Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains • Hacker News Board

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#131

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 4:21 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #48

raziel2p wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple one would be progressive tax on house ownership. For each house/apartment/whatever you own, you pay N% more tax on it than the previous one.

But the higher taxes are then transoformed into higher rents, while at the same time, you still need more housing units in many areas.

You're assuming the market will bear the higher rents. If that is true, why aren't rents already at that higher level? Not all costs can simply be "passed on to customers" if they won't bear the increase.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#132

Post by solatic » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #46

solatic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single-payer. One government agency is permitted to purchase construction of additional units, and also manage the long-term rental (pricing set at auction) of those units in a rent-to-own model, where "own" means the right to live in that unit rent-free until you die, at which point control reverts to the government agency, combined with laws that forbid owning/renting multiple residences. Add in some allowances lik…

This is sort of how social housing used to work in the UK ("council houses"), but with additional restrictions on private ownership that are politically very hard. > right to live in that unit rent-free until you die This is very bad for labour mobility. It's a hukou system for retirees.

> This is very bad for labour mobility. It's a hukou system for retirees.

This is unfortunately a political requirement for passage. There are very, very few people 60+ who have lived in the same place for 20+ years who are willing to leave their houses, and most who do are dragged into nursing homes only because they are no longer physically capable of taking care of themselves.

The rent-to-own period can and should be quite long, like 30-40 years, similar to a mortgage. But the quality of "nobody can take my property away from me" is quite strongly felt, and not one that you can really take away from people. Any radical housing reform must respect that.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#133

Post by lamontcg » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

It isn't just housing, it is also the medical system and education.

These things that basically everyone needs are not getting cheaper over time but are getting more expensive so that they vacuum up as much money as possible.

(And it looks like vehicles/transportation is going to go this way as well, with companies licensing all the software in the vehicles to customers on a yearly subscription basis)

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#134

Post by tharmas » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 4:51 PM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #13

This story is being repeated across countries and cities. It really is high time there is some serious regulation around home ownership, especially as an investment vehicle. I would even say this is an existential issue for our current civilizational model - the unaffordability of housing is contributing to demographic decline globally.

[flagged]

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#135

Post by tharmas » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

candiodari wrote: post #72

badcppdev wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantity and value of properties. Which also means a wealth tax. To be clear I'm 100% in favour of this. The current economic trickle-up system is starting to cause serious problems. Large sections of populations everywhere are increasingly shut out of the capitalist system because they do not have ANY access to capital.

But does it matter? The way housing problems were always fixed was very simple and without any kind of tax: with the government building social housing, allocated according to social principles (you pay the same, but the size of the apartment is determined by the number of kids you have). A LOT of non-luxury housing. This has nearly stopped. These buildings were famously bad. First, they tended to be unfair and viola…

I agree. Its not a problem free solution but its the only one that seems to be effective at reducing homelessness and increasing affordability.

Post WW2 in the UK the gov't built a lot of social housing that was successful. Sure there were some failures too (eg tower blocks), but I believe those were built much later.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#136

Post by traverseda » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #130

cableshaft wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People usually own multiple properties (outside of main home/vacation home, at least) to rent them to others. So they will just pass that cost to their renters, and make rent more expensive. Although I guess there could be some number of properties where that becomes untenable as well.

If they could simply "pass that cost to their renters" why wouldn't they just raise rents to that level now, absent any tax increase? The point of this progressively increasing tax would be to raise the landlord's costs to the point where the market actually cannot bear a rent increase--which would disincentivize using the property as an investment.

Presumably it's a coordination problem. If everyone raises rent you can too. If your rent is abnormally high you'll either have a hard time finding tenants or get abnormal tenants.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#137

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:23 PM UTC

traverseda wrote: post #136

ryandrake wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they could simply "pass that cost to their renters" why wouldn't they just raise rents to that level now, absent any tax increase? The point of this progressively increasing tax would be to raise the landlord's costs to the point where the market actually cannot bear a rent increase--which would disincentivize using the property as an investment.

Presumably it's a coordination problem. If everyone raises rent you can too. If your rent is abnormally high you'll either have a hard time finding tenants or get abnormal tenants.

But in this scheme, not every landlord will have the increased tax and thus need to raise rent--only the ones with many properties. So that behavior becomes disincentivized.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#138

Post by fallingknife » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

fatfingerd wrote: post #88

fallingknife wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody who doesn't want to: - put up a ton of capital - take housing price risk - enter into a long term commitment - deal with maintenance and repairs - deal with selling my investment every time I move And that includes me. I want to rent. I want the landlord to take care of all that crap for me. And I'm tired of all these people complaining about it.

Yes, a nonprofit group running/developing a housing area and renting to its members is much nicer than having to own at least a condo and then dealing with a bunch of bank/lawyer/realtor nonsense every time you want to move.

I don't want to be a member of a non profit housing group. Sounds like an HOA but made worse by the sanctimony and lack of incentives of people who work for non profits. I just want to hand over my money to a landlord and not think about it. My only considerations are what I pay and what I get in return. How much the landlord is making isn't at all relevant to me.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#139

Post by fallingknife » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

rhaway84773 wrote: post #75

pjc50 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One residential property per person"? Or the more reasonable one owned + max one let out? ( Some holiday lets are entirely legit and necessary for some local economies, but the politics of that is very complicated and site-specific.)

No, holiday lets are not legit. The world has survived most of its existence without needing holiday lets. Because it has hotels. Hotels that do not take up residential properties and pay appropriate taxes, etc. and prevent overtourism whixh has become one of the biggest issues in most tourist places. You can eliminate holiday let’s and the world will do just fine. Any legitimate loss will be minor.

Exactly. There are some places in the world that only rich people able to purchase multi million dollar houses should be allowed to be. We'll allow a few proles in to work for us and put them in subsided housing away from us so they know their place.

The only problem is these pesky single digit millionaires thinking they can somehow come here to our neighborhood for a month. I paid good money to live here so I wouldn't have to be around those upjumped peasants, but now airbnb rentals are letting them in by the thousands and ruining it. If you can't pay $1000 a night for a hotel, you're not the sort that belongs here. We'll call it "overtourism" to make it seem like they're the problem and not our own insufferable snobbery.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#140

Post by fallingknife » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

wildrhythms wrote: post #82

raziel2p wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think we still need to build more (correctly sized) housing, counteract urbanization, provide social housing, and I'm in favor of rent control in general. So don't get me wrong, I don't think progressive tax will solve the problem on its own. That being said: Higher taxes could lead to higher rents, but that stops working once the supply of people willing to pay said higher rent is exhausted. At some point landl…

All that and no mention of rent control...

Yes let's trap people in apartments they can never move from and force newcomers to pay excessive rents to cover it. Also let's give landlords an incentive to try to make it as unpleasant for those long term tenants as possible.

And of course we will need an expensive and unaccountable bureaucracy to manage all the inevitable conflicts of interest. But it's a small price to pay to avoid the horror of building enough housing units to match population growth.