If you conflate home ownership with wealth, more people will view themselves as targeted by policies that target the rich - even if that is not the reality. Useful for getting voters to oppose taxing the rich.
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Ding ding ding.
This is why the rich try to muddy the waters.
They try and make it appear as if the homes and retirement funds of the middle class are somehow equivalent to the hundreds of billions owned by the rich.
Fun fact: if we would tax the rich and lower taxes on the middle class, we would get something closer to socialism. Under pure socialism, where everyone owns an equal share of the total wealth, the average household would actually be worth $1.6M.
Any household with less wealth than that is actually doing worse under the current system compared to full equality.
We need to roll back to 1955 tax rates:
Eisenhower individual income above $200,000 was taxed at 90%, above $300,000 at 91%, and above $400,000 at 92%. That’d trim Musk Bezos etc. down to size, fund education, fund social security etc.
Corporate taxes topped out at 52% - the tax rate was 30% for the first $25,000 in profits that a company made, and 52% for anything over that amount.
Of course, adjust these floors with with inflation taken into account - $300,000 in 1950 = $3,772,843.22 in 2023 - so multimillionaires and up.
Several years ago I came across a graph showing relative tax revenues collected from companies and individuals. I don't remember the details, but there was a time when the tax revenues came mostly (or maybe equally?) from corporate taxes and now they come mostly from personal income taxes.
It seems to me that going back to that would be a good place to start. Once we have companies paying for the systems that allow them to thrive, we can tackle personal wealth/income taxation disparities.
Yup. We literally can't balance the budget with the regressive systems (WA and TX especially where there's no income taxed at all, and everything is built on sales and property taxes because fuck you rich people can afford more lobbyists) in place; the disparity between the ultra rich and poverty grows further every day.
That won't really solve the problem.
The ProPublica leaks showed that Musk, Bezos and Buffet only had incomes around the $100K.
While at the same time, their net worth grew by hundreds of billions.
That won’t really solve the problem.
no single policy change will 'solve' the problem, that's why it's governance, not 'fix it and forget it'. BUT, one thing that would impact this issue greatly would be the:
Corporate taxes topped out at 52% - the tax rate was 30% for the first $25,000 in profits that a company made, and 52% for anything over that amount.
Tesla, SpaceX, etc., earning money would be taxed and that would impact Musk's value. They hide their money in individual compensation, you tax the individual, they hide it in corporate compensation, you tax them there.
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That policy would impact lawyers, doctors and movie/music stars mostly... Musk, Bezos don't get paid that much, they get paid in stock. When they borrow billions against that stock it counts as debt and don't get taxed.
Totally solvable problems.
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I disagree. Homeowners of multi-million-dollar properties have something others really want — property — but they also usually don’t actually OWN the property; they have mortgages.
And if they sold their property, some of them would be wealthy, but they’d also be homeless. And as soon as they attempted to buy another property (or even rent), they’d be back to having very limited disposable income.
So yeah; they’re still middle class. Someone else is holding the purse strings; the purse is just bigger.
For anyone who purchased a house in the last 5ish years sure. Much longer than that and they are sitting on a whole lot of equity.
Yes if they sold the house they would have 1/2 - 1 million dollars in cash and be homeless. But that's a lot of dollars better than all the other people who currently also don't own a home and don't have all that cash.
Which is sorta the point the article is trying to make.
Yeah; I agree with that point, but not how they couched it — those people are still middle class.
The real kicker is that all the people who currently don’t own a home and don’t have the cash… are lower class. Despite thinking of themselves as middle class.
I don't agree with that take.
Those house owners likely fall into upper middle class rather than middle class.
Another way to look at it. Depending on who you ask middle class roughly covers household income of about 75k-150k
If one of those home owners sold their home and made 1 million in equity, that money could be expected to make them ~50k a year. For many current home owners that hypothetical raise would push them above the middle-class bracket.
"We're not middle and lower class, we're all working class"
Most home owners, if they cash out their home, and either rent or downsize, will still absolutely need to work to eat, and if they don't they will find themselves homeless before long.
For that small portion that could actually live on the equity from downsizing their housing, yeah, they are upper class, but there are a lot fewer of those than you would think. For a single person, a million in equity (50k a year) might get you by, but not luxuriously and not safely, and most houses are owned by couples though (so cut that in half), and many have dependents.
This article is a smear job trying to say “owning a home makes you wealthy” and ignores the fact that “the cash to own 7 homes” is the real problem.
I certainly agree. Seeing as all property values skyrocketed in the past few years, those whose homes are now worth $1 million only kept up with everyone else.
Seeing as over 60% of Canadians own their home, that means that the rise of property costs merely widened the gap between those that own and those who rent. While the rise of property costs certainly isn’t a good thing, those who own property realistically aren’t any better off than they were before.
What's the statscan definition of homeowner? Aren't myself and my partner considered owners because we live with my parents in their house, so there are 4 "homeowners" living in the house.
I could be wrong but I remember reading what they consider a homeowner does not match what common sense says it is. Please point me in the direction of something if I'm wrong, I've tried looking but can't find anything.
That’s a great question, and I can’t seem to find an answer. I got my information from stats Canada, but I can’t seem to find how they define a home owner.
Looks like it's people who report ownership on their taxes, i.e. legal owners. So either one or both parents would be a "homeowner", depending on whether it's singly or jointly owned, but other adult tenants wouldn't be (unless they were partial owners).
Ownership rates are around 65%, but mortgage rates in Canada are only about 30%.
So less than half of homeowners have a mortgage, and another good chunk of those mortgages were small to begin with and are approaching being paid off.
You don't need to sell the house to benefit from owning it or it having a higher price either. You get to live in it for the cost of taxes and maintenance, that's a massive amount of freed up monthly cash flow. The house value being higher means you're paying less comparable to someone who has to rent at current market values (like a young adult moving out)
It would be less beneficial to own the house if the value was lower and rents were dirt cheap.
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Re: the title... Yeah no, owners of an expensive property are not only not in the "rich" class, they're likely working class as much as gig drivers and cashiers. Unless they liquidate this asset and actually go live somewhere LCOL where they can live off of the labour of others, they're still working class.
Exactly, articles like this are just confusing the meaning of class.
What makes you a member of "the working class" is that you are forced to sell your labour to survive. Fullstop. A tradesperson, and a lawyer, and a burgerflipper are all in the same class from that point of view.
As soon as your accumulated capital becomes large enough that you earn your income only as a result of your capital, then you are no longer working class, and that's when your interests diverge from the average worker and average homebuyer or renter.
A landlord with no other job, the major shareholders of a profitable business, a wealthy heir, those people make their money by siphoning value off of other people's work without actually needing to spend their time on work.
Long story short: I have no problem with a 50 year old plumber with a large family who legitimately uses that 4500 sqft house.
My issue is with Karen who used dad's money to buy 8 properties to airBnB them and insists she get special treatment because her business risks didn't pan out.
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That is the point though, if like the article says l, 1/5th of owners have an investment property, they could sell it and still live in the current place and have a ton of cash. or sell both and move to a cheaper city and retire. Compared to people struggling to save for a mortgage in this crazy market.
1/5th of owners have an investment property, they could sell it and still live in the current place and have a ton of cash
That's fair, and the article goes through a few key points that I agree with. The article title is just clickbait, but annoying because it's alienating. I don't think it makes sense to write a headline based on 1/5th of that group being land speculators.
"1/5 of Homeowners Refuse to Accept the Awkward Truth: They’re Rich"
Or
"Multi-property Homeowners Refuse to Accept the Awkward Truth: They’re Rich"
Or
"Multi-property owners Refuse to Accept the Awkward Truth: They’re Rich"
Or
"Landlords and Spectors Refuse to Accept the Awkward Truth: They’re Rich"
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If you're dicing things up that way, there's no middle class in the first place.
:-) the middle class is the subset of the working class that has no food insecurity but has a lot of social & image insecurity
But like the rest of the working class, the middle class is one or two tragedies away from becoming homeless and marginalized, despite the lack of awareness regarding so
That's as good a definition as any I guess.
There never has been. You either sell your body and labour, or own enough capital for it to self sustain, or at least be sustained by the labour class.
If we're doing Marx, don't forget the petite bourgeoisie, who draw significant income from both. They were minor in Marx's day, partly because very little was publicly traded, but they're actually the wealthiest group by far now, taken as a whole.
Exactly, you're either a part of the working class or capitalist class
Of course there is no middle class!
Therein lies the contradiction at the heart of the persecuted property owner: their wealth is deserved, by virtue of their lifetime of hard work and careful planning; at the same time, it’s not fair to tax them in proportion to that home’s staggering value.
So you’ve lived in the same house with the same job for several years/decades, but because actually-wealthy individuals and institutional investors are suddenly willing to pay a lot more for your house, you should effectively be forced to move out? Christ, just tax rental income ffs
Or, radical opinion, don't let people invest in housing. Also, I noticed BC raised their maximum rental increase from 2% to 3.5%. Almost double. So there's that too 🫠
Ontario got rid of theirs for any newly built/designated residences. Now you also have to look at what year the damn unit was first rented in. If you aren't careful with that, your landlord could legally hike up your rent by $10,000 or however much they want to, for absolutely no reason. November 15, 2018 is the date to watch out for, specifically. Anything after that is taking on a big risk, imo.
This is all so fucked. Here's an example of what I was talking about.
No where in the article does it say that homeowners should effectively be forced to move out.
We absolutely coddle homeowners, with preferential tax treatment, subsidized street parking, super low property taxes in places like Vancouver, and, most importantly, outsized power to prevent new development at the cost of renters, young people, and the poor. This is zero sum: homeowners maintain and grow their wealth, in part, at the cost of renters and actual poor people.
Increasing taxes at a higher rate than inflation on a homeowner who is given raises at the same rate as inflation (if that) is effectively forcing them to move out over time.
If the goal is to make everyone a homeowner, then
outsized power to prevent new development at the cost of renters, young people, and the poor.
is the only truly catastrophic problem mentioned so far. Everything else you listed at least incentivizes homeownership. Sure, car-centric urban design is silly and all that, but I kind of doubt most people would prefer the space reserved for parking spaces be occupied by more housing. Green spaces, bike lanes, and larger walkable areas would probably win that vote. Vertical and mixed-use housing are tried-and-true solutions to the density problem.
I would argue that the only other “catastrophic problem” is one we haven’t mentioned yet: institutional investment. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they paid for this article. They’d love to see people turn on individual homeowners, and raise property taxes to the point that only institutions can afford to pay it.
Super low property taxes, besides starving government services and causing renters to make up the difference in fees, is precisely one of the reasons why places like Vancouver have one of the worst housing crises in the world. Economists agree that profiting from the increase in land value is a kind of theft from society, called “economic rent”. (This is why a land value tax has the nickname “the perfect tax”.) That theft is at the heart of our dysfunctional housing market.
You have a lot of concern for the hypothetical possibility of increases in property taxes forcing homeowners to sell. But in reality, annual property taxes on a $3 million house isn’t even the average single months rent on a 1BR. They should be taxed properly, and that money should help renters! We desperately need public housing and co-ops. This is absolutely a class struggle, but you seem to only see the harms of the homeowner class, not renters.
The goal absolutely should not be to subsidize homeowners. That is precisely the problem! When you subsidize a group, non-members pay the cost. That means non-homeowners pay for homeowners! It is precisely this mindset, that homeowners deserve even more from society despite their incredible privilege, that is causing our housing problems. More to the point, institutional investors inevitably benefit from many of these policies, perpetuating the housing crisis.
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Wealth is not money, can't buy bread with a staircase.
Yes and no. Wealth can be used as a proxy, usually via debt, to acquire more wealth. If this wasn't the case, Elon Musk would not have been able to buy Twitter.
This is why renters are absolutely screwed: not only are they spending the same as someone with a mortgage in many cases, but they can't leverage equity at all. Need a car repair done? Send a kid to school? Retire? Invest? If you rent, you're screwed.
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A lot of people in this thread are claiming that homeowners are not really rich. A bunch are citing some Marxist definition of “rich” or raising the bar to “never having to work again”. OK, fine: they’re “rich enough” to be a problem, then.
The truth is, homeowners in Canada have enormous power, both economic and political, and they have been advocating for policies at every level of government that have both exacerbated the housing crisis and grown their own wealth.
“But they’re working class because they can’t enjoy their wealth without selling their home!”
That’s just not true. Homeowners enjoy enormous privileges at the cost of renters, most notably blocking new developments, which homeowners do with passion. Their mortgages are guaranteed by the government, subsidized effectively at the cost of taxes by non-homeowners, i.e. renters. And homeowners have enormous generational wealth to pass on, which if we don’t address, will cause an economic caste system to permanently root itself. Yes, this is real wealth, causing real social problems. This article is right to call it out!
They are middle class. In fact, there is no middle class, they are working class!! They do not own their own means of production, they are wage slaves like everyone else.
I can’t tell if you’re joking or not. Poe’s Law.
If you own a $3.5 million home in Vancouver, or you’re complaining about not being able to rent out four condos on AirBnb like one woman in the article, then, no, you’re not middle class.
That isn't the definition of working class, or middle class
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