…
[crashes through closed pane glass window]
[actually still grunching]
LOL AND ALSO WHO IN T F IS TRYING TO PRETEND LIKE MONEY IS REAL UP IN HERE?!?
I plan on reading this all because Sabo is one of my favorite posters but I keep putting it off as I think it will depress me.
Wanna take a quick grunching guess at how many direct responses my (slight) effort post got?
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I know you think that post was a slam dunk victory, which is why you felt the need to gloat about it 5 times already, but really it’s just not that interesting or persuasive. I’ll take a quick crack at it.
Obviously absurd in a world where house-flipping is a thing. This is also something that potentially requires much less capital than you think to start doing.
Sure mostly agree. Although when I add a 3rd floor to my house I’m literally creating living space out of thin air.
Sure, but it is important to accept that it doesn’t always work that way. What you are really arguing against is investing in general, not landlords. So goodbye stocks, goodbye lending, goodbye art, goodbye making any sort of purchase with appreciation/depreciation in mind.
You seem to have this stumbling block over the idea of “network effects,” as it’s an argument you often use in favor of breaking up Amazon and Facebook. But network effects is a concept that exists in almost any industry, it’s really just the demand version of “economies of scale.” “Critical mass” is as important in retail as it is in media as it is in city planning. I have no idea how you plan on capturing the value from it in order to make sure no one can profit off it. And while it’s clear that Amazon the company benefits from network effects, it’s just as clear that users of Amazon and Facebook benefit extremely from it as well.
That’s why despite all the hate here, Amazon is really freaking popular. 91%.
This…applies to 99% of things that people own. It’s one of the beauties of specialization (you have an econ degree just like I do iirc).
Remodeling or refurbishing a house is not appreciation and neither is buying below market at any auction or something like that and selling it with better marketing.
If you do the work.
Lol
What if I pay someone to remodel it?
You said absolutely nothing to refute what you were arguing against. The contention is that the person who hires the worker is not creating anything. You just stated that they are and pretended that scored a point.
Now you’re starting a huge discussion over again.
No thanks. This is past the limit of what can be accomplished in this setting.
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To clarify, the point is houses don’t just appreciate on their own the way land does. Obviously if you put time, effort and money into a house you can increase it’s value but a heap of bricks is never just worth more for no reason, that’s not how entropy works. My bad for not being clear but this is not a valid counter example.
If you’re a totally passive investor and your returns are above inflation something is very wrong with the system. No matter what you invest in.
In general I agree it’s tricky though I think that when a business incorporates that a % of the dividend paying equity should be held in trust and used for the social good. That would go some way towards redressing the unearned value. In the housing market it’s very simple. When you sell your house the difference between the buy price and the sell price (in real terms) less any genuine improvements you can show you’ve made is the amount of value that “we” have added to your house and that’s the amount we should take in taxes. It’s not your value, it belongs to us. If you buy a house for £200k, do £20ks worth of improvements and then in 10 years sell it for the equivalent of £300k (inflation adjusted) we take £80k to feed starving people and provide hospitals etc.
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30% of people have zero or negative wealth outside that in their primary residence. Your plan is to help them by lowering their net worth?
My plan is to help the people where the wealth they generate is currently being stolen from them because they don’t happen to own a parcel of land.
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And those 30% who own a home but no other wealth? What happens to them?
They still own a home. It’s exactly the same house.
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When they retire they sell that house move into a smaller house, now that the kids are gone, and live off the equity they built over the years.
Your plan makes them much poorer.
and the plan to prevent people robbing banks makes criminals much poorer. Did they steal the value or not? I mean luckily for them when they retire they will be getting fantastic benefits and free healthcare, government sponsored affordable housing and so much more. All paid for by the unearned wealth. The money doesn’t vanish they’ll get it back in services (which further raises land values kerching!)
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Who is buying these homes, with increased value to be siphoned off as taxes, at sale? Where did they get the money?
The people who want houses will buy them and they’ll pay what the houses are worth. Where does anyone get money? You want me to explain like where money comes from?
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What about sustenance in your little dreamland utopia, Miss Pollyanna? What are people gonna do — ingest nutrients? Huh?
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