Live data from Hacker News

What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

bloomberg.com

551–560 of 687 posts

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

#551
post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I bring up the topic of Georgism or land value tax, people look at me like I am mentally ill. The idea of taxing the right to exclusive use over a piece of land - something that no human has ever put effort into existing - is so utterly foreign to most people. Unfortunate. There was a reform of the German property tax system, since the federal constitutional court ruled that the old system was unfair. The cu…

Thanks for the example, I didn’t know of any good examples of LVT. Hopefully it becomes more widespread. Unfortunately it’s not easy to understand why it is so effective, thus why people hear it and assume insanity.

I disagree with it not being easy to understand, on the contrary it makes perfect sense to me. We have the vast earth we live on as humanity and all the land was here long before us and will be here long after we are gone. Now we divide some of this land up and give people exclusive rights to it. How is it not absolutely intuitive to pay everyone else, who is not allowed to use this land, a fee, rent or tax or however you might want to call it, as compensation? In turn, if you use less land to reach the same goal, i.e. you make better, more efficient use, you pay less, just like with any other resource.

The more common "rebuttal" I hear is "well the land lords will just slap it onto the rent, so no use", to which I ask "then why don't they ask for more rent already if the rentors would be willing to pay?"

Then again, people I talk with are against a wealth tax as well, claiming that property would be impossible to account for and value, meanwhile France and Switzerland, two neighbours, have no issues in that regard. At the same time, both Germany and Austria had a wealth tax until very recently.

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

#552
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why the rich and those in charge of regulating and steering policy think it will not end bad for them too when masses could not afford the housing on the highly inflated prices fuelled by passive money drawn out of economy into "investment" (more like sleeping) properties, hence crashing housing prices all around making them loose a lot. And that all that living cost hikes will not exacerbate things further…

The solution for this will be CBDC - electronic programmable money and social credit score. The class of the ultra rich that has developed and controls the governments will use the poor as means of production - since they already own most of the economy, there is no longer any need for markets in the traditional sense, that we know. At one point if you have 100 billion, it doesn't matter if you have 101 or 200. The c…

It did not work in the history of isolated submissive societies, it will not work in the period of highly interacting and highly conscious global societies.

For their sake I hope the title of one Aerosmith song will not become reality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK__9UIN5gk

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

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If eastern Germany is still affordable like that then it might be for a reason. I'm not German, but you can't complain there's no affordable housing when there actually is, but you just don't want it. Just because you only want to move only to a specific city you like, that has the "right vibe", where others also want to live, it's not society's fault you're too picky and you think you're too good for other more aff…

This is just the just world fallacy in a post. If you lived in Germany you would understand that statements like this that you wrote: > doesn't make you a special snowflake worthy of the German society to turn itself upside down for you and roll the red carpet and make life super easy for you are utterly, utterly ridiculous. There is absolutely no risk whatsoever of Germany "rolling the red carpet" for immigrants. It…

> It's a fairly hostile place to be if you're not German even if you're white. It can also be hostile even if you're German but not white.

BS. If Germany were that hostile it wouldn't attract the biggest migration waves from non-white African and Middle Eastern countries in all of Europe. And now home to over one million Ukrainians.

>Let me tell you as someone who lives in Germany right now: the vast majority of 1M Syrian refugees will never, ever, ever integrate into German society.

Again, BS. Most Syrians I met spoke much better German than techie expats who were entitled enough to think that learning German is something beneath them, only mandatory for the lower classes of immigrants doing blue collar work, while they should be somehow exempt because they're special snowflakes who push code to git in English at work so the whole society should switch to English for their ~2% demographic of SW devs to accommodate their laziness of not bothering to integrate and learn the local language of their host country they choose to move into.

>Even if you change your name to Winfried and got C2 German, you'll still never be accepted here.

Again, more biased BS. I did my best to learn German and mostly hanged out, dated and socialized in German circles instead of English speaking expat circles so I could integrate better, and was always accepted and never discriminated by the Germans because I was a foreigner. I even became friends with people working at the German Government in Berlin or with kids of upper class Bavarians who owned vacation homes in Sylt or Austria. Of course you will find bigoted racists everywhere, but I found the Germans to be very friendly and inclusive if you show willingness to integrate.

How far do you think you'd go without English fluency as an immigrant in US or UK?

>As if Germany is doing everyone a favour by letting people move there. If there was no demographic crisis then immigration would be practically impossible. I am doing Germany a favour by moving here at least as much as they are doing me a favour by letting me.

Germany is a democratic country responsible to provide to the German citizens with voting rights. It's not a country founded by immigrants, like the US, who focuses on pandering to non-German immigrants. If Germany has decided it wants to commit demographic suicide then so be it, it's well within their rights to do so, what gives us foreigners the right to complain about it when we voluntarily chose to come here? Their country, their rules. No like? Vote with your feet and choose another country. Expats make the mistake of expecting Germany to be like Europe's USA.

Let's be real here, you didn't benevolently move to Germany to save their demographics like some superhero, but you did it because you found a good economic opportunity in doing so for yourself. Germany didn't kidnap you and bring you here against your will to save their economy, you voluntarily decide to come because it benefited you. Then it's our responsibility as guest to integrate in their society, and not vice versa.

Again, how far do you think you'd go without English fluency as an immigrant in US or UK?

>I'm an academic in a fairly obscure branch of physics so in this case I can categorically say that I do have those rare skills. Living in Germany mostly makes no sense if you're not German or not a refugee.

Then why are you staying in a country you feel doesn't like you? If you're such a special immigrant, why aren't you voting with your feet and moving to a country that is more accommodating to your kind?

Question: if you'd leave, would the German GDP or company you work for collapse in your absence? If not, maybe you're not as special as you think and the country is doing fine without you as well.

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

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There might be a pretty huge gap between incentivizing responsible people to create families and own property (these are very good things for a country and society) and forcing women to reproduce and with whomever the government assigns to them.

"Responsible people"

What I mean by that is using a deduction, not a credit. You aren’t paying people to have kids but rather incentivizing people that are financially independent by lowering their current tax burden while they have kids For poor people you continue to focus on helping with basics (food and shelter), family planning measures, and up-skilling towards becoming independent. Since a deduction probably isn’t helpful in these cases, a tax credit would continue to exist.

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

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really attracts people to those places? Cuisine? Night life? Tinder opportunities?

I want my kids to be around a variety of perspectives. The groupthink and pressure to conform in rural areas and small towns can be extreme.

Funnily enough the most narrow minded self-centered provincial people I know are in big cities.

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

#556
post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, I did not expect that city to be Newark .

When I went to Newark 20 years ago the road I was on looked like an abandoned waste land. Today the area has multi level family houses and looks more like a walkable area. Ascetically it looks much better - if it’s really a better place to live I don’t know. It’s likely it needed massive investor cash to rebuild so I’m honestly not surprised.

I went to college in Newark from 2006-2012. Essentially the beginning to the end of the Booker era. Yeah they make a big stink about the new developments and how Newark was "Revitalizing" itself.

Nonsense: It was a dump when I started and was still a dump when I left. The thing is you don't realize it until you have gone to a place that has not had Newark's issues. Only then do you realize how much further they have to go.

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

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economists are part of the problem. When the rich are getting richer and the poor work their asses off and still get poorer, then just about any solution is better and the more decent thing to do than keeping disagreeing about what is the best solution.

This is the exact same thinking that brought us the Four Pests campaign, or the cobra effect. They also thought that any solution was better and didn't think about the higher order consequences.

So instead of naming some higher order consequences, you just assume they will happen by invoking some random analogy?

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

#558
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it doesn't collapse, then society may collapse? Like the sibling comment mentioned, you can only push this too far, and I think it's pushed too far to be very alarming. And housing is expensive by design and not by constraint. I'm staying in KL, a comparatively cheap place by Western standards. The housing market is crap here from a seller perspective as you have an over-supply of condos. That, despite the large a…

A lot of service industry people can't afford a long commute. So even if the property is cheap X hours out, they still can't afford to live there. And that's how you get what you're seeing in many cities - uninhabited property deserts where the houses/apts are nominally inflating in value, but most people can't afford to live there. And those can afford it don't want to because there's no one around to keep the light…

It’s compulsory renting, not selling/purchase. Either way it’s yet another ridiculous move from the left ( in this case ) that doesn’t solve anything and it’s feasible only in the minds who never had a real job outside politics.

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

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "driving", you mean "helps create inequality", right? But inequality is already there. Someone now pays that high rent already; otherwise, landlords would lower prices to avoid empty units. You are competing with many people from all parts of the EU and, to an extent, the world for the same limited resource. Someone who built their startup and banked on it already came to Germany to work and live there because it…

Sofia is a dirty, badly maintained city. Quality of life is low, air is horrible and there's dirt/mud almost everywhere. It's pretty bad overall. But it's not dull, at all. Not bad for young folks because almost nobody cares about the things in their 20s. Plovdiv is 1000x better than Sofia in any conceivable way. Older, cleaner, cultured. Built on top of an ancient Roman city. It's by far the best big place in Bulgar…

This is mostly the question of tastes. I lived in Sofia for two months, mostly in the city center. For me an international mobility is important and I don't drive, so the well connected airport and good means of transportation towards it were paramount. Thus Plovdiv and also Varna and Burgas are not an option for me. But from the business perspective it is a real tax haven. Also, there is an IT community there, and offices of large companies including Microsoft and Uber.

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

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't claim "wait times" as a positive of letting a bunch of people die or go bankrupt i already covered that under 'access' . If you have access then USA has much lower wait times. Its postive to the people who have access. Your implication that wait times are just natural consequence of more access is also not right. "Commonwealth Fund ranked Canada last among 11 countries surveyed on wait times for specialis…

Yes, Canada's system has problems. But any system that discriminates based on class is automatically worse.

of-course, You are free to think that. Making absolute statements based on your gut feelings has no place in rational thinking.
Post reply on HN