I think real estate has proven to be somewhat of a market failure when so much is taken up by landlords and investment firms driving up prices without providing much or any value. The pandemic has only made this worse as big firms ride out the storms and buy even more land on the cheap to rent back out at an obscene profit.
My parents used to pay $1000 a month in rent for a property that I know the taxes on amounted to maybe $3000 a year, and the landlord rarely did anything else than pay that tax. Sent a bargain basement repair guy out a few times to fix the heater maybe. That's 300% profit for nothing, pure rent seeking behavior. That's not good for society.
More needs to be done to encourage individual home ownership and discourage people having no choice but to send a third to half of their income into a black hole every month.
> That's 300% profit for nothing, pure rent seeking behavior.
The landlord suddenly woke up with a house in his name? He might be in the red as house prices / interest rates varies from person to person. No one knows.
> That's not good for society.
Let's create laws to transfer wealth from certain individuals to other individuals that fits our profile. That's good for "society".
> The landlord suddenly woke up with a house in his name? He might be in the red as house prices / interest rates varies from person to person. No one knows.
Well, have you heard of that old fashioned thing called feudalism? You know, with a certain land owning class?
Now, the US didn't have feudalism, but let's say that due to family, someone in your distant past managed to get lucky and buy a ton of very valuable land. Or buy very cheap properties. At this point, your family is practically a lighter version of landed gentry.
You'd be making each year a ton more than the property cost to build 60-80-whatever years ago, property taxes generally aren't that high, if the location is good people will live there even if the living conditions are crap (for example from lack of maintenance), etc.
> Let's create laws to transfer wealth from certain individuals to other individuals that fits our profile. That's good for "society".
Ummm... that's how taxes work. We generally transfer wealth from "certain individuals" (generally the well off, that can afford to have some of their wealth transferred), to "other individuals that fit our profile" (generally poor people, those without housing, etc.).
And yeah, in case that was not a rhetorical comment, yes, it's good for society. It's literally how modern societies are built.
No, taxes were to be paid for war, then infrastructure. It's only recently that taxes have been diverted to social welfare. I think the jury is still early on whether that will build civilization or result in its demise.
Capitalism combined with the current money system creates a class of humans that cannot work and receive a living wage even if they wanted. It's the failures of capitalism and zero lower bound fiat that created the need of social welfare. The idea that social welfare is the cause of problems is completely absurd. It's just one of the hundreds of symptoms of a handful of core problems.
For example, Germany is conducting an import deficit policy, meaning it is exporting more to Greece than it is importing from Greece leading to money flowing out of Greece. The capitalist answer is that the entire Greek population should move to Germany because that is where the jobs are. It's not just Greece, it also applies to every country that is poorer than Greece. We then get to enjoy the benefit of blaming the other nation for committing band aid policies like social welfare. Haha, they are so stupid, right?
I can list more second or third order effects of a broken monetary system but you will probably think that the demise will stem from the symptoms.
> The capitalist answer is that the entire Greek population should move to Germany because that is where the jobs are.
No, the capitalist answer would be to lower wages and costs by devaluing the currency and thus bringing in investment and jobs but that is impossible because Greece joined the EU and Euro. Greece's elite benefits from the EU slush fund and their money's value protected by the Euro but it's not so good for the country as a whole.
You mean land owners extorting the productive work out of the people that live near or on the land of that land owner? He did nothing to create the earth and he did nothing to conquer it.
He can keep the building and usage rights to the land, but he should never own the land.
We need a progressive land tax. Meaning people with a single property receive a low tax bill and large corporations with lots of land receive a much higher tax. I personally do not think this is optimal but it's politically impossible to do the correct thing of charging everyone the fair amount.
At least this watered down version of a land value tax will hit large corporations. Property taxes apply to corporations and individuals equally, but there are more home owners so they will vote for a tax policy that benefits corporations.
Without associated rules around buying/selling then land tax becomes a way for the state to control the populace by threatening to kick them off their own land. It's why I favour Georgism[1] but I do have doubts as I don't know it's ever been put into practice anywhere.
My parents used to pay $1000 a month in rent for a property that I know the taxes on amounted to maybe $3000 a year, and the landlord rarely did anything else than pay that tax. Sent a bargain basement repair guy out a few times to fix the heater maybe. That's 300% profit for nothing, pure rent seeking behavior. That's not good for society.
More needs to be done to encourage individual home ownership and discourage people having no choice but to send a third to half of their income into a black hole every month.