housing prices
ever wonder how house prices can just keep going up? when i first looked at buying a house the banks wanted my mortgage to be no more than 1/3 of my income. presumably my lifestyle would consume the other 2/3. now though incomes have gone up faster than lifestyle costs. my utility for more food, cars, toys, movies has effectively peaked at 1/3 of my income. but my utility for a house hasn't. so i'm willing and able to pay 2/3 of my income for one. lifestyle costs have gone down because of technological advances, cheap oil, and cheap foreign labor. how much higher can prices go? depends on how much lower lifestyle costs can go.