Here’s an observation by a friend that links abortion with the financial crisis: As the baby boomers got rich they invested wildly in housing. Not only did they buy a house to live in. They wanted to buy a beach house, a lake house, and houses to rent to other people. The housing market boomed with the confident assumption that there would always be a wonderful housing market, and that more and more people would want larger and larger houses.
The problem is, that in the long run, the population is not growing at the same rate as the housing supply. The population will begin to contract because of contraception and abortion. This means that there will be fewer people to buy the large number of houses that are on the market. Too much supply and too little demand means low prices.
The thing which may counter this is a larger number of immigrants. However, the poor immigrants, who may want to buy a house, don’t want to buy beach houses, lake houses and McMansions in opulent subdivisions with country clubs.
I can see all rows and rows of these luxury homes with ‘For Sale’ signs–all of them available for a song. In the meantime, the value may hold on sensible, affordable family homes in ordinary neighborhoods.
I think they will be subdivided, as mansions used to be, for the new immigrant poor. And torn down. The real question is, what is going to happen to all those opulent nursing homes being built now? I know I’ll never get to live in one! Once the Baby Boomers are gone, they will be gone too.
I would agree with the above comments but add that abortion(contraception included) is a clear sign of selfishness(greed). We want what we want and we want it now! And this is at the core of the current economic crisis. Of course these issues are related. Immorality is related to all issues.
The larger the house, the fewer the children…two or more houses, even fewer children, three homes or more, probably no children.All the space used for so few people – I see the revolution coming from the left, dividing up the houses of those of the few children and making them into homes for several families at one time. Look at China and the former USSR as an example.All that is except for those who are in charge – they will continue to live in very large houses with very few if any children…and heaven forbid, no grandchildren, but of course, the grand-dog.(who really is not grand at all – he is just a dog – but they pretend….oh they pretend.)
I don’t know about sub-dividing those McMansions, especially as they are poorly designed for such.But Father’s prediction is already coming into fruition. I am in the industry, and I can tell you that while the the modest-housing building business is having a rough time, the McMansion business is for the most part either dead or dying.
Tom- the mansions in China and the former USSR were not designed to be subdivided. They had whole families living in one bedroom and the lavatory and kitchen were shared. That way you could get five or six families in one house.The ruling class was hardly concerned about esthetics!
Everybody complaining about a population “down turn” should try living in a county where the population is growing and see that too MANY people at one time is just as bad as too few. The green spaces in our county are being decimated at record paces for strip malls and yuppie chain restaurants,the watershed is being polluted by run off from developers, the schools don’t have enough space for the huge influx of kids and hence they want to keep raising our taxes, and the traffic jams which used to exist only on the interstate are now everywhere. At seemingly every time. Anything without balance is not good. I’m not advocating the “contraceptive mentality,” just pointing out that a population boom is just as bad in some cases as the population bust. Meanwhil,e please pray for those growing areas of the south that they leave us some green space for all the kids to enjoy at some point in their lives.
I response to Wordwench; It sounds like you are describing land use problems not population problems. You need to be careful not to fall into the trap of connecting these two topics. This is exactly what abortionists want us to do. As a society we can talk about the environment and what to about it and how to care for it, it just can NEVER be linked with abortion(population control).
In response to Jeff:I am in NO WAY referring to population control. And the population “problem” I’m referring to is a huge growth in population in an area that wasn’t prepared for it. There was no way anyone could have predicted the huge influx of people our county has experienced, and unfortunately we have a county (and city) government that doesn’t work very well in any case and isn’t handling the land use question well, correctly. I was simply indicating that there are problems when there are too many people crammed into an area not prepared for it. I’m not advocating in any way for an “abortion” or “contraceptive” mentality. I was using my county’s example as a counter-example to images of neighborhoods with nobody in them. We have plenty of neighborhoods with PLENTY OF PEOPLE in them, and the problem is nobody is offering any balanced solutions to provide both good neighborhoods for the growing family population as well as still maintain some sort of zoning and natural beauty for these families to enjoy. My two godsons live in the middle of this sprawl. My friend and I have to drive about 10 or 15 miles just to find them a nice natural area to play in. Three years ago, there WAS a perfectly gorgeous natural area a mile from their house. What is it now? A “multi-use” strip mall with overpriced shops nobody can afford to shop in, and chain restaurants. My prayer is simply that we find a way to be good stewards of the earth AND protect human life at the same time.
Father, your commnet on which homes would take the devaluation hit the hardest has proven untrue. It was the modest homes that took the biggest hit, at least according to one analysis of the data in an NPR article. I would have thought the reverse, too. But apparently modest homes grew the most in value during the ‘bubble’ years.I ran across your blog looking for data to substantiate your main point about abortion. Nice place!