Comment on Government urged to let Iranian women's football team stay in Australia until safety is assured

• MisterFrog@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  We aren’t building enough houses. This is fact.

  We have more houses per person, so it is not a fact. We do have a supply problem, because we’re not utilising our existing housing stock.

  We do have a supply problem, but it’s wild you think it’s okay for wealthy people to screw the rest of us over. The supply problem is because houses are sitting empty, and tax incentives are such that profiting off of housing makes it an asset class people are pouring money into.

  We could just decide tomorrow we’re going to keep housing prices nominally stable, make hoarding empty houses illegal (like, someone’s “freedom” to profit doesn’t trump the rest of our freedom of having somewhere affordable to live… we live in a society, not an anarcho-capitalist hellscape), and remove tax incentives that make housing such an attractive asset class.

  We could be using these piles of money invested into unproductive assets (the house just sits there, the actual value from living there is far, far exceeded by the current price) and invest them in actual productive assets like companies and research.

  Housing needs to be for people to live, not to profit.

  We are building enough housing per person, that’s a fact, and I’ve given you the data to prove it. Yes, even with how many people were bringing in (which I agree, we ought not just aimlessly do).

  But it’s plainly obvious that the reason housing is expensive is not because of the number of houses we have.

  To be clear we have more housing per person than before, so the 7000 per week figure (also, is that net?), doesn’t really prove your point at all.

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  • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Where are these empty houses? Not where people want to live, and they’re not for sale or rent so they’re irrelevant.

    Are we building 7000 new homes per week?

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    • MisterFrog@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      7000 new homes per week? No.

      Clearly we must be, otherwise how would the number of houses per person be increasing…?

      Something tells me the 7000 per week number isn’t correct or otherwise misconstrued. Please link to the relevant study or ABS data page. (There may be some confusion between net migration, and number of ARRIVALS per week, which includes tourists and other temporary visa holders)

      they’re not for sale or rent so they’re irrelevant

      You are not owes someone else giving you their house to live in. If they choose to buy it and keep it empty that’s up to them, and they shouldn’t be forced to do otherwise. Thinking they should is just jealousy.

      Sorry, but I think this take isn’t sensible. We regulate a lot of our society. We don’t let people do whatever they want, where we draw the line in different areas comes down to what we value as a society.

      You seem to value ownership above all else. Never mind the extremely damaging externalities, in your point of view.

      If you own a house, and you’re not living in it, and you’re not renting it out, especially if you own more than 2 (I think holiday houses aren’t some sacred thing people NEED, but fine, have A holiday house), then sorry, yes, you should be forced to sell or rent it out. Thinking it’s okay to just keep it empty as your personal choice, is anti-social behaviour, and we as a society can choose to disallow it like we do with many other anti-social behaviours.

      It’s not jealously, it’s empathy for your fellow human beings who need somewhere affordable to live. We as a society do get to decide when someone’s behaviour is unacceptable. Unless you’re not a fan of democracy?

      We balance freedoms for the individual with what’s best for the collective. Both extremes of hyper-individualism (what you seem to think “FreedomAdvocacy” means) or no personal rights whatsoever are dumb. There’s a debate to be had about where exactly we should fall for any given topic, but the extremes seem a terrible way to run society.

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      • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        You need to get an adult to explain your houses per 1000 people graph to you lol

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