Unemployment & real estate

I am reading Jeremy Rifkin's book "The End of Work", published in 1995,  a rich expansion on  ideas I first encountered in the work of Bernard Lietaer (whose book I have been translating )I am surprised to see Ben Bernanke  remark on insufficient "employment growth" yesterday. Surely it is part of his job to educate legislators.  We are seeing a profound transformation that is making "work" as we have known it a thing of the past. There is not going to be a rebound in employment. Jobs are over. Productivity has been rising since the 60s, and ever fewer workers are needed. Not just manufacturing workers, but all workers, are being replaced by our wonderful software and machinery.

It is not just happening in the US, but all over the world. The "redundancies" are more related to machines taking over than to off-shoring. We are going to have to deal with that, .either by working toward the old dream of more leisure for everyone(that is, some way to share these wonderful profits around more equitably), or by unconsciously sinking  further into social division and chaos. It is worth remembering that local currency  experiments  led to decreased unemployment in Austria and Germany until they were made illegal (for fear of loss of central bank control), whereupon unemployment skyrocketed along with membership in the National Socialist Party-the Nazis. I think we have seen something parallel in our day in the frenzied rhetoric of extremist parties- not just in the USA. I highly recommend the book.

An article in the San Francisco chronicle reports that Bay area real estate prices suffered an accelerated decline in December, a harbinger (as we chart follower's know) of the approaching bottom (we call them "blow-offs") The chief economist of Zillow, Stan Humphries, is quoted as expecting "a long flat bottom"  (so far so good= I agree). He goes on, though "before resuming a more normal appreciation of 2-4%" What is this? How can a "normal" market appreciate 2-4% annually. That kind of growth in biology is either juvenile, or tumerous.

Since the mad market makers have been little influence by their most recent toxicity, there seems to be hope among the financial fraternity that markets too will return to "a more normal appreciation" The indices have continued on an uptrend. If you can't beat them, join them. I read that there has been some return to "buy and hold" investing. Here I am, buying and holding. My Chinese stocks (APWR, JST, SOL, SOLF, TSTC, SDTH) are down, my Canadian uranium holdings (CCJ & DNN) are up. See-saw Marjorie Daw. I am also a holder of CREE, since it fell on some slight earnings disappointment recently. I expect LED lights to be with us for some years, and since the Chinese have 20 nuclear plants in construction, uranium miners should do well.

On my street, several people fear for the upcoming loss of their employment. They are engineers. I have weekly quilting parties with their wives, where we take part in a pale sort of "local currency", trading fabrics and doing each other good turns. North Carolina real estate values never rose as high as California's, so it  has not fallen as far either. Most of the gigantic houses I have seen built lately could comfortably house several families, and the people in them would be less lonely, too! There would be other folk to share the work- wouldn't that be nice? The only price we would have to pay is the price of learning to put up with each other again!