York City
Chicago
Los Angeles
San Francisco
Portland
Our top state governments likely to go bankrupt include:
New York
California
Illinois
New Jersey
And apparently these bankrupt candidates are still the most likely to go belly up fiscally, given a recent analysis by the WalletHub website:
WalletHub compared the operating efficiency of 148 of the largest U.S. cities to try and measure what are the best and worst managed city governments.
They concluded that, “The best-run cities in America use their budgets most
effectively to provide high-quality financial security, education, health, safety and transportation to their residents. Many of the top cities also have a very low amount of outstanding government debt per capita, which can prevent financial troubles in the future.”
And the cities we feel are likely to go bankrupt pretty soon did not disappoint: San Francisco was rate the most inefficient city (148th out of 148), New York was rated the fourth most inefficient city (145th out of 148), Los Angeles was rated the 9th worth (139th out of 148), and Chicago was rated the 11th most inefficient (137th out of 148).
The analysis also looked at the long term city debt by city per person living in each city and again, our bankruptcy candidates did not disappoint: San Francisco had the highest long term debt out of the 148 cities studied, New York had the 4th highest debt load, and Chicago had the 5th highest debt load.
The debt load per person of San Francisco was a whopping 52 times greater than the debt load per person than the most efficiently run city.
Thus, our city candidates most likely to go bankrupt are unchanged, Wallethub’s numbers do not lie.
4)Not only has Biden’s economic policies been a disaster, his illegal immigration policies have also been a major disaster along several different dimensions. Consider the illegal drug dimension:
According to Newsweek, Texas law enforcement authorities have seized an unbelievable 504 MILLION lethal doses of fentanyl in the past three years, about the same amount of time that Biden has been President.
The 504 million doses is enough to kill every citizen of the United States and Mexico.
These law enforcement officers have also intercepted 514,500 illegal immigrants and executed 44,300 criminal arrests which involved 38,700 felony charges.
According to Texas governor, Greg Abbott: "More than five Texans die every day from deadly Fentanyl, and Texas continues to ramp up our efforts to combat the growing Fentanyl crisis plaguing our state and the nation."
People die from bad political decisions and Biden has certainly made any number of fatal decisions.
Enough numbers for today: bad housing numbers, bad government mismanagement numbers, and bad illegal immigration numbers, destroying the American dream, destroying government functions, and destroying American lives.
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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
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