Western countries (such as OP's, and mine) have been counter-acting lowering birth rates with higher immigration rates. It's become a political issue in Australia now with a housing and a cost of living-crisis, in times of record-level immigration [1]. It doesn't look like OP accounts much for that.
Yes, overall birth rates might be going down, but that doesn't mean that there will be fewer people where OP lives. Chances are the rest of the world wants to live where OP lives. I don't see Australian house prices going down any time soon, and I don't see these trends reverse in my lifetime. And I'm not even that old!
Exactly. In the EU, most hot cities have become prohibitively expensive in terms of rental and purchase prices, basically because that is where most jobs are. I don't see a reversal of this trend happening anytime soon, unless there is a massive shift towards remote work. If anything, I think things are becoming worse.
I wish I was wrong, as it is a nightmare. Before COVID, a nice rental in the Oxbridge area would cost 1/3 of an average salary. Fast forward to 2024, it is now 1/2. Lot's of people are struggling. I heard the buy-to-let era was over, and that the market was cooling down, but I don't see that turning into lower prices.
ReleaseCandidat 13 days ago [-]
And even if the population decreases, still (almost) everybody has to live in one of the big cities or centers of tourism to get a job. The irony is that only wealthier people, who can work remotely, can afford to live in villages where living costs are low. Because there is (almost) no work and (almost) no young people live there (any more).
nradov 13 days ago [-]
There are plenty of jobs for oil and gas workers in North Dakota. Plastics manufacturing is booming in rural Ohio.
ReleaseCandidat 13 days ago [-]
Even if somebody would have been talking about the US, I would call neither "North Dakota" nor "Ohio" villages. Both are bigger than many european countries, and you certainly are going to find regions were the population increases and some where it decreases.
jelkand 13 days ago [-]
Well, North Dakota is pretty close. It is indeed very large but its population is only slightly larger than Luxembourg.
appplication 13 days ago [-]
As rural jobs grow, so too do prices[1]. I don’t think this trend is still there, but that’s also because the job market is not as strong as it was during the fracking boom.
If there were meaningful numbers of well paying jobs in inexpensive rural places, they would cease to be either rural or inexpensive.
Nobody wants to live in those places, we just complain that it is too expensive in San Francisco and Vancouver
km3r 13 days ago [-]
This is so wrong. US population growth rate, including immigrants, has been trending down for decades. Even the raw number has hovered around 2M per year. While building technologies, number of laborers, and financing has mostly grown over the same time too. We managed to build enough housing to hold the next 2M population generation before, we should absolutely be able to do it today.
vinyl7 13 days ago [-]
Can, but wont
al_borland 14 days ago [-]
>Remote work eliminates the need to live close to work, which means the entire world becomes potential housing land supply
In theory, this is true. In practice, it seems people working from home want to be near stuff that can get them out of their homes, so they don’t feel so isolated being at home all the time. Work isn’t the only thing a city offers.
jen729w 14 days ago [-]
True, but in Melbourne, Australia, this has meant an explosion of cafes in the suburbs.
It used to be that most people travelled in to the CBD for work. Hence very expensive housing the closer you were to the city.
I don’t think house prices have adjusted yet, but your local shops have. Anecdotally I hear from people all over the place who say that their local shops have had a boost thanks to the increase in weekday traffic.
jacobn 13 days ago [-]
Which probably corresponds to a loss of foot traffic to restaurants & shops in the cities' downtowns. This is very visible in SF.
whateveracct 13 days ago [-]
The thing is The City isn't the end all be all.
For instance, there are a dozen western WA towns and cities smaller & cheaper than Seattle that are full of stuff to do. Bars, restaurants, museums, parks, arcades, etc. And Seattle itself is a 30-60 min drive away from all of them depending on traffic.
Swizec 14 days ago [-]
I work from home. It’s very nice that the gym I go to daily is a 10min bicycle ride away (faster than driving), the farmers market is a 30min walk, there’s 3 large grocery stores in a 15min walk radius, I’ll never discover all the bars and restaurants I can reach with a quick bicycle ride let alone a short Uber, and there’s even a major international airport 20min away by car. Oh and I can run to the Golden Gate Bridge in about an hour.
Cities are nice.
Oh and there are 2 or 3 elementary schools and countless daycares within a 20min walk as well.
__turbobrew__ 13 days ago [-]
I moved from Vancouver to a rural area due to remote work. It goes both ways.
master_crab 14 days ago [-]
Yeah this is something I have noticed the last few years. Remote work cuts both ways. Someone in NYC can now do their job in Cleveland. But someone in Cleveland might decide to try and do their job someplace more exciting like NYC.
And while people working originally Cleveland based jobs may not get as much money as an NYC based job, there are apparently enough high paying jobs (and trust funds) to support people moving into places like NYC.
solatic 13 days ago [-]
Or, don't invest in real estate because, if you're not supremely wealthy, purchasing a house will both drastically concentrate / un-diversify your holdings and result in you spending multiple years of earnings (hundreds of thousands of dollars) on mortgage interest. You not only need for the house to continue increasing in value, you need it to increase in value above what you paid in mortgage interest, above what you pay in transaction related expenses (real estate agent commissions etc.), above the cost of capital improvement (i.e. repairs), above the return you would have earned on the money had you invested it instead of paying mortgage interest, plus an expected rate of return on the entire property that you would need to actually sell, which is illiquid, and you may find that you would want or need to sell at an inconvenient time, i.e. when interest rates are high, making it more difficult to realize a return.
Sure, you don't need to pay rent to a landlord, or moving fees. But if/when purchase prices are so far out of whack compared to rents, it's better to invest the difference in your diversified portfolio instead. And if you really want to invest in real estate, you can invest it in real estate ETFs instead, which are more liquid and do not require such a large financial outlay as to concentrate your portfolio.
Don't get me wrong, there are other reasons to buy a house. But they're usually emotional, not financial.
anonzzzies 13 days ago [-]
As a hedge for tech I have been doing up and flipping houses: I agree with OP mostly for the long term but you can make a few 100k on the side in the eu by flipping if you have cash. I personally hate renting out and having guests which is what most people do here; I buy for 50k, do up for 20k and sell for 200. Holding on is lame unless you live in it imho.
s5300 13 days ago [-]
[dead]
reify 13 days ago [-]
Some basic facts.
10 years ago one person buys a house for £100K
10 years ago one person buys a house for £250K
They both buy their houses in accordance with the level of income they earn.
The person who bought the £100K home could not afford the £250K home.
10 years later house prices have increased by 100%.
The person who's home is now worth £200K still cannot afford the house which is now worth £500K even though, on paper he is £100k richer.
The person who owns the £200K home can only buy the expensive £500K house if he increases his mortgage which involves increasing their earning capacity.
Back in 1982 I bought my first home for £29,500 (cheap as chips) with a 25 year mortgage. The mortgage adviser said that over the 25 year period I would pay back £160,000 in interest. 42 years later that same house is on the market for £360,000.
On paper I am considerably richer today than I was 42 years ago. This is meaningless. I have no access to that money. I cannot just sell my home and have loads of cash in my bank account. I would be homeless. I cannot buy a cheaper home because my home was cheap when I bought it and is still cheap.
As a 25 year old I loved my new home. I looked around at all the more expensive homes and thought that one day I would buy one of them. Naively misunderstanding that as my home went up in value so would all the other homes around me even the more expensive ones.
After working all my life I finally retire. My dream is to sell my home and move to the seaside and enjoy my final years and die in peaceful surroundings. Alas, my home will not sell for enough money to buy a home near the seaside. I remain forever stuck in the home I bought 42 year ago.
It is increasingly more difficult for young poeple to buy their own homes. Unless you are earning £120,000 per annum you cannot afford the house that I bought for £29,000 when I was 25 years old.
Who really benfits from home ownership?
Who really benfits from ever increasing house prices?
Who really controls house pricing?
Banks and estate agents!
nemo44x 13 days ago [-]
You’re totally ignoring interest rates which since 1982 have trended downwards significantly. Combined with inflation this is why properties have gone up in cost. A home will be priced based on the monthly payment the buyers are willing to make and that includes principal, interest, and taxes. As interest goes down, principal goes up. In general this is good as more of the buyers monthly payment goes into equity instead of bank profit.
You can sell your home and get loads of cash and buy a smaller place or rent. Many people “downsize” when the kids are grown and often move to lower cost of living areas. Also, your home is an asset. You can borrow against it. Considering you have not had a monthly payment for nearly 20 years you’ve had ample opportunity to save more money and upgrade your property if you’ve wanted.
TheAmazingRace 13 days ago [-]
The whole mentality around “a home is your piggy bank and retirement plan” has screwed future generations out of a chance for an affordable domicile. I’m a millennial that “missed the boat” on a property prior to the pandemic.
I want to believe this will eventually self correct, but should I be waiting till my twilight years to have a piece of the American Dream?
This is why I do cringe about folks that bought before and got in with super cheap interest rates, and then brag about it like they are geniuses. They simply got ridiculously lucky.
What are we supposed to do about it? Building more homes isn’t terribly economical due to the obsession with large McMansions, and the rise in interest rates caused a chilling effect, where few want to sell, so we are in a deadlock.
defrost 13 days ago [-]
Observationally it's less " a home is your piggy bank and retirement plan "
more
" at least seven homes should get you by " with many opting for more.
A great many people I've known from school days in the late 70s | early 80s just kept buying more houses after a long haul getting the first one (interest in Australia early on was tough, then easier).
Enough people got carried away with property accumulation that they're now competing with each other and both snapping up new properties fast and pushing prices for first buyers out of reach.
Animats 13 days ago [-]
> I want to believe this will eventually self correct, but should I be waiting till my twilight years to have a piece of the American Dream?
Right. I expected this to self-correct about two decades ago. The ratio to watch is median home price / median income.[1] Note what happened in 2006-2010.
This situation is a smaller economic stage upon which the same script is playing itself out on the larger economic stage. The FIRE economy [1] and its accompanying regulatory capture apparatus that enabled the pricing out of your and younger generations relies upon capturing the value derived from the network effects of aggregating people into the same volume of space over time. There are ways for non-accredited investor actors in this dynamic to get out from under the feedback loop, but they all take more time than most are willing to put in and in some scenarios, more trust within larger groups than is usually culturally feasible.
Some of the backlash is already inexorably unwinding in the baked-in demographic collapse in many areas of the world, but that will take at least a couple more decades to impact housing prices in a material manner (to within 2-3X median annual income). Mass population-scaled solution implementations are still currently quite out of reach, but you can see lots of people reacting with solutions that fit their individual profiles at the margins: intentional communities, co-operatives, vanlife, tiny home, etc.
Anyone who is not directly, daily working in the real estate industry should be commoditizing that complement of their lives, but the real estate industry has successfully convinced most to work for that industry with the "your home is an investment" canard...periodically (on average once every 7 years in the US)...with a ~10% round trip transaction fee after all is said and done (better than 2 and 20 in many scenarios per unit effort, however you want to measure it). Most people cannot stand against the allure of "your home went up in value!!!", but it's a clever trap.
Both times I've bought property it's been expensive for me at the time and worked out to be a great decision. I bought about 80% of one peak and still managed to save a ton on rent even though I'm break even on the property. One I bought at a trough in 2013 but it was still a stretch for me. I've got about 8 times I felt I missed the boat and 2 so far have turned out to be a bad idea. Basically you have as many fomo opportunities for property as you have times you found a house that became more expensive later.
I've been hearing that I'll never be able to buy a house since I've been an adult.
Negitivefrags 13 days ago [-]
It’s interesting that you read an article that basically outlined all the structural supply and demand issues around why house prices are the way they are.
And then you turn around and blame the “home is your piggy bank” mentality.
km3r 13 days ago [-]
Any many of the structural problems are made worse by the “home is your piggy bank” mentality.
If homes are an viewed as an investment, people are incentivized to push for policy that drives prices up faster than inflation. It leads to NIMBY laws, shortsighted assistance to the demand side of the equation (lower rates, special grants/loans), and a reluctance to sell when the market is down.
Home instead should be treated like cars. Big purchases but always a cost. Profit is to be made from production, maintenance, and management. Not from ownership alone.
jdewerd 13 days ago [-]
The "home is your piggy bank" mentality is the cause and motivating force behind NIMBYism. It's not only in the article, it's prominently in the article.
al_borland 13 days ago [-]
I think NIMBYism is a result of a home purchase being more permanent than a rental, and comes with a certain expectation of some peace and quiet for many.
It makes sense people would want to protect against the things they moved to the house to get away from.
I just bought a house a few years ago. There is 1 annoying house in ear shot of me and it’s a rental house that seems to get a new family each year, and no matter the family, it’s the house having parties, and slamming car doors at all hours of the night. It’s not every night, but it’s enough that I noticed. All the houses that are owner occupied aren’t like that.
Inviting more of that around me would make me want to move, and I’d rather not move. If you take away the reason a group of people moved to an area, they are going to find a new area. The previous area will slowly erode, and the new area will grow and thrive.. and then YIMBY people will want to come in and change the new area, and the cycle will start again.
I don’t see my house as a piggy bank. I see it as a means to stop rising rent costs, to stabilize my budget over time, and lower my fixed expenses in retirement. I’m not borrowing against it (the piggy bank), as I don’t want to risk the stable housing.
Negitivefrags 13 days ago [-]
I'm not convinced.
People don't say no to increased density because they are worried about increased overall housing supply affecting their house value.
They say no mostly because they like the place they are how it is, and they don't see any reason for it to change because the upside doesn't affect them.
And the rest of the time they are saying no due to a direct downside like having a new large building near them that wasn't there before.
I'm not saying that this attitude should be allowed, but let's be honest about the cause of it.
jdewerd 13 days ago [-]
No, let's be honest about the cause of it: it's because they want their housing value to keep going up. The parade of excuses is much less convincing than the plain, obvious, dramatic financial incentive.
dnissley 13 days ago [-]
Increased density would make their property even more valuable because it would be in a more desirable place in general: more walkable (more people = more businesses in a smaller area), fewer single family homes (the ones that were removed to build higher density housing, so that = more demand for the ones that are left), better public transit, etc.
HDThoreaun 13 days ago [-]
No one is saying this doesnt contribute, but my experience with NIMBYs is that its much more about keeping things the same because they like the way they are now than it is about pumping their homes value.
nemo44x 13 days ago [-]
Mainly this, agreed. A place is a place because of how it is. Changing how it is makes it not that place anymore. Drastically opening access to the place will drastically change it and the people that live in the place often don’t want to change the place. They like the place how it is. That’s why they bought property in the place.
And then there’s construction. It takes a long time to build a thing in the place and not only will it change the place it will make the place much worse while long term construction happens. Nobody wants that.
dnissley 13 days ago [-]
+1 -- Increased density will change the neighborhood, but would also make their property more valuable!
TheAmazingRace 13 days ago [-]
Thank you. This is exactly my view as well. Folks before me got in when the getting was good, then pulled the ladder up.
nemo44x 13 days ago [-]
A lot of people bought into places that weren’t very desirable and helped make the place desirable. There’s a lot of old towns that were down market from where they are today because the housing stock aged and owners couldn’t afford the renovate. But eventually some people took a risk and did because they saw the potential. Then more did and so on and the town is much more attractive than it was.
The idea that an interloper should just be able to walk in and exploit that is ridiculous. Talk about getting in while the getting is good!
There’s plenty of shabby places with potential. Go there and unlock it. It’s futile to try and jump on the back of people that did that elsewhere by demanding they build affordable housing after they turned a place around.
TheAmazingRace 12 days ago [-]
You make a decent point... but this recent run up in property values truly feels different than the norm. I'm from the Phoenix area, and prior to the Pandemic, I could have afforded a three-bedroom, two bathroom house with a pool, and with a sub six-figure income to boot. That same property has doubled or tripled in price within the past few years (which is an abnormal level of growth in real estate) plus the interest rates have also gone up. I'm getting fscked on both ends, with a monthly mortgage payment that would make me absolutely house poor.
I just hate the feeling of needing to put more of my life on hold because a world changing event disrupted my buying power and messed up the available housing stock. Truly the perfect storm of disappointment.
busterarm 13 days ago [-]
This whole thread is bound to be overly emotional to the point of being incoherent.
13 days ago [-]
whateveracct 13 days ago [-]
The thing is..a home and 3y mortgage is worth it even if it doesn't appreciate wildly in value!
Locking in living expenses for years to guard against inflation is great. I pay the same as my Seattle apartment for a 3k sq ft Tacoma home. And having my monthly payment build equity instead of go to a landlord is even better.
I agree buying a house in 2024 is tougher. But man was it easy for all of the 2010s. 2020 pre-craziness was a good time to buy. Sub 3% interest was the norm.
At the end of the day, finances have luck involved but also the saying about preparation meets opportunity is true. It might feel like there's no opportunity now, but that just means you should prepare because it's all cyclical. Don't miss the next wealth-boosting event.
But yeah it's not a piggyback or retirement plan. I would happily just live here forever and use my the rest of my money for that.
bredren 13 days ago [-]
It is not entirely dependent on macroeconomic cycle either.
This place is called Hacker News. The application for YC asks about a notable hack of a system. Residential real estate is a very large system.
It is unlikely someone would hand you a free house in a desirable location, but it doesn’t mean everyone must join the ranks of homeowners via a property that anyone can find and “like” on a real estate app.
I’m not saying don’t save, do.
But if you are not looking for special circumstances to get in, you are indeed stuck competing on the basis of capital accumulation and credit ranking.
TheAmazingRace 13 days ago [-]
I appreciate your sense of optimism. To be clear, through the 2010s, I was still finding myself and didn’t feel ready to settle down. Additionally, I prioritized paying off debt and being as fiscally responsible with my spending habits, since in my youth, I was terrible with money.
I’m just bummed that by the time I finally had my chance to get a property for myself to live in and… whoops. I got rug pulled.
13 days ago [-]
13of40 13 days ago [-]
Why do you want to own a home? I'm guessing it's something like you want to save/invest money every month rather than tossing it down the drain on rent. In other words, it's the “a home is your piggy bank and retirement plan” mentality. If it's something else, I'm happy to listen.
logicprog 13 days ago [-]
Wanting to own a home so you don't have to pay a monthly fee to have a roof over your head so you can save is pretty different from wanting to own a home so it can appreciate in value, thus essentially paying you something monthly, so you can not just save what you don't pay in rent, but also have that passive increase too, aren't the same thing, economically speaking.
al_borland 13 days ago [-]
If money is saved or not depends on a lot of factors. When I was working around Chicago, a co-worker of mine paid more in property taxes than I paid in rent. I also rented a condo once, and when I inquired about buying a unit, the monthly association fee was only $200 less than my rent. The owner was basically renting the place at cost, assuming it was paid off. It made me feel not so bad about renting.
There are also a lot of extra costs to owning a home, beyond the property taxes, there is the maintenance. When renting, 0 time and energy needs to be spent on maintenance. If something breaks, there is 1 number to call, and other than that, it’s easy living. With a house the owner has to either spend time/money doing it themselves, or spend money to hire out for it, and manage all the various contractors doing the work.
The first time I bought a house it was a disaster. Every month I was having to spend at least $800 fixing something. My savings were going fast. I ended up bailing on it in less than a year for a few reasons, but one was that it was significantly more expensive than rent when it was all said and done. My current house is better for than perspective, and I was much more prepared going into it. I still like the carefree nature of renting, but after almost 20 years of renting, I was worried about how much it would cost me if I was renting into retirement, or if I still had mortgage, so I hit a now-or-never moment.
TheAmazingRace 13 days ago [-]
This is a sentiment I share, but with the caveat that a mortgage is the least amount you spend, since you also account for taxes, insurance, repairs, etc. Rent, by comparison, is the most you’ll spend.
But yes, generally, I’d like to have control over my place and not deal with a landlord dictating what I can and can’t do.
13of40 13 days ago [-]
Home ownership goes like this:
1. Find a place you like and can afford.
2. Buy it for whatever they're willing to take.
3. Pay on your mortgage several times.
4. Sell it for whatever someone will pay.
As a virtuous person who just wants a roof over your head, which of these are you going to differently so you don't wreck things for future generations?
jnwatson 14 days ago [-]
The author makes good points about trends, but they are mostly super-long term. In the US, it will take at least a decade before the backlog in housing is resolved, and that's with lots of YIMBY support.
thsksbd 14 days ago [-]
I don't buy real estate because I think there will be a population boom.
I buy real estate because I think the dollar will collapse. And because when mortgage rates <3% when all the macroeconomic fundamental scream "bullshit", I have a fairly safe, free, and accessible to leverage.
imposterr 14 days ago [-]
If the dollar collapses who's there to enforce your ownership of said property?
thsksbd 12 days ago [-]
How, and what happens, the dollar collapses is undetermined and out of my control. I can only position myself for it.
The dollar could simply enter into a semi-permanent state of 15-25% inflation. Permanent until the USD withers away. This my preferred outcome because I actually like this country.
The dollar could collapse to junk status seemingly "overnight". This is very unlikely, but appears to be the course of action preferred by the good folks who are over extending our military position. This will result in wide spread riots.
The end result is probably somewhere in between. Sometime in the future. You might object that Im crazy and that nothing will happen but consider the two guys running for president - one just threatened financial sanctions of China, the other sanctions for any country that doesn't trade with USD.
Hardly the actions of confident people
presidentender 13 days ago [-]
If you live close enough to the property and you've built the right relationships with your tenants the matter is trivial.
If you live far away and rely on third party managers, the matter is also trivial, but the outcome is opposite.
nostromo 13 days ago [-]
"Dollar collapse" in this context means the dollar is extremely devalued -- something that is already happening in the long term.
It doesn't mean the entire government will fail.
Look for example at the Lira, Ruble or Argentine Peso.
Ekaros 13 days ago [-]
Dollar collapsing does not mean property rights collapsing. Or police and courts going entirely away. In some parts it might, but in most things will be bad for a while and worse than now after that. But there will still be someone paying for your real estate, at least if location is not dying.
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
Fiat currency collapse is so common that it’s more the norm than the exception and property rights tend to survive perfectly well even when the government issued currency experiences collapse and high inflation.
tomohelix 13 days ago [-]
For the dollar to collapse in this lifetime to the point you can benefit that way, it will take a major event that would also likely decimate the US real estate market.
Maybe for your children's lifetime, if they are lucky. It took Britain nearly 100 years to deflate from its hegemon status. Argubly, with the size and natural advantages the US hold, it will take even longer for them to naturally fall from its top spot.
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
Japanese yen is down 20%+ in 2 years. How are property prices in Tokyo in €£$?
Nigerian Naira is down 75% in two years. How are property prices in Lagos in €£$?
Turkish Lira is down 80% in 4 years. How are property prices in Istanbul in €£$
shall I continue?
USD can absolutely have a 50%+ depreciation in next 5-10 years. That is completely possible. Will it lose reserve currency status? No absolutely not. There is no viable replacement. But when we measure in purchasing power or gold or other stable pricing reference it can happen and property prices will not fall in those terms.
Printing currency doesn’t strictly cause economic collapse in simply causes a loss in value and faith in the currency.
pandaman 13 days ago [-]
Do you have any historical example of a hyperinflation when real estate market had been "decimated"? And if the US is so unique and it's going to happen for the first time in history, what would be the mechanism of all prices going up (inflation) while real estate staying the same/dropping?
abletonlive 13 days ago [-]
Me?
thsksbd 12 days ago [-]
+1 - the holder of the right to defense
12 days ago [-]
Arete314159 13 days ago [-]
I think the next 10-20 years will be an era of local real estate highs and lows.
Long before actual submersion, the effects of rising seas will affect property in the forms of more frequent storms, flooding, and the effects on groundwater like in the Florida condo collapse. Inland, many parts of the world will start having water scarcity, or fire risk.
Instead of an all-over rising real estate market, I think prices in places like Florida, parts of Texas, Louisiana, etc. will crater due to uninsurability. The places that are still standing undamaged in 15 years' time will be incredibly expensive.
The only tricky part is knowing where those places will be exactly. The areas that were "sure things" just a few years ago, such as the Pacific Northwest and Vermont, have been shown to be not nearly so certain. Lytton, Canada spontaneously combusted, while VT has had many damaging storms and floods. So it's a guessing game at this point.
One could make the argument that renting is the best gambit, because that's the only way you won't get stuck with a climate change "lemon."
aunty_helen 13 days ago [-]
Spanish cities are dense (and very walkable) because at one point in time everyone went home for siesta.
There’s a bit of a white elephant in this article, no mention of mass migrations. People not only want to be in a city, they want to be in a good city. Whether that’s idealism, climate related, conflict related or opportunity related there are many drivers pushing people from everywhere to just here.
master_crab 14 days ago [-]
This is directionally accurate. The issue is of course timing. It takes years, possibly decades before inertia is overcome and prices move down. And in a place as big as America it will always be impossible to time a permanent shift downward, if it ever comes for the handful of metro areas that will always remain alluring.
1971 was basically the year the government decided it could print money infinitely. Assets prices used to go up and down, now they mostly go up. The last two times real estate corrected, the Fed gobbled up mortgages like they were going out of style.
The 50 years since have been an aberration -- but I'd argue mostly it's been better than before... maybe those good times will come to an end, or maybe they won't. But if real estate crashes hard in the US, so will equities, so don't pretend you're safe.
0xbeeffade 13 days ago [-]
>I'd argue mostly it's been better than before... maybe those good times will come to an end[...]
"And the gods of the copybook headings, I notice outlast them all."
jijji 13 days ago [-]
It depends where/how you get your real estate. If you're talking about the MLS (retail) market, then yes its probably not a great investment.
purpleteam81 13 days ago [-]
Investing in a home is a mixed bag. Whether you purchase a new home or pre-owned, there will always be repairs and some are cause due to the use of cheap products by builders.
Determine why you want to purchase a home. Do you intended to pay it off to establish a level of 'rent' control once retired? Is your home a tax write-off based on income?
Rigth now in the US there is an affordable housing crisis due to price gouging.
andrewstuart 14 days ago [-]
The right reason for not investing in residential real estate is because it’s immoral.
Every house owned by a landlord is another house not owned by an owner occupier.
The landlord renter system has divided our society into haves and have nots. It’s modern serfdom in which landlords own families.
So sure, you can avoid investing in real estate for financial reasons but you can also avoid investing in real estate for the same reason you don’t invest in gambling smoking or fossil fuels….. to invest is to support something fundamentally wrong.
No doubt the commenters will all jump in with "but waddabout this, waddabout that, so you want no homes to rent eh!?!". I don't care, my point remains - he landlord/renter system is destroying the fabric of our society, has destroyed the social bargain, is robbing young people of the future and if you're a landlord then you are part of the problem even if you hide your identity and sense of guilt behind a managing real estate agent.
jen729w 14 days ago [-]
That’s very absolutist. There’s a place for rental accommodation. I moved to Australia as a backpacker in 2003 and found a cheap rental. What was I supposed to do, buy a house?
andrewstuart 14 days ago [-]
The absolutist position is to think I am advocating for an end to renting, and thus dismiss my message.
Only a fool or someone choosing to would think I am advocating for an end to renting.
But sure if you want to be right, you made your point. My point remains - the renter/landlord system is toxic for healthy society, for families, for young people, for old people, for everyone who is not a landlord - if you have personal integrity then you should not be a landlord.
jen729w 14 days ago [-]
> if you have personal integrity then you should not be a landlord
Alright. So who rents 2003-me that flat in Elwood?
By the way, I still rent. I mostly enjoy it. I like the freedom to move.
000ooo000 13 days ago [-]
Realise that you are in the minority. The majority eventually desire security and stability in their housing for obvious reasons. A system that incentivises a minority with the means to increasingly squeeze potential from those without is not sustainable long term. One doesn't need to look hard now to find sentiment in younger generations that amounts to "what's the point? I'll never afford a home". If you think that's healthy for a society, or justified, because a small portion of the population like the freedom of renting, not sure what to tell you.
al_borland 13 days ago [-]
And where are people supposed to live before they are ready to buy a house of their own?
One of the issues young people seem to have is that they have been conditioned to want immediate gratification. They are 23 and want a house on par with their parent’s home. Their parents didn’t start out with that place and worked up to it over decades.
My parents didn’t even have a shower in their first apartment. They had to take baths and use a mug to scoop up water to wash their hair. I had it better than them when I started out and got my first place; I actually had a shower.
People in general would be a lot happier if they dialed back their expectations.
etrautmann 13 days ago [-]
How are you so sure what people want? I think many people want both stability and freedom to move.
apsurd 14 days ago [-]
agree with you, how would it work otherwise? if rent still works, who are we paying rent to that's not paying into all the negative stuff you mentioned?
how do i have shelter in your system?
andrewstuart 14 days ago [-]
The goal of society should be 90% owner occupied.
Of course not everyone should own a house, but 90% owner occupied/10% rented it the right mix.
Housing in most western economies today is a ponzi scheme - a deeply immoral ponzi scheme, perpetrated by politicians with large housing portfolios who stand to benefit from the immoral corruption of the ponzi.
The first thing to do is point the finger at the landlords who are buying up houses and who think of themselves as good people and let them know they are the toxic perpetrators of the ruin of the fabric of our society. Every houses a landlord owns in a house that a young family will never own. When you own houses you own families like serfs.
vel0city 13 days ago [-]
> The goal of society should be 90% owner occupied.
Why 90%? Why not 85%? Why not 95%? Why not 70%? Why not 99.21237%? Where'd 90% come from?
What if 11% of the households genuinely want to rent? Have rental prices skyrocket forcing people into the complications of buying, holding, maintaining, and selling real estate?
andrewstuart 13 days ago [-]
I could not ask their sons to fight and die for the properties of the wealthy.
Lee Kuan-Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore said:
“Soon after separation, I resolved to enable every household to own its own home. If we were going to get the people to take National Service seriously, I could not ask their sons to fight and die for the properties of the wealthy. We worked out a personal savings scheme that allowed them to own an apartment painlessly through installments over 20 years. We sold the apartments to them at below cost to enhance their assets. Today, 95 per cent of Singaporean households are homeowners. It has immeasurably increased their wealth and our social stability. Without home ownership, we would have become like Tokyo, Seoul or Hong Kong, where the voters in the cities are disaffected because they pay a large proportion of their salaries in rents.”
.
.
.
95%
jen729w 13 days ago [-]
Have you been to Singapore?
Yes, most people own their home. But those homes are small flats in giant shared blocks. Your laundry hangs out the window and there are hawker markets on the ground level where everybody eats because there’s so little room to cook upstairs.
How many Americans, or British, or Australians would settle for that? It ain’t 90%.
Of course Singapore is an outlier, geographically. It’s a tiny island-nation-state. And by the way those ground-floor hawker markets are terrific; when you do go, make sure you visit a few. They’re a highlight. (Take cash!)
Edit: “But at least”, you might say, “the private housing market in Singapore must be sane thanks to this incredibly high level of pseudo-public housing?”. To which I respond, lol, and invite you to browse listings for real estate.
We have friends who live there and a nice (like, nice) house is currently renting for ~$25k/month.
vel0city 13 days ago [-]
So it's whatever number you're going to pull out of the air at any given moment. Thanks for being honest about it. Because the owner occupied percentage of Singapore isn't 95%. That's just the rate of ownership of citizens. There are these people called "immigrants" who might also participate in the housing markets. They might have a different owner/rental housing dynamic.
You really should have just stuck with your 90% number, because that's really closer to the owner occupied rate in Singapore. But hey thanks for really showing you're just making things up as you go instead of actually thinking things through.
It's sad too because I generally agree the ownership rate in most US cities isn't great and would prefer to see more owner occupied housing units to be built, but people spewing nonsense and making things up as they go really do a disservice to persuading people. Pulling numbers out of the air and blindly assuming that number should be a target probably does more to harm your arguments than helps.
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
> The first thing to do is point the finger at the landlords who are buying up houses and who think of themselves as good people and let them know they are the toxic perpetrators of the ruin of the fabric of our society. Every houses a landlord owns in a house that a young family will never own. When you own houses you own families like serfs.
Let’s point instead the fingers at leftists and collectivist who have deceived you and tricked you into believing this. This shows you don’t understand economics whatsoever, like zero. You are driven by Envy and anger which is a deep source of evil. The real evil is in spreading such hatred and nonsense.
vel0city 13 days ago [-]
> Every house owned by a landlord is another house not owned by an owner occupier.
> the renter/landlord system is toxic for healthy society
> Only a fool or someone choosing to would think I am advocating for an end to renting.
I mean, you use terms like "every" and say the whole concept is toxic for society. Its not some misreading of your statements to see you're stating for an end to renting when "the renter/landlord system is toxic". If that relationship is toxic for everyone who is not a landlord, isn't eliminating the whole thing the cure for this toxicness?
edanm 13 days ago [-]
> No doubt the commenters will all jump in with "but waddabout this, waddabout that, so you want no homes to rent eh!?!". I don't care, my point remains -
No, your point doesn't remain if other people have valid points that refute it.
You're making a very strong statement which I imagine most economists would disagree with. Characterizing anyone who disagrees with this as "whiny" or something doesn't make it true - you just might be wrong (and probably are, IMO).
This is especially weird since you're making a strong moral claim here - it's not even "we disagree about economics here", it's "we disagree, and you're evil for thinking differently than me".
qwerpy 13 days ago [-]
Soon to be ex-landlord here. Maybe I'll regret it someday, but I'm winding down all of my rental properties. Being a landlord in Seattle is just not a good idea financially anymore, with how out of whack rents are compared to house values, and how more and more restrictions are making it hard for small-time landlords. So I'm selling everything. Some will be bought by owner-occupiers, and others will be bought by huge property management firms with the analysts and lawyers to still be profitable.
andrewstuart 13 days ago [-]
>> and others will be bought by huge property management firms with the analysts and lawyers to still be profitable
Corporate mega landlords should be banned too.
As should foreign owners. Housing should be owned by the citizens and permanent residents of a country, not corporate mega landlords.
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
> Corporate mega landlords should be banned too.
> As should foreign owners. Housing should be owned by the citizens and permanent residents of a country, not corporate mega landlords.
This is completely insane. Envy is one hell of an evil disease, individually and especially socially.
I have an alternative proposition. Re-zone and deregulate to allow new developments. Lower all permits and taxes. Remove all barriers to capital and investment, foreign or otherwise.
Your housing costs will immediately drop.
Collectivism is the economic equivalent to creationism in biology. A false evil fantasy proven endlessly as failed ideas but fueled by primitive human emotions, envy and pride respectively.
skylurk 13 days ago [-]
> Envy is one hell of an evil disease, individually and especially socially.
I agree that envy is toxic, and free markets are pretty good technology.
But housing is a protected class of assets, just like clean water and radio bands. Taxes on non-primary residences are high, as they should be. Perhaps they should be higher.
keb_ 13 days ago [-]
> I have an alternative proposition. Re-zone and deregulate to allow new developments. Lower all permits and taxes. Remove all barriers to capital and investment, foreign or otherwise.
Would this make it far easier and probable that a Chinese mega-corp can buy up neighborhoods in the US? Not implying that's a bad thing. I wonder if it's already happening to an extent.
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
Are you joking about Chinese mega-corp? You realize China is desperately trying to avoid catastrophic economic collapse? They have so much malinvestment there have been emergency discussions between them and the US Treasury. Between ghost cities in China and unfinished empty highways to nowhere (used for embezzlement by their leader fwiw) they are on the edge of collapse. However a disorderly economic collapse in China is assessed by globalist US leadership as against US interests so it’s being careful managed between the two powers.
However back to a hypothetical mega-corp. Let’s say a megacorp buys up blocks of old houses and redevelops it into new supply .. will overall housing prices go up or down? Obviously down! supply increases. However due to fundamentally broken education system that has been coopted by neo-Marxist collectivist gibberish even highly educated and technically literate individuals in western countries don’t understand that. And worse yet they have been trained to instinctively label me and anyone who tries to explain simple empirical economic facts as “racists” or “fascists”.
qwerpy 13 days ago [-]
Yeah I'd think mom and pop citizen landlords with one or two long-term rentals should be the least offensive of the bunch. But we're the ones least able to adjust to the regulations and changing economics. I'm thankful that I'm able to get out without taking a big financial hit, but I'm not sure if the end result is better for society.
apsurd 14 days ago [-]
I agree with your sentiments, but I'm stuck because renting is paying into the exact same problem isn't it?
keb_ 14 days ago [-]
I predict you're gonna get a lot of flak for your comment, but this is something I've started feeling myself in South Florida, where I grew up. We started noticing more and more homes in our neighborhood without permanent residents -- almost every new neighbor we get is a renter who's there for 6 months to a year, and then leaves. Or, we end up finding out that a home on the block is actually an AirBnB that is empty for weeks at a time. The cohesion of a neighborhood where you meet and know your neighbors that I had as a kid is mostly gone.
Not to mention the housing prices down here have skyrocketed with a bunch of wealthy folks from up north moving down, buying up real estate, turning them into VRBOs or their summer homes. Meanwhile, a friend of mine who graduated with CompSci from a state university is being offered peanuts by companies down here; he can barely afford to rent an apartment.
Anyways, I know this is kinda the norm in places like NYC, so I don't want to sound like a crybaby. Maybe city enshittification is just normal in the US. But my observations have turned me off from real estate investment, which was something I was considering last year.
Ekaros 13 days ago [-]
The issue in system is cost of housing and appreciation of thus. With both being lower and appreciation even being negative renting might not be unreasonable deal. Renting is just a service like any other. Someone put initial capital in on housing and should expect reasonable return on that. Problem becomes when capital is too large compared to product and the value of product goes up where as it should go down.
angusturner 4 days ago [-]
Not sure why this is down-voted so heavily.
In Australia, the property market has been artificially inflated for years with favorable tax incentives that encourage investors to hoard properties and sit on them, while writing off any losses as tax deductions.
Meanwhile, renters are being squeezed because landlords are trying to pass on the cost of rising interest rates to their tenants, who are forced to choose between groceries and making rent.
And yet, I would bet my kidney that when interest rates fall we won't see landlords pass on the savings to their tenants.
As the OP's point, the landlord renter system HAS "divided our society into haves and have nots", and it causing serious bitterness in division in our country. And the issue is politically intractable, because the propertied class are not going to accept any reform that lowers the value of their house.
npteljes 13 days ago [-]
>Every house owned by a landlord is another house not owned by an owner occupier.
Or, another landlord.
What I see is that if we leave things up to contestants, then the contestants will do everything to win. What can be done is a change in the game itself. So, regulation.
rokkitmensch 13 days ago [-]
If only morals were universal...
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Aunche 13 days ago [-]
> Every house owned by a landlord is another house not owned by an owner occupier.
And every ounce of food owned by a company is not owned by a person. Oh right, that's why we allow people to produce more food.
As Communist China discovered, getting rid of landlords doesn't magically house more people. That just makes it harder to move to areas with more economic opportunities and ensures that any home that requires significant renovations will end up completely uninhabitable. You can offset this by asking the state to fund more housing development, but that still requires you to allow for housing development.
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
How how how does a fairly selective and educated group such as HN users come to believe such collectivist nonsense. What a failure of education systems we have. Unbelievable.
History has shown repeatedly that policies to restrict free markets and centrally plan makes everyone poorer and produces catastrophic results.
There is absolutely NOTHING immoral about being a landlord or a real estate developer. People need housing but cannot afford to build it themselves. Capitalists take capital they and create housing for people who need housing. This is a fundamental service to the economy and society. A necessary service.
It’s simply foolish to have this view that landlords are unethical. It’s been shown over and over and over that high housing prices are a result of restrictive supply caused by government regulations and that without such restrictions and regulations landlords and real estate investors LOWER housing prices this is a fundamental fact of economics!
rokkitmensch 13 days ago [-]
Well he's from Australia, the same country that's attempting global content takedowns vs. Twitter.
keb_ 13 days ago [-]
What do you mean? That all Australians are pro-content takedowns?
rokkitmensch 13 days ago [-]
Just that there's something in the water there.
In fairness, there's plenty in the water most places.
keb_ 12 days ago [-]
In fairness, (in faaaaaaaaaairrrrrrrrrrnesssssssss), that's pretty based of you to say, my epic ftw homie. :^) You just rekt that libtard Aussie.
FredPret 13 days ago [-]
The problem is that long division and poetry is a requirement but economics isn’t. And even when it is, the teachers skew so strongly leftward, kids don’t get a balanced view.
Ideally teachers and professors would go back to being 50/50 left/right, like how it used to be in the days before the Soviets started their global mindgames.
keb_ 13 days ago [-]
I grew up in the US and was in high school 10 years ago. Economics was required for me, and if anything, my teachers skewed right-wing. In fact, being "left-wing" largely meant being pro gay/womens/colored rights, but still neo-liberal. I still get that sense from most Dems I meet, so I don't really get this Soviet mindgame speak.
Also, in what era were all teachers and professors 50/50 left/right wing?
Admittedly that last one does not describe an infiltration on the scale I’m talking about. But my thing happened around the 1920’s - 1930’s. Just look at all the Confucian Institutes on campuses and academics getting into trouble for illegal ties to China.
If you’re an ideological enemy of the West and seek to undermine it in the long term, this slow infiltration of the teaching institutions is exactly what you would do.
keb_ 13 days ago [-]
> I’ve never met a conservative teacher.
This probably depends where you went to school. I'm from South Florida where there is a large Cuban population.
Thanks for the article. It's a bit of a goofy partisan piece though, and provides some hand-wavy conjecture like, "It is unclear why elite research institutions have been untouched by these changes, though it is possible that these institutions use less-politicized criteria when selecting faculty, and thus make it easier for talented conservative scholars to find jobs." The article never explains what criteria. It also makes funny statements like "if one wants to be exposed to a broad spectrum of political ideas, it is still far better to attend Notre Dame or Baylor than Berkeley or Cornell" Because... more faculty are Republican? Does the American two-party system accurately represent the wide spectrum of political thought?
You seem to be implying that the rise in liberal professors/teachers is a result of covert infiltration of American universities that is brainwashing students and faculty. I find it more likely that less conservatives want to be teachers/professors than liberals do in the first place.
FredPret 13 days ago [-]
Yes, it’s partisan, but I don’t think there’s a news site that isn’t partisan and, as you say, goofy.
> “I find it more likely that less conservatives want to be teachers/professors than liberals do in the first place.”
This is true. But consider that a little bit of subversion applied over a decade or two can make things uncomfortable for one side, tipping the scales that way.
Soon the whole field becomes unwelcoming to outsiders and a political spiral begins.
A century later, you’re 1000x more likely to find Das Kapital being read at university than Atlas Shrugged.
I just think we need more granola-eating chemical engineers and more libertarian English professors. Running society is about negotiating tradeoffs. How can we make intelligent tradeoffs when only one perspective is present?
keb_ 13 days ago [-]
> Yes, it’s partisan, but I don’t think there’s a news site that isn’t partisan and, as you say, goofy.
I guess what I was trying to say was it's not a very good piece and doesn't offer a balanced perspective.
> This is true. But consider that a little bit of subversion applied over a decade or two can make things uncomfortable for one side, tipping the scales that way.
I considered that, but I think this has less to do with universities politicizing their hiring process, and more to do with shifting societal norms and external factors; ex., Universities are more secular and multicultural than they were 50 years ago, public schools pay less.
> A century later, you’re 1000x more likely to find Das Kapital being read at university than Atlas Shrugged.
I think this is a bad example and false equivocation -- Das Kapital is a scientific text and analysis of economic models that was a work-in-progress for the entirety of Marx's life. Atlas Shrugged is a fiction novel written by a person who literally named her own philosophy and tried to build rules around it.
Also, Atlas Shrugged is commonly assigned reading in high school in the US.
> I just think we need more granola-eating chemical engineers and more libertarian English professors. Running society is about negotiating tradeoffs. How can we make intelligent tradeoffs when only one perspective is present?
I guess what I'm saying is: more perspectives are present. Just because all professors in a university vote Democrat doesn't mean they all hold carbon-copy political views. There's room for nuance outside of a meaningless metric like "50% of teachers should be Republican".
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
> I think this is a bad example and false equivocation -- Das Kapital is a scientific text and analysis of economic models that was a work-in-progress for the entirety of Marx's life.
There is absolutely nothing scientific about Marx’s works. The Envy driven garbage produced by Marxists and current neo-Marxists leaders is directly responsible for unimaginable human suffering.
I remember well trying to explain to an academic audience that teaching anything or even reading Marx is the economic equivalent to reading the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and taking it seriously. Both are 100% fantasy and evil. Das Kapital is a slanderous attack on the capitalist heroes improving the human condition by an evil dark and envious soul.
keb_ 13 days ago [-]
I'm not sure how to respond to this -- I'm almost certain you're just going to lament that I'm a product of a broken education system infiltrated by the evils of neo-Marxist propaganda. But I'm curious of your credentials when you mentioned explaining to an academic audience, and I'm wondering what capitalist heroes you think Marx slandered in Capital?
Your characterization of Marx as an "evil dark and envious soul" is humorous to me. Also, why do you keep capitalizing "Envy"?
13 days ago [-]
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
Let’s take a look at a few highly referenced quotes from Das Kapital:
- "Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!"
- "Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks."
- “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range."
- "Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society."
- "In proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the laborer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse."
These are from your supposedly “scientific” Marx. To call Marx a scientist is effectively calling a doomsday cult leader one.
As far as my own personal credentials. I graduated as the top analytical student in a large american high school in the late 80s. From which I went on to an top 5 university and was exposed to the methods of leftist indoctrination. However fortunately for me, having completed all mathematics classes available to me, including all offered at the community college by 15. I discovered markets and programing. I also discovered Hayak and Austrian economics, along with Smith, and many others, independently studying. This combination of extremely high analytical ability, max score on all standardized math tests ever taken, and exposure to actual legitimate political scientists, sociologists, and economists, made all attempts to indoctrinate me with collectivist nonsense futile, much to frustration of my college professors and classmates.
I am extremely familiar with the global banking and financial system. I also was able to comfortably retire before age 40 but instead continue working and expect to until I’m unable.
Marx is an evil man. His envy and hatred has inspired some of
the worst atrocities in human history. The fact he is even taught with any degree of respect or labeled by anyone as a “scientist” is outrageous. He has no numbers, no measurements, no evidence, and every single one of his assertions are categorically false.
So how is this possible. We come to capitalizing Envy.
Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour
By Helmut Schoeck
keb_ 13 days ago [-]
I now see I am in the presence of a true genius, and that my Marx is not scientific as I once thought, but simply an evil beast fueled by his hatred of the human race and that he must be stopped. Thank you for enlightening me to the evils of Marx and the evil Left.
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
It’s just society hasn’t realized they continue to teach the equivalent of creationism to biology when giving legitimacy to Marx and collectivism for economics.
It’s absolutely infuriating and frankly disgusting.
FredPret 13 days ago [-]
Wait until you read his poetry. Truly a twisted soul. Even the worst dictators thought they were helping their own people at least; Marx just wanted everybody dead.
Angry with God. Makes sense it’s obvious to any real believer. You can feel the Envy and Anger dripping from his words. No submission to the Lord, no respect, no Love.
Obviously he has to try and ban religion also. Very interesting. Thank you. I never knew about this somehow.
—-
The Fiddler
The Fiddler saws the strings,
His light brown hair he tosses and flings.
He carries a sabre at his side,
He wears a pleated habit wide.
"Fiddler, why that frantic sound?
Why do you gaze so wildly round?
Why leaps your blood, like the surging sea?
What drives your bow so desperately?"
"Why do I fiddle? Or the wild waves roar?
That they might pound the rocky shore,
That eye be blinded, that bosom swell,
That Soul's cry carry down to Hell."
"Fiddler, with scorn you rend your heart.
A radiant God lent you your art,
To dazzle with waves of melody,
To soar to the star-dance in the sky."
"How so! I plunge, plunge wihout fail
My blood-black sabre into your soul.
That art God neither wants nor wists,
It leaps to the brain from Hell's black mists.
"Till heart's bewitched, till senses reel:
With Satan I have struck my deal.
He chalks the signs, beats time for me,
I play the death march fast and free.
"I must play dark, I must play light,
Till bowstrings break my heart outright."
The Fiddler saws the strings,
His light brown hair he tosses and flings.
He carries a sabre at his side,
He wears a pleated habit wide.
greenie_beans 13 days ago [-]
not OP, but your personal attacks don't engage with their ideas at all. and you also stated a strong opinion masquerading as fact.
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
No Capitalism is the greatest force for the improvement of the human condition known. That’s a fact and the problem is you have somehow been taught it’s only an opinion. It’s not, it’s an unambiguous empirical fact.
andrewstuart 13 days ago [-]
It's the socialism for the rich that ruins it.
Tax breaks for property investors, tax incentives for property developers, handing large swatches of public owned land over the mates of the politicians for virtually nothing, selling houses to foreign buyers, selling houses to global money laundering criminal.
All to pump up the value of the housing portfolios owned by the politicians.
Whenever anyone says "let the market sort it out" I cheer and say "finally, the rich will stop getting their socialist handouts".
If that is your capitalist market economics then you might need to rethink how pure it is.
rokkitmensch 13 days ago [-]
People love to blame "capitalism" because they've never learned about "regulatory capture".
There's a missing perspective on the global governance bodies, that everything is born, matures, ossifies, is outcompeted, and dies.
Alligators and cockroaches perhaps the exception, but are those models for a life well lived?
keb_ 13 days ago [-]
To be fair, people blame "socialism", and "communism" for similar reasons.
rokkitmensch 12 days ago [-]
To be fair (to be faairrrrr), Communism's embedded contradictions flamed it out significantly faster than capitalisms has.
keb_ 12 days ago [-]
To be fair, (to be faaaaiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrr) that's besides the point, and every successful capitalist nation routinely contradicts free-market principles anyway.
greenie_beans 13 days ago [-]
prove that it's a fact? you aren't making a convincing case.
i'll check out and will consider it in good faith, thanks for sharing. my knee jerk reaction:
> And also we can look at the cases where collectivism replaces capitalism and the catastrophic consequences that inevitably occur:
at a glance, that book ignores the role the US played in these country's downfalls, particularly in south and central america. why is the US so afraid of a different system that they interfere with cuba and venezuela — i thought capitalism was the greatest system and could never be beat? oh that's right, it needs to kill any dissent in order to survive. do you ever consider all of the suffering that the US inflicts on other countries in the name of freedom and capitalism, to this very day, happening right this very minute?
it's true, the USSR created a lot of suffering, but looking at the chapter intros, that book doesn't seem to consider the contribution of the authoritarian governments had in the suffering. instead it blames the economic system. nor does it cover the diversity of political opinion that led to the establishment of the USSR, most of which was quickly silenced (aka executed).
imo, the USSR's problems were much like what's happening in the developed capitalist countries right now. american capitalism is a centralized economy controlled by few people with the power of the government, just like the USSR. i'm not talking about small business here, i'm talking about corporate capitalism that controls the federal government and all of the commerce, what we eat, where we get our energy, etc. very centralized. (aside, wouldn't it be amazing if the small businesses had as much power?)
and regardless of how you define the USSR's economic system (an authoritarian government can never be socialist, as socialism is a democratic system by definition), we can agree that the USSR was not capitalism, yet it's responsible for some of the technological gains of the 20th century. capitalist dogma lead us to believe that the 20th century changes were only because of capitalism, but that's simply untrue. if capitalism is responsible for all of the technological changes, then how were the soviets able to reach space first?
lastly, neoliberal propaganda from the world economic forum isn't a good source for an argument imo. and who said that socialism is the only alternative? regardless, your sources conveniently ignore countries with democratic socialism that are thriving. (queue: "tHaT'S nOt SoCiAlIsM!!!!" arguments...)
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
> corporate capitalism that controls the federal government and all of the commerce
Correct! That is not capitalism and is fascism. I agree with you on this 100%.
I’m a classic liberal libertarian not an advocate of crony capitalism/aka oligarchy or fascism.
However regarding USSR. It was an absolute disaster. I have direct personal family knowledge of what occurred. You are demonstrating a new phenomenon of revisionism with USSR romanticism.
The US is currently a war machine. Fueled by corrupt politicians alliance with the MID.
greenie_beans 13 days ago [-]
i'm in no way romanticizing the USSR? i think you're seeing my comments through the lens of your family history.
i'll let u in the commune once ur libertarian island fails.
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
The speaker is Milei trashing the WEF. It’s an epic speech.
It is certainly true that USSR’s investment in basic science was probably one of its best achievements. I agree we can’t deny that.
Libertarianism is likely rising as we see a multipolar global economy develop and state power eroding along with collapsing fiat currencies worldwide. I highly doubt you’ll have a successful commune anywhere but anyway I’m confident we won’t be needing it.
greenie_beans 13 days ago [-]
are you familiar of the ideas of left libertarianism? murray bookchin is a good writer to read about that.
alchemist1e9 13 days ago [-]
I’m actually not. I’ll check him out. Thanks.
keb_ 13 days ago [-]
Genuine question: is there a golden child example for unbridled capitalism free of regulation, taxes and central planning that we can point to?
Rendered at 15:59:48 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Yes, overall birth rates might be going down, but that doesn't mean that there will be fewer people where OP lives. Chances are the rest of the world wants to live where OP lives. I don't see Australian house prices going down any time soon, and I don't see these trends reverse in my lifetime. And I'm not even that old!
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/21/migra...
I wish I was wrong, as it is a nightmare. Before COVID, a nice rental in the Oxbridge area would cost 1/3 of an average salary. Fast forward to 2024, it is now 1/2. Lot's of people are struggling. I heard the buy-to-let era was over, and that the market was cooling down, but I don't see that turning into lower prices.
If there were meaningful numbers of well paying jobs in inexpensive rural places, they would cease to be either rural or inexpensive.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/19/5425040/williston-north-d...
In theory, this is true. In practice, it seems people working from home want to be near stuff that can get them out of their homes, so they don’t feel so isolated being at home all the time. Work isn’t the only thing a city offers.
It used to be that most people travelled in to the CBD for work. Hence very expensive housing the closer you were to the city.
I don’t think house prices have adjusted yet, but your local shops have. Anecdotally I hear from people all over the place who say that their local shops have had a boost thanks to the increase in weekday traffic.
For instance, there are a dozen western WA towns and cities smaller & cheaper than Seattle that are full of stuff to do. Bars, restaurants, museums, parks, arcades, etc. And Seattle itself is a 30-60 min drive away from all of them depending on traffic.
Cities are nice.
Oh and there are 2 or 3 elementary schools and countless daycares within a 20min walk as well.
And while people working originally Cleveland based jobs may not get as much money as an NYC based job, there are apparently enough high paying jobs (and trust funds) to support people moving into places like NYC.
Sure, you don't need to pay rent to a landlord, or moving fees. But if/when purchase prices are so far out of whack compared to rents, it's better to invest the difference in your diversified portfolio instead. And if you really want to invest in real estate, you can invest it in real estate ETFs instead, which are more liquid and do not require such a large financial outlay as to concentrate your portfolio.
Don't get me wrong, there are other reasons to buy a house. But they're usually emotional, not financial.
10 years ago one person buys a house for £100K 10 years ago one person buys a house for £250K
They both buy their houses in accordance with the level of income they earn.
The person who bought the £100K home could not afford the £250K home.
10 years later house prices have increased by 100%.
The person who's home is now worth £200K still cannot afford the house which is now worth £500K even though, on paper he is £100k richer.
The person who owns the £200K home can only buy the expensive £500K house if he increases his mortgage which involves increasing their earning capacity.
Back in 1982 I bought my first home for £29,500 (cheap as chips) with a 25 year mortgage. The mortgage adviser said that over the 25 year period I would pay back £160,000 in interest. 42 years later that same house is on the market for £360,000.
On paper I am considerably richer today than I was 42 years ago. This is meaningless. I have no access to that money. I cannot just sell my home and have loads of cash in my bank account. I would be homeless. I cannot buy a cheaper home because my home was cheap when I bought it and is still cheap.
As a 25 year old I loved my new home. I looked around at all the more expensive homes and thought that one day I would buy one of them. Naively misunderstanding that as my home went up in value so would all the other homes around me even the more expensive ones.
After working all my life I finally retire. My dream is to sell my home and move to the seaside and enjoy my final years and die in peaceful surroundings. Alas, my home will not sell for enough money to buy a home near the seaside. I remain forever stuck in the home I bought 42 year ago.
It is increasingly more difficult for young poeple to buy their own homes. Unless you are earning £120,000 per annum you cannot afford the house that I bought for £29,000 when I was 25 years old.
Who really benfits from home ownership? Who really benfits from ever increasing house prices? Who really controls house pricing?
Banks and estate agents!
You can sell your home and get loads of cash and buy a smaller place or rent. Many people “downsize” when the kids are grown and often move to lower cost of living areas. Also, your home is an asset. You can borrow against it. Considering you have not had a monthly payment for nearly 20 years you’ve had ample opportunity to save more money and upgrade your property if you’ve wanted.
I want to believe this will eventually self correct, but should I be waiting till my twilight years to have a piece of the American Dream?
This is why I do cringe about folks that bought before and got in with super cheap interest rates, and then brag about it like they are geniuses. They simply got ridiculously lucky.
What are we supposed to do about it? Building more homes isn’t terribly economical due to the obsession with large McMansions, and the rise in interest rates caused a chilling effect, where few want to sell, so we are in a deadlock.
more
" at least seven homes should get you by " with many opting for more.
A great many people I've known from school days in the late 70s | early 80s just kept buying more houses after a long haul getting the first one (interest in Australia early on was tough, then easier).
Enough people got carried away with property accumulation that they're now competing with each other and both snapping up new properties fast and pushing prices for first buyers out of reach.
Right. I expected this to self-correct about two decades ago. The ratio to watch is median home price / median income.[1] Note what happened in 2006-2010.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=n9xI
This situation is a smaller economic stage upon which the same script is playing itself out on the larger economic stage. The FIRE economy [1] and its accompanying regulatory capture apparatus that enabled the pricing out of your and younger generations relies upon capturing the value derived from the network effects of aggregating people into the same volume of space over time. There are ways for non-accredited investor actors in this dynamic to get out from under the feedback loop, but they all take more time than most are willing to put in and in some scenarios, more trust within larger groups than is usually culturally feasible.
Some of the backlash is already inexorably unwinding in the baked-in demographic collapse in many areas of the world, but that will take at least a couple more decades to impact housing prices in a material manner (to within 2-3X median annual income). Mass population-scaled solution implementations are still currently quite out of reach, but you can see lots of people reacting with solutions that fit their individual profiles at the margins: intentional communities, co-operatives, vanlife, tiny home, etc.
Anyone who is not directly, daily working in the real estate industry should be commoditizing that complement of their lives, but the real estate industry has successfully convinced most to work for that industry with the "your home is an investment" canard...periodically (on average once every 7 years in the US)...with a ~10% round trip transaction fee after all is said and done (better than 2 and 20 in many scenarios per unit effort, however you want to measure it). Most people cannot stand against the allure of "your home went up in value!!!", but it's a clever trap.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_economy
I've been hearing that I'll never be able to buy a house since I've been an adult.
And then you turn around and blame the “home is your piggy bank” mentality.
If homes are an viewed as an investment, people are incentivized to push for policy that drives prices up faster than inflation. It leads to NIMBY laws, shortsighted assistance to the demand side of the equation (lower rates, special grants/loans), and a reluctance to sell when the market is down.
Home instead should be treated like cars. Big purchases but always a cost. Profit is to be made from production, maintenance, and management. Not from ownership alone.
It makes sense people would want to protect against the things they moved to the house to get away from.
I just bought a house a few years ago. There is 1 annoying house in ear shot of me and it’s a rental house that seems to get a new family each year, and no matter the family, it’s the house having parties, and slamming car doors at all hours of the night. It’s not every night, but it’s enough that I noticed. All the houses that are owner occupied aren’t like that.
Inviting more of that around me would make me want to move, and I’d rather not move. If you take away the reason a group of people moved to an area, they are going to find a new area. The previous area will slowly erode, and the new area will grow and thrive.. and then YIMBY people will want to come in and change the new area, and the cycle will start again.
I don’t see my house as a piggy bank. I see it as a means to stop rising rent costs, to stabilize my budget over time, and lower my fixed expenses in retirement. I’m not borrowing against it (the piggy bank), as I don’t want to risk the stable housing.
People don't say no to increased density because they are worried about increased overall housing supply affecting their house value.
They say no mostly because they like the place they are how it is, and they don't see any reason for it to change because the upside doesn't affect them.
And the rest of the time they are saying no due to a direct downside like having a new large building near them that wasn't there before.
I'm not saying that this attitude should be allowed, but let's be honest about the cause of it.
And then there’s construction. It takes a long time to build a thing in the place and not only will it change the place it will make the place much worse while long term construction happens. Nobody wants that.
The idea that an interloper should just be able to walk in and exploit that is ridiculous. Talk about getting in while the getting is good!
There’s plenty of shabby places with potential. Go there and unlock it. It’s futile to try and jump on the back of people that did that elsewhere by demanding they build affordable housing after they turned a place around.
I just hate the feeling of needing to put more of my life on hold because a world changing event disrupted my buying power and messed up the available housing stock. Truly the perfect storm of disappointment.
Locking in living expenses for years to guard against inflation is great. I pay the same as my Seattle apartment for a 3k sq ft Tacoma home. And having my monthly payment build equity instead of go to a landlord is even better.
I agree buying a house in 2024 is tougher. But man was it easy for all of the 2010s. 2020 pre-craziness was a good time to buy. Sub 3% interest was the norm.
At the end of the day, finances have luck involved but also the saying about preparation meets opportunity is true. It might feel like there's no opportunity now, but that just means you should prepare because it's all cyclical. Don't miss the next wealth-boosting event.
But yeah it's not a piggyback or retirement plan. I would happily just live here forever and use my the rest of my money for that.
This place is called Hacker News. The application for YC asks about a notable hack of a system. Residential real estate is a very large system.
It is unlikely someone would hand you a free house in a desirable location, but it doesn’t mean everyone must join the ranks of homeowners via a property that anyone can find and “like” on a real estate app.
I’m not saying don’t save, do.
But if you are not looking for special circumstances to get in, you are indeed stuck competing on the basis of capital accumulation and credit ranking.
I’m just bummed that by the time I finally had my chance to get a property for myself to live in and… whoops. I got rug pulled.
There are also a lot of extra costs to owning a home, beyond the property taxes, there is the maintenance. When renting, 0 time and energy needs to be spent on maintenance. If something breaks, there is 1 number to call, and other than that, it’s easy living. With a house the owner has to either spend time/money doing it themselves, or spend money to hire out for it, and manage all the various contractors doing the work.
The first time I bought a house it was a disaster. Every month I was having to spend at least $800 fixing something. My savings were going fast. I ended up bailing on it in less than a year for a few reasons, but one was that it was significantly more expensive than rent when it was all said and done. My current house is better for than perspective, and I was much more prepared going into it. I still like the carefree nature of renting, but after almost 20 years of renting, I was worried about how much it would cost me if I was renting into retirement, or if I still had mortgage, so I hit a now-or-never moment.
But yes, generally, I’d like to have control over my place and not deal with a landlord dictating what I can and can’t do.
1. Find a place you like and can afford.
2. Buy it for whatever they're willing to take.
3. Pay on your mortgage several times.
4. Sell it for whatever someone will pay.
As a virtuous person who just wants a roof over your head, which of these are you going to differently so you don't wreck things for future generations?
I buy real estate because I think the dollar will collapse. And because when mortgage rates <3% when all the macroeconomic fundamental scream "bullshit", I have a fairly safe, free, and accessible to leverage.
The dollar could simply enter into a semi-permanent state of 15-25% inflation. Permanent until the USD withers away. This my preferred outcome because I actually like this country.
The dollar could collapse to junk status seemingly "overnight". This is very unlikely, but appears to be the course of action preferred by the good folks who are over extending our military position. This will result in wide spread riots.
The end result is probably somewhere in between. Sometime in the future. You might object that Im crazy and that nothing will happen but consider the two guys running for president - one just threatened financial sanctions of China, the other sanctions for any country that doesn't trade with USD.
Hardly the actions of confident people
If you live far away and rely on third party managers, the matter is also trivial, but the outcome is opposite.
It doesn't mean the entire government will fail.
Look for example at the Lira, Ruble or Argentine Peso.
Maybe for your children's lifetime, if they are lucky. It took Britain nearly 100 years to deflate from its hegemon status. Argubly, with the size and natural advantages the US hold, it will take even longer for them to naturally fall from its top spot.
Nigerian Naira is down 75% in two years. How are property prices in Lagos in €£$?
Turkish Lira is down 80% in 4 years. How are property prices in Istanbul in €£$
shall I continue?
USD can absolutely have a 50%+ depreciation in next 5-10 years. That is completely possible. Will it lose reserve currency status? No absolutely not. There is no viable replacement. But when we measure in purchasing power or gold or other stable pricing reference it can happen and property prices will not fall in those terms.
Printing currency doesn’t strictly cause economic collapse in simply causes a loss in value and faith in the currency.
Long before actual submersion, the effects of rising seas will affect property in the forms of more frequent storms, flooding, and the effects on groundwater like in the Florida condo collapse. Inland, many parts of the world will start having water scarcity, or fire risk.
Instead of an all-over rising real estate market, I think prices in places like Florida, parts of Texas, Louisiana, etc. will crater due to uninsurability. The places that are still standing undamaged in 15 years' time will be incredibly expensive.
The only tricky part is knowing where those places will be exactly. The areas that were "sure things" just a few years ago, such as the Pacific Northwest and Vermont, have been shown to be not nearly so certain. Lytton, Canada spontaneously combusted, while VT has had many damaging storms and floods. So it's a guessing game at this point.
One could make the argument that renting is the best gambit, because that's the only way you won't get stuck with a climate change "lemon."
There’s a bit of a white elephant in this article, no mention of mass migrations. People not only want to be in a city, they want to be in a good city. Whether that’s idealism, climate related, conflict related or opportunity related there are many drivers pushing people from everywhere to just here.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
1971 was basically the year the government decided it could print money infinitely. Assets prices used to go up and down, now they mostly go up. The last two times real estate corrected, the Fed gobbled up mortgages like they were going out of style.
The 50 years since have been an aberration -- but I'd argue mostly it's been better than before... maybe those good times will come to an end, or maybe they won't. But if real estate crashes hard in the US, so will equities, so don't pretend you're safe.
"And the gods of the copybook headings, I notice outlast them all."
Determine why you want to purchase a home. Do you intended to pay it off to establish a level of 'rent' control once retired? Is your home a tax write-off based on income?
Rigth now in the US there is an affordable housing crisis due to price gouging.
Every house owned by a landlord is another house not owned by an owner occupier.
The landlord renter system has divided our society into haves and have nots. It’s modern serfdom in which landlords own families.
So sure, you can avoid investing in real estate for financial reasons but you can also avoid investing in real estate for the same reason you don’t invest in gambling smoking or fossil fuels….. to invest is to support something fundamentally wrong.
No doubt the commenters will all jump in with "but waddabout this, waddabout that, so you want no homes to rent eh!?!". I don't care, my point remains - he landlord/renter system is destroying the fabric of our society, has destroyed the social bargain, is robbing young people of the future and if you're a landlord then you are part of the problem even if you hide your identity and sense of guilt behind a managing real estate agent.
Only a fool or someone choosing to would think I am advocating for an end to renting.
But sure if you want to be right, you made your point. My point remains - the renter/landlord system is toxic for healthy society, for families, for young people, for old people, for everyone who is not a landlord - if you have personal integrity then you should not be a landlord.
Alright. So who rents 2003-me that flat in Elwood?
By the way, I still rent. I mostly enjoy it. I like the freedom to move.
One of the issues young people seem to have is that they have been conditioned to want immediate gratification. They are 23 and want a house on par with their parent’s home. Their parents didn’t start out with that place and worked up to it over decades.
My parents didn’t even have a shower in their first apartment. They had to take baths and use a mug to scoop up water to wash their hair. I had it better than them when I started out and got my first place; I actually had a shower.
People in general would be a lot happier if they dialed back their expectations.
how do i have shelter in your system?
Of course not everyone should own a house, but 90% owner occupied/10% rented it the right mix.
Housing in most western economies today is a ponzi scheme - a deeply immoral ponzi scheme, perpetrated by politicians with large housing portfolios who stand to benefit from the immoral corruption of the ponzi.
The first thing to do is point the finger at the landlords who are buying up houses and who think of themselves as good people and let them know they are the toxic perpetrators of the ruin of the fabric of our society. Every houses a landlord owns in a house that a young family will never own. When you own houses you own families like serfs.
Why 90%? Why not 85%? Why not 95%? Why not 70%? Why not 99.21237%? Where'd 90% come from?
What if 11% of the households genuinely want to rent? Have rental prices skyrocket forcing people into the complications of buying, holding, maintaining, and selling real estate?
“Soon after separation, I resolved to enable every household to own its own home. If we were going to get the people to take National Service seriously, I could not ask their sons to fight and die for the properties of the wealthy. We worked out a personal savings scheme that allowed them to own an apartment painlessly through installments over 20 years. We sold the apartments to them at below cost to enhance their assets. Today, 95 per cent of Singaporean households are homeowners. It has immeasurably increased their wealth and our social stability. Without home ownership, we would have become like Tokyo, Seoul or Hong Kong, where the voters in the cities are disaffected because they pay a large proportion of their salaries in rents.”
. . .
95%
Yes, most people own their home. But those homes are small flats in giant shared blocks. Your laundry hangs out the window and there are hawker markets on the ground level where everybody eats because there’s so little room to cook upstairs.
How many Americans, or British, or Australians would settle for that? It ain’t 90%.
Of course Singapore is an outlier, geographically. It’s a tiny island-nation-state. And by the way those ground-floor hawker markets are terrific; when you do go, make sure you visit a few. They’re a highlight. (Take cash!)
Edit: “But at least”, you might say, “the private housing market in Singapore must be sane thanks to this incredibly high level of pseudo-public housing?”. To which I respond, lol, and invite you to browse listings for real estate.
We have friends who live there and a nice (like, nice) house is currently renting for ~$25k/month.
You really should have just stuck with your 90% number, because that's really closer to the owner occupied rate in Singapore. But hey thanks for really showing you're just making things up as you go instead of actually thinking things through.
It's sad too because I generally agree the ownership rate in most US cities isn't great and would prefer to see more owner occupied housing units to be built, but people spewing nonsense and making things up as they go really do a disservice to persuading people. Pulling numbers out of the air and blindly assuming that number should be a target probably does more to harm your arguments than helps.
Let’s point instead the fingers at leftists and collectivist who have deceived you and tricked you into believing this. This shows you don’t understand economics whatsoever, like zero. You are driven by Envy and anger which is a deep source of evil. The real evil is in spreading such hatred and nonsense.
> the renter/landlord system is toxic for healthy society
> Only a fool or someone choosing to would think I am advocating for an end to renting.
I mean, you use terms like "every" and say the whole concept is toxic for society. Its not some misreading of your statements to see you're stating for an end to renting when "the renter/landlord system is toxic". If that relationship is toxic for everyone who is not a landlord, isn't eliminating the whole thing the cure for this toxicness?
No, your point doesn't remain if other people have valid points that refute it.
You're making a very strong statement which I imagine most economists would disagree with. Characterizing anyone who disagrees with this as "whiny" or something doesn't make it true - you just might be wrong (and probably are, IMO).
This is especially weird since you're making a strong moral claim here - it's not even "we disagree about economics here", it's "we disagree, and you're evil for thinking differently than me".
Corporate mega landlords should be banned too.
As should foreign owners. Housing should be owned by the citizens and permanent residents of a country, not corporate mega landlords.
This is completely insane. Envy is one hell of an evil disease, individually and especially socially.
I have an alternative proposition. Re-zone and deregulate to allow new developments. Lower all permits and taxes. Remove all barriers to capital and investment, foreign or otherwise.
Your housing costs will immediately drop.
Collectivism is the economic equivalent to creationism in biology. A false evil fantasy proven endlessly as failed ideas but fueled by primitive human emotions, envy and pride respectively.
I agree that envy is toxic, and free markets are pretty good technology.
But housing is a protected class of assets, just like clean water and radio bands. Taxes on non-primary residences are high, as they should be. Perhaps they should be higher.
Would this make it far easier and probable that a Chinese mega-corp can buy up neighborhoods in the US? Not implying that's a bad thing. I wonder if it's already happening to an extent.
However back to a hypothetical mega-corp. Let’s say a megacorp buys up blocks of old houses and redevelops it into new supply .. will overall housing prices go up or down? Obviously down! supply increases. However due to fundamentally broken education system that has been coopted by neo-Marxist collectivist gibberish even highly educated and technically literate individuals in western countries don’t understand that. And worse yet they have been trained to instinctively label me and anyone who tries to explain simple empirical economic facts as “racists” or “fascists”.
Not to mention the housing prices down here have skyrocketed with a bunch of wealthy folks from up north moving down, buying up real estate, turning them into VRBOs or their summer homes. Meanwhile, a friend of mine who graduated with CompSci from a state university is being offered peanuts by companies down here; he can barely afford to rent an apartment.
Anyways, I know this is kinda the norm in places like NYC, so I don't want to sound like a crybaby. Maybe city enshittification is just normal in the US. But my observations have turned me off from real estate investment, which was something I was considering last year.
In Australia, the property market has been artificially inflated for years with favorable tax incentives that encourage investors to hoard properties and sit on them, while writing off any losses as tax deductions.
Meanwhile, renters are being squeezed because landlords are trying to pass on the cost of rising interest rates to their tenants, who are forced to choose between groceries and making rent.
And yet, I would bet my kidney that when interest rates fall we won't see landlords pass on the savings to their tenants.
As the OP's point, the landlord renter system HAS "divided our society into haves and have nots", and it causing serious bitterness in division in our country. And the issue is politically intractable, because the propertied class are not going to accept any reform that lowers the value of their house.
Or, another landlord.
What I see is that if we leave things up to contestants, then the contestants will do everything to win. What can be done is a change in the game itself. So, regulation.
And every ounce of food owned by a company is not owned by a person. Oh right, that's why we allow people to produce more food.
As Communist China discovered, getting rid of landlords doesn't magically house more people. That just makes it harder to move to areas with more economic opportunities and ensures that any home that requires significant renovations will end up completely uninhabitable. You can offset this by asking the state to fund more housing development, but that still requires you to allow for housing development.
History has shown repeatedly that policies to restrict free markets and centrally plan makes everyone poorer and produces catastrophic results.
There is absolutely NOTHING immoral about being a landlord or a real estate developer. People need housing but cannot afford to build it themselves. Capitalists take capital they and create housing for people who need housing. This is a fundamental service to the economy and society. A necessary service.
It’s simply foolish to have this view that landlords are unethical. It’s been shown over and over and over that high housing prices are a result of restrictive supply caused by government regulations and that without such restrictions and regulations landlords and real estate investors LOWER housing prices this is a fundamental fact of economics!
In fairness, there's plenty in the water most places.
Ideally teachers and professors would go back to being 50/50 left/right, like how it used to be in the days before the Soviets started their global mindgames.
Also, in what era were all teachers and professors 50/50 left/right wing?
Here’s some (probably low quality) data that confirms that idea: https://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/
Here’s an article about how college professors used to be much more Republican: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-disappea...
Here’s one about Russian infiltration of a Western uni: https://www.propublica.org/article/why-russian-spies-really-...
Admittedly that last one does not describe an infiltration on the scale I’m talking about. But my thing happened around the 1920’s - 1930’s. Just look at all the Confucian Institutes on campuses and academics getting into trouble for illegal ties to China.
If you’re an ideological enemy of the West and seek to undermine it in the long term, this slow infiltration of the teaching institutions is exactly what you would do.
This probably depends where you went to school. I'm from South Florida where there is a large Cuban population.
> Here’s an article about how college professors used to be much more Republican: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-disappea...
Thanks for the article. It's a bit of a goofy partisan piece though, and provides some hand-wavy conjecture like, "It is unclear why elite research institutions have been untouched by these changes, though it is possible that these institutions use less-politicized criteria when selecting faculty, and thus make it easier for talented conservative scholars to find jobs." The article never explains what criteria. It also makes funny statements like "if one wants to be exposed to a broad spectrum of political ideas, it is still far better to attend Notre Dame or Baylor than Berkeley or Cornell" Because... more faculty are Republican? Does the American two-party system accurately represent the wide spectrum of political thought?
You seem to be implying that the rise in liberal professors/teachers is a result of covert infiltration of American universities that is brainwashing students and faculty. I find it more likely that less conservatives want to be teachers/professors than liberals do in the first place.
> “I find it more likely that less conservatives want to be teachers/professors than liberals do in the first place.”
This is true. But consider that a little bit of subversion applied over a decade or two can make things uncomfortable for one side, tipping the scales that way.
Soon the whole field becomes unwelcoming to outsiders and a political spiral begins.
A century later, you’re 1000x more likely to find Das Kapital being read at university than Atlas Shrugged.
I just think we need more granola-eating chemical engineers and more libertarian English professors. Running society is about negotiating tradeoffs. How can we make intelligent tradeoffs when only one perspective is present?
I guess what I was trying to say was it's not a very good piece and doesn't offer a balanced perspective.
> This is true. But consider that a little bit of subversion applied over a decade or two can make things uncomfortable for one side, tipping the scales that way.
I considered that, but I think this has less to do with universities politicizing their hiring process, and more to do with shifting societal norms and external factors; ex., Universities are more secular and multicultural than they were 50 years ago, public schools pay less.
> A century later, you’re 1000x more likely to find Das Kapital being read at university than Atlas Shrugged.
I think this is a bad example and false equivocation -- Das Kapital is a scientific text and analysis of economic models that was a work-in-progress for the entirety of Marx's life. Atlas Shrugged is a fiction novel written by a person who literally named her own philosophy and tried to build rules around it.
Also, Atlas Shrugged is commonly assigned reading in high school in the US.
> I just think we need more granola-eating chemical engineers and more libertarian English professors. Running society is about negotiating tradeoffs. How can we make intelligent tradeoffs when only one perspective is present?
I guess what I'm saying is: more perspectives are present. Just because all professors in a university vote Democrat doesn't mean they all hold carbon-copy political views. There's room for nuance outside of a meaningless metric like "50% of teachers should be Republican".
There is absolutely nothing scientific about Marx’s works. The Envy driven garbage produced by Marxists and current neo-Marxists leaders is directly responsible for unimaginable human suffering.
I remember well trying to explain to an academic audience that teaching anything or even reading Marx is the economic equivalent to reading the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and taking it seriously. Both are 100% fantasy and evil. Das Kapital is a slanderous attack on the capitalist heroes improving the human condition by an evil dark and envious soul.
Your characterization of Marx as an "evil dark and envious soul" is humorous to me. Also, why do you keep capitalizing "Envy"?
- "Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!"
- "Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks."
- “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range."
- "Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society."
- "In proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the laborer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse."
These are from your supposedly “scientific” Marx. To call Marx a scientist is effectively calling a doomsday cult leader one.
As far as my own personal credentials. I graduated as the top analytical student in a large american high school in the late 80s. From which I went on to an top 5 university and was exposed to the methods of leftist indoctrination. However fortunately for me, having completed all mathematics classes available to me, including all offered at the community college by 15. I discovered markets and programing. I also discovered Hayak and Austrian economics, along with Smith, and many others, independently studying. This combination of extremely high analytical ability, max score on all standardized math tests ever taken, and exposure to actual legitimate political scientists, sociologists, and economists, made all attempts to indoctrinate me with collectivist nonsense futile, much to frustration of my college professors and classmates.
I am extremely familiar with the global banking and financial system. I also was able to comfortably retire before age 40 but instead continue working and expect to until I’m unable.
Marx is an evil man. His envy and hatred has inspired some of the worst atrocities in human history. The fact he is even taught with any degree of respect or labeled by anyone as a “scientist” is outrageous. He has no numbers, no measurements, no evidence, and every single one of his assertions are categorically false.
So how is this possible. We come to capitalizing Envy.
Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour By Helmut Schoeck
It’s absolutely infuriating and frankly disgusting.
Angry with God. Makes sense it’s obvious to any real believer. You can feel the Envy and Anger dripping from his words. No submission to the Lord, no respect, no Love.
Obviously he has to try and ban religion also. Very interesting. Thank you. I never knew about this somehow.
—- The Fiddler
The Fiddler saws the strings, His light brown hair he tosses and flings. He carries a sabre at his side, He wears a pleated habit wide. "Fiddler, why that frantic sound? Why do you gaze so wildly round? Why leaps your blood, like the surging sea? What drives your bow so desperately?" "Why do I fiddle? Or the wild waves roar? That they might pound the rocky shore, That eye be blinded, that bosom swell, That Soul's cry carry down to Hell." "Fiddler, with scorn you rend your heart. A radiant God lent you your art, To dazzle with waves of melody, To soar to the star-dance in the sky." "How so! I plunge, plunge wihout fail My blood-black sabre into your soul. That art God neither wants nor wists, It leaps to the brain from Hell's black mists. "Till heart's bewitched, till senses reel: With Satan I have struck my deal. He chalks the signs, beats time for me, I play the death march fast and free. "I must play dark, I must play light, Till bowstrings break my heart outright." The Fiddler saws the strings, His light brown hair he tosses and flings. He carries a sabre at his side, He wears a pleated habit wide.
Tax breaks for property investors, tax incentives for property developers, handing large swatches of public owned land over the mates of the politicians for virtually nothing, selling houses to foreign buyers, selling houses to global money laundering criminal.
All to pump up the value of the housing portfolios owned by the politicians.
Whenever anyone says "let the market sort it out" I cheer and say "finally, the rich will stop getting their socialist handouts".
If that is your capitalist market economics then you might need to rethink how pure it is.
There's a missing perspective on the global governance bodies, that everything is born, matures, ossifies, is outcompeted, and dies.
Alligators and cockroaches perhaps the exception, but are those models for a life well lived?
https://youtu.be/h8s_z-jaexk
And also we can look at the cases where collectivism replaces capitalism and the catastrophic consequences that inevitably occur:
https://iea.org.uk/publications/socialism-the-failed-idea-th...
> And also we can look at the cases where collectivism replaces capitalism and the catastrophic consequences that inevitably occur:
at a glance, that book ignores the role the US played in these country's downfalls, particularly in south and central america. why is the US so afraid of a different system that they interfere with cuba and venezuela — i thought capitalism was the greatest system and could never be beat? oh that's right, it needs to kill any dissent in order to survive. do you ever consider all of the suffering that the US inflicts on other countries in the name of freedom and capitalism, to this very day, happening right this very minute?
it's true, the USSR created a lot of suffering, but looking at the chapter intros, that book doesn't seem to consider the contribution of the authoritarian governments had in the suffering. instead it blames the economic system. nor does it cover the diversity of political opinion that led to the establishment of the USSR, most of which was quickly silenced (aka executed).
imo, the USSR's problems were much like what's happening in the developed capitalist countries right now. american capitalism is a centralized economy controlled by few people with the power of the government, just like the USSR. i'm not talking about small business here, i'm talking about corporate capitalism that controls the federal government and all of the commerce, what we eat, where we get our energy, etc. very centralized. (aside, wouldn't it be amazing if the small businesses had as much power?)
and regardless of how you define the USSR's economic system (an authoritarian government can never be socialist, as socialism is a democratic system by definition), we can agree that the USSR was not capitalism, yet it's responsible for some of the technological gains of the 20th century. capitalist dogma lead us to believe that the 20th century changes were only because of capitalism, but that's simply untrue. if capitalism is responsible for all of the technological changes, then how were the soviets able to reach space first?
lastly, neoliberal propaganda from the world economic forum isn't a good source for an argument imo. and who said that socialism is the only alternative? regardless, your sources conveniently ignore countries with democratic socialism that are thriving. (queue: "tHaT'S nOt SoCiAlIsM!!!!" arguments...)
Correct! That is not capitalism and is fascism. I agree with you on this 100%.
I’m a classic liberal libertarian not an advocate of crony capitalism/aka oligarchy or fascism.
However regarding USSR. It was an absolute disaster. I have direct personal family knowledge of what occurred. You are demonstrating a new phenomenon of revisionism with USSR romanticism.
The US is currently a war machine. Fueled by corrupt politicians alliance with the MID.
i'll let u in the commune once ur libertarian island fails.
It is certainly true that USSR’s investment in basic science was probably one of its best achievements. I agree we can’t deny that.
Libertarianism is likely rising as we see a multipolar global economy develop and state power eroding along with collapsing fiat currencies worldwide. I highly doubt you’ll have a successful commune anywhere but anyway I’m confident we won’t be needing it.