Back from Hawaii
Well, I am nursing some jet-lag but am working on a post for later this week on the alleged CIA secret overseas prisons. This is one of those issues where my pragmatic frequent-flying persona is all over Jenifer Garner violating the crap out of terrorist civil rights to protect me, but my intellectual-libertarian persona knows better. If you want a preview of where I am going with this, you can see this post on immigration, noting the argument that our individual rights pre-date, rather than flow from, the government, and therefore citizenship shouldn't matter in assessing what rights a person has vis-a-vis Uncle Sam.
I had the opportunity to look at some land while I was in Hawaii, thinking about maybe having a retirement home in the future, at least to escape the Phoenix summers. My wife and I would like to be on a coast. I don't like the Northeast, and neither of us like the Gulf coast or Northwest coast. That leaves SoCal and Hawaii (if you limit it to the US). What worries us is that though we expect some appreciation in our real earnings over the next decade, we fear that waterfront property in these areas may appreciate even faster, leading us to the conclusion that we may be able to afford a nicer piece of land now than when we retire. We worry about bubble pricing but being willing to hold an asset for 20-30 years alleviates some of that problem. The Big Island seems to be a better value than the other islands, but even there, its freaking expensive. Sigh. Maybe if it was a big enough lake, that would do?
