Yes, Angelfire!! My first website was there. It was ✨ sparkly✨ and quite lovely. 😂 I only ever see people talk about Live Journal nowadays, which I think was after my time.
Step 1: Use the equity you’ve built up in your primary dwelling to put a down payment on a second house, which you can rent out. Congratulations, you now have a second job to fill your evenings and weekends.
Step 2: Hope like hell you get a decent tenant who pays the rent on time and doesn’t destroy your property.
Step 3: Pay all of the taxes, mortgage payments, maintenance costs, repairs, legal fees, etc., which the rent will just barely cover. Of course, most of the mortgage payment goes to the bank as interest.
Step 4: Keep crossing your fingers that you don’t rent to someone who will destroy your property, fail to pay rent, sue you, or cause any other major headaches.
Step 5: After 20 years of doing this, you have now paid off that second house. Yay!
If you are a renter, there is a big probability you move a lot, and buying is simply not so convenient due to your current situation. But it is unfortunate that many people also can’t afford to buy a house or apartment and are only able to rent. What are you, as a landlord, supposed to do if you are living paycheck to paycheck with the mortgage you took for the apartment that you rent ?
Depends on the country. Apparently most people in Germany rent because that’s just the way things are over there. I would say in the UK that generally people only rent if they’re living somewhere on a relatively short term basis. Otherwise they might either buy their own property or apply for social housing depending on their income level.
Landlords do not build houses, they own houses. Saying that they provide housing is equivalent to saying Jeff Bezos delivered your latest Amazon package.
There are countless more efficient ways that are just less efficient at generating income for the ownership class. Do I need to run over all the strategies from pre-fuedalism to the varieties of modern public housing?
I’d rather pay five percent of my income in taxes and not have to walk by homeless people because they have somewhere to live and not have to worry about being homeless if I lose my job or eventually retire and have to worry about constantly increasing rent or property taxes on a fixed income than pay around a third of my income in rent so Brad and Karen can go on another vacation to the Bahamas this year.
How does that add up? If you pay 33% to Brad and Karen, where does the civil servants get the building sites, construction workers and materials for 5%, ignoring the extra space needed for the formerly homeless?
I’m basing this off of real world data taken from socialist projects. Rent in the USSR was 5 percent of income for example.
They do not have 500 percent margins because capitalism is incredibly inefficient and they’re only one small actor making money from the situation in a broader ecosystem of developers, construction companies, etc.
If you go for standardized housing with an abundance of construction sites then you also get your 5% rent within capitalism.
The problem is not the landlords but the voters and buyers. The landlords will offer 5% housing if the demand is there, together with construction sites.
That doesn’t make landlords the origin of high rents.
If people want less rent, it doesn’t help to oppose landlords. All it does is reducing the number of participants which worsens the situation.
Renters can decide elections. Unionize and negotiate with the parties how many construction sites they will create. Then vote accordingly. Then rent will go down.
Landlords are not parasites. If you have enough competition then profits will go down until it’s barely rewarding to manage property, which somebody has to do.
Housing just costs so much becsuse of zoning laws and lack of public transport.
Unless you pull of a revolution, competing landlords are key if you want rentable housing.
But you want to abolish the idea of rent. What will happen? People have to own their housing units. This requires credit. People who don’t get credit now, where will they live?
Of course you can establish Socialism. But you don’t believe that voters can change politics.
What’s the most possible change?
I think making the housing market competitive is possible. But it’s still difficult because there needs to be a decision about how to handle collapsing housing prices and the defaulting on most mortgages.
The father of classical economics and the father of Marxian economics are in agreement about landlords being parasites but you have been blessed with divine knowledge that says they aren’t. Please, impart your wisdom on the masses. /s
Seriously, imagine the ego to think you know better than literally the people behind the two major competing economic analysis systems.
But you want to abolish the idea of rent. What will happen?
Literally look into how much nicer housing is in places that succeeded at communist land reform. Talk to Vietnamese and Cuban people about how housing is handled. Plenty of them speak English if you’re monolingual. (Not vietnamese american or cuban American, people who actually live in the current systems)
You are appealing to authority. They are right in the sense that the owning class will try to maintain their position. Now, what do you want to do? Stage a revolution without weapons from the means of production?
Hegel for sure is proud to know that those two reached the end of philosophy.
I don’t question that communism and Socialism can create better housing. My point is that as long as you are in capitalism, you have to play by capitalist rules. This means you should increase competition. It’s not the fault of landlords that there is not enough opportunity to build affordable housing.
Blaming landlords is counter-productive because renters don’t feel the need to build the power to influence the next election.
Yes, and it is an appropriate appeal. It is the equivalent of pointing at physicists while arguing with a flat earthen.
I don’t question that communism and Socialism can create better housing. My point is that as long as you are in capitalism, you have to play by capitalist rules.
Okay, so stop doing capitalism. You just said that socialism produces better outcomes.
Blaming landlords is counter-productive because renters don’t feel the need to build the power to influence the next election.
That won’t do anything. Build tenants unions and then find where your landlord lives and have a pleasant conversation with them about collective bargaining and what collective bargaining is the historical alternative to, at the minimum.
I leave the possibility of revolution to the other thread.
You cannot force cheaper rent. The landlords don’t have 500% profit margins. All you do is fix the housing situation with nobody left to organize renovations or new constructions because landlords will seek other opportunities.
The resources for housing are too expensive. You have to change that.
Revolutions needed 2% of the population to fight. Voters are 50% and you need a majority, so in total 25% of the population.
That made revolutions easier historically because you just needed guns and food for those 2%.
Now look at Ukraine, are guns and food enough?
You have to convince the population anyway or there will be a counter revolution. So I think if something is worth changing, it should be changed by voters.
That said, let me ask again, why do you prefer revolutions?
I didn’t say I prefer them, I said that historically over and over again they get the goods. The problems you’re asking about are questions all successful revolutions have succeeded at grappling with.
What does that mean? Should we perceive landlords as members of the ruling class and make owning property as difficult as possible because rising rent will lead to the revolution which will ultimately reduce rent?
Or should we perceive landlords as cogs in the capitalistic machine and increase their supplies to increase their output to reduce rent?
Who rents for 20 years and then acts all surprised that they don’t own the house? If your end goal is to own a house, start by buying a house. If you can afford to rent and pay off someone else’s mortgage then you can certainly afford to pay off your own mortgage.
That and I can’t save up enough for a down payment cause rent/inflation/student loans/car payment. I was a teacher for 6 years and couldn’t save a penny. If I wanted to make more money I needed a master’s degree which I also couldn’t save up to afford.
Well, because as a class they raise the cost of land, meaning that many peoples only option is to rent. And then you have to pay off their mortgage for them.
Note that in the USSR apartments were 5 percent of income. That is what the actual cost of maintaining homes for people is, when you remove all the rent seeking and property speculation.
There is a huge difference between small and large landlords. The example I gave was clearly related to small landlords. If you have two houses and two mortgages and are doing your own maintenance, you aren’t driving up the cost of housing significantly. If you are a small landlord, as I’ve described, the only “profit” you’re making goes straight into the payments on that mortgage, most of which is interest for the bank. Also, those “profits” won’t be realized for 20+ years. Of course, I’m talking about averages over time. Clearly, housing is unbalanced right now, and bubbles create exceptions.
Large landlords, hedge fund investors, foreign investors, large AirBnB investors… these are a different story. They are the ones on large amounts of property, creating artificial scarcity, jacking up rents to unreasonable levels, etc.
That’s why this is such a frustrating conversation, and it’s similar to many other hot button issues. It gets treated like a black & white problem and folks start slandering whole groups when the issue usually arises from some sub-set of opportunistic assholes, or extreme bigots/mysoginists/what-have-you. (I my mind I’m also thinking about social issues that pit left-leaning people against right-leaning people, where everyone treats the other side as if each person were an example of the most extreme in that camp.)
So in this thread there are folks talking about overthrowing landlords en masse, when it’s the large investors from outside the local community (plus some scumbags in the local community) who are adding to the suffering in the world.
Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It’s the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.
We need a more efficient way to get to the heart of the matter in these conversations because just scrolling through the comments it seems like a lot of ignorant or misguided anger.
That’s why this is such a frustrating conversation, and it’s similar to many other hot button issues. It gets treated like a black & white problem and folks start slandering whole groups when the issue usually arises from some sub-set of opportunistic assholes, or extreme bigots/mysoginists/what-have-you. (I my mind I’m also thinking about social issues that pit left-leaning people against right-leaning people, where everyone treats the other side as if each person were an example of the most extreme in that camp.)
So in this thread there are folks talking about overthrowing landlords en masse, when it’s the large investors from outside the local community (plus some scumbags in the local community) who are adding to the suffering in the world.
Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It’s the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.
We need a more efficient way to get to the heart of the matter in these conversations because just scrolling through the comments it seems like a lot of ignorant or misguided anger.
Your problem is you are viewing this as some sort of moral argument. I am not claiming landlords are sinners, Im saying that their class existing is harmful and land should not be commodified as it currently is.
Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It’s the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.
Except by its very nature it is extractive. The renter is always getting fucked over in the situation.
That’s why this is such a frustrating conversation, and it’s similar to many other hot button issues. It gets treated like a black & white problem and folks start slandering whole groups when the issue usually arises from some sub-set of opportunistic assholes, or extreme bigots/mysoginists/what-have-you. (I my mind I’m also thinking about social issues that pit left-leaning people against right-leaning people, where everyone treats the other side as if each person were an example of the most extreme in that camp.)
So in this thread there are folks talking about overthrowing landlords en masse, when it’s the large investors from outside the local community (plus some scumbags in the local community) who are adding to the suffering in the world.
Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It’s the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.
We need a more efficient way to get to the heart of the matter in these conversations because just scrolling through the comments it seems like a lot of ignorant or misguided anger.
When you find yourself comparing to the USSR I think you’ve already lost your argument. Since it boils down to “eradicate capitalism and rent becomes cheaper”. Maybe it does and everything else becomes a lot shittier too.
Except life expectancy, women’s rights which still haven’t been replicated in the west, nutrition, the eradication of homelessness(not the homeless like the US wants to do) political agency for the proletariat, the list goes on.
And lgbt rights in Cuba, east Germany before its collapse, and increasingly in countries like Vietnam and China.
If you overlook the surveillance, political oppression, the beatings / torture / disappearances, the labor camps, the subjugation of minorities & religions, the squalor everyone is subject to, the censorship, the run down infrastructure, the lack of luxury goods, the imposition of “social” systems to punish non-compliance, the lack of free enterprise. It’s also amusing you hail women’s rights when the USSR banned abortion and made divorce practically impossible. Or LGBT when was and still is marginalized and persecuted in most Communist countries. Maybe ask the Uyghurs think of their lives in their re-education centres. But maybe you’re hailing Cuba taking enormous strides to recognize LGBT rights… in 2022. Well that certainly makes up for 70 years of life under Communism.
Oh they’re all such a veritable workers paradise! It’s weird why so many people attempted to escape, enduring arduous journeys, even risking drowning, being shot or entangled in barbed wire. It’s weird how so many countries got rid of Communism and the people rejoiced about it. Strange that.
I’m not going to debunk all of that. It is much easier to say bullshit than fact check it.
It’s also amusing you hail women’s rights when the USSR banned abortion
When did the USSR legalize abortion the first and second time? When did the US legalize abortion? You don’t actually have to answer this, it is a rhetorical question, but you should know the answer
Also, read “why women had better sex under socialism.”
Or LGBT when was and still is marginalized and persecuted in most Communist countries.
In east Germany lgbt people lost a lot when the wall came down. In general socialist countries are better on practical lgbt rights than capitalist ones. Especially when you include the neocolonialist capitalist subjects where being lgbt is explicitly a serious crime. Cuba has the best lgbt rights in the world.
Also, communists spearheaded lgbt rights movements in capitalist countries. Taking credit for their work and recuperating it into capitalism is intellectually dishonest.
It’s weird how so many countries got rid of Communism and the people rejoiced about it. Strange that.
egalize abortion the first and second time? When did the US legalize abortion? You don’t actually have to answer this, it is a rhetorical question, but you should know the answer
Sure thing comrade. Go back and finish your first year political studies semester. That, or emigrate to one of these socialist paradises.
They wouldn’t be landlords if they didn’t think they wouldn’t make money off of it. However the petite bourgeoisie are often squeezed by the haut bourgeoisie, and if that happens enough we get fascism as class warfare on the part of the big beautiful boaters and car dealership owners.
I agree there is a problem where people that rent and want to own can’t because of affordability. However, renting is less risky. Renters aren’t on the hook for major problems with a property. Imagine a leak goes undiscovered and causes major damage and mold to your apartment. What do you do as a renter? You move out, find a new place, and maybe even sue your landlord for damages and health impact.
What does your landlord do? Try to find enough money to cover the repairs, vacancy, and hire a lawyer.
Let’s not act like renting isn’t without its benefits. I think the factor most people overlook when they think about owning property is RISK. Risk means you could lose something or be liable. Renters have limited risk. If you’re taking on risk, you should be rewarded for it, otherwise you wouldn’t do it. Also, the reward is supposed to make you resilient to risks materializing. If the reward isn’t big enough, then when a risk materializes into a real problem, you won’t have enough capital to recover from it and you’ll go bankrupt.
I mean, it’s more than that though. You could sell the property at a loss or have it foreclosed on. Selling incurs fees of roughly 6-8% of the selling price… so, even if you sell it for what you bought it for, you could still be in the red. You might walk away $100ks in debt.
You can be jealous of people in that position of having multiple properties all you want, but ask yourself if you were in their position whether you would somehow respond differently to the incentives and risks?
If you had enough money to buy multiple properties what would you do?
I would do what I do now and invest in companies making products I really care about. I wouldn’t own two houses. To me, that’s unethical. I understand that not everyone considers it that way, but you should also understand that I do.
You forgot the step where wealthy investors & hedge funds crash an artificially inflated market, you go bankrupt and they swoop in to buy the property from their friends at the bank for half of what you paid for it.
They’re not even ending hunger that’s the worst thing. At best you’re paying their taxes. EDIT: Apparently this is a common misconception. At worst you’re also funding fascist ‘charities’ if they decide to just lie and put the money towards “end transness foundation” or the “kill all gay people fund” instead.
What if the perceived increase in numbers of androgenous and trans people has a chemical basis: chemicals from plastics interfering with the endocrine system.
Holy shit, how is this not a super high priority right now? Not because of trans people but the conclusion that microplastics interfere with hormones seems super fucked up
Actually, this is genius. Get the right wing climate change deniers to fight climate change by telling them that microplastics will turn their Chad of a son into a sissy girl
Haha, somebody go post this information in some right wing forums!
Are micro plastics responsible for your micro penis? Are they responsible for those trans people you seem to be so afraid of? Stop microplasitcs before they stop America from becoming the greatness that it never wasn’t!
transgenderism has been a prominent aspect of virtually all human cultures dating back to the dawn of civilization. it wasn’t until the Victorian era and colonialism that it was demonized. it’s not some new phenomena caused by microplastics
Yeah, but it’s possible the chances of it occuring are increased with micro plastics. Kinda like how exposure to some chemicals used in plastics seems to increase the likelihood of a child having ADHD. It’s not the sole reason, nor are trans people new, but micro plastics might make trans people more common.
Current demographic information seems to suggest that transgender people are no more frequent than they have been historically, just more visible / likely to come out.
This. I’ve seen more people come out as a part of some minority in last several years than, say, in 2000s in general, and that’s not a time span during which any alleged and meaningful genetic or biological changes could play a role. It’s just a much better and safer time to come out compared to everything before.
Almost exactly the same kind of situation with mental illnesses such as Autism or ADHD, you see people scream that the rates are rising and trying to pin it on external factors without even considering that the medical diagnosis/process and tracking of all of that has consistently improved, it just makes sense we’d be seeing more examples as previously undiagnosed “weird” people are able to diagnosed.
These aren’t really illnesses, though. Think of it as of being left- or right-handed - it’s your brain functioning in a different way, but not a pathological one.
Eh, they consider it a-typical, it’s basically considered a mental illness. “neurotypical”
Let me clarify to say, I don’t think there’s inherently anything actually “wrong” with non-neuotypical folks, I have ADD for sure and I know it’s definitely an impediment to myself in various aspects of my life in ways neurotypicals also experience from time to time, but not on a near constant basis like some of the population.
I was reading What to expect before you’re expecting and it says to stay away from any food that comes in any kind of plastic, esp if the plastic container needs to be heated/re-heated.
It says when it gets into your blood stream your body thinks it’s estrogen.
The most fucked up part is the EPA says the risk is very low. Probably because plastics are literally everywhere, and banning them at this point would cause an economic catastrophe. Which it def would.
What if the perceived increase in numbers of androgenous and trans people has a chemical basis
I’d be willing to wager it’s mostly due to it being safer to be “out” than it was just a few decades ago. Speaking as a 40-odd trans person, growing up in the 80’s meant a much higher chance of getting your ass kicked or worse by your “peers” if you stepped out of line when it came to gender expression. I’ve always been what I am now, it’s just that it’s been safe to actually do it “out loud”, at least for the past decade or so – that seems to be changing now that the right is radicalizing rapidly.
that’s far from what the study says. there is no research on the effects of plastic chemicals in human beings cited in the study, the vast majority of the data is in rats and mice. saying that its responsible for trans people requires some very large leaps of logic that aren’t supported by the data or the conclusion of the study.
we have a great deal of anthropological evidence that other cultures conceive of sex and gender in wildly differing ways, both through history and in the modern era. gender identity is a complex social and cultural phenomenon, not some essential trait of the human body with a basis in endocrine function. maybe i’m just sensitive to this shit, but i can’t see somebody making a claim like this without just fundamentally misunderstanding what being trans is.
I have no problem tipping wait staff or bartenders for the service, but I’ll be damned if the cashier at my local Chinese restaurant is getting a tip because they handed me a bag of carryout food I ordered online… tipping has definitely gotten out of control.
With this little change, you might think you’re supplementing their minimum wage pay, but the owner can lower their pay to the “federal tipped minimum” in some states. You basically just make it cheaper for the owner in the long run (they’re probably sold on this by the Point Of Sale software company), and the workers can get little or no extra money.
I feel you on that, but I’m in California so that’s not the case here. I think owners/companies are just able to pitch counter help to job hunters as $x/hr plus tips, and people feel compelled to tip when prompted on the screen while the counter person stares them down.
Tip functionality is a business decision that comes from the top. The Devs have no say in whether a feature is included or not, and dislike it as much as you do.
If you’re serving me alcohol (or something similar) at a bar, you get $1 per drink. If you’re taking my order at a table and bringing me food, you get 15%. That’s it.
I think it’s the difference between the call ending suddenly (hang up) and the call not responding for several seconds before dropping (lost connection).
“I am priveledged enough that my right to exist and thrive is never questioned or under fire, and things that I care about are protected by the status quo and the suppression of others”
It’s confronting for a cis gendered white male to accept they are the pinnacle of the power structure in western societies by serendipitous occurrence.
Not marginalized people across the country clawing desperately for the right to mind their own business and live their life in peace as adherents to the status quo dedicate their free time to attacking them and arguing they don’t deserve recognition as people.
“I am priveledged enough that my right to exist and thrive is never questioned or under fire, and things that I care about are protected by the status quo and the suppression of others”
so someone who this doesn’t apply to thinks that some random star in our neighbour galaxy is political?
I exist in several categories of people who’s right to exist have been threatened many, many times throughout history, I agree that everything is political, or rather, that politics encompasses everything.
However, not every discussion should become politically oriented, as it’s not particularly the most productive in many cases. This is most prominent on the internet, where nuance, which is ESSENTIAL for productive political discourse, is often absent. I find much political discussion. This is especially true in dialogues where it is either discussed on a broad scale, or where it is discussed in a reactionary manner. When my answers to political topics are so often “it depends”, this stuff tends to be quite straining, especially when my attempts to create dialogue are shot down.
In short “not everything is political” exists because you’re either detailing a discussion to talk about how horrible everything is, or you’re on the internet and internet politics just suck.
My first week at my current tech job, our ceo gave a little presentation. He said, and I quote, “we ain’t a family. I like everyone here, but make no mistake: we’re a business”
We’re a pretty small (bout 150 at the time) company.
I worked at a restaurant that was big on breakfast for many years. When our manager needed to open a new bag, she would tear a hole it half way down the bag and start pulling bread from the middle. The only option we really had was to put it into another bag.
The subtitle of the article literally says some countries are exempt and in the article the author said they are waiting for confirmation that the EU is exempt.
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