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Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

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Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#121

Post by impossiblefork »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #69
impossiblefork wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the FBI contains part of the US government's attempts to counter spies and infiltrators, and my understanding is that it's seen as especially important that those people aren't easily bribable.

I would think domestic bribes would be far more likely. Less risk to the agent due to less exposure to a high profile failure. If an agent gets pinched for taking bribes from a business owner or a local sheriff, it's not as big of a scandal as if they took foreign money. And probably easier to set up in the first place.

But what would the motive be there?

I don't think the scandal would be the main concern. The main concern would the life imprisonment that treason/spying, when discovered, usually leads to.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#122

Post by oneshtein »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #64
mrktf wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is broader problem to solve, not taking account any civil infrastructure the houses will be bought by corporate rent company and renters will be charged "fair price" - pretty same as now (not long ago the was article with discussion about rent price fixing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39575803 )

The root cause is the state or local govt preventing new housing. If there were enough housing, rent fixing wouldn't even make a dent.

The root cause is that houses are built for decades. It's impossible to plan ahead at this timescale. The alternative is to make standard places for stackable houses, with flexible infrastructure (electricity, water, sewer, road, parking space) to fulfil demand in days, instead of decades.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#123

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

nurple wrote: post #104
s1artibartfast wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Penalizing landlords would lead to greater shortages and mass homelessness of would be renters. The houses simply would not be built. You can't have a right to housing without taking away the right to property. Renters are a Group that are already unprofitable to lend to, so banks would reject most and hike rates higher for the rest. Your proposal only makes sense if landlords provide no service, but this isnt true.…

I'm sorry, but selling the landlord's literal rent seeking as a value to anyone but themselves is just blatant antisocial shilling.

Can we please stop talking about "rent seeking" in economics before we learn what it actually means? kthanxbai

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#124

Post by haburka »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #91
buro9 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also caused by the idea that housing should be an asset to make someone else money, rather than solely a place in which a person/family can live. This leads to the AirBnB culture, the landlord culture, and compounds inequality whilst driving unaffordability. I'm sure the idea is abhorrent to the USA, but perhaps removing incentives to be a landlord at every step should be considered... mortgages should be puniti…

Penalizing landlords would lead to greater shortages and mass homelessness of would be renters. The houses simply would not be built. You can't have a right to housing without taking away the right to property. Renters are a Group that are already unprofitable to lend to, so banks would reject most and hike rates higher for the rest. Your proposal only makes sense if landlords provide no service, but this isnt true.…

You should check out what China did about landlords in the 20th century! It turns out that a lot of what you’re suggesting isn’t nearly as true as you might think. However there solution was a bit “break some eggs to make an omelet” but it seems like it worked out pretty well.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#125

Post by dragontamer »

nurple wrote: post #118
dragontamer wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US lawmakers make millions of dollars beyond their salaries 1. For those where this is true, this is a MAJOR problem. 2. For those where this is false, this means that we're underpaying lawmakers severely. > The paycheck simply isn’t a significant factor in whether or not someone wants to be a senator or representative. Should it? I think the primary pay of Senators / Representatives should be their paycheck. Not d…

Or we could just abolish representative government that was created to work around limitations in the predominant communication tech at the time, horseback. The corruption does feel inevitable here as we sit and watch the federal gov rob the country blind while shamelessly enriching their families. No, I wouldn't take a rep's job for even $500k/year, and neither will anyone with the moral mettle to make changes, exac…

> More money is not a solution to greed and self-dealing.

Less money causes self-dealing behavior though. Because now there's widespread acceptance that the only way a $180k wage is worthwhile for our leadership class is if they take widespread bribes.

Drop the wages enough, and even FBI agents are going to have to self-deal to make their positions worthwhile taking. Be glad its only on the leadership class for now.

> Or we could just abolish representative government that was created to work around limitations in the predominant communication tech at the time, horseback.

That's not a serious discussion point until you say what you're replacing it with.

My discussion point is pretty simple. Raise wages on the top-end scale of government (ex: Senators, Congressmen, and executives like FBI Director) to $300k, raise the top end GS-scale to $280k, and let the rest of the GS scale flow naturally from that down to the bottom.

As I said before, the GS system and overall compensation of the government is actually fine. Its just that the top-end number is far too low, in part because of our ridiculously low wages that we grant to our top-level officials.

--------

> No, I wouldn't take a rep's job for even $500k/year, and neither will anyone with the moral mettle to make changes

I'd maybe consider it. But $180k is so low that I'd never consider it.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#126

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #34
buzzy_hacker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In NYC, you typically need to earn 40x the monthly rent in annual income to not need a guarantor. 73k / 40 = $1825/month in rent. The median 1 bedroom apartment in NYC is $3,263 according to Zillow https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/new-york...

you're saying people look at gross income to determine if someone can rent a place rather than net ?

It's just a heuristic to determine basic qualification: it's up to the renter to determine what they can afford once they're basically qualified.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#127

Post by wizzwizz4 »

hackerlight wrote: post #62
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houses are also not fungible. If people have a reason to live in a particular area (e.g., work, jurisdictional issues), and housing isn't regulated, you get places like Kowloon: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/a/a7/...

The most extreme example the world has to offer is not representative of what would happen if the US legalized housing. HK has almost 200x the population density of the US and almost 100x the population density of California.

Slums can be found in nearly every country's history. Housing regulations are important: it's zoning restrictions that cause availability problems, not quality regs, and it's important to make the distinction. (When your community is exempt from zoning regulations, you can do things about the problem: https://macleans.ca/society/sen%CC%93a%E1%B8%B5w-vancouver)

But zoning restrictions on housing maintain the prices of existing real-estate "investments" (see https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/housing-should-be-afford...). We're not going to have change until real-estate owners abandon the idea that housing is supposed to be profitable.

(Btw, I still think "don't build on floodplains"-type restrictions are important, even though those are also zoning restrictions.)

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#128

Post by listenallyall »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #113
listenallyall wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be one cause, in some towns and cities, but it is far from universal. For one thing, demand growth has accelerated in many places, so building homes at a historic rate went from sufficient to meet to demand, to insufficient. You have flippers taking low-priced homes off the market, and you have AirBnb'ers taking other homes off the market (or not selling theirs when they move). There are higher expectations…

> but it is far from universal None of what you said contradicts that. Supply is always measured relative to demand.

You wrote: "The root cause is the state or local govt preventing new housing."

And I'm saying supply and demand can get out of whack for reasons that have nothing to do with the government, they can even get misaligned under pro-growth policies.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#129

Post by s1artibartfast »

haburka wrote: post #124
s1artibartfast wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Penalizing landlords would lead to greater shortages and mass homelessness of would be renters. The houses simply would not be built. You can't have a right to housing without taking away the right to property. Renters are a Group that are already unprofitable to lend to, so banks would reject most and hike rates higher for the rest. Your proposal only makes sense if landlords provide no service, but this isnt true.…

You should check out what China did about landlords in the 20th century! It turns out that a lot of what you’re suggesting isn’t nearly as true as you might think. However there solution was a bit “break some eggs to make an omelet” but it seems like it worked out pretty well.

It is also worth noting that Maoist policy lead to nationwide starvation, and nearly all of it ended up being backpedaled.

What part do you think worked out well?

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#130

Post by snird »

kilotaras wrote: post #59

Housing theory of everything[0] strikes again. Situation: Housing demand outstrips housing supply. First order effect: housing prices go up Second order effect: your FBI agents are now experiencing financial instability and worries Third order effect: your FBI agents are now more susceptible to bribes [0] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...

I expected the third step to be "shortage of FBI agents lead to deteriorated quality of service".

But what you described is far more scary.

And this is obviously true for all jobs that hold power. Combine it with bribery that can come from actors like Russia, Qatar, or China - this is an issue that must be fixed now.

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