this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Who rents for 20 years and then acts all surprised that they don't own the house? If your end goal is to own a house, start by buying a house. If you can afford to rent and pay off someone else's mortgage then you can certainly afford to pay off your own mortgage.
You certainly can, right? But that doesn’t mean you’ll qualify for a loan.
That and I can't save up enough for a down payment cause rent/inflation/student loans/car payment. I was a teacher for 6 years and couldn't save a penny. If I wanted to make more money I needed a master's degree which I also couldn't save up to afford.
How is someone supposed to save for a mortgage when they're busy paying off someone else's mortgage?
How is that the landlord's fault?
Well, because as a class they raise the cost of land, meaning that many peoples only option is to rent. And then you have to pay off their mortgage for them.
Note that in the USSR apartments were 5 percent of income. That is what the actual cost of maintaining homes for people is, when you remove all the rent seeking and property speculation.
There is a huge difference between small and large landlords. The example I gave was clearly related to small landlords. If you have two houses and two mortgages and are doing your own maintenance, you aren't driving up the cost of housing significantly. If you are a small landlord, as I've described, the only "profit" you're making goes straight into the payments on that mortgage, most of which is interest for the bank. Also, those "profits" won't be realized for 20+ years. Of course, I'm talking about averages over time. Clearly, housing is unbalanced right now, and bubbles create exceptions.
Large landlords, hedge fund investors, foreign investors, large AirBnB investors... these are a different story. They are the ones on large amounts of property, creating artificial scarcity, jacking up rents to unreasonable levels, etc.
That's why this is such a frustrating conversation, and it's similar to many other hot button issues. It gets treated like a black & white problem and folks start slandering whole groups when the issue usually arises from some sub-set of opportunistic assholes, or extreme bigots/mysoginists/what-have-you. (I my mind I'm also thinking about social issues that pit left-leaning people against right-leaning people, where everyone treats the other side as if each person were an example of the most extreme in that camp.)
So in this thread there are folks talking about overthrowing landlords en masse, when it's the large investors from outside the local community (plus some scumbags in the local community) who are adding to the suffering in the world.
Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It's the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.
We need a more efficient way to get to the heart of the matter in these conversations because just scrolling through the comments it seems like a lot of ignorant or misguided anger.
That's why this is such a frustrating conversation, and it's similar to many other hot button issues. It gets treated like a black & white problem and folks start slandering whole groups when the issue usually arises from some sub-set of opportunistic assholes, or extreme bigots/mysoginists/what-have-you. (I my mind I'm also thinking about social issues that pit left-leaning people against right-leaning people, where everyone treats the other side as if each person were an example of the most extreme in that camp.)
So in this thread there are folks talking about overthrowing landlords en masse, when it's the large investors from outside the local community (plus some scumbags in the local community) who are adding to the suffering in the world.
Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It's the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.
We need a more efficient way to get to the heart of the matter in these conversations because just scrolling through the comments it seems like a lot of ignorant or misguided anger.
Your problem is you are viewing this as some sort of moral argument. I am not claiming landlords are sinners, Im saying that their class existing is harmful and land should not be commodified as it currently is.
Except by its very nature it is extractive. The renter is always getting fucked over in the situation.
That's why this is such a frustrating conversation, and it's similar to many other hot button issues. It gets treated like a black & white problem and folks start slandering whole groups when the issue usually arises from some sub-set of opportunistic assholes, or extreme bigots/mysoginists/what-have-you. (I my mind I'm also thinking about social issues that pit left-leaning people against right-leaning people, where everyone treats the other side as if each person were an example of the most extreme in that camp.)
So in this thread there are folks talking about overthrowing landlords en masse, when it's the large investors from outside the local community (plus some scumbags in the local community) who are adding to the suffering in the world.
Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It's the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.
We need a more efficient way to get to the heart of the matter in these conversations because just scrolling through the comments it seems like a lot of ignorant or misguided anger.
I'm not casting blame, I am talking structurally. As a class they do this behavior. Small landlords also contribute to the commodification of housing.
When you find yourself comparing to the USSR I think you've already lost your argument. Since it boils down to "eradicate capitalism and rent becomes cheaper". Maybe it does and everything else becomes a lot shittier too.
Except life expectancy, women's rights which still haven't been replicated in the west, nutrition, the eradication of homelessness(not the homeless like the US wants to do) political agency for the proletariat, the list goes on.
And lgbt rights in Cuba, east Germany before its collapse, and increasingly in countries like Vietnam and China.
If you overlook the surveillance, political oppression, the beatings / torture / disappearances, the labor camps, the subjugation of minorities & religions, the squalor everyone is subject to, the censorship, the run down infrastructure, the lack of luxury goods, the imposition of "social" systems to punish non-compliance, the lack of free enterprise. It's also amusing you hail women's rights when the USSR banned abortion and made divorce practically impossible. Or LGBT when was and still is marginalized and persecuted in most Communist countries. Maybe ask the Uyghurs think of their lives in their re-education centres. But maybe you're hailing Cuba taking enormous strides to recognize LGBT rights... in 2022. Well that certainly makes up for 70 years of life under Communism.
Oh they're all such a veritable workers paradise! It's weird why so many people attempted to escape, enduring arduous journeys, even risking drowning, being shot or entangled in barbed wire. It's weird how so many countries got rid of Communism and the people rejoiced about it. Strange that.
I'm not going to debunk all of that. It is much easier to say bullshit than fact check it.
When did the USSR legalize abortion the first and second time? When did the US legalize abortion? You don't actually have to answer this, it is a rhetorical question, but you should know the answer
Also, read "why women had better sex under socialism."
In east Germany lgbt people lost a lot when the wall came down. In general socialist countries are better on practical lgbt rights than capitalist ones. Especially when you include the neocolonialist capitalist subjects where being lgbt is explicitly a serious crime. Cuba has the best lgbt rights in the world.
Also, communists spearheaded lgbt rights movements in capitalist countries. Taking credit for their work and recuperating it into capitalism is intellectually dishonest.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284621/russia-opinion-dissolution-of-the-ussr/
Sure thing comrade. Go back and finish your first year political studies semester. That, or emigrate to one of these socialist paradises.