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Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
371–380 of 817 posts
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#372Housing is another one of these systems (I don't have a name for), but once you have a house, you really don't care about many of the ills. The same for immigration. The same for college admission. The same for many jobs. Once you have what you want, the default is to not do anything to improve the system.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think taxes stopped making sense since 1971 when the USD became a fully fiat currency. if the government can print money, what's the point of collecting money through taxes?
Countries that try to print money instead of collecting taxes usually end up with pretty bad inflation.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#374In my opinion, I think the housing crisis in the US is mostly down to the limitations of our legal constructs of property. Right now, you basically own your house, including the land and its other rights, as a whole rather than as a condition of occupancy. In this way, it means that any house, especially in popular areas, are always a good bet and will rarely lose value. As the owners of housing continue to reap benefits beyond the scope of occupancy, everyone else is effectively paying interest to live. In my view, there needs to be a complete re-work of property norms surrounding housing but the chances of that happening is probably zero at this point in history.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I suggested nationwide mail-in voting as a solution. A national holiday might help some workers, but not all. Gas stations still need staffed, etc.
Realistically, how would that work for these same group of people? They'd have to know well in advance that they would need postal ballots and complete and return them in advance of election day. Would shift workers working multiple jobs be best served by mail-in voting? tbf I'm not sure if there is a better way, but it seems relying on mail-in ballots helps some people and alienates a different group of people.
I was imagining the ballots would be auto-shipped based on voter rolls (which get updated with DMV records in many states - this should also be mandatory).
So, check mail box as normal. Receive ballot. Research candidates (or not) and fill out. Drop in the mailbox. Not much different than paying paper bills.
Who were you imagining would be alienated by mail-in voting?
We could do mandatory extended timeframe/hours in-person voting but that costs a lot more (paying to staff the sites, rent locations because you can't just borrow a school cafeteria for a day like we do now, etc).
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
YIMBYism simultaneously raises prices (presumably for the greedy developers and sellouts) and lowers them (for the noble neighborhood defenders who are forced to sell). Got it.
I'm going to ignore your presumptions (your "greedy developers and sellouts) and things I did not say (like "YIMBYism lowers prices for noble neighborhood defenders who are forced to sell"), so basically every word and try to find the spirit of your comment. It's pretty difficult to fit a massive apartment building on a house sized plot between two massive apartment buildings. The prices you will be offered are not w…
I think the contradictions are pretty clear: it raises prices, but holdouts sell cheap; it's a shit neighborhood that no one wants to live in because it's too crowded...
And the hypothetical boxed-in holdout scenario is simply not representative of what's happening in high demand areas in the US. We're preserving laundromats and parking lots in San Francisco and Manhattan. No one is trying to build towers in the middle of suburbia.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#377Housing in the US has gotten to where it is due to horrible laws effectively allowing total tax avoidance for landlords. Take some investment property. You buy it at some basis price, let's say 500k. You rent it out for 15k a year. Each year you can offset your rental income against deprecation of the property and property taxes - meaning, you pay no income tax on your rental income. ~30 years later, you've deprecate…
You don't write off your rental income. You depreciate the rental property over 27½ years and write that off against your rental income. Few rental properties will have under a 3.7% ROI where depreciation would cover all the income. At best you might be paying half tax. In your example, you'd pay no tax, but you'd lose out on the potential income you could have had with better investments (and lose about 6 years' wor…
We need a third party to validate both of your claims, because I don't know where to start to understand who is right. This is an example of someone (me) who wants to understand the issue, but would need to google for days to understand both arguments.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#378Have we considered just building new cities? It would be cool if the state could run a contest, have a rural county sign up to reform their zoning laws, and in exchange receive 100 year tax relief guarantees from the state to build a new city. America used to build new cities from scratch all the time up until WW2. This creates competition between cities (new entrants) resulting in better policies all around. And the…
I wouldn't be surprised if Musk tries this. Seems like there's some land in Idaho or around that part that he could move all his companies to and his cult of personality might follow.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#379You want housing prices to cave? Jump property taxes for landlords (short-term rentals included) and you'll see a shit ton of houses on the market tomorrow.
How would that help the rental market? Wouldn't landlords just pass on the price increase to renters?
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#380A couple ideas for how to fix some real estate problems: 1. A zoning rule that requires home owners to live in the owned home. This would prevent remote/foreign money from meddling with local housing in particular areas, and prevents big corps from buying up all the homes and forcing people to lease them out. Some people want to lease though, so that's why I think it's more appropriate as a zoning tool for particular…
>A zoning rule that requires home owners to live in the owned home.
This would reduce the housing stock.
The way capitalism works is that some people have excess capital, and they invest it. Housing is one such investment. People don't need multiple houses to live in, so multi-property owners rent out their investments, which is great because there are many people that can only afford renting, not buying.