If you pay 1% for one house, someone with 2 houses should pay 2%, and a company with 2000 homes should pay 2000%

That would make it increasingly difficult for mega companies to buy up everything and torture the housing market

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[–] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (29 children)

That was a kind of aggressive way for me to express that, but, in all seriousness, the reason is that:

Being a "landlord", that is, very specifically, an "owner of houses you don't live in, but rent to people for profit", is a way to live that is inherently abusive to the people you rent to.

You have ownership of a basic good people need to survive (housing), which is effectively scarce (because it's not allowed for just anyone to build a house without incredible amounts of money, even homelessness is fairly illegal in many places), and you say to people:

"Either give me a monthly fee for me to allow you to have a roof over your head, or I'm calling the police (the only people allowed to be violent in the country) to kick you out"

It's a way of making money, where the owner doesn't do anything helpful to society, except find people who are desperate to survive, and milk them of what they make.

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  • [–] -3 points 2 months ago* (28 children)

    How is it not helpful to society to allow others to live in your house? And it's not landlords who are looking for tenants, it's the other way round.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (13 children)

    The problem is being a landlord as a job. The problem is rich people buying up housing (or land and building on it) they don't use, in order to rent for profit.

    It's about everyone who has no house. All the people who have no alternative, apart from renting from some rich people.

    If someone "allowed" others to live in his house, without demanding half their salary, you wouldn't see me complaining.

    And the reason that buying or building a house is so expensive, is explicitly because rich people clamber over each other, to make the best investment of their lives: Housing.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago (12 children)

    People have a right to invest.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    We're saying that maybe, just maybe, basic human necessities shouldn't be the object of speculation.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    Agreed but we shouldn't prevent people from buying or selling houses.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (7 children)

    Housing can be affordable or an investment, not both.

    People can invest elsewhere, in markets not necessary for survival.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (6 children)

    But I don't want to lose value on my house

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

    The only purpose for value of your home is for selling it in order to purchase a different home. If the cost of the home you'll be purchasing also goes down your not actually losing on anything except for a made up number, and your property taxes go down as well.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    No? The purpose of the value of my home is that it gives me my net worth.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

    The purpose of any home is to provide you with shelter and a place to live, not increase your imaginary high score.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Imaginary? If money is imaginary, try living without it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    I live every day without using a "net worth". You can not spend, trade, or consume a "net worth". If your government decides to print a bunch a money inflation is going to cause your "net worth" to be a bigger number, but that doesn't change how many things you own. If the housing market crashes that also doesn't change how many things you own, but your "net worth" changes to a different imaginary number.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    That's like saying people with major medical issues "are looking for" insurance salespeople to fix their medical issues. They "need" insurance because the system is fucked, not because insurance will make them better. Likewise, no one "looks for" a landlord, they look for housing they can afford.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (9 children)

    Yes but housing is much more expensive than healthcare. The government can't afford to provide it for free.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (6 children)

    You mean the taxpayers can't afford it, and you're wrong. Trillionaires exist, we could afford anything we want to if we had people in charge willing to tax them fairly.

    Regardless, the potential cost difference doesn't negate my previous point, no one has ever "looked for a landlord".

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (5 children)

    That's not an individual country's decision to take. People look for housing and landlords provide a valuable service to society.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (4 children)

    That's not an individual country's decision to take.

    What isn't? How to tax it's citizens? Pretty sure individual countries are the only ones making that decision.

    People look for housing and landlords provide a valuable service to society

    Almost, people need housing and landlords can exploit that need. Renters provide a valuable service to landlords. How about this analogy: people need food, but that doesn't mean every single company that sells food is good for society, or even good for the individual people they sell to. Many are the opposite, at least in the US. Look I'm not arguing for banning buying more than one property, though I'm not against it, all I'm saying is that your claim that people "look for" landlords is absurd.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    No. Countries make that decision based on the international tax rates. If your tax rates are too high, companies will move to other countries.

    Selling food is God's work.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    That makes sense, God must be the one poisoning all our meat and produce since Trump defunded the FDA. ✊↔️

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (1 child)

    No, what the government actually can't afford is to have homeless people overutilizing public services (ambulances, police, hospitals, and jails) because they don't have stable housing. It's way, wayyy cheaper to provide people free housing than let them be homeless, Finland has proved this with basic arithmetic, our culture is just really into performative cruelty for some reason.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    There's a reason "rent seeking" is a derogatory term.

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