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What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

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Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#281

Post by OnlineGladiator »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #274
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your hypothetical is "the government taxes everything". Then someone asked, "how would that work?" and your response was "everything we're discussing is a hypothetical!" Because he was mixing reality with the hypothetical. He was saying the IRS doesn't work that way in reality, which has no bearing to the discussions we were having which is a hypothetical. I explicitly stated in a previous comment that the IRS woul…

You have proposed an idea which does not actually provide any solution to the difficult part of your idea, which is this bit: "this wealth is determined by the IRS". "determined by the IRS" is passing the buck big time. > In this scenario they do, so why does that matter? Because you're skipping the most difficult and pertinent part of the solution. There's not much substance to proposing a wealth tax based on wealth…

I wasn't even claiming my original idea had much substance because it is so obvious. I hardly think I've solved a real-world problem because the real problem is people and politics while we're discussing theory. But if you want a simple proposal to address wealth inequality that's one way to do it. And wealth evaluation isn't an impossible problem because wealth is regularly evaluated in every market - real estate, art, stocks, cash.

No solution is ideal. But it's not an intractable problem because it's regularly solved every day around the world for all sorts of reasons. If we created a branch of government whose purpose was to do this I think they could figure it out. So in that sense I'm offloading the problem to people whose job it would be to figure out the problem.

Anyway, I've spent way too much time arguing about something I don't even care about. Cheers.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#282

Post by satvikpendem »

jnwatson wrote: post #219
b112 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 90s, I didn't know anyone in their 20s, who didn't have a roommate(or two!), or were married. No one I knew, could afford an entire apartment to themselves! I find it weird that people complain about not being able to rent their own entire apartment, but are in their 20s. It wasn't a thing 30 years ago! As one advances in their career, eg in their 30s, then income tends to rise, due to experience, and better p…

When I graduated as a software engineer in 1998 making $45k, I could have easily bought a house in the DFW area.

There are parts of the US where houses are similarly cheap even today, problem is, no one wants to live there. People want to simultaneously live in very popular cities but also not want to pay a high rent. Both can't be true at once.

...Or can it? The solution then is to build more housing; YIMBYism, go to local government meetings and vote for YIMBYist candidates. After all, all of the NIMBY people who bought their house decades ago are there, day after day. There really is no way around this.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#283

Post by lambic2 »

bandrami wrote: post #127
UncleOxidant wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Sweden story sounds so much like the SF story. It sounds like the same story being repeated all over the world. There was someone on comments here on another thread talking about how this is a problem in Ireland now as well. It's not just SF in the US, it's all over the place. A friend recently told me about his search for a place to rent in rural western Washington and they said it was just impossible to find…

I don't know about Ireland, but in the US the home ownership rate is higher than it was at any point in the 20th century. So however bad the situation is it doesn't seem to actually prevent people from buying a house.

right but I'm guessing a huge percentage is baby boomers or Gen X'ers who bought a house 10 or more years ago. I'm curious to see a graph of home ownership rate history for people between 25 and 39 years old, I'm guessing it is lower now than 30 years ago.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#284

Post by satvikpendem »

LegitShady wrote: post #254
throwawaybbq1 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an immigrant and got really burned during the Harper admin (Kenny's handling of immigration destroyed my life). That basically meant my options are Liberal or NDP. NDP policies seem to think if I make more than 200K, I am a rich fat cat (ignore that I have a freakin PhD at the cost of a delay in buying a house - effectively making me far poorer in wealth terms than someone with a mediocre undergrad who bought a p…

> That basically meant my options are Liberal or NDP. NDP policies seem to think if I make more than 200K, I am a rich fat cat If you make $200k a year, you've got almost 3x the average household income in canada ($75k). You're way up there in terms of wealth, and don't need any help from the NDP or anyone else.

I like that you entirely ignored their parenthesized statement immediately following what you just quoted. If you're going to respond to a point, at least respond to the entire point the other person makes.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#285

Post by lambic2 »

timonoko wrote: post #279

Only difference between Sweden and Finland is that Finland stopped all rent regulation in 1985. I was a landlord during that era, and after few years of turmoil, most rents started go down. Nowadays the rents are mostly costs + 40% -(32% capital gains tax) ie worse than most other investment. You only invest on housing because you expect home ownership raise on that area.

Isn't rental income treated as income tax? It is in the U.S. Since tax is on the profit only, the tax would be on that 40%, so 32% of 40% so ~10%. You are still walking away with 68% of 40%, so 30% of your rental income is profit.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#286

Post by satvikpendem »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #75
brabel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you invest your money on anything that gives , say, 5% yearly returns on your money, instead of paying off your mortgage, which used to be at less than 2% (but is not getting beyone 4%), you're just better off. Say you start with a 10,000 mortgage, and your payment per year is 500, not including interest. By the end of the year, you'll have a 9,500 mortgage left. If you just invested the 500 and only paid interest…

Risk, I think. For most people this is a higher risk strategy long term than just "paying the mortgage". Depending on your life stage and overall position it can make sense but it's not for everyone.

It's literally lower risk to invest if your average investment return rate is lower than your mortgage rate. It's likely more of a psychological opposition, where people want to feel more secure with a fully paid off mortgage, even if it does lose them potentially millions in the course of their lifetime.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#287

Post by rickydroll »

nemo44x wrote: post #223
baseline-shift wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japan, there are empty houses going cheap as old people die off. In a few decades, possibly there will be some effect as the de-population bomb from lowered birthrates globally begin to affect real estate prices. Let's hope.

Japan is unique for a few reasons: 1) Very insulated culture with nearly no immigration coupled with low birth rates. 2) They build houses very differently. They aren't generally made to last centuries if taken care of and renovated. The strategy is to build small units cheaply and tare down after 2- years. It's like Ikea for homes. 3) I agree, depopulation is a problem. We really need to incentivize middle and upper…

item 3 is solving the wrong problem. people will have babies when they have space and feel like they can give their kids a better future. trying to move people into dense urban living it the opposite of space needed for kids. right now, we cannot give kids a better future in the current billionaire run world.

we need to depopulate the billionaires and with the freed up wealth, fix the environmental problems so we have a chance at a future.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#288

Post by LegitShady »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #220
UncleOxidant wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) the immigration rate is so high it isn't enough to keep up That could be addressed by making home building a priority and by relaxing regulations like zoning. Allow more infill. > 3) The government doesn't want to do anything about it because immigration is how they're keeping down wages That's not the only reason to support immigration. Canada, as is the case with most western nations, is facing a demographic c…

Ironically you're complaining about the Canadian government not doing anything on the exact day that the FHSA comes into effect, which is a plan to make it easier to buy a home.

The FHSA allows people who have excess money beyond what they can save in a TFSA to save tax money on income put aside for the specific purpose of saving to buy a first house, but on much worse terms than a TFSA. If you've maxed out your TFSA and have room to save in the HFSA, great, but its got a time limit and most people will have room in their TFSA already.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#289

Post by r00fus »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #119
rhaway84773 wrote: post #45

The Sweden story sounds so much like the SF story. Area doesn’t building housing, leading to a massive increase in house prices and a destruction of class mobility as the rich get richer (as their houses get more valuable) and the poor get poorer (as they pay more to rent the same living space). The growing wealth inequality leads to all sorts of other dysfunction including increased crime, worsening services, etc. a…

> The Sweden story sounds so much like the SF story. It sounds like the same story being repeated all over the world. There was someone on comments here on another thread talking about how this is a problem in Ireland now as well. It's not just SF in the US, it's all over the place. A friend recently told me about his search for a place to rent in rural western Washington and they said it was just impossible to find…

REITs buy up housing everywhere. That’s your answer - the wealthy elite need ways to keep making money.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#290

Post by satvikpendem »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #233
satvikpendem wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One interesting point regarding this is, ask anyone in the first world whether they want the same fairness as those not in the first world, ie if we added up all of the wages of everyone on the planet and redistributed them equally, the first worlder would be much much poorer than where they started off. Of course, I do support bringing up the average wages in each country overall, which is precisely what capitalism…

> if we added up all of the wages of everyone on the planet and redistributed them equally, the first worlder would be much much poorer than where they started off This point of 'most people only want what benefits them' is very shallow. You've set up the question for failure. You limited comparison to income, and to income just among labour class. If you actually setup the question correctly, you might find the resu…

Sure, let's redistribute those too.

> Capitalism has been dumping toxic waste from the west in developing nations, like used electronic and plastics

Well, I did talk about wages rising, specifically, and not environmental waste. But it really is true that developed countries now want many developing countries to stop their environmental damage right as they are industrializing, meanwhile discounting their own environmental damage in the centuries prior. The truth is that industrialization requires some sort of short term environmental damage (as long as we use fossil fuels still) but thankfully, many nations are using renewables, including the China you talk about. China's (and indeed most others') rise has only been through after adopting capitalist principles, look at their growth until the 80s, and then from the 80s to today. I don't agree that we should have non-interventionist capitalism, but I won't deny that capitalism has been the single greatest driver of prosperity in human history, even with all of its faults.

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