Comment on Why are so many leaders in tech evil?
TBi@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoEverything over a certain amount should be taxed 100%. Not everything. But also there should be a substantial house tax on mansions. And a higher house tax if you own more than one property.
untorquer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, you don’t need to have a billion to exclude people from shelter and exceed complicity in their suffering or death. Anyways, yeah short of abolishing property and landlords a significant tax, property hoarding deterrance, and rent control would make so much sense. It would take an severe naivete or true sociopathy not to support it.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
… or seeing how those things affected a few rent-strained places not in the USA where you are apparently from.
Property taxes are fine and all. But renting out has a place in economics. It should be profitable and encouraged, it does benefit people who can’t buy real estate.
Of course when huge realty companies rent out, and there’s not much other choice, you are going to have problems. But that’s work for anti-monopoly laws.
But where I live, for example, it’s usually individuals who rent out and they don’t own dozens of apartments.
Landlords do spend their money and time on maintaining their property, buying furniture, appliances, keeping it in good state, insured and all that, so that someone without time and energy to do a hundred things would be able to rent that property and live there without too much bother.
They provide a useful service. Hating them all is stupid.
untorquer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sitting in the “shelter is not a right” space:
They withold houses from the market, thereby driving cost up. In turn that drives mortgage down payments up. The credit system and bank hurdles to securing a mortgage are also a big part of that issue but another conversation.
The generalization that the individual landlord does the maintenance and tasks that the tenants don’t want to is hard bs. Considering that rent is based on a profit, and any landlord I’ve had has hired out labor, the tenants functionally already pay for all of that maintenance and upkeep. Many would love to DIY but others could afford to hire the labor and save money with a mortgage vs rent. That’s not to mention it’s basically 50/50 on whether the landlord actually maintains a property or sits in the area of, “tenants aren’t going to report me cause i have all the power and they need shelter”.
Now owning a home i can easily say, you don’t really have much to do for maintenance. I guess i mow the lawn every few weeks and otherwise do basic cleaning? Even my old car only takes a few hours of labor every few months and it has moving parts. I guess i also cleaned the gutters back in spring. Took an hour and a buddy to hold the ladder. Oh i also have savings put away for larger infrequent maintenance which i can just hire out(if i wanted) at a tiny fraction of what i used to pay in rent.
Anyways, to the part where i can agree in some sense is short term housing. That’s a real need. That’s where rent really makes sense. Still, rent control based on simple percent profit and tax. Limits on unused properties. So on. Housing capacity should grow but housing cost should not drive cost of living nor exceed inflation.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Wouldn’t that stimulate more construction?
OK, where I live people usually don’t own houses, they own apartments, and maintenance minimally involves ensuring that your apartment is not a cockroach breeding ground and your piping doesn’t make your neighbors below feel too wet.
In a separate house yeah, you can more or less just shrug because liquids go into the ground anyway, and there are no central heating pipes that may rupture, and so on.
That’d be fine. Maybe if you own 5+ apartments, or by living space, because otherwise you’d, say, hurt people who have one apartment they are slowly restoring to livable condition to maybe rent out later and one they themselves live in.