Posted on 01/28/2007 11:48:56 AM PST by BronzePencil
It sits on top of a hill, overlooking a busy road -- a big, pink stucco house that dwarfs all the houses around it. It is conspicuous consumption at its worst, or at its best, depending on your point of view.
It's not the biggest house around. There are many bigger -- one just a few miles from where I live, not on top of a hill but practically on the offramp of a highway. So many smaller houses have been knocked down to make room for these Goliaths. This is called progress.
I don't understand who lives in these massive homes or who can afford them
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Yeah, I visited the house I grew up in a few years ago after decades away. I remember it being practically a mansion. Amazing how it's shrunk since.
The Edwards house appears to be designed by dairy farmers who don't want to walk outdoors to milk the cows.
LOL. You think maybe he keeps his chicken cooops next to the bed so he can have his breakfast there?
I wonder if Al Gore has lectured Edwards about all that methane gas the livestock produces.
actually looks like a sports car and a limo on the left
"My parents paid $10,000 for that house. It was 1954. The average cost of a home then was $10,250."
My parents bought a NEW house outside the city limits of Memphis in 1944 at a cost of $7500. It was 3 BR, screen porch and garage.
Today it is in probably the best neighborhood of Memphis, and while the porch and garage were converted to rooms, it is much the same house, but now worth over $200,000.
They should never have been approved as they stand now. They ruin the character of the community.
I agree wholeheartedly. My husband and I have had the unpleasant experience many times. They'll charge you $20. for a little piece of chicken on some escarole with a couple of pretty radishes or something; maybe some goat cheese thrown in. People pay it because they feel trendy. The $50 sounds about right. We went to a place not to long ago and had wonderful meals, wine, and dessert - cost was about $115 for the two of us.
see the John Edwards post elsewhere on FR.
Worse yet is the zero lot line McMansions. If I am gonna spend $500,000+ for a house I sure as heck don't wanna know what my neighbors had for dinner every time they fart.
I want property and privacy. Maybe even a cement pond.
Wow! Just hope it's not in a nice neighborhood.
I thought this was a thread about Edwards new house!
You know, the truth is some people really don't have taste. That's why I like living in the middle of my own 10 acre spread, though there aren't enough trees to block out the loser next door.
It is. That's what's so sad. And down the road is the one with the turrets. All it needs is the moat and guards.
I agree. Someone please forward this to new mansion owner, and discoverer of two Americas, John Edwards.
My great-grandfather came over from Ireland and started out sweeping floors in a corner grocery. He went on to start what eventually became the largest supermarket chain in the country. He eventually died and gave all but a small fraction back to charities (except college trusts for the family's kids).
He didn't do all this by sitting on his butt complaining, nor did he ever feel he "deserved" it.
So the mcmansions will be divided up into condos (however ridiculous they look most of them are too small for schools, museums, and convents which many of the mansions of the turn of the last century became).
Then, in the next generation after that the new rich will rediscover them and scoop them up for private residences. Just as the 1970s saw a "Great Gatsby" revival, so the rich couples of the 2050s (if there are any) will ape today's excesses, half satrically, half admiringly.
Yes. You seem surprised.
Typical liberal drivel. Everyone who lives in a big house should give away their money.
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Paging John Edwards! John Edwards; please pick up the white courtesy phone!
I hope Sandy (first wife) got something. It looks like it's all been spent on that.
I think they're gonna put an ocean back there.
I just watched the Barrett-Jackson Car Auction from Scottsdale. They sold almost $100M in rolling stock over the span of 40 hours. I saw 1960's car that originally sold for $2-3000 new go for $60-150,000. When they showed the people bidding on them they looked like ordinary guys my age, sitting with their wives of the same age, kids all grown up, reliving their wasted youth. Somebody is making money in the country and they aren't all evil, Republican, corporate executives
Pick up a copy of Pinnacle Living Magazine sometime and look at all the gated communities they are building in the mountains of the southeast these days. The starting price for a 1/2 to 1 acre lot runs $60-100,000.
I am not naive enough to believe that there are not poor people struggling in this country. In my 34 adult years I have been young, newly married and poor, middle class, divorced and poor again, and now remarried and very well off. That's life in America. I don't know Paul Krugman, but I have to believe that some of these people spending this money are pretty ordinary people just like me.
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