Unintended consequences…
Under provisions of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Waxman-Markey), the government would be able to tell you that you can’t sell your house unless this inspector and that inspector says it’s environmentally approved.
Ok, let’s look at that: yesterday was a good day to have bought stock in companies like Pella and Affinity Doors. Both of whom have VERY nice products.
Well, someone is going to have to make all those environmentally friendly windows and doors. Contractors… you day is coming. Think of ALL those windows and doors that people are going to be forced to install. By a licensed contractor no less, using ONLY union labor of course. Roofers, there has GOT to be some way you can get in on this government takeover of the American peoples homes and land.
What? You have a house you need to sell because you just got offered the job you have been nearly killing yourself over for the last six years. But it means you must relocate halfway across the country… lots-a luck if your house is not approved for resale. What’s your choice? Fix it at vastly inflated prices, buy off an inspector or two or four? Or forego the job and loose a little more of your freedom. This freedom is called your ability to move and live wherever you want to.
And what if your neighbors figure that they can never afford to upgrade and just say ‘to hell with it’. Letting their home deteriorate and bring down the value of your house and property?
Ok… so far we have major payoffs to unions here, government employees, contractors, environmentalists and… what about you? Where do you fit in this equation?
With your pants down and your bare posterior shining in the sun!
But this is for this good of the planet! No more energy leaking out through old, outdated window and door assemblies. Have you ever worked in a building that is a tightly closed environment? Studies have shown that these buildings are nothing but breeding grounds for a vast array of maladies. There is even a name for the problem: Sick Building Syndrome. Check it out: http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/sbs.html.
Fresh air in one of those buildings? Perish the thought; it’s all piped in through filters and such that only re-circulates the air in there. Mold spores, Stachybotrys chartarum for one is deadly.
Some would say that mold isn’t nearly as problematic as the dreaded ‘sick cube mate syndrome’. If your cube mate comes in on Monday with a hacking, gagging cold… by Wednesday, not only everyone on your floor has it… but two floors away in both directions are hacking, wheezing and trying to figure out if they can afford to take Thursday and Friday off.
In her book Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand writes of a society where people are not allowed to quit their jobs, change banking institutions, move freely about the country. What happened? As people will always do, they figured out a way around it.
They go on about their business, but the name on the door means nothing. The name on the check means nothing. John walks into a bank with a check written out to George and the bank cashes it. Darryl goes in to a job under the name of Doris…
When people are forced to make major outlays of cash for improvements they cannot afford. Some people will not be selling their houses to move: following a job or their dream of retiring to sunny south Florida. But rather because they simply cannot afford the house they have. They might be wanting to downsize because they finally were able to talk their youngest little snowflake into leaving home… How cruel is that, making their thirty-something move out on their own?
I’m betting that there are going to be some major gluts of lease housing available in some areas. But WAIT! THERE’S MORE! What if you can’t lease the property unless you upgrade?
People worry that Flint, Michigan took it on the nose the way it did. A quick sidebar here: I remember when Flint, MI was one of the premier, and I mean ULTIMATE marketing proving grounds in this country. If you had a product you were trying to bring to market: Flint was one of THE places you took it to. If it sold there… you went NATIONAL.
Look at Flint now though…
If you can’t sell without some major outlays to upgrade your property, and you can’t lease it without those same upgrades… I wonder how many more banks will fail because people will just walk away from these houses.
Will vast apartment and condo complexes will become the new norm for American living? Where the dream of owning your own home will be a thing of the past.
Government housing anyone?
