Colby Hamilton: In conversations about Lancman, it's not uncommon for people to fall into non-attribution mode right before things like this get said: he’s self-serving, he’s entirely focused on his own self-promotion, he thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room, he lacks introspection.

Decisions on housing and transportation are inter-related, because in some places one automobile per adult is required while in other places there are alternative ways of getting around. And one of the big changes over the past 50 years is a decrease in the share of Americans living in places where there are alternatives, and an increase in the number of households with more than one motor vehicle. According to the 2010 Consumer Expenditure Survey, in fact, the average American household had 2.5 people and 1.9 vehicles. The large-scale entry of women into the out-of-home workforce explains some of this, but the average American household only had 1.3 workers in 2010. Considering only those households with a respondent age 35 to 44, the averages were 3.3 people, 1.3 children under 18, 1.6 wage earners – and 2.0 vehicles. In much of the U.S., if you don’t have your own car you are home-bound, or at least think you are. You cannot even go for a walk without getting in a car.

There are not many places in the United States where people can expect to live without any of their own motor vehicles for their entire lives. I don’t expect that to change. There is enormous demand, however, for places where young people and seniors can get around without having to drive, and where families with children can get by with just one vehicle. That demand far exceeds the supply. And that is something that will have to change, because younger generations will not be able to afford one car per adult. Not on their lower salaries. Not given their larger burdens. Not in a future when Americans are not the only people on the planet rich enough to compete for the world’s fossil fuels, with the most of cheaply accessed fossil fuels having already been used up.

Legislation introduced by State Senator Tom O’Mara and Assemblyman Dean Murray would require New York-based websites to “remove any comments posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post.”

The bursting of the housing bubble seems to have awakened some people to some realities about housing. Housing isn’t a household’s largest investment, it is a household’s largest expense, and one of the expenses that is easiest to cut. A house or apartment is a place to live, and it doesn’t make sense to lock oneself in by buying one unless one’s personal and career circumstances are very settled and they are likely to stay in one place indefinitely. Moreover, young people are the buyers of houses, while older people (and today financial institutions collecting money for wealthy bondholders) are the sellers. Young people can take back many of the financial disadvantages that older generations have foisted on them, in lower wages, higher future taxes, and future reductions in public services and benefits, by paying those older generations and financial institutions rock bottom prices for housing (and stocks). Holding out until the cost of their housing is perhaps 10 or 15 percent of their income, rather than stretching until it absorbs half. And if older generations are unwilling to sell cheap, then more jobs will be created by the young moving to new housing units in new types of neighborhoods, rather than merely paying up for the existing oversized housing in auto-dependent neighborhoods that prior generations have chosen.

And yet not everyone has absorbed those lessons, and there is no guarantee they will stick. There was a housing bubble in the late 1980s too, but only in the Northeast and in California, and many of my peers were financially crushed as it deflated, particularly those who had purchased apartments with the expectation of selling for more and buying their permanent residence later. At the time I thought a lesson had been learned and the bubble would not be repeated. Wrong. Moreover, the federal government has been going $hundreds of billions into hock, money younger generations will have to pay back, to keep the price of housing – and the value of paper wealth backed by houses — from falling further. So what to do about it? <

Least significant announcement of the day: "Ulrich supports the minimum wage."

Even if Ulrich was in the Senate, he'd never get the opportunity to vote for it, as long as his Party still controlled the Senate.

I really didn’t want to touch this race; however, some of my advisors convinced me to say something about it or be branded a chicken/lol. 

You see near every time I write something about Charles Barron I get these strange (and often inane) calls or e-mails, from different folks with different strokes.  And it doesn’t matter if I write something critical or something positive. They are out there and they are watching. 

Poor Cory–he thought his worst nightmare this year was that his Oxford buddy, Rabbit Schmuley, was running for Congress as a Republican.