Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake • Hacker News Board

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#461

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 7:03 AM UTC

jjav wrote: post #460

daemin wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing people seem to skip over is that once you have bought a house you will still need to pay many fees. Just owning a house isn't free, there will be property taxes, fees for services, and other actions that require money from you. In a lot of cases when renting these are taken care of by the landlord. So just the rent vs mortgage comparison (or rent vs no rent) is misleading at best, downright fraudulent at wo…

> In a lot of cases when renting these are taken care of by the landlord. Approximately never are any of those costs taken care of by the landlord! The renter is paying for them, plus a profit margin for the landlord. That's what rent is. The landlord isn't running a charity. Only exception is if you luck into a rental by someone who paid off the property long ago and doesn't care to charge market prices for it.

GP seemed to use “taken care of by rhe landlord” to mean “bundled with the rent, and not a separate fee on top”, which is relevant to cost comparisons based only on purchase/finance cost vs rent cost.

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#462

Post by jjav » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 7:06 AM UTC

bovine3dom wrote: post #77

Traster wrote: post #48

I don't think this article makes a logical argument at all. It says house ownership is bad because it gives people a vested interest in constraining the supply of housing. That's true but that's not a problem. If people didn't own houses then someone would, and that someone is still incentivized to constrain the supply. I'm also not sure that reducing home ownership is a good idea - "let's make everyone poorer" doesn…

> If people didn't own houses then someone would, and that someone is still incentivized to constrain the supply. Yes, but constraining the supply is done through political means: planning laws, green belts, individual objections to developments, voting etc. All of those in theory are based on "one man one vote", so if you concentrate ownership of supply you drastically reduce the number of votes it gets. > the middl…

> if you concentrate ownership of supply you drastically reduce the number of votes it gets

Unfortunately most of the influencing of politics isn't accomplished by voting, it's done by lobbying.

So it's sadly the opposite. The more you concentrate ownership, the larger those mega-landlord-corporations become and the more clout they have with the politicians.

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#463

Post by jjav » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 7:13 AM UTC

harperlee wrote: post #111

Traster wrote: post #48

I don't think this article makes a logical argument at all. It says house ownership is bad because it gives people a vested interest in constraining the supply of housing. That's true but that's not a problem. If people didn't own houses then someone would, and that someone is still incentivized to constrain the supply. I'm also not sure that reducing home ownership is a good idea - "let's make everyone poorer" doesn…

> the middle class who used to be able to live in a nice semi/detatched house are now living in flats in a skyscraper that is a massive detriment to their quality of life Higher density has pros and cons. Living in higher density areas can increase quality of life significantly, if you can walk to work, groceries, pharmacy, restaurants, friends, etc. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/07/paris-mayor-un...…

> Living in higher density areas can increase quality of life significantly, if you can walk to work, groceries, pharmacy, restaurants, friends, etc.

High density cities are not the only way to have that. Another one is small villages where everything is grouped together. I easily walk to multiples of every category of place you listed even though I live in a very small town.

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#464

Post by gtsop » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 7:22 AM UTC

dslkfjg wrote: post #335

gtsop wrote: post #200

Most of my relatives have moved from owning their property to renting. The rents go higher and higher, leading people to rent worse and worse houses so they can aford to live. Those who still manage to own their home have a significant advantage in life. West's biggest economic-policy mistake isn't home ownership, but capitalistic use of housing. Give me a 100% guarantee that I will get afordable, good quality housin…

It's not like the price of sleeping somewhere is going to go down if we assign home ownership to people whose goal is to raise the cost of housing for personal gain. California found out how little this is tolerated when they tried to turn everyone's house into the government's piggy bank by continually raising property taxes. Their voters, ina rare show of almost total unity, capped property taxes to 1%. It can only…

For some reason you extrapolated that I support government ownership of everyones houses. My comment was very clear, with the economy being what it is people are better of owning their houses than renting. When you own the house your only cost is maintenance and you don't fear of living in the street one day. And the question is also clear, by transfering the ownership to any agregator, can they guarantee you will not live on the street one day? They answer is no. Let's move on then.

> At this point in this exercise either you understand that this is an attempt to get you to accept the implementation of totalitarianism or you're under the age of 15.

I honestly don't even understand what your point is

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#465

Post by Smaug123 » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 7:28 AM UTC

throwaway316943 wrote: post #444

Smaug123 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shot in the dark here, but I assume you own land? ;)

I do and I also respect others property rights. Communal ownership and responsibility should only cover those things for which there are no other options, even then they are hard enough to deal with.

Under Georgism, you have the right to all the property you want. It just classes land as (I think?) the only thing which is "not property".

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#466

Post by yetihehe » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 7:29 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #431

yetihehe wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Original sellers are makers. They create and sell at reasonable price. Speculators only buy to sell at higher price, thus their only reason to exist is to be the one between people who value something more than it's previous price and those selling at previous price. And they want to buy at lower price before other people can buy at that lower price. They don't contribute anything. They just insert themselves and sel…

> They create and sell at reasonable price. I'm afraid there's no evidence whatsoever that makers sell at lower prices than speculators. Everyone sells for as much as possible. There's nothing magic about speculators that enable them to get higher prices. > And they want to buy at lower price before other people can buy at that lower price. Every buyer tries to do that. > They don't contribute anything. Yes, they do.…

> There's nothing magic about speculators that enable them to get higher prices.

> For example, the only reason a seller sells to a speculator is if the speculator offers to sell at a higher price than others.

Yeah, it's not magic.

If there was not speculator in the middle, buyer would look for another seller, who probably could have lower price. And that seller could sell at still higher price, because he doesn't have to pay speculator for finding him a buyer. A little more work for seller and buyer, but because speculator makes this work, doesn't negate "just extracting value from being in the middle".

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#467

Post by hewsnacker » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 7:46 AM UTC

> At the root of that failure is a lack of building, especially near the thriving cities in which jobs are plentiful.

Well then get at the root of the root of the failure and stop artificially cramping jobs up in cities. Living closer and denser with people ends in misery for everyone and disconnects people even more from the world they actually depend on.

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#468

Post by __turbobrew__ » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 7:57 AM UTC

Glyptodon wrote: post #429

effie wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "financial freedom"? You still have to work, use state currency, pay taxes. Did you mean owning your own home is the first step towards being wealthy?

I think it's usually defined as being well off enough to curse out your boss and/or quit when they make unreasonable demands without having to think twice.

Also known as “fuck you money”

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#469

Post by maratc » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 8:06 AM UTC

lucian1900 wrote: post #382

maratc wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "privatization" in the '90s was a one-off where failed socialist states just passed the bulk of state-owned flats to its inhabitants for a symbolic sum, on their way to becoming capitalist states. There wasn't any "market" to speak of, so no market prices. This can hardly be seen as an example-setting experiment, as socialism only works when there is something or somebody to pay up the costs. In the case of the U…

It is true that the flats were sold for symbolic sums. This was done by the counter-revolutionary government after '89 both to prevent revolts from people used to cheap housing and in the hope of engendering individualism through ownership. Of course the destruction of socialism in '89 isn't a good example, most of us would still prefer it over capitalism. And it's not true that the socialist countries were somewhat…

> the destruction of socialism in '89 isn't a good example, most of us would still prefer it over capitalism

As the example of pre-wall GDR shows, socialism can only exist with GULAG's for the suppression of the unconvinced. I seriously doubt about most of "us" preferring socialism over capitalism, unless you take a very specific (unknown to me) definition of "us". It would most certainly not apply to HN's readers.

> The rest (surplus) is either appropriated by capitalists or pooled together by the workers or a worker's state to fund collective efforts

This reminds me of Marxism and its problem: while it's fine in theory, it hasn't been proved yet to effectively work in practice (and that is not for lack of trying).

> all socialist revolutions so far have been in poor under-industrialised countries that improved drastically under socialism

Other "poor under-industrialised countries" that did not have revolutions have nevertheless improved drastically under capitalism.

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#470

Post by chriswarbo » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 8:22 AM UTC

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #356

chriswarbo wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it inherently unjust? Heh, I wasn't taking a position on renting versus ownership. I said there are pros and cons of both. What is unjust is to advocate for renting, if that rent will go to an owner/landlord. After all, why should owners/landlords exist at all, if renting is apparently so good? Social housing avoids this hypocrisy, since the "owner" is not a person (or person-surrogate, like a corporation).

> Social housing avoids this hypocrisy, since the "owner" is not a person (or person-surrogate, like a corporation). Like the housing projects in the inner cities?

Based on my (very limited) understanding of inner city housing projects in the USA, then yes.

AFAIK those planning such projects did not themselves live in social housing (unlike, say, many soviet officials), hence there's still an element of hypocrisy there (note that I never claimed otherwise; I specifically chose the word "this" in the sentence you've quoted. I'll also re-re-state that I've not made any argument for or against home ownership or renting)