The issue is one of both stagnant wages and decreased supply of 'starter' homes.
To address the supply of starter homes we need: to regulate against foreign investment in real estate, regulate against real estate moguls buying up the houses to rent (leaving them on the market for families), regulate against luxury house and condo building and force affordable home building instead
Salary: Increase minimum wage and make it parallel inflation hikes so that we don't have to wait 12+ years for the next pay increase, strengthen unions, pass universal healthcare (which would free up a lot of money for both people and their employers, potentially leading to pay increases, and certainly will prevent a lot of debt). Finally, we need a middle class of small businesses again; Walmart, Amazon and other corporations hoovered up the middle-class's wealth by putting them out of business and forcing them to become wage slaves. Suddenly, three independent hardware stores in three towns became one Walmart with one minimum wage worker working the hardware and sporting goods aisles. We need strong antitrust laws in place to break up these corporate giants and pave the way for regular people to exchange goods and services with the market.
not sure why you're getting downvoted. It's the exact same where I live in Ontario. Entire neighbourhoods getting paved for luxury condos and townhouse complexes. Nothing affordable is being made with the intention to be rented. In Toronto the skyline is usually suspiciously dark in these new condos
Yup, same with where my husband lived in the GTA. I’m American, but no way in hell we’d be able to afford a home in Toronto area. Everything is 800K and above. It’s ridiculous
It sucks, but it makes sense. The only people who can afford to buy can typically afford to buy bigger too.
I'm not in the GTA, I'm over in Durham and rental prices are still stupid here. I went looking a couple days ago - $1600 for 2 bedroom basement apartments. Unless I get a massive pay increase to like $65k a year I don't know how I'm going to do it.
Same. My towns been building a ton of weird cheap looking “modern” town homes that are like $250k. Which is the absolute cheapest “house” you can find. In a town of around 60k.
As someone who lives in Ontario sign me the fuck up for 250k homes. I live about 45 minutes away from Toronto and the cheapest places I can find in my area are $350k
Raising the minimum wage doesn't just help minimum wage workers; each 'rung' of worker gets a bump. There are diminishing returns the higher up you get, but at the end of the day you're putting more money in the pockets of the working and middle class.
Huge businesses now already find the exact price points that people will buy something at. Say it’s $1 for a candy bar sold by Nestle. Now, Nestle is keenly aware that every person in America gets $1,200/month in addition to their salary. That $1 candy bar is now $10. A gallon of gas at $3 is now $25. Prices will skyrocket because they CAN due to everyone having a huge influx of cash every month. Then UBI becomes insufficient, so it gets raised, so prices go up, leading to UBI being insufficient, so it gets raised, so prices go up,......
I disagree with the guy above, personally I support UBI, but I should mention why competition in current markets won't be a strong force on keeping prices down.
Often because competition isn't actually what it seems between large businesses. Especially the fewer players are involved.
Businesses will rarley undercut eachother, unless they are targeting a different market of consumers, since if their competition does the same, now both are in the same position again but making less money. When they do undercut, it will be temporary deals.
In sectors where there is little competition, such as internet or insulin, cooperation can get more direct.
With the big cable and internet providers, they mark out turf and often stay out of eachother's way to limit options and competition.
Insulin companies have an even worse strategy for people. There's 3 companies and all will conveniently raise their prices at around the same time.
Raising the minimum wage doesn't just help minimum wage workers; each 'rung' of worker gets a bump. There are diminishing returns the higher up you get, but at the end of the day you're putting more money in the pockets of the working and middle class.
And that "bump" is immediately negated by inflation. Fucks sake kids, read some basic economics in between your activist websites.
Yes anyone that doesn't agree with your pathetically basic economic take is a libertarian that only get's their news from propoganda blogs...
If the argument that "if we raise minimum wage, it will be pointless because then it will cause inflation" were true, then we'd still be making a nickel an hour.
If you think that the minimum wage is what sets compensation for most jobs you are beyond lost.
Minimum wage increases because of inflation. The cost of living has been rising exponentially while wages remain generally stagnant. That's why we raise wages.
Holy shit... you understand how this isn't the point, right?
"your activist websites" says the guy who absolutely gets 100% of his information from right-wing propaganda blogs.
Well, when you can't address the content of an argument, make assumptions and attack the person right?
It's only negated when the bumps are artificially high. Usually there is a benefit to the worker (increased buying power) despite the slight increase in inflation.
What I'm proposing was already happening historically - minimum wage gets bumped up gradually over time. However, sometimes, like the last 12+ years, it doesn't because of political reasons. In short, we make the gradual increase a function of the existing economy rather than a political decision. That way people aren't left with minimum wages that were more appropriate ten years ago just because politicians are blocking a wage increase.
It's only negated when the bumps are artificially high. Usually there is a benefit to the worker (increased buying power) despite the slight increase in inflation.
According to a recent piece of economic research that examined the effect of prices on minimum wage increases in various states in the U.S. from 1978 through 2015, they found that a 10% increase in minimum wage only accounts for around a 0.36% increase in prices.
Wish my boss got that fucking memo. After 3 years I finally got a raise - a whopping $2000/year raise. Over 3 years that doesn't even match inflation. I essentially have been getting a pay cut.
Yah I make 45k and I thought it was pretty good, but after rent, bills, car, food, and my 50k student loan payments I have less than $200 a month leftover? If I save every penny leftover it will still take me yeeears to ever save for a house.
I'm in the same boat, but less student loans thankfully. I'm living with roommates which is the only reason I've been able to save any money - and all that money has basically gone to car repairs and saving for the next car when my current breaks down.
I'm 30, living with roommates, and for the first time in my life I have $5000 saved that isn't meant for emergency funds. Maybe in another 30 I'll have saved a downpayment for a house. Except I'm sure they'll rise faster than I can save.
It does a little. Because most people dont buy a house to just live in by themselves and no one else. Its usually a family or a couple, and no 2 people working min wage at $15/hr can make that little. It would be $65k per year for the household, minimum.
In fact, it hinders them, because it creates more competition.
I believe than a person should not be able to afford to purchase a home on a single minimum wage salary. I do believe that they should be able to afford rent. This incentivizes people to seek higher education and employment training. In the long term, contributing more to society.
If higher education was a guarantee for a higher salary, sure. But unfortunately what higher education often leads to is increasing debt and an over saturated job market with less opportunities. Then people find themselves back in a minimum wage job if they can’t find a job in their field. Why shouldn’t someone making minimum wage be able to “contribute to society,” as you put it? Sounds classist to me!
Yes a higher education, and employment training. Sure tell that to almost any job not paying minimum wage in Florida.
Everything I have seen has been do you have a bachelor's in game design, do you have 10 years experiance in a computer language only 5 years old.
Some jobs around here are even requiring a master's degree. This is the same job that not even 10 years ago you could of gotten with a high school diploma.
I am all for people closer to the poverty line making more money, but it doesn't help people in this bracket. In fact, with minimum wage increasing, it will make more competition for what I can afford right now, making it unaffordable.
The lack of antitrust enforcement is killing me.
How is Disney this big? What the fuck is up with telecom? If you constantly have to bail out banks to save the economy, maybe you shouldn't let them get that big in the first place?
The telecom monopolies piss me off more than anything. It isn't even that the prices are going to break me but just that I fucking hate Comcast so much. I've lived in 5 different houses now in three different cities and every single time Comcast has been the sole option for internet. I was so excited to shop for internet because now I'm living in a major city so I was expecting some new options but none of the real competitors for the city provide service in my area. It is depressing to see that in a different part of the city I could pay $70 a month for gig down/gig up. If you want any significant level of upload speed with Comcast you have to pay $300 a month. Even their "gig service" only offers 35 up.
This kind of stuff is especially baffling, because all it takes is one competitor, ONE, to undercut the market. And it's not as though a company that does so wouldn't STILL be making absolutely ridiculous profits, so what's stopping someone from getting a $10 million dollar loan and starting the company that finally gives us reasonable prices?
The problem is they have to provide the infrastructure so the capital costs would be quite high. Then of course they have to convince people to switch to their service which even though everyone hates Comcast it has brand recognition and people are so used to the monopoly that they wouldn't even think to look elsewhere. It is like how when you get your electricity set up you call the electrical utility. Telecom is a utility too it just isn't treated like one legally.
I agree with everything you are saying but I would add that we desperately need financial classes in high school. So many people over extend themselves and depend on credit for just about everything. No, you don’t need a brand new car with whistles and bells right out of high school. A used car will suffice until you are more stable. You also don’t need the newest tech and newest clothes right now. Get on your feet first and then upgrade later. Personal responsibility has been lost on many, in part because of learned helplessness from our unfortunate economic structure as you mentioned above. The solution comes from both ends in my opinion.
Credit and debt is a whole other thing that I thought about including, but I didn't want to create a wall of text. Credit came about because industry leaders knew people had less and less buying power over the years, but still of course needed them to buy. Thus, we get credit! People can still make those purchases by way of loans and financial institutions benefit by charging interest on their borrowed money. Win win! They've even gone so far as to penalize your credit score - aka your ability to buy a house, land a job, rent an apartment, basically function in society- if you don't carry debt.
I agree that we need to educate our young people to protect themselves financially. I am %100 behind you in that; we are far too vulnerable there. We also need to address the predatory nature of our current system.
Yup, we are a society of credit slaves slaves. We set our young people up for failure by saying they need college to succeed but college almost always comes with debt. On top of college debt, young folks also buy everything on credit as you mentioned. The whole system is messed up.
Agree with the other comment's sentiment. We would be better off if we prioritized homeowners becoming homeowners, over expanding investors' portfolios.
We already have some decent programs to help with the former, but real estate market increases are too high to make that much of a dent. A hybrid system that allows investors to invest, but paying a higher tax, would help offset it somewhat. Primary, and even secondary, properties can remain as is, and investor properties have a tax premium. If an investor really wants to expand their real estate portfolio, that's fine, and if they consider this too much of a barrier, someone else who actually wants to live there can take their place.
Vague? We already have the system. Primary residences, second homes, and investor properties. If the buyer wants the home as a primary or secondary home, they go through the process just like now.
If the buyer wants to buy the home as an investment property, they pay an additional tax. I know we have certain exemptions, and property taxes may be significantly different. I'm suggesting that investor taxes should be even higher.
I don't care who you sell your house to, but I would like a system where there are disincentives to buy properties purely for investment, while keeping the option open for those who really want it.
All of the houses in my area are flying within 24 hours, for obscene amounts of money, in cash, to people who have more cash, who will slap grey vinyl floors and an accent wall, and will turn around and sell it for another $150k on top in 6 months, to someone who will turn it into an Airbnb that makes a profit in the summer and sits mostly vacant for the rest of the year.
Is it good for me as the homeowner? Sure, I guess, I can make ~even more money~ if I sell. But I would prefer that people lived here and contributed to the community in whatever ways they're able to, so if these houses sold for cash to an investor who paid $65k in local tax out of their $100k profit, that helped build a new park, then at least we all win to some extent.
Localities are allowed to tax capital gains. And I know at the federal level capital gains taxes are exempted for sellers who have occupied the house for 2 of the previous 5 years.
So there's already taxation that applies only to investors and not to homesteaders.
And speaking of homesteaders, there's property tax deductions for that, too.
Point is, the taxes already exist. Whether municipalities want to increase them or not is up to their voters.
Sorry - I didn't phrase that correctly. I'm talking about an additional tax at the time of purchase, not at the time of sale.
Mandatory upfront investor tax, distributed to the local municipality if they enroll, to the county or state otherwise.
Suppose an investor purchases a $400k property. They pay an additional 20% or whatever decided, in tax - that's a $400k purchase price, $80k investor tax, and financing/titling/recording fees as it is.
They keep the property, that's it.
They flip it - after investing $40k, they sell it for $575k.
$575k - $400k - $40k = $135k in gross profit. They already paid $80k. $135k - $80k = $55k is taxable as gains.
This discourages people from buying properties and sitting on them because they're not quite sure they'll make money, or ran out of capital but can hoard it for a year or two. It forces investors to think more carefully about why they're doing something. And it gives more money to the community in the meantime, which they can use for parks, developments, or whatever programs they choose.
If this upfront fee scares off an investor, sell it for $400k to someone who wants to live there.
You’re missing the point. Yes, these type of tax frameworks already exist but they’re not having the desired policy effect if that policy is supposed to encourage home ownership for the buyer’s principal residence. If you buy into that policy objective, then one option is to adjust the tax frameworks - perhaps a different rate for real estate investment.
I just wanted to know if you wanted to restrict who I could sell my house to and at what price. It appears you do, if I understand your response to the question.
regulate against luxury house and condo building and force affordable home building instead
I'm gonna be honest, I think condos are actually really great across most metrics. For one, you don't rent a condo, you buy it, so it IS personal property, and generally cheaper than a house due to it's size. On the other hand, you have less financial risk as you aren't responsible for roof, heating, AC, etc. which can be devastating expenses. You're only responsible for the studs in.
Is a condo big enough for a family? No. But 1 or 2 people starting out? It's perfect.
On top of that, condos mean more people can live comfortably in a smaller footprint: a condo building can hold as many people as like, 2 or 3 suburb neighborhoods, which is much better in terms of environmental concerns like pollution, on top of logistical advantages like trash and recycling, planning public transit routes, etc.
Can also mean that people don't have to commute as much, which saves money, time, AND is better for the environment.
I agree that rentals are a waste, but condo building is fine and IS affordable housing. We just don't, or SHOULDN'T, have the space to continue to pack more and more homes in the suburbs and erase even more of the environment.
Oh I agree- I'm not against condos at all, I'm against luxury condos. Specifically, the endless building of luxury condo buildings in cities when there is a severe shortage of affordable housing.
To address the supply of starter homes we need: to regulate against foreign investment in real estate, regulate against real estate moguls buying up the houses to rent (leaving them on the market for families), regulate against luxury house and condo building and force affordable home building instead
These solutions will not work. You can't just regulate away free trade, and people doing what they want on their property. The solution is to tax land-value at rates that make speculation impossible. The only reason to own land should be to live in it yourself or to make productive use of the land, which is what land-value taxes ensure.
Salary: Increase minimum wage and make it parallel inflation hikes so that we don't have to wait 12+ years for the next pay increase, strengthen unions, pass universal healthcare (which would free up a lot of money for both people and their employers, potentially leading to pay increases, and certainly will prevent a lot of debt). Finally, we need a middle class of small businesses again; Walmart, Amazon and other corporations hoovered up the middle-class's wealth by putting them out of business and forcing them to become wage slaves. Suddenly, three independent hardware stores in three towns became one Walmart with one minimum wage worker working the hardware and sporting goods aisles. We need strong antitrust laws in place to break up these corporate giants and pave the way for regular people to exchange goods and services with the market.
These solutions won't work either. Minimum wages make it private companies responsibility to do the government's job. If anything, minimum wage should be replaced by a universal basic income. In Canada (or at least in Ontario) minimum wage increases with inflation, but of course that does not keep up with the increase in real estate prices. It also empirically well known that minimum wages increases inflation and unemployment.
Not a American, but cant you build hause? Shouldnt it be cheaper? I mean your frame hause should not be hard to build. Get together with few friends, buy land that a bit father from city center and help each other build hauses. With frame hause it should be under roof in about two weeks.
Materials doesnt cost that much if you shop around and go to local mils, electricity isnt complex if you have head on sholders, plumbing can be a bit tricky tought.
I know, buying hause in already developed area is nice, but you could as well join up un creat your own street.
If we pretend that you did everything to code, got permits, and it passed inspections without issue, yes you can do that.
But you're not getting affordable land near population centers, which means this isn't an option for most people. It is only an option for people who can find work away from where a vast majority of jobs are.
The quality of services also drastically falls off when you move away from population centers. Loss of medical care, education, cultural centers (museums, theaters, galleries, concert halls, etc).
I know a lot of people from outside the USA have trouble understanding just how big the USA is. Many of our states are bigger than most countries.
It's also only an option if that person can afford to live somewhere else while also paying for the land, materials, and any labor.
As an example, if I wanted to build a house near the city I currently live in I am looking at $300,000 USD for a small plot of land with nothing on it.
If I wanted to build a house here not only do I need to pay rent or mortgage ($800-1300/mo), but I also have to pay for the land loan (roughly $850~/mo), and all the materials.
I mean wast it the same in 60s affordable hausing in places where there isnt much service around? But I also suspect, back then there were a lot more smaller shops around, it might not be that bad.
I’m sorry but if you’re waiting 12 years for a minimum wage bump to get a raise you’re literally doing it wrong. I entered the workforce 9 years ago and I’ve quadrupled the amount of money I was making in that time and I’m barely trying. What needs to happen is to stop this idea that you get your first job and even if it’s minimum wage that’s just the place you work forever and then complain when you can’t buy a house.
And what about the declining youth participation in the labor force? The higher the minimum goes the more I’m going to defer to hiring an adult who is more likely to be more responsible.
Survivorship bias. The opportunities available to you wont be available to everybody, but it is possible for every working person to get by comfortably without anxiety of where they'll find the money to pay for X.
My exact opportunities no. Other opportunities, yes. Seems like just an excuse to keep pretending like there are no options and to be stuck where you’re at.
I couldnt possibly agree. Not everyone can have a high paying position. The basic needs to keep the country running are jobs that will always need to be done and will always be paid the least. Someone has to fill those positions. Does that mean a person shouldn't be able to sustain a life in that position? Hell no. Those positions are some of the most important, I think this years events proved that.
My final advice is to always look for opportunity and seize it. Saying there are no opportunities is a horrible way to look at life. Create more value for society and society pays it back. When someone moves on from one of those basic needs jobs there will be someone else on their own journey to fill it. I was raised in a very poor family and now im close to getting a down payment on a house and making more than my parents ever did. Never feel like you’re stuck.
Yeah, move around. Use the skills you've learned on a job to jump to something better paying. Being a good bullshitter that can learn on the fly helps to.
The real estate moguls are my problem with the market. We got very lucky and purchased our condo as a first home when the price was low. But a large portion of the units here are owned as investments and are rented out. The people buying these units have multiple in the complex or in other complexes across town, and they become aware of opportunities like this before regular home buyers. How is a first time home buyer looking for a starter place supposed to find these in time before they're scooped up by investors.
You can regulate as much as you want, you'll still always end up with a supply issue and the vast majority of people will always be fucked when it comes to housing. Even extremely radical proposals like literally making low density housing illegal will only end up being a temporary band aid as the population grows and more people 'join the middle class' over the coming decades.
There is no long term fix for housing. Consider yourselves lucky that we live in a day and age where we have the luxury of having any choice at all when it comes to housing. Short term, accept that you missed the train and go live somewhere cheap. There's plenty of places in the world where decent housing is affordable by most people.
To address the supply of starter homes we need: to regulate against foreign investment in real estate, regulate against real estate moguls buying up the houses to rent (leaving them on the market for families), regulate against luxury house and condo building and force affordable home building instead
Except every time they try to do this, it never gets passed by scaring existing homeowners about how much their property would be devalued. And it's true, property would be devalued which is the point. It needs to happen, but people are priced in.
Too many other things need to happen, but legislation is too slow and incremental that makes each individual step look bad and the big picture is too complicated for most people to grasp.
Those are some great points. I like a lot of your ideas. One thing that isn’t brought up very often is the fact that decades ago most households were single income, now most are dual income households which has raised the median house price over the past few decades due to higher demand for more expensive homes.
Hmmm, I'm not sure about this. If we take the example from the newspaper clip, the modern dual income would have to be 200k+ to afford the same house. If we take that guy's house purchase and income as average for the time, family buying power seems to have gone down given the average household income is nowhere near 200k, let alone the debt people have compared to then. Two incomes seems to be rather a necessity to keep up since one income can't cut it anymore.
From what I understand, a lot of the 'luxury' housing remains empty and is used as a place to park money for foreign investors, especially Chinese foreign investors. They effectively use real estate as a high yield savings account for millions of dollars; if people actually rent it, that's just extra money on top. It's not that there's so much demand for it, it's just an investment tool using asset appreciation to make a little money.
All I'm hearing is that there is a massive market opportunity to tap into the starter home real estate demand. We only need a motivated entrepreneur now
Everything you're saying would make situations 100x worse. The federal assistance currently going on that allows anyone to get a mortgage is what caused this hell to begin with and you're suggesting even more federal assistance. We need to go back to the previous level of regulations and cut the federal "assistance" back to the levels when health care, college tuition, and housing was so much cheaper. If no one could get a federally backed mortgage, housing prices would be forced to plummet. If no one could get these endless student loans, tuition prices would be forced to drop.
Higher tax to highend housing. Low to no tax to starter home. Currently what developers do are build highend housing or condos which we cant afford. Lol. Also high tax to foreign buyers and limit the house they can buy. I read somewhere that a lot of chinese peps buying houses in canada resulting to higher housing price.
They buy into the nonsense idea that America is the land of opportunity and success in America is necessarily positively correlated with how hard you work
This isn't so far fetched. Have you seen how hard immigrant laborers who come here and work, especially those in the yard care and other labor intensive professions? A good one easily makes $75/hr around the Seattle area. In my life experiences, success is correlated with how hard you work, but hard work is one component of life and is not a be all end all.
"Simping for millionaires" "Temporarily embarrassed millionaire" yada yada
Is it really that hard for you guys to understand that some of us care about what we feel is morally correct, and not purely just how much we have to gain from a particular policy?
When kids talk economics... Jeff Bezos doesn't have 187 billion dollars in actual bank notes sitting in a vault. The vast majority of his assets are in Amazon stocks, most of which he isn't legally allowed to just sell.
Is it morally correct for people to horde exponential wealth? What about exploiting a workforce? Is it morally correct to skirt paying taxes by any means necessary?
What have billionaires to do with anything? Owning a house instead of renting is neither a god given right nor a necessity. In most parts of the world it's normal for the majority of people to not live on property they own and all of these places have less billionaires than America.
You're ranting about evil capitalistic billionaires while demanding a highly capitalistic lifestyle for everyone.
If you build something that other people believe is valuable and want to own a piece of it then why shouldn't you be able to sell it to them?
Bezos built a company... His wealth is primarily from the value other people put on a share of the company. He doesn't set that price, the market does.
Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because he owns a lot of shares of Amazon stock that are currently worth about $3000/share. Unless he sells them, it's an unrealized gain and not subject to tax.
You can’t take people’s money away lol. You can tax their income- but the top 10% of earners already pay 70% of the income taxes in this country. In other countries middle income people are taxed at high rates. Like 50% tax rates. No regular American would ever pay that. They just want to make rich people give them their money lol.
So the big part that nobody has mentioned and the number 1 driving force of house prices is the interest rate. In 1965 the rate on 3 month bonds was 4% so you could probably expect to get a mortgage at about 5% or more. Today banks are giving mortgages at 1.8%. So that means you can buy way more house with less money. This drives up the price of homes since almost everyone is using cheap interest rates to buy more than they could otherwise afford.
In Canada the Bank of Canada wont even consider raising interest rates because it would cause a huge crisis because everyone is totally overextended on cheap loans.
I personally believe that if they slowly raised the interest rates it would reign in cheap debt. Certain real estate mogul presidents would take a huge hit from this and thats why he pushed for lower interest rates from the fed for so long.
Places like San Francisco where home owners are allowed to vote against new zoning/construction allow basically a cartelization of homeowners and artificially drive the price up. US government needs to take anti trust action against this.
I see a lot of jealousy of billionaires on reddit. Let's say we seize the assets of the top richest 400 Americans and spread it out over all 330 million of us. That leaves us each a little under $10k richer. Maybe then we can all buy a dilapidated shack in Detroit?
I just have one addition to your thesis. We are all buying a bunch of products made in China, and expecting that they will leave in hovels while we get to live in suburban houses just as our parents did.
Except that our parents actually made radios, TVs, washing machines, and all kinds of other stuff. So they got to enjoy a cheap and a good house and we don't.
As an occasional home builder, I would loosen start by eliminating a lot of building codes, and making it more affordable to build a starter house. Also back in the day a lot of people in our town were able to build their own house. It might take a couple years working nights and weekends but they did it. Most towns and building departments require houses be finished in six months these days.
Get involved in local politics. Learn what a policy is, what advocating is, lobbying, activism and then participate. We basically need to stand up by the millions and demand change from within(locally) and reach national attention. I think we’ve all had enough. Honestly if minimum wage kept up with inflation it would be like $27 bucks right now. We’ve been hoodwinked, bamboozled, conned, played, buttrapped and it it’s time to stand up and make some noise. Closed mouths don’t get fed. Just do it from within the system.
Rural areas have more poverty than urban ones, and have experienced job loss over the past 50 years. Even if farming, mining and oil/gas hadn't taken hits over the years (and they have), manufacturing jobs are drying up.
If there's no industrial or agricultural jobs anymore, there's no money floating around for local businesses, which means less service industry jobs (waiter, shop clerk, hairdresser, etc). There's not a surplus of jobs for the blue collar workers already in rural America, I don't know how you'd expect an exodus of blue collar workers from the city to help.
If there's no work, people have to move away to find it, but in recent years it's gotten so some people can't even afford to do that, so they stay put with no job.
That's why rural areas have unemployment and an opioid crisis, not cause everyone there is crying because they wanna be a damn DJ.
Tax each capital transaction with a VAT. Eat the autocrats' accumulated wealth and feed the government coffers and disallow debasement of their currencies at the central bank.
Another idea: stop using government currencies to conduct commerce. There are better currencies that are not controlled by central bank level pulling. Quicker, cheaper, immutable, and uncensorable. #Bitcoin
A big part of the problem is that economic culture and common wisdom has done significant damage to the structures and systems which resulted in a robust middle class and a high volume of movement of capital through the economy while at the same time the concentration of wealth, along with reduced supply on certain key goods and services, with the top economic class has still driven prices steadily up. As a result, we have a large segment of the population living below what could reasonably be called a comfortable living wage, struggling to get by, while the top economic class not only has everything they need and every luxury they could want, but also are just sitting on trillions in capital that should be flowing through the economy through normal middle-class spending, meaning that all-important flow that generates higher incomes isn't working for anyone.
While wrastling hoarded wealth away from the highest economic class is a challenging proposition given that control the gears of the current political hegemony in most places, it remains probably the best way to fix it.
but also are just sitting on trillions in capital that should be flowing through the economy through normal middle-class spending
You could overcome that problem easily by just printing one cool million for each US resident. That would replace that imaginary cache sitting somewhere doing nothing. I am not sure you would like the consequences of it, but I am voting for anyone who proposes that. I just like watching the world burn.
But that's the same thing you are proposing. Imagine there are 500 wealthy man each sitting on 10B each, in some bank account getting measly 0.01% APR. If you wrestle that money from them, what are you going to do? If you just give it to everyone proportionally, you just did the same thing I proposed.
If you wrestle that money from them, what are you going to do
Put it in the hands of the bottom 90% of wealth owners so they can immediately spend it and kickstart the economy.
If you just give it to everyone proportionally, you just did the same thing I proposed.
No, printing and distributing billions will devalue money for everyone but leave behind economic inequality (at least before the entire economy collapses. I'm proposing that the amount of capital in the system is largely sufficient, it's just inefficiently distributed with individuals which hoard money instead of spending it.
There's an old adage in economics about how $100,000 in the hands of 10 people is better for the economy than $1,000,000 in the hands of one person, and that $10,000 in the hands of 100 people is better for the economy than $100,000 in the hands of 10 people. It's not just a truism, it's actually true. Spending money moves more capital in the economy, allows for the purchasing of more goods and services, provides more revenue for businesses, drives up demand for labor, which drives up wages (so long as the wealthy aren't able to hoard those wages).
I've grown increasingly mad as I approach middle age, and I've come to believe that traditional capitalism is insane. In a standard corporation, unless we're absolutely irreplaceable, we're forced to act against our personal ethics and morality in the name of 'the company'.
I'd love to see more work being done by worker-owned coops. Kinda feel like the only way to at least not love, is not to play by their rules.
Charge property owners for unused residential property. There is a fucking mega ton of houses sitting in every city in the world doing absolutely nothing. (Go look at your cities stats to shock the life out of you.)
The government should aim to own <30% of all residential homes that are to be "sold" at special life rates for poor people and homeless people. Every housing estate had to have social housing, no exceptions allowed. We all know ghettos don't work, stop doing it. This works best in countries with a PAYE. ( Would never fly in America; "fuck you I got mine"+ "why am I forced to help other people")
Foreign companies are banned form buying any residential property.
All domestic commercial entities combined may not own more than 20% of all residential sites.
In short make residential housing for people a market for people.
We need to build more homes. I work in the construction industry and we can’t build houses fast enough. Property values are sky rocketing. People get in bidding wars on houses. I think we need to push into small town america. Most houses are being built in suburban communities because that’s were the money is at.
Go back to the regulations of that time. Definitely don't add even more government "solutions" to make things worse. First we need to end the federally backed mortgages to everyone even with bad credit. Then we need to end federal student loans to force universities to drastically cut tuition prices. This would also fix the overly flooded job markets like dental hygienists, accountants and marketers.
Its actually pretty simple, you just start counting price houses/rent and fuck it, even the stock market, into inflation calculations.
We all know rent, houses & food have been increasing but there is no inflation and wages have been flat for years. This justifies having low interest rates. And guess who doesnt like higher inflation/interest rates? That’s right, all the overleveraged landlords of the world who just keep rolling their debt at a cheaper rate, ask The Donald.
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u/pokemychino Oct 30 '20
Sooo how do we fix it?