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Agreed Dave, but not assets that are in-country, by whatever means, or any income earned in CR up to $84K +/-, if ever claimed.
I am talking about people who are not “working” anymore and ceased to do so earlier in life that are planning to move to CR. These individuals opt out of the system early with respect to taxes on wages. The issue is that there is not any social security or medicare to tax without wages being earned for neither the employee or the employer for that total of 15.3%. With the requirements to live in CR being made so much more stringent financially, many of those who could have retired here early would not be able to. Therefor, they are more apt to stay and work in the US and pay into an entitlement system that is facing some gargantuan shortfalls, which will prolong the supposed “solvency” of the system. That was my point. Any financial advantage of moving to CR with such high $ requirements would be essentially eliminated.Safe to say we all hope this does not pass. CR would be the ultimate loser in this since a significant amount of development and construction funds are derived from migration, just as customs and technologies are, and have been throughout the history of man. However, I am getting the sense that there is a global movement for countries to become more “nationalistic” and in turn tighter controls on the movement of people between countries. This is very difficult to accomplish in today’s much more globally mobile, trade driven economy. Also, this smells like a bit of US influence involved for it would benefit the US government significantly to keep as many taxable assets (the citizens) in country to fund the entitlement machine.
Edited on Nov 03, 2008 10:40
I have seen school buses that execute a rolling stop for a red light. Driving rules in CR are optional and honking of horns is a language of its own.
Albeit a president with strong socialistic tendencies, which will likely put a serious damper on capital gains from trading stocks and in turn investment in general if he has his way.
Edited on Oct 25, 2008 17:38
A dam would use more concrete per surface area than any other public works type project. The Hoover dam was also built under Roosevelt’s New Deal program when there was not any work, thus all available resources in the Las Vegas region were solely focused on one project. That is not realistic today without years of prior planning, contractual and cost escalation guarantees with respect to labor, material and physical plant. You would be hard pressed in a US urban setting to get more than 6-8 pumpers dedicated to one project. In additon, a stadium does not require large, continuous concrete pours; most stadiums that have a concrete seating substructure, the concrete is precast in units supported by steel or additional precast concrete. Most modern stadiums are predominatly consructed of structural steel, which is much more quickly erected. Concrete trucks and pumpers are not the issue for this project, but cranes are and there would not be a need for that many due to the speed of steel erection with prefabricated members. I believe Costa Rica can provide the equipment for it would be exhorbitantly expensive to ship mobile and/or tower cranes of sufficient capacity from China to CR. The San Jose has significant experience with concrete, but less with steel framed structures. This is not a complex stadium and smaller than most all Division I NCAA university stadiums in the US. I am certain that the 200 chinese work force is composed of predominantly specialized and supervisory personnel and would be supplemented by local labor, subcontractors, suppliers and manufacturing facilities. As a contractor, from a cost perspective and goodwill, I would endeavor to seek as many companies as possible to satisfy my project needs locally due to the very high cost of travel, shipping and subsistence that would render my company non-competitive.
The Canadian “Loonie” went from $1.10 to $.79 today … 1 year later. The strengthening dollar, a significant slowing in lumber exports, a declining ROI on the oil sands project, which is break even @ $60/barrel is not helping. Interesting to note that 80% of the Canadian population lives within 1 hour of the US border. I live 1 hour south of Vancouver and have numerous Canadian friends.
Aguirre
With 22 years ecperience in the commercial consruction industry I have never seen nor heard of a 1,000 yard concrete pour in one working day for a commercial building. It is not physically possible to stage that quantity of 9 yard trucks (typical capacity) and have that many concrete pumpers on-site to accomplish. Even tha massive $7 billion City Center project in Las Vegas with its own concrete batch plant on-site working 24-7 cannot pour that much concrete in a day. This could only be accomplished in massive slab construction such as highways and would eliminate any concrete pours for an entire region at maximum capacity.
It is not an apples to oranges comparison really when you have an experienced labor force, however, I am certain that this will be supplemented with local labor to double the work force. The number of total workers for the Seahawks stadium includes all the finish work and complex mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems. We are talking about a stadium that has luxury boxes, stores, restaurants, weight training facilities, offices, etc. Comparatively, it is ten times as complex as the San Jose stadium, yet was still completed in 2 years working 8 hour days, 5 days per week.
The Bird’s nest is the equivalent of a $4 billion US stadium and is one of the most complex structural stadiums ever built. It also has over a 100,000 capacity for multiple uses, suffered numerous delays due to infrastructure not being in place, the discovery of unsuitable subsurface problems and a myriad of design revisons because of its complexity. In reality, the bulk of the stadium was completed 1.5 years before opening.Edited on Oct 24, 2008 22:14
Qwest Field in Seattle (NFL Seahawks) was constructed with a maximum of 400 workers during its peak in two years and seats 67,000. 1/3 of the $360 million dollar cost was provided by the team owner Paul Allen (Microsoft co-founder).
Safeco Field (MLB Mariners) was built in the same time frame, has a very complex retractable roof and seats nearly 48,000.2012 is the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar.
Check this article out by Steve Forbes for a more level headed, capitalistic perspective: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1110/018.html
The fate of US depends on that four letter word … poli-tics.Thanks for the response watchdog. Your partner RP is our attorney and we very much appreciate your collective expertise and all the information that Scott brings to light on this site.
All the state pension funds are down, but most states utilize “asset smoothing”. In WA State they spread pension fund gains or losses over an 8-year period and bank any amount in excess of the target 8% annual return. Our pension fund is down 4.5 billion or 7%, but there is a reserve of $10 billion. California’s, the largest state pension fund is down 18%. Unfortunately, California’s issues are far greater than any other state and is also the 8th largest economy in the world, thus the impact and volatility is much greater. They also have experienced the brunt of the housing bubble, serious budget problems, a huge shortfall in tax revenue and the single biggest illegal immigrant problem which has cost $1 billion in health care costs annualy.
China is footing the bill for the construction and they also have the workers experienced with these types of projects having recently transformed Beijing infrastructure and constructed billions in venues within a 4 year period. However, their worker safety record is attrocious and I am certain they have factored in worker fatalaties on the job site. Also, the asian construction industry has a serious problem with methamphetamine abuse, primarily due to the fact they work around the clock, 7 days per week.
Extremely intersting article on economy & ecology, which I plan to share with my consumerist US friends whose goal in life is to acumulate “things” that really have no intrinsic value.
Thanks Scott.
I don’t think most Americans can handle the fall. As a population, Americans are fixated on maintaining their luxury status quo and the politicians keep promoting the lies, but life here has become much too complicated, full of stress and very pessimistic. Maybe that is why the US is now ranked #45 in longevity and not high on the happiness scale.
Good move on liquidating and right now is an opportunistic time with so many stocks at all time lows … if you have the cash and were smart enough not to get overextended with debt.
I have been tracking the Nicoya Peninsula, specifically Montezuma/Mal Pais/Santa Teresa for 3 years and in the last 6-8 months there have been 15%-20% drops in asking prices. Of course, this is the Pacific coast, which had the fastest run-up in prices, thus as a rule of real estate (aka Florida, California, Las Vegas) they will see the first and largest “adjustments”.
