Potato I have

I just read this NYT article from a few months ago; buyers in the bubble today are more than ever dependent on further appreciation:

For new home buyers, prices in New York would need to rise roughly another 13 percent over the next five years for the average buyer to do better than the average renter over that span. In Northern California, where the gap between house prices and rents is largest, home values would need to go up about 19 percent by 2010.

Over the next decade, the break-even increase is about 25 percent in New York and 40 percent in California.

From the article we see price/annual rent ratios of 33 in the bay area, and 25 in the next tier including NY, LA, Boston. And while the equation is different here in France (no mortgage writeoff, for example), our current apartment has a ratio of >30.

But to many people, the psychological benefits of buying are almost impossible to overcome. Owning makes them feel that they have achieved the American dream, or it gives them the secure sense that, if nothing else, they have a tangible asset where they can sleep at night.

Those are nice feelings, indeed. The question is how much they are worth to you.

Our case is a little different. While we hate missing the price runups (first in San Francisco, now in Paris), renting has been a conscious decision to keep life simpler and more flexible, and to live in buildings or locations where we wouldn’t or couldn’t purchase. It’s been the difference between doing and not doing a number of things that we’ve appreciated. And now, current housing purchase prices are helping to make this a logical decision as well.

(via Rebecca’s Pocket)

It’s hard to post about the differences of living in France and in the US, endlessly fascinating though they may be to me: whenever I write something, I’m entirely preoccupied with how it’s being received by other Americans. I wish things weren’t so charged between the two countries. So I post with a disclaimer that if I seem provocative or defensive it’s not necessarily intentional, and dive right in…

Paul Krugman’s latest Op-Ed piece covers the part of living in France that fits me like a glove: that of economic choices. He reminds us that France is actually more productive than the US (this shocked me when I first heard it a few years ago), and then argues that the main difference in the economies is one of policy decisions. He mentions health care, schools, and significantly more vacation (personally this is ten weeks rather than four), but really the list is much longer. These things are expensive I guess, but I know the taxes I pay, I know the services I receive, and I’m very happy with the equation.

Krugman closes:

American conservatives despise European welfare states like France. Yet many of them stress the importance of “family values.” And whatever else you may say about French economic policies, they seem extremely supportive of the family as an institution.

So that is being provocative, and I already hear the “Yeah, but…”s, but it seems a shame that it’s impossible to imagine the current US administration even acknowledging that some of these things might work better elsewhere, let alone in France, let alone considering what might possibly translate to the American situation.

One of the American conservative complaints, I think, would be that it’s the government deciding, not the individual, and so that’s not a real choice. Referring to some recent research on differences in working hours (I think it is this study), Krugman says

[European] government regulations actually allow people to make a desirable tradeoff - to modestly lower income in return for more time with friends and family - the kind of deal an individual would find hard to negotiate.

This touches an interesting shift in attitude about governments for me over the last several years. None is perfect, certainly not the French one, but at the end of the day I have (to pick just one specific item) ten weeks of vacation with my family and friends. The research above suggests this is primarily due to regulation, and from my viewpoint it’s highly consistent with the priorities of most French people. On the other hand, I know plenty of Americans who would like to see that shift in priorities in their own lives, but it’s very hard to do. Not impossible–very little is truly impossible in America–just highly unlikely.

France was late to the internet, partly due to an already established online services network called Minitel. But lately it seems they’ve become quite a leader, at least in high-bandwidth offerings. My DSL provider’s plan is 30€/month and includes a connection of up to 20Mbit (in practice I get about 10Mbit), a VoIP solution that has free unlimited calls in France and is about 1.80€/hour to California, and >200 TV channels (>80 free, including the new digital-over-airwaves channels). The satellite content providers are now delivering over DSL too. Stability and service are not rock-solid — and they’ve been downright nightmarish for some — but I’ve had a pretty good experience overall. Connection-only, high-bandwidth (20Mbit) offerings are about 15€/month, from multiple providers.

My provider has been aggressive with new services, and I especially like this free one; it’s based on the free and open-source (GNU GPL) VLC media player project, and means I can stream video from any computer on my LAN (Mac and PCs for me, but most OSes are supported) to my TV without any additional hardware. No computer in the living room. DVDs, mpgs, etc all presented as playlists which can be selected with the TV remote. Well, any multimedia can be streamed, but video is the interesting one for me.

The Morning News has a roundtable discussion, a follow-up to Mireille Guiliano’s extremely popular French Women Don’t Get Fat (a kind of diet book), with four French women food bloggers. I also link their blogs, which are good reading in their own right; now I need to find a recipe for Gibassier de Lourmarin, and make hamentaschens with my daughter. And, decide if I dare grow my Omea aggregator by another four feeds.

There’s something funny about the “French paradox” being rendered as a diet book, but not having read it I’ll not comment on that.

(via kottke’s remainders)
(more…)

I don’t have to write formal letters in French very often, but when I do, I stress. In a recent exchange with my landlord, I found this handy calculator for formal salutations.

Je vous prie d’accepter, Monsieur, Madame, l’expression de mes sentiments respectueux.