151–160 of 174 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Real estate, being a straightforward investment attracts those who couldn't be making more money at pretty much any other type of investment. Hence you get the most clueless people managing the properties.
Putting your money in an index fund will probably make more money than the average real estate investment.
How about: US citizens saved $34B by not having to stay in the highest COL areas? Why should we sympathize with a minority of rent-seekers?
The average New Yorker has a mere one-third of the carbon emissions as the average American. This is really bad for the climate overall. Dense city living is very efficient; living in the suburbs and driving everywhere is not. NYC is the densest city we have.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything gives room for corruption and incompetence. The problem is the US has some of the most incompetent government on a local level in the developed world. Part of it is American individualism, part of it is the Republican party starving the beast, part of it is the government as a giant jobs program. There is no reason we cannot have competent civil servants, long term planning, clean cities, etc. I'm complete…
> The problem is the US has some of the most incompetent government on a local level in the developed world. Part of it is American individualism, part of it is the Republican party starving the beast, part of it is the government as a giant jobs program. Blaming individualism and "the Republican Party" is bizarre in connection with a complaint about "incompetent government on a local level." Almost all of the local…
But I'm mostly with you. I'm kind of dumbfounded by how much attention gets paid to national/federal policing policy, where change is essentially impossible to achieve, when most people live in suburbs, where 2-3 seats on a village or township board can result in nearly arbitrary policing policy changes for that suburb. Swing House seats are a million-dollar proposition; a village board seat in Oak Park might go for less than $5000 invested.
A serious theory of change, and one I think more credible than passing any kind of new federal law: get reformer village boards elected in a scattering of suburbs, get them to pass sharp, meaningful policies (an end to no-knocks, crisis intervention teams, or dream big and have the police stop doing routine traffic enforcement), then prove them out. I've been watching Chicagoland village board meetings for the past couple months, and the modal question that seems to come in policy discussions is "what are the neighboring suburbs doing". Start there! See if you can get a snowball rolling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putting your money in an index fund will probably make more money than the average real estate investment.
Looking at the returns alone is an incomplete picture; a huge part of being a real estate investor is having clever tricks at your disposal to reduce your taxes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an interesting point of view Don't you think it's exactly the high taxes that give space for corruption and incompetence? Once you accumulate a large pool of money (especially if it's someone else money), the larger the pool, the easier it is to waste it. We see it with governments, big tech companies, VC funded startups, even when pooling money for a road trip with friends. I think the enemy is human nature a…
> Don't you think it's exactly the high taxes that give space for corruption and incompetence? No. We know what causes corruption - lack of oversight. Its why you see very little of it in the federal government, but that same oversight is also why federal projects are expensive. Everything must be documented and accounted for. As far as incompetence in government, that's easy... smart people can't stand being constra…
Compare the big cities to the small well off cities in the Bay Area. Go see how much oversight is in the big cities versus the small cities. Then look at the level of corruption.
Now compare the amount corruption in the military industrial complex to the state governments.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking at the returns alone is an incomplete picture; a huge part of being a real estate investor is having clever tricks at your disposal to reduce your taxes.
Could you please share some examples?
sell building for 2 million. buy another building for 2 million.
0 taxes paid on growth. and new basis is 2 million.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point is that I do not find it remarkable for that number to be higher than 25% during this period, nor would it be remarkable if more of that churn of people were moving in and out of the city rather than within. (you misrepresent what I said about that). So the article's reporting fits within my expectation - also noting that a net change of 70,000 people is very small. The voter rolls will significantly lag out…
Everything you're saying here is reasonable/plausible. But it's not at all what the linked article says; it says that there was 40% turn-over of people leaving and entering the city, which is absurd. The first sentence is literally "Millions of people have moved out of New York City during the pandemic, but at the same time, millions of others with lower incomes have taken their place". Not moved within the city, mov…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you please share some examples?
invest 1 million in a building, raise its value to 2 million. sell building for 2 million. buy another building for 2 million. 0 taxes paid on growth. and new basis is 2 million.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem is the US has some of the most incompetent government on a local level in the developed world. Part of it is American individualism, part of it is the Republican party starving the beast, part of it is the government as a giant jobs program. Blaming individualism and "the Republican Party" is bizarre in connection with a complaint about "incompetent government on a local level." Almost all of the local…
There's a lot of truth in that, but it's not strictly true. The Obama DOJ pursued and enforced consent decrees over a bunch of local police departments; the incoming Republican DOJ announced that they were backing away from them. Certainly, national politics has some influence over local policing. But I'm mostly with you. I'm kind of dumbfounded by how much attention gets paid to national/federal policing policy, whe…
And yet, rayiner's comment appeared faded-out from down-voting when I came upon it.
And that's the real problem. He had truth and thoughtfulness in his comment (yeah, you can quibble about federal attempts to override local policy), yet even a smart group of people like regular HN users tribalistically downvoted it. Rayiner sinned by making a coherent argument against throwing Republicans under the bus for metro-area problems.
We are a tribalistic society and it's only getting worse. Trump said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and his supporters would defend him. He was probably right. When evidence of Biden's family corruption surfaced before the election, the media and tech giants actively suppressed and subverted the information.
Ending no-knock warrants or shuffling around police roles just eats away at the edges of the problem. If as a society, we can't find ways to get at truth and logic that cuts through the dynamics that push tribalism, we're doomed to a never-ending race toward the drain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you're calling de-gentrification isn't really the opposite of gentrification. Gentrification is the destruction of long-standing neighborhoods and the displacement of poor people, who may have no good place to go and lose their support structures. Often, those poor people rent their homes/apartments, and so they don't benefit from the increase in prices. Their rent just goes up until they have to leave. Rich peo…
So in summary no matter what rich people do, they're the problem.
There are a lot of things that rich people can do besides displace poor people. Maybe you can think of some.