Hi all - a bit off topic and curious on folks experiences out there. I've been thinking about single family home prices where the prices are strong and steadily increasing, mainly coastal cities. I've done a bit of number crunching, but really focused on looking around at the economy around me recently and talking to folks. I saw that some areas have markets that have generally gone from ~$250k in 2010, to ~$450k in 2019 to ~$800k for a typical B-Class single family home. I've had lots of conversations with people in all groups around major metro areas: young and living at home, younger millennial and stuck renting, elder millennial/young Xer home owner, boomers retiring in place et al. and one major takeaway I had was how many home owners are trapped in their homes, like Hotel California (you can check in any time you like, but you can never leave). Lots of these homeowners had steady income and bought these homes sometime between 2005-2019 and "couldn't afford their home now". I think these high price areas have a lot of people with mortgages that are significantly below current 1BDR rents in their area so they cannot leave. So it is not just the interest rate but they might not qualify for more debt if their salaries didn't rise as fast, or if they took on more debt like auto loans, credit card debt, wedding debt, etc. It seems to me the rents rose so fast and so high that it's frozen a whole generation into whatever living situation they had at the time, and I've been noticing the Cantillion observation that people do not work beyond their necessities. So they keep their day job because it pays the bills they have, and those people are getting frozen out, which in turn leads to a crash in sales. If that's the takeaway then do falling rates even matter if the potential sellers have nowhere else to go? Wont the prices be driven by the shrinking supply, and those prices rising raises rent demand, which raises rents? And if the problem is people frozen in their homes with lots of equity and growing 401ks, would mass job losses even bring the prices down or would those people continue to be frozen?

Spirit Airlines is facing bankruptcy, which aligns with Simon’s theory that the middle and lower classes don’t constitute the top 20% of consumers. I think discount companies like Spirit Airlines are likely to continue struggling and eventually go under. In contrast, big brands such as Amazon and Costco are expected to thrive by catering to the top 20% of consumers. Spirit Airlines’ bankruptcy serves as an example of this theory, highlighting the fact that companies targeting the middle and lower classes are not what helps the Fed’s monetary policy... When I think about investing in stocks, the only thing that comes to mind is health services catering to the aging baby boomers and millennials, as they are considered one of the largest generations. What are your thoughts. It appears that market experts are considering shorting puts as a promising opportunity for stock play… like spirit airlines…

Breaking down the current events through the lens of the Credible Threat Theory

@Simon Caron - your emphasis on manufacturing coming in and out of the state from Cantillon's Essay has been spot on in my opinion. I think in here there is 1 piece that Cantillon could not have foreseen: robotics in manufacturing. With incentives like 100% depreciation in the first year and other tax credits, I think it's very likely we see more capital and manufacturing come back to the US. But here's the catch: modern factories need almost no human labor at all. So what happens then? The capital owners are the ones who produce. The after effect: as the producers, the capital owners receive all the savings and new money that comes into the state, and the State receives its share through taxation. Who gets cut out of the picture? The average working American trying to earn on labor instead of capital. I think we're staring down the barrel of the State and Capital Owners hoarding the savings. The Capital Owners then redeploy their savings and compound their wealth (and continue to receive the new money) and the State expands its programs with its share of the new money. Before you know it, the middle class is now melted into the lower classes as dependent on government programs (i.e. falling into poverty). Your livestreams have really helped move some gears in my head, so I wanted to give back. I have a couple of more ideas that I will share here as well. Agree? Disagree? What are others thoughts here?

If you are protecting the shipping channels then you are the maritime state. "If the state is a maritime state, the easiness and low cost of its shipping for the transport of its com- modities and manufactured goods to foreign countries may compensate, in some way, for the high cost of labor caused by the overabundance of money." Cantillon essay https://cdn.mises.org/An%20Essay%20on%20Economic%20Theory_2.pdf https://news.usni.org/2026/04/11/two-u-s-warships-sail-through-strait-of-hormuz-to-establish-new-route-for-merchant-ships