• Keith@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    So what’s the consensus on landlords who do it as a side hustle

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Lol, no nuance here. Landlords are the devil. I try to inject some moderation once in a while. We have a rental, it’s in fantastic shape. We’ve never raised the rent. We’ve spent so much on improvements and repairs we’ll not see a profit on it for the next 3 years. Tax write off? Sure… but nonetheless landlords are the devil. Doesn’t matter if we worked out asses off to afford it.

      E: what follows is people willing to subscribe to luxuries like entertainment, but complain about fair prices for necessities. Why bother being decent when you get shit on anyway.

      • Knightfox@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        You’re literally my parents. They were long term landlords, bought properties for nothing in the 90’s rented them for 20-30 years and then sold them. Most properties were long term rentals, people lived there for 5+ years, one lady had 6 kids in 10 years in one of their houses. Rents in their area are ~$1200-2000, my parents were still renting at $700 because the place was paid off and the people living there had been there for nearly a decade.

        Side hustle landlords ain’t the enemy, it’s the corporate landlords that are the true problem. Unfortunately the people being oppressively fucked don’t see a difference and it’s hard to blame them.

        Hope your side hustle works out for you and I hope you stay one of the good ones.

        EDIT: My parents both have full time jobs, having rentals wasn’t a job for them. They rented to pay the mortgage and pay for upkeep. The long term plan for them was to sell the houses and retire, not live off rent for perpetuity. They rented the properties at a rate that allowed them to pay the mortgage off quickly and pay for landlord repairs (roof, HVAC, water heater, septic tank, etc).

      • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I would argue that owning additional property in an environment where there is a housing shortage is implicitly unethical even if you’re trying to run it ethically. Only argument I can think of against that is that you’re keeping it from shittier landlords and corporations. But still, denying others the opportunity to grow their wealth through property ownership causes poverty on a mass scale. Not any one person’s fault, but still.

        • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          We charge well under mortgage rates for rent. It’s affordable. I hate to throw this out there, but our intent is never to “extract” the max profit from someone. If someone wants to rent at the upper extent of their ability to pay it’s not what we’re forcing on someone.

          • Lifekraft@jlai.lu
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            1 year ago

            The only reason you own a second house is for profit. A profit you are doing directly from an other individual. You can twist that how you want, it’s the reality. You are doing it respectfully and are providing a service. But an artificial one.

            • onion@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              What if it’s run at cost? (And the property value were to stay level)

              • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                You’re still extracting wealth from the tenant, and the tenant is only losing money. You’re still preventing the tenant from building their wealth through property ownership.

                The ethical thing to do in this situation would be to sell the house to the tenant at a price proportional to the rent, minus what they’ve already paid in rent to this point.

                • onion@feddit.de
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                  1 year ago

                  Sorry I genuinly don’t follow. If I were to rent out at cost, that means if the tenant were the owner, they’d have to pay the same cost as well. So they’re losing the same amount of money either way.

                  And how would they be building wealth through property, if the property value doesn’t rise? They would buy the flat for say 50k$, and then own 50k$ worth of property

                  minus what they’ve already paid in rent to this point

                  I think you’re assuming that I would be paying off a loan with their rent? By renting at cost I meant their rent covers maintanance/upkeep

          • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It can be fairly priced, but that doesn’t really change anything I said before. It’s not how the property is run that’s the problem, it’s that it’s owned by someone who isn’t living there during a time where that, on its own, creates problems.

      • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, youre doing it out of the goodness of your heart and not to have a renter pay for you to own an appreciating asset. /s

        • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Why do you think any business does what it does? That’s an absurd assertion that anyone would do that for nothing. We take good care of our tenants because we like having good people there, and that’s worth a lot. We play the long game. Your /s is useless after that post.

              • saigot@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                Groceries?

                Food stamps. It definitely would be nice to have a government owned food bank. This is a bit of a weird one because the line between luxury food and necessity food is blurry and complex. It certainly is a system that is also in need of reform

                Electricity?

                About half owned by the government why I live, the other half is highly regulated, companies dont really get a choice of what to charge. It’s also illegal where i am to cut off electricity during winter months where it really is 100% a need. If they don’t really get to choose who there customers are or how much they charge, aren’t the real customer the government? I think this would be a pretty good model for land ownership.

                Fuel?

                Not really a basic need, I haven’t used any in a couple years. The car cartels are certainly a huge threat to people’s basic freedoms.

              • force@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Fuel is NOT a basic human need, especially in countries where gas stoves are extremely uncommon or banned from being used in new houses (which includes most of Europe). In fact, in most of the US electric stoves are also by far the most common type (with the exception of California, NY, Illinois, and New Jersey).

                Fossil fuels as a “need” is manufactured, it’s completely artificial, it shouldn’t even be legal to install stoves or heating that require gas. The US and Canada also shouldn’t have shitty car-dependent infrastructure. The only reason we have these problems is because of propoganda from fossil fuel corporations promoting garbage like “gas stoves cook better”… whatever that’s supposed to mean… or lobbying to keep cars as the only viable form of transport for the past hundred years.

                I agree with the rest of your points though.

              • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                Yes really.

                I absolutely agree with you about grocery, energy, and fuel companies being evil. But most companies aren’t grocery, energy, or fuel companies.

                That said, I still hate capitalism. But for the purposes of this discussion, landlords are listed among the worst because they’re part of the select few who withhold basic human necessities over profit.

              • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                Don’t get me wrong, capitalism is still evil. On the employment end they’re still extorting people because below a certain level, in the current society, money becomes a basic human necessity.

                But for the purposes of this discussion, from a consumer perspective, most businesses in the world don’t trade in human necessities. Landlords, grocery stores, hospitals, energy companies, and a few more are the select few who do.

          • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Why do you think any business does what it does?

            Yeah, profit is legitimately a problem, this guy Adam Smith wrote about it in a book and then Marx wrote a whole series of tomes doing a more comprehensive analysis about how it is unsustainable and to the detriment of humanity.

              • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Yeah, youre a member of the rentier class, not the capitalist class.

                The critique is actually different for rentierism vs capitalism, even most capitalist economicists hate rentierism.

                You still benefit from extractivist class dynamics though. Unless you’re going to be in the red even after selling the properties you own, even if you’re charging so low that you lose money in the short term. But I’m guessing that on aggregate you’re gaining money in the short term.

    • sheogorath@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So here’s a story from other side of a coin. When I got married I decided to get a small house in the suburbs as my work is remote so I can work from anywhere. But after getting a baby me and my SO decided that we would live near my in-laws house to help with taking care of my baby for the time being. So we rented a house near my in-laws and to keep the house occupied I decided to rent out the house for a cheap price. It’s basically half the market price. Soon enough I got a renter. Being too trusting of others I decided to not ask for a deposit because the people renting are basically a friend of a friend.

      But after they finished their rental period when I came to the house it was basically wrecked, they destroyed the toilets, one of the doors, and generally left the place in shambles. It’s amazing what kind of damage you can do in a short period of time, and the amount of money that I spent fixing the damage is more than the rent money that I got.

      • imgprojts@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Something almost exactly like that happened to me. I bought a house so my money wouldn’t be stagnant and didn’t wanna live away from my parents yet so I rented it. They totally fucked up everything in it.

      • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Should have sold your house. Another person could have bought it. Being the owner, they would have more respect for it since it’s their loss of it gets wrecked. Adding another house to the market also increases supply and makes houses more affordable.

        Your landlord also should have sold his house and you could have bought it instead of paying his mortgage.

        The ethical use case for rentals is short and medium term for travelers and people who are in a place for a few months to a year.

        • Aermis@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Selling your home is not a solution. “Being the owner they would of had more respect for it” is a ridiculous notion to abide by. People will wreck their home as owners just as much as renting. You can easily just argue to have the tenant pay full cost for rent, pay full down payment and then maybe he would have respected how much he was paying for his living solution.

          Do you not understand the costs of buying and selling a home? Having to deal with banks and lending? You think this is the solution every time someone or a family needs to make a living change?

          The guy tried to rent out his property at a reasonable price because he didn’t want to go through the other route. Even without the absurd costs of closing and dealing with mortgage lenders and every party involved, the volatility of the housing market is enough to make people insecure.

          I can tell the majority of people here aren’t home owners and hate landlords like some evil boogeyman but they’re conflating a single or 2 house owner with a renting conglomerate. Selling your home so there’s more homes on the market as a solution is equivalent to turning the water off while brushing your teeth to fight the dwindling supply of water.

          • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Selling your home so there’s more homes on the market as a solution is equivalent to turning the water off while brushing your teeth to fight the dwindling supply of water.

            Fucking EXACTLY. Every drop counts, not running the water uselessly for 4 minutes a day saves enough water for you to survive a full day. Sure there are people wasting more water and we need to spend more energy reducing their waste, but just because someone is worse than you doesn’t mean you’re “good”.

        • sheogorath@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          So you expect me to buy another house when my kid is old enough that I don’t need help from my in-laws and spend much more money after the housing price goes up.

          My landlord is in a similar position as mine, soon after he bought the house I’m staying in he got assigned to work abroad for five years and decided to rent the house for cheap. I did the same expecting the tenants would act like me.

          • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Landlords gonna landlord. You’re literally the guy in the meme “owning other people’s homes and complaining about it”

            Basically you wrote a story where you’re the good guy who out of the goodness of his heart rented his only house at HALF MARKET VALUE just because you love the poor and want to help them. Then an EVIL NON LAND OWNING tenant moves in and destroys it for no reason. And you didn’t even make any money. What a disaster. Thankfully for your landlord you’re a good land owning tenant. If only all tenants were like you.

            What a joke.

            • sheogorath@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Dude, I’m literally renting the house for a couple of years before I move back in after my kid is older. What the fuck do you expect me to do? Do you know how much I rented the house at? Only for 2 months cost of the mortgage for a year.

              Let me sum it up for you simply, if you bought a house for some price and then you need to move for a short time like 3-4 years, why the fuck should you sell the house?

            • KepBen@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Entitlement is a hell of a drug. I deserve to live wherever it’s easiest for my family, obviously. You don’t though.

          • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Imagine complaining about having to buy a house in a bad market while also complaining about being a landlord

            • sheogorath@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              So let me get you straight. If I needed to live somewhere else for a short time like 3 years. I’ll need to sell my house and then buy the same house again after 3 years for 50% more price?

              • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                No? Why would you need to buy the same house again?

                Also you’re getting mad at the exact evil that makes renting the only option for some - the shitty housing market. It just so happens that landlords exacerbate the shitty market by being economic parasites. It doesn’t matter how well intentioned you are as a landlord, the concept of renting is parasitic.

                • Aermis@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  A man owning a home and renting it out isn’t the problem and you know it.

          • Aermis@lemmy.world
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            Man people hate owning property here. Selling your house because you needed to change living conditions for a while is wild. Besides the absolute volatility of housing markets and prices, just the cost of buying/selling a home is a ton. Renting is an easy way of what you did.

            No way do these people think selling your home was the right idea in your position. And it’s not entitlement to want people to take care of property.

      • Waker@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yep. I’ve had something similar happen to me.

        I’ve had someone rent my apartment, stopped paying rent after a few months and then rented one of the rooms. This went on for about 3 years until I was finally able to legally remove the person from there. 3years of losses + all the legal fees for about 3 or 4 months of rent. Plus I had to fix the walls.

        Not all renters are like this of course.

        I agree that some landlords are absolutely predatory and that the rise of Airbnbs is killing communities while increasing rent prices (at least where I’m from). However, people complain about it but have never been on the other side.

        I do my part by not being an ass and taking good care of my renters. They need something? I’ll fix it ASAP. Also, taking into consideration their job situation, family and such. Sometimes they can’t fully pay rent, that’s fine. Pay me back next month or dilute it slowly over the next couple of months. For instance, while rents have increased high as fuck, I haven’t increased his rent since 2019. I will probably increase it a bit this year but about 20€ at most.

        • sheogorath@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yep, my deal with my landlord is if there’s anything that needs fixing I’ll fix it myself and if I spend any money I’ll just forward him the invoice and he’ll deduct it from my rent. Although others don’t have the same situation as myself, I think there’s a place for landlords to exist.

          • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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            Yeah, damn those tenants who use their legal rights to actually get their landlords to maintain their own damn property. They’re just mean. If only all tenants just did free labour for their landlords, the world would be a better place.

            What a fucking joke.

            • sheogorath@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Dude, if you get to rent a place for half the market price, just try to be a decent person okay?

          • Waker@lemmy.world
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            I’ve done that with my renter as well (don’t know the English word lol). Whatever he asks for in the end, I just deduct from the next couple of rent(s).

            If it’s something he’s not comfortable doing I’ll hire a professional.

    • someguy3@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Imo taking houses out of the market to rent them out shouldn’t be allowed.

    • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      “As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”

      -Literally Adam Smith. I dont even need to get out the Mao quotes.

      The problem isn’t the scale the problem is the class dynamic.

      • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world
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        Honestly, Adam Smith gets a worse rap than he deserves because all the rich people abused his ideas to peddle unregulated, free-wheeling capitalism. Even Smith knew the inherent danger of privatization and monopolization of land and rampant rent-seeking.

        Kinda like how Nietzsche’s sister exploited and misrepresented his work after his death to further the Nazi cause.

        It seems to be a common thing with a lot of the classical economists that they all recognized (and wrote quite a bit about) these problems of monopolism and rent-seeking, but wealthy elites cherry-picked their books to serve their own economic agenda.

  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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    People being like “tax landlords more” No, do what the cpc did. Stop enforcing property rights. All you have to do is take over the local sheriff or city court and refuse to enforce or write any eviction orders except for serious safety reasons.

    Some of those landlords will form gangs to enforce their property rights, those landlords are myopic jackasses who are going to end up killed by peasant… er… tenants if the local law enforcement doesn’t step in to break up those gangs without killing anyone first.

    • popcap200@lemmy.ml
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      Yeah, rent control isn’t the solution people think it is. It turns out markets are high because of demand and supply. Not solely due to greed. What we need is more housing and to delete nimbyism.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    “NFTs” were an attempt to rent-seek on the internet, demanding kickbacks for the dubious ownership of an entry on a ledger that is usually associated with an ugly picture. cringe

  • TheOakTree@beehaw.org
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    I think the pro-landlord commenters are missing the fundamental point:

    In the “please pay me to live in my extra house” scenario, the problem is not that someone is renting your extra house. The problem is that you and others can afford to have multiple houses, so much so that the person renting your house cannot buy their first house. If the cost of houses increases as the availability of houses decreases, there is an obvious outcome to the richest people buying all the houses and renting them out.

    • oatscoop@midwest.social
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      I don’t have an inherit problem with “mom and pop” landlords as a thing if they’re willing to actually do what they’re resposible for. Rental property existing isn’t the problem and fills a need for a lot of people. Renting (at sane rates that allow saving up a down payment) is a pathway to ownership. It’s a solution to people that aren’t planning on settling down in an area – like students and people working towards another career.

      Price gouging and landlords screwing over tenants is an issue. Huge rental companies buying up everything they can is the problem. As is reality companies creating artificial scarcity and driving up prices on housing.

      The problem is what’s it’s always been: unmitigated greed, primarily by the rich and powerful.

      • MaxHardwood@lemmy.ca
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        Renting (at sane rates that allow saving up a down payment) is a pathway to ownership.

        As opposed to what? You’re either living with somebody for free or you’re homeless if not currently renting or owning.

    • lemillionsocks@beehaw.org
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      Yeah I think people forget that these kinds of complaints and memes arent geared at the nice old lady who rents the unit upstairs and who,along with her husband, in the 60s/70s invested in some cheap real estate to help get them through retirement.

      This is more he big boys and girls who have eviction down to a science, who dont repair things on time, who are hard to get a hold of, and who raise rent on the regular because despite their overhead remaining the same “everyone else is doing it so good luck!”

      The irony is that a lot of the “pro landlord” development and laws favor the big wealthy LLCs and very rich individuals over the mom and pops supplementing their fixed incomes.

    • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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      As a landlord (renting out my basement) Amen. Fuck people with multiple homes for the purpose of “passive income”.

  • J Lou@mastodon.social
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    1 year ago

    Land value tax would solve this when combined with a UBI from the revenue it generates

    • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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      Land value tax is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of. “Unimproved” value? So basically when rich people get together and build mansions, next to them we build affordable housing. Both pay the same tax because the unimproved land is worth the same? Or maybe you’d argue that because the other mansions were built that the land is now worth more because it’s more desirable. That logic applies to the affordable housing next door though, so the rich can kick the poor out of house and home just by being nearby.

      No, all taxes need to be extremely progressive because the wealthy simply consume more from society than the poor. A poor person can be poor anywhere. A rich person can only accumulate and hoard vast wealth if the society they parasite provides them with a steady source of healthy and intelligent workers and vast access to energy and natural resources to consume. The rich take more from society and need to pay more.

      Taxes also need to apply to every possible economic transaction because unlike the poor, the rich can afford to do weird things to escape taxation. If we tax only one thing you can bet your ass the rich will find a way to avoid it and only the poor and working class will pay, allowing the rich to hoard wealth unimpeded leading to the tremendous inflation we see now.

      • J Lou@mastodon.social
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        Land value tax is progressive. Due to land’s inelastic supply, this tax cannot be passed on to others. People that own lots of land bear the entire burden of the tax. Charging for unimproved land value encourages building denser on more valuable land. This increases housing supply thus making housing more affordable

        LVT is 1 policy. It can be combined with other policies. LVT is not an avoidable tax

        • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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          It’s not progressive.

          How much land does Musk or Bezos own? How much land does an average farmer own?

          Amazon warehouses are built on the unimproved equivalent of farmland or worse. The Amazon warehouse generates millions in annual profit. The same parcel of land gets a farmer a meager income and we should tax BOTH THE SAME???

          If you come up with a tax that has any chance of taxing an old farmer more than it taxes Musk or Bezos, don’t come tell me it’s progressive.

          Also I’m sick of hearing that somehow this tax “can’t be passed down to the consumer”. If every plot of land nearby is taxed the same, all the owners will shrug and say “sorry that’s just what it costs”. It’s the very definition of things that will be passed down to the consumer. Take your libertarian BS out of here.

          • J Lou@mastodon.social
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            1 year ago

            It meets the definition of a progressive tax.

            The broader Georgist program involves aggressive taxation of government-granted monopolies like IP, which both Musk and Bezos are indirectly beneficiaries of.

            LVT is 1 policy meant to solve 1 problem. It can be combined with other policies that address other problems.

            The labor theory of property, a negative application of which provides a moral rationale for LVT, also provides a justification for an inalienable right to worker democracy

            • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              I’m sorry, I just have a hard time agreeing with you on the definition of progressive taxation here. Sure SOME rich people will pay more than SOME poor people. But even that statement is tenable at best. Certainly MOST rich people will pay less than an average family farm. Most rich people will pay less than an average person who owns a self sufficient rural homestead lot.

              It’s not as bad as the libertarian “15/15/15 flat tax” that was making the rounds a few years ago, but that’s the best that can be said about it.

              I like a lot of consequences of the LVT, like that if famously solves the downtown parking lot problem. But I’d never call it progressive. A progressive tax should tax people who own more wealth more than those who own less. If you tax someone who owns a multi million dollar hotel the same as someone who owns an empty lot next door all you’re doing is making it so that only the rich can afford lots. Then when they improve the lot to make more money you reward them by effectively taking a smaller percentage of their new found wealth.

              • J Lou@mastodon.social
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                1 year ago

                LVT taxing the empty lot next door at the same rate as a multimillion dollar hotel is exactly what makes it so efficiency enhancing because it give land owners economic incentives to use their land productively rather than just holding it and waiting for it to appreciate in value. With LVT, prices would exclude the value of the land.

                LVT can be combined with other policies and taxes. You have to look at the whole package of policies to determine progressivity. LVT+UBI is progressive

      • deo@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        if the revenue from the tax is used for the UBI, there is no change in the money supply compared to the current situation. So, can you explain where the inflation you’re predicting is coming from?

        • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Rent seeking, unless you also combine it with rent control and a bunch of other measures and have a monopoly on violence.

          Inflation comes from people seeking to make more money, not just an increase in money supply.

          • explodicle@local106.com
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            1 year ago

            That’s the benefit of a land value tax. It captures all the economic rent, without penalizing investment in improvements.

            If you’re an anarchist, then the economics work the same way in a geoanarchist society.

            • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              LVT doesn’t really address the fundamental class antagonism between landlords and tenants.

              Let’s say landlords pay more taxes because of LVT, and that goes to UBI. Landlords can just jack up the prices to make their money back. The only people who benefit are people who don’t rent.

              Also geoanarchism doesn’t sound like anarchism, unless we are being pejorative toward anarchism.

              • explodicle@local106.com
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                1 year ago

                I agree that LVT doesn’t address the fundamental class antagonism. It only addresses economic rent.

                Landlords can’t just jack up prices. LVT doesn’t distort prices because the supply of land is perfectly inelastic - the revenue comes entirely out of landlord surplus. UBIs so far haven’t caused significant inflation, which makes sense if the total amount distributed equals the total amount taxed.

                http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/library/Geoanarchism-FredFoldvary.html

                • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Okay, imagine a hypothetical. You’re a landlord with 90 percent occupancy rate across 100 apartments. For simplicity let’s say they all pay you 1000 dollars a month. With the lvt tax you pay 100 dollars a month per apartment. Your renters simultaneously get 90 dollars a month(let us assume that renters make up 50 percent of the population and slightly more than half of the tax comes from residential land, giving us 90 dollars)

                  You’re going to raise rent by 90 dollars, at least. Maybe 111 dollars, to compensate for the empty apartments, if you want to continue making the same amount of money.

        • mrchuckles@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          yeah, years of economic science dating back to post WW2. not just an emotional comment on lemmy.

  • BananaPeal@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I mean it CAN be a job if they also do repairs, landscaping, and/or preventative maintenance. Almost none of them do it though.

    • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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      I think it is probably useful rhetorically and in analysis to differentiate between landlording as owning property and doing maintenance as doing a job even if one person is doing both

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    1 year ago

    it’s not a job. it’s an investment.
    basically like trading or renting out equipment.

    (but yeah treating homes people live in as investment is pretty fucked up, as that leads to poor treatment of tenants)

    • cricket98@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It is absolutely a job if you personally handle upkeep. Managing something is still a job. Although if you outsource every aspect of it I would consider it more an investment.

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        1 year ago

        It is always an investment that requires work to be put into it, but you doing the work isn’t an inherent component, you can always pay someone to do it for you.

        Just rephrasing what you said in a way I think you’d agree with to repeat the point that it is always an investment.

        • cricket98@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Why are we gatekeeping the word job? all a job is “a task or piece of work, especially one that is paid” that seems to fit the definition of a homeowner renting out their property.

          • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            You’re just not getting like, a basic political economy concept.

            Regardless of whether the investor also does the job of maintaining the property, the property they invested in is an investment. Investments always require some sort of work on someone’s part.

            Also you were the one gatekeeping the word investment

            • cricket98@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Something can be both an investment and a job. If you found a startup, for instance. I just don’t get the meaningless arguments about how maintaining a property isn’t a job. If it requires you to work, then it’s a job.

              • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Something can be both an investment and a job. I do not know why you were saying “it is a job not an investment” originally.

    • Marxism-Fennekinism@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      The job in that case is property management, not being a landlord in and of itself. If you do upkeep yourself as in renting out a basement or a second property, you’re technically both a landlord and a property manager. Homeowners can have property managers as well, such as in a condo, in that case the property manager is hired by the owners council and paid for with condo fees.

      The “professional” landlords, the type that are hated by far the most, hire dedicated property managers who do basically everything (up to and including approving new renters and evicting people in some cases) and basically the only thing the actual landlords personally do is hold the deed, which is why those businesses are called holding companies.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Yes. This is exactly the distinction made between personal and private property. The landlord owns it as private property, but it’s the renter that uses it for daily life purposes.

    • Chump [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Think home as in a place you live, vs house as in a place where people can live. The landlord owns a bunch of houses, which are themselves other peoples’ homes

    • thisfro@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago

      The landlord owns the property, the person renting possesses it.

      So it is the person renting’s home, owned by the landlord.

    • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      They live in it, it’s their “home”.

      “Home” as a concept, not a piece of property.

      • dmention7@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It’s just a really weird passive phrasing that implies it was your home before the landlord bought it.

        It’s more like they bought a house and then you rented it, at which point it becomes your home.

        (Not that the former never happens, I just don’t think the meme was calling out a relatively niche situation.)

        There are so many things to criticize about the housing market that it’s weird to rely on tricks of language rather than factual arguments. Like, “Renting out property that you own, and complaining about the upkeep required to keep it rentable” is much more accurate but not as memeable I guess.

        • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          I think your overthinking it. It’s never implied that they bought it after the fact

          • dmention7@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Gotcha, so it’s just an emotional appeal based on word choice, rather than attacking the real issues problems with the rental market…

  • m3t00🌎@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    buy one, live in it, buy another, rent one. not usually a job, already have one thanks.

  • SoapyYogurt82@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Being a landlord involves property management, tenant relations, and property maintenance. Generalizations about all landlords being “bad” oversimplify the situation. I’ll bet some of us have had some pretty interesting landlord interactions in our time as renters.