• Octavio@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    You know how California got sick of greedy companies ripping off people for insulin so now they’re going to sell insulin themselves at a reasonable price? Yeah, they should do that with apartments.

      • Octavio@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        High speed rail such a great way to travel medium distances anyway it’s downright criminal the US hasn’t figured it out yet.

      • Batmorous@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        It will happen eventually just needs more people doing and more proper usage of funding. Can’t wait for upgrade from 39.5 million people to 200 million. Making it a full fledged country with amount of people to back it up. If California can develop in same Japan and South Korea do that would be awesome

        • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          It would obviously allow people to live in cheaper committees and commute into the more expensive ones alleviating some of the issues.

          Why are you so defensive and mean about someone bringing that up? Seems like you might have some issues

        • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Yes but he said “high speed rail” which is popular here so now you’re getting downvoted.

          You’re right of course. It’s an idiotic take.

          It’s kinda like saying housing would be a lot better if there were more forest rangers.

    • SippyCup@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      This literally happens in some areas outside the US. I can’t remember if it’s NotJustBikes or HappyTowns that talks about it on YouTube. But basically, the government offers affordable housing to force landlords to compete on quality and price. Shockingly in those areas rents are down and the quality of apartments is decent.

      • lemonwood@lemmy.ml
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        6 days ago

        Vienna, Austria is a classic example. Don’t know about the current situation, though.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 days ago

        It’s fairly standard for each municipality here in sweden to own a landlord company that has some small fraction of the local housing supply and is explicitly for the public good.
        I’ve lived in such housing basically my entire life and it’s so hilariously superior to anything else that if they removed the arbitrary limit on how much housing they can own, the municipal landlords would utterly dominate and the total spending on housing would probably drop by 50%…

    • ProbablyBaysean@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      I lived in a housing market like that. It was a college town dominated by a church subsidized school. The students had to live in on-campus, off-campus and registered, or unregulated housing. The only people allowed to do unregulated housing were those who had their stuff together e.g. married or living with family. Housing was cheap and any landlord disagreements could be complained against the uni housing office. The uni provided so much housing that prices were based on the uni’s low cost instead of anything higher. A friend from high school had her dad choose to “invest” by buying a small apartment building out there, but even with his daughter as manager, he didn’t make a good return because he didn’t have the scale to provide the minimum level of service. I think he sold it.

      Students there tended to get married and have children while still in school.

      Long story short, housing market regulation can be done via a dominating entity over demand, but non market forces are not common everywhere.

  • lemonwood@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    Smith goes into great detail in “The wealth of Nations” about how landlords are parasites. He explains why theoretically and empirically and gives specific examples. He lacked an understanding of historical materialism, so he wrongly thought capitalism would naturally get rid of them.

  • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net
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    6 days ago

    Reality is worse than this picture though. The landlords are contributing to all thkse knives and grenades, intentionally.

    • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      I’d say that’s what separates a good landlord from a bad landlord, is if they are intentionally adding knives and grenades.

  • Steve Dice@sh.itjust.works
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    7 days ago

    Rant incoming. I’m trying to rent a apartment that is less than 1/4th of my salary but I might not get it because the landlord is too stupid to understand 80% of my salary is stocks so they won’t show up on a paystub. This is the people that love to label themselves as savvy investors. God damn it. Rant over.

    why don’t you just buy a house?

    My president just consolidated the three branches into one so I’m holding up in case I have to flee.

    • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I tired to rent an apartment once. I had 100k in liquid in my bank account. I showed them this but it wasn’t good enough. I’m 1099 and officially make very little money (it’s all above board and legal. I have a CPA.)

      They needed paystubs. I don’t have pay stubs. I don’t even get paychecks.

      It’s kind of a weird catch 22 for them. They’re ok with some bloke making 20 bucks an hours with nothing in savings as long as he can “prove” his income but someone with actually money is just too much of a risk.

    • ranzispa@mander.xyz
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      6 days ago

      Fair enough, prioritise people who actually work and do things. They deserve housing before anyone else.

      Then also people who do not work and make money off of others people’s work may have a house.

    • JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      As if we’ll be allowed to flee, or that the dollar will be worth anything by then.

      • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Learn skills that will be easily transferable across countries. Look for a country you would like to live in, learn the language if necessary, research where they are hiring.
        Do it before Trump’s third term, there will be a lot more chaos then

  • notarobot@lemmy.zip
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    6 days ago

    I had a contract with yearly price adjustment that lasted 3 years. We updated the price on January and in February there was A LOT of inflation in my country so I did get “cheap” rent for that year. When the end of year was approaching we made the math and the new total was outside what we could realistically pay so we ended the contract (paying the respective fees) and she tried to guilt trip us saying how much she had LOST because we adjusted on January.

    Good luck with that. I’m not feeling sorry for someone who sits on her ass all day and expects money to just show up on her account. She didn’t even fix shit that was going to cause permanent structural damage to the house

  • hanrahan@piefed.social
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    7 days ago

    Adam Smith also pointed this out.

    Unfortunately we live in a system that makes them necessay, like taking a shit is necessary.

    And alas we don’t vote enough for folks who might like to try to chanhe things to something like Vienna.

    • Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com
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      6 days ago

      Vienna isn’t a bad model but it’s progressively becoming less significant because in capitalism you have to be constantly fighting to maintain the little progresses you make.

      We’ve had better, such as the Soviet Union, where housing was a guaranteed right, rent costed 3% of the average income, and homelessness was abolished.

  • melonhusk@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    yeah, ‘protecting’ us from the very financial strain they create. truly the unsung heroes of our generation. what noble sacrifice.

  • orioler25@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    You can’t buy a house because $2.5k per story pays the mortage for the landlord and the rental property.

  • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    I dislike personifying landlords just like I dislike personifying greedy corporations. It’s the system which is broken, and entities which act in greedy self-interest are merely a symptom.

  • BenLeMan@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Not sure what the graphic is trying to say. Are landlords supposed to protect people from increasing costs of home ownership? 🤔 How are these ideas connected?

    Mind you, ownership implies that you are not renting your home, you own it.

    • causepix@lemmy.ml
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      7 days ago

      People say landlords provide a service that is providing housing to another person without them having to pay the full cost of homeownership. Yet, because the landlord is not only covering their costs but extracting as much profit as the market will allow, the cost and experience of renting is pretty damn competitive with that of ownership. So to answer your question,

      Are landlords supposed to protect people from increasing costs of home ownership?

      Yes, that is the way most non-landlords justify the existence of landlords to themselves. The alternative is to acknowledge that landlords exist only for the sake of enabling the owning class to generate capital for themselves by exploiting the working class.

      • BenLeMan@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        O-kay. I can think of a myriad of other reasons than sheer cost why I might not want to buy a home straight away. But I see how the graphic kind of makes sense in the way you describe.

        I’m not a big fan of landlords, by the way, and the instant downvoting for asking a simple question is extremely rude. Doesn’t exactly foster community engagement, guys! 😑

        • Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com
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          6 days ago

          I can think of a myriad of other reasons than sheer cost why I might not want to buy a home straight away

          Me too and you make a great point. The problem isn’t with renting homes as a concept, it’s with renting from a private owner at market prices. Publicly owned housing for rent at maintenance cost-prices would eliminate the exploitative relationship and still allow people to rent for as long as they want.

        • causepix@lemmy.ml
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          6 days ago

          I can think of a myriad other reasons than sheer cost

          Tell me what those are and how they can’t be solved with capital

          downvoting

          They’re fake internet points, you don’t get anything for them. You said something and people expressed disagreement. Don’t sweat it.

  • huquad@lemmy.ml
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    8 days ago

    I’ve seen a recent finance bro fad saying renting and investing is better than owning. My brother in Christ my rent was much higher than my mortgage for a shittier spot and I didn’t get equity.

    • Sirence@feddit.org
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      7 days ago

      It really depends on the circumstances. For me personally renting and investing is indeed better - but my rent is 500 Eur per month for 100m² cold and I can’t finance a similar sized house for that here. Everyone needs to do their own math for their situation.

    • The_v@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      During the last housing bubble, you could rent the same place for less than 1/2 the cost of buying it. Renting and investing made more sense then.

      Currently buying a house is overpriced but rent is even more so.

      The best financial decision right now is to live with your parents your entire life. If you don’t have a parent you can stay with, then a tent and cardboard boxes in the park it is.

    • huquad@lemmy.ml
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      7 days ago

      I just did the math for renting/investing vs buying, including rent/house value yearly increase, income taxes on capital gains, mortgage rate, down payment amount, and initial house price. The results indicate a strong dependence on rent price and taxes/insurance for buying. I found that renting/investing can be a better financial option depending on the inputs. As another commenter pointed out, the main reasons are taxes/insurance and the greater time return rate for market vs home value. This was surprising to me, so I’m glad I ran the numbers. That tells me the real difference is your life choice of wanting a place of your own vs renting and moving around.

      • huquad@lemmy.ml
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        7 days ago

        I should’ve known better than to trust my intuition on this. I previously ran the numbers on investing vs double mortgage payments and found investing to be far superior.

    • min@lemmy.sdf.org
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      7 days ago

      Taxes and maintenance wouldn’t be included in the mortgage. A new roof is expensive, so are HVACs, floors, etc. These things will need to be replaced. A rule of thumb is to budget 1% to 4% of the total house value per year. For a 400k house that could be up to $16k extra per year, or $1333 more per month than your mortgage. Those costs for maintenance and taxes don’t go towards paying down your principal so they aren’t directly gaining equity. With the rent and invest option, the investing is the counter to equity. When you sell your house you usually pay a realtor commission. There are a lot of factors to include when seeing if rent & invest is better than mortgage & buy.

      That being said, I prefer to buy. I don’t plan on moving anytime soon.

      • village604@adultswim.fan
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        7 days ago

        People who don’t own homes don’t understand just how expensive and time consuming it can be. And most of that money and work doesn’t go towards building equity.

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          7 days ago

          The maintenance and taxes on my home are far cheaper then rent in my area. I could not afford to rent the home I own.

          People don’t understand that a landlord is going to charge enough rent to cover all those costs and still make a profit. Otherwise they would just sell the home.

          • village604@adultswim.fan
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            7 days ago

            Yes, the landlord is going to make a profit, but that’s going to be true of literally any service that’s being provided by a private entity, especially when they’re carrying a large amount of risk.

            But it’s disingenuous to claim that there’s no benefit to tenants in a rental situation. They don’t have to worry about having to unexpectedly drop $30k on a new roof or HVAC system, or finding and dealing with contractors to do maintenance (or finding the time and energy to do it themselves).

            • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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              7 days ago

              In the house I own yet could not afford to rent I have no issue with those unexpected costs because I am able to save the money that is not going to a landlord in order to pay them.

              The renter is paying for the cost of a new roofer or HVAC system anyway, whether the home ends up needing one or not, and they have zero say in how or when it happens.

              • village604@adultswim.fan
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                6 days ago

                What you’re not getting is that’s a plus to some people. They don’t have to worry about budgeting and all of that.

                Just because you don’t get anything from a rental situation doesn’t mean no one can. I absolutely know people who have sold their houses and went back to renting because they were tired of the hassle of home ownership.

                • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                  6 days ago

                  What you’re not getting is I don’t think economic policy should be based around people with more money than sense.

                  We are in a housing crises right now, the vast majority of people want to own a home but could never reasonably afford to. I don’t give a shit about the small fraction of a percent of people that find it more convenient for them.

                  “I absolutely know people who never set foot in a hospital” is not an argument against healthcare.

    • iegod@lemmy.zip
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      7 days ago

      As always, you have to run the numbers. Ownership also comes with hidden costs. Property taxes and maintenance aren’t cheap.

        • iegod@lemmy.zip
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          7 days ago

          Precisely. When comparing against home ownership, people often only consider the mortgage.

        • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Yeah, I think renting has less hidden costs, but it might increase in an unpredictable way, or you might need to move out sooner.

  • kingofthezyx@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    I think it would work better if the weapons were firing at the sleeping kid directly from the soldier