Instapundit reader comments

Glenn, your recent posting about retirees seeing all their home equity disappear was spot on. I would just add that both the Republicans and Democrats seem to have not noticed that one of the significant reasons home sales numbers (and therefore prices) continue to be in the toilet is that many retirees (my wife and myself included) cannot even dream about selling and relocating because selling our house would be so difficult, if not impossible, now or in the forseeable future. Basically, we are stuck in a high tax, union dominated state and I wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to buy our house and live here. It is also notable that at least two of the states with the worst housing numbers are also ‘destination states’ for millions of retirees, i.e., Florida and Arizona. And thanks to Bernanke’s prolonged zero-interest-rate policy, people like us who saved our money for retirement now find that it is useless for providing an income stream unless we are willing to risk it in a stock market now dominated (and manipulated, as we saw in the ‘flash crash’ the SEC has yet to cogently explain) by computer driven algorithmic high
speed trading where stock fundamental values are essentially ignored.

We have that problem here in Fresno,CA. The low end houses cannot justify the pension costs imposed via property taxes. They end up being abandoned while citizens crowd into remaining homes.  The county supervisors who caused this mess are still in office, the Guv who signed the anti-democratic Dills act is back in office.  They are all pulling the same scams, Jerry just granting prison guards pension  a payoff for election support.