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To: kahunabear who wrote (50)	5/3/1998 12:09:00 PM
From: Bonnie Bear	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 129

employee stock options, and I believe the 401K company match, are not included as compensation. Re real estate: Much of California has never recovered from the end of the Cold War, there's still double-digit unemployment in many counties and you can find a nice house for $50K in some areas. It's not in the Bay Area, though :-( The low interest rates are having a profoundly positive effect on the depressed parts of California. Since this is the most populous state in the union and likely to grow from immigration etc by 50% in the next fifteen years, I think the california REITs buying distressed properties may be on to something.

To: kahunabear who wrote (50)	5/3/1998 5:32:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 129

Whipper Snapper, I think the easiest way to judge whether or not we have inflation is to look at our lifestyles. When I was young, back when the Earth was cooling and we all rode dinosaurs, a husband's salary, at an average job, was enough to buy a house, a car, take vacations and afford several children. Today, you have to be awfully affluent for one spouse not to have to work to maintain the same sort of standard of living. This has nothing to do with "wanting" to work. It has to do with having to work. Things like medical care, property insurance, education, etc. are rising in price much faster than reported cost indices would indicate. There is also a quality cost to inflation that is impossible to measure, things like potholes in the road that cost too much to fix, mentally ill people released to become homeless because we can't afford mental hospitals any more, early parole for violent criminals who cost too much to keep locked up and drinking water that may not be potable. There are also the tricks corps use. The next time you buy a "pound" of coffee, look at how much it weighs. Downsizing has more than one definition. <G> MB