181–190 of 764 posts
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And people who own more valuable land benefit proportionally more from state services.
And they pay more property tax.
But property tax also taxes improvements that the owner made themselves. This disincentivises improving land too much.
The whole thing with Georgists and a land value tax is that it's specifically unearned wealth due to increases in unimproved land value that are taxed more.
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What valuable service do landlords provide, exactly? It's my understanding that barring regulatory requirements for standards of living, at their core a landlord is providing access to previously un-utilized monopolized space. That's not really a valuable service, in my mind; maybe it is in the way that 'we'll give you protection from ourselves coming back and breaking your windows' is a valuable service.
See my comment below to a similar concern. There are as many different kinds of landlords as there are people. The value the good ones bring are cared for, affordable places for people to live who prefer to not own a home. Repairing, maintaining, improving, insuring, all take a lot of costs and risks. The government does provide public land in which people can live for free. Why isn't that more popular?
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arguing against owning your home is arguing in favor of rent-seeking
The parable is very explicitly contrasting taking what you need / taking one seat at the theatre / owning a home to live in, with taking everything and depriving others of the use of what should be common / taking all the seats at the theatre / hoarding homes to extract economic rent, respectively. I'm 99% sure you understood the point too.
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The US housing market is regulated and subsidised…the American dream of owning a home is socialist…US mortgages are guaranteed by federal government.. this doesn’t happen in most other countries..
>the American dream of owning a home is socialist…US mortgages are guaranteed by federal government.. "socialism" =/= government intervention.
Having one element of a nation state being characterised as socialist doesn’t not equate to socialism… the world is not black and white..
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There is nothing inherently wrong with landlords and rent. Anyone that says otherwise is a tankie. Landlords provide a valuable service. But there cannot be perpetual growth in rents like there is in say the growth of a startup. It’s the corporatization of landlords that is wreaking havoc by forcing them to maximize shareholder wealth. A simple solution is to bar corporations from charging rent for residential proper…
> There is nothing inherently wrong with landlords and rent. Anyone that says otherwise is a tankie. Landlords provide a valuable service. What valuable service would that be, I wonder. Having a signature on a deed? Also nice, argument: "my opinion is right and anyone that says otherwise is wrong". x)
> slum·lord (n)
> a landlord of slum property, especially one who profiteers. "Can you rent to the poor without being a slumlord?"
Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
I already posted a comment on this, but forgot to answer the actual question. I don’t think it follows that it’s wrong to commoditize basic necessities. Take, for example, food: the reason just about everyone in the western world can afford food is BECAUSE it is commoditized. I would like the barriers to home ownership to be lowered. On the other hand, I don’t think the rental market is evil. A lot of people can’t af…
You are talking about different kind of commoditization. Food processing is commotized, not the food itself. In fact food is naturally immune to have a speculative market as it could only be stored for short term.
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And what are we doing about CORPORATIONS buying up our neighborhoods? As far as I know, NOTHING.
"our" neighborhood implies that you own it - so if you owned something, and sold it, how can you complain that someone (or gasp, a corporation) is buying when you're selling?
>a basic human right You do not have a basic human right to the labor of the people who build and maintain these houses. This is where this entire discussion collapses for me. Yes, I agree there needs to be more access to housing. And it’s frustrating to me that our government is too inept to simply provide it. For instance: we have committed to about 45 Billion to Ukraine. At a cost of $100k/unit (achievable at scal…
Well inflation will go up even more thanks to that bill. Incomes will go down. So housing will become even more unaffordable
There are no positive natural human rights, only the negative ones (rights to be free from violence, including bodily autonomy, freedom of speech, rights to keep property etc). There are no rights that have to be provided by others for free. If I need my own place to live, I am expected to earn money to rent or buy it; I can’t expect anybody to give me this for free, there is no “basic human right” for me to be kept…
I'd say that there are no natural rights. Never heard a good argument for any of them.