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My family have never been wealthy. They work for a living like
so
many other families. There is one thing I don't understand
though
-- perhaps as families get larger than replacement -- why am I
still paying rent in 2020?
My ancestors in their collective force should have earned
enough
cash in life to afford multiple family homes by now. I should be
living rent free, as the houses should have been passed down
through generations, not sold to pay for trinkets.
I propose banks offer a service: a family intergenerational
saving
plan which is a way of saving between generations. You commit
a
% of your income to it and at some point in the future, a house
is
automatically purchased as a permanent home for the family.
There would be an app for mobile phones to collect votes on
what property to buy based on surname. So families could
agree to form a base around a certain area.
There can be multiple homes owned by the family plan. A bit
like
a property in a trust that is accessible to normal people,
without
the strict need for trustees (it's a hassle to administer and pass
them down through generations) If you're a member of the
family,
you can live in any purchased property rent free.
Apple - 0.005 percent tax
https://www.cnbc.co...x-rate-in-2014.html [xenzag, Nov 18 2020]
Getting deals done.
https://youtu.be/ut7yhjaqK6I (it's still work though) [Mindey, Nov 18 2020]
[link]
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In many more advanced societies, a high percentage of housing is state owned and rented out at affordable stabilised rates. In the Netherlands for example this is 32% of all housing. In Scotland the figure is 24% and in England it's 18%. There are many advantages to living in social housing. It's affordable; maintenance is usually carried out by the state or city, and there is no fear of being evicted by a greedy landlord to increase the rent. The right to decent affordable housing is a fundamental. Without it you get thousands sleeping on the streets as per San Francsiso and other places where the ethos is that of obscene wealth through the maintenance of inequality. ie one person can have a home with solid gold toilets, while families sleep in moth eaten tents in the street. The greater the inequality, the greater the control the greedy have over the have nots. |
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kdf, I have enough cash for a deposit, I just haven't pulled
the trigger. I live in Scotland. |
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I have an illness, schizophrenia which makes it difficult to
plan for the future, because there can be periods of time
where I cannot work (software engineer). |
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Either my ancestors flittered away what wealth they had
and were poor investors and the wealth was diluted through
generations in larger families. I think the wealth was diluted
a bit. I would still expect some savings to pass their way
down to me, I have yet to receive a sizable inheritance. I
would prefer the life of my family members live for that
much longer than an inheritance though. |
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Think of this idea as houses in trusts as a service. Trusts are
bit of a pain to setup because you have to go through
lawyers. |
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I imagine an app where you can see your family homes on a
map and stay at any of them rent free. So you could be
staying at your grandparents ancestral home from any
generation. |
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Wonder what the homeless rate is in China? I saw no-one on the street in Japan, but there must be some? In Dublin the homeless rate is enormous (greed again) given the billions raked in by resident tax haven companies like Apple. (0.005% tax paid - look it up if you don't believe the figure - link) Then there people like Trump who only paid $750 yet claims to have billions. Inequality means the small number of haves have a lot and the very large number of have nots have very little. |
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That is called "How the World is" and no doubt has been bemoaned by the less privileged since your species was capering around the Black Monolith ... |
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The world is how people make it, and it can be
made fairer. |
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Not him. I detest him and his vile band and their
vile music. They copied Simple Minds who remain
excellent. That Edge moron is destroying an eco
system to build a giant mansion in Malibu. |
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In the US, estate taxes were created specifically to
drain dynasties because they were seen as a
hindrance to progress. |
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As the population grows larger, we each get a
smaller portion of the pie we call earth, and the
competition for the best pieces of it gets fiercer.
That seems like an unchangeable law. |
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That's obscure, even by your standards. Do you not understand Latin ? |
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Well well, [xen] and [kdf] ganging up on us - again. |
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No, not paranoid ... not paranoid ... |
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Oh, the suggestion is perfectly workable apart from the fact that at the moment you've got the wrong sort of people ... |
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There's an ethical consideration of having families larger
than 2+ children. |
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If you have only 2 children, you can combine houses of
two separate families (the assets of the mother and father's
families) to provide for both children. |
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If you have more than 2 children, you're diluting your wealth
down the generations. |
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If you're a parent, you should offer your children the
opportunity for rent free living for as long as you can bear. |
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// for as long as you can bare. // |
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That varies. Many humans look really bad without clothing. |
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People pay rent because there is competition for locations. I think even now it is possible to live rent-free by, for example, living on a boat at sea, or high in the wilderness mountains of some obscure country on the wrong side of the world. |
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There has been political discussion about this for centuries - the idea that the land surface of the Earth should be a common inheritance of all humans, which is bad luck for the animals and plants, but who cares about them. And then discussion of how to equitably divide up said land surface so one person gets a town house in Mayfair and another gets Chatsworth and another gets a flat in a block beside the motorway on the outskirts of Basingstoke. |
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They should count themselves fortunate; at least the flat's not actually IN Basingstoke ... |
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It's a tricky one - on one hand you've got the principle of equality for all, and on the other, you've got the natural desire to
do well by your own family. In this instance, those two fairly commonly held beliefs end up in conflict with one another. |
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I'm also of the opinion that I might not have studied or worked as hard at being good at what I do without a degree of peril in
terms of paying the rent - but I'm not sure how much of that is bias on my part - let's assume it's true - then isn't it good
for children to make their own way in the world, with all its perils and pitfalls? |
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There is that archetypal narrative of the cosseted offspring of successful parents failing to realise their privilege and losing
it all to gambling and hedonism. Again, that might be some deep rooted protestant bias - these things are after all cautionary
tales and by definition deliberately bias inducing, I know of exactly zero people who actually fall into this category. |
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Given the option, would I want my children to benefit from my hard work, and have some familial seat paid-for and available for
future generations - sure. I think it's interesting to think about long-term stability and how you structure intergenerational
culture to successfully achieve this. If history is anything to go by, the trick would appear to be to follow the aristocracy
and build massive country manors at the centre of rural populations from which cultural, social and commercial ties can be
established to form ongoing, organically operating systems. Once established, you then need to somehow get the family to adhere
to sensible values and not spunk it all on roulette, wine and skydiving. |
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This is a great post, if not for the specific idea, for
the conversation. Love discussions about specific
issues and their possible solutions rather than generic
political party line nonsense. |
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That's exactly the sort of thing that Hit ... ah, no, you don't catch us that easily. |
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I despise rent seeking behaviours, such as buying houses,
splitting them up into flats and renting them out. |
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First you're depriving someone a house at market rates,
so you're causing a price increase by outbidding young
families. |
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Second, you're introducing an economic rent on productive
behaviour by inserting yourself between productive people
of society. |
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If you rent out housing, you should be ashamed for the
damage and suffering you cause without any benefit to
people is staggering. |
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I've thought about that. If you buy property and
rent it out, your title is "lord", as in "I am your
lord. Give me your money!" Adding the
preface "land" to it doesn't take the sting away
that much. |
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That being said, renters do get to use the land
without the long term commitment, down payment
etc. But it is serfdom and there's no disagreement
that it's something to be avoided. |
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Housing DOES need to be discussed, but as 8th
started to point out, that's exactly what hit
record making people like me would say. |
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A place to live should be a basic right. It shouldn't be a mansion just a place with amenities which the tenant, if the tenant has any gumption, saves up in order to purchase a better place to stay. |
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For myself, I'm a bit bent on providing for the generation after this next one. This inventing-thing seems to skip generations in my family and my grandchildren, (should I be blessed with any), will be able to pursue their own interests without constant struggle if I have my way. |
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You can easily divide rent payments into two halves, one part covers the costs of building maintaining and servicing the building, and the other part covers the monopoly right to occupy a specified fragment of the surface of the earth. |
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It is not difficult to work out the amounts - my grandparents rented a site, but had to provide their own house. On the other side of the coin I currently live in a place owned and run by a charitable trust, which explicitly charges only the costs of maintaining the buildings. |
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Viewed like this, the "monopoly land occupation rights" proportion of the rent can be seen as a kind of private taxation. There are good reasons to question why a private individual should be given that money, as opposed to it going into the collective treasury. |
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The proportion of rent that covers the provision and maintenance of the building is fair enough, since the person who you pay that rent to is responsible for providing a service to you. |
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// a flat in a block beside the motorway on the outskirts of
Basingstoke. // |
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As far as I know, there aren't any blocks of flats. It's far
worse. |
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//what kind can I get if I decide not to work, and just claim I'm entitled to it?// I suppose you get to make false attributions and be entitled to not get criticised for it? |
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The puritan ethic of work comes before everything else is old
fashioned. |
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If people want to spend their lives carrying out their hobbies,
so be it. As long as they can afford food, what should stop
them? |
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But as [poc] pointed out, most of the cost* isn't the shelter; it's
the land the shelter is built on, of which a previous generation of
American populists used to sing** "God made the land for the
people". |
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*in crowded parts of the world, which nowadays is most of them |
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**to the tune of "Marching through Georgia" |
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//the land the shelter is built on//
It's not the land per se; it's the fact (for the most part) the
land is already owned by some-one else, who wants a return
for the work they have put in to it. Beyond that, it's just
supply/demand and how much more one person is prepared
to pay than another. |
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I thought Japan does have 50 and 100 year mortgages. |
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Real homelessness will finally dawn on xenzag when the
party visits and asks if there's a real need for all those
bedrooms and bathrooms, and can some additional folks
live with you. |
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That's not only the predicted -- but the demonstrated
result of not allowing greedy landlords to charge rent. |
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Why would anyone build a building if you can't make
money doing it? Why would anyone buy a building? If
they wouldn't, what would be the value of that building?
if the value drops, who would fix that building when it
breaks. |
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The sheer idiocy of these socialist fantasies boggles the
mind. |
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In the US the worst homelessness is in cities that have
very strict rent control policies and socialist mayors. |
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Whether that's in spite of the policy or because of it
is another question. |
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I'm a landlord by default of not being able to sell my
prior house for a price that wouldn't lead to financial
ruin until we pay it down further. Back when we were
setting up the rental we had to decide whether or not
to accept section 8 tenants. It came with several
strings attached and the upkeep issues from section
8 tenants was, shall we say, notorious. |
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One does wonder that if there were, say, the
equivalent of modern day monestaries that were
devoted communities towards new causes like
scientific research or such, as to how well they could
do. Maybe universities with extended-stay graduate
programs, where research fellows could just live on-
campus without the pressure of making the rent, if
that would prove to be a benefit to society. |
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// I suppose you get to make false attributions and be entitled to not get criticised for it?// |
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[kdf] I was the one who said "A place to live should be a basic right." which you attributed to [pocmloc]. Yes I know it's naive and socialist but a minimum standard of living should be something nobody is allowed to sink beneath. You want to elevate your status from minimum then standard capitalist rules apply. |
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[chronological] I'm sorry to hear about your illness. My little brother, (50 now but still my little brother), was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 17. Hard for him to keep a normal job. Sub-contracting seems to suit him but he still lives mostly off the radar credit-wise which makes any mortgage application impossible. Right now he still works like a bull moose but that will change soon and I'm trying my damnedest to ensure that he has something of his own when our system shoves him to the curb. |
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//the land is already owned by some-one else, who wants a return for the work they have put in to// |
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Apart from certain reclaimed areas near the sea or rivers, I think you'll find that quite a lot of land was already there when the first people came along. And it was quite a lot later than that that one person said "I own this bit and you're not allowed here". |
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//Whether that's in spite of the policy or because of it is
another question. // |
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Even if you accept that there's some room for debate
there,
there is no doubt as to what happened to housing in
countries that decided that a family needs only so much
spaces for living, and everyone is entitled to housing. |
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There may be a post-scarcity dynamic that ultimately
emerges in housing (and in other fields) due to continuing
automation. That's why ultimately something like basic
income is probably destined to happen. |
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//And it was quite a lot later than that that one person said "I own this bit and you're not allowed here".// |
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Hand waving. You have absolutely no idea how long it was before protohumans declared individual ownership of property, but families of monkeys do it now. |
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I said //quite a lot later// which could be 10 minutes or 400 billion years, depending on context. |
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Anyway, I note you don't dispute my suggested sequence of events. |
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[libertarian] Me too, with the understanding that libertarianism is not a political system. A libertarian government is like consentual rape - it doesn't mean anything. A libertarian is someone who is willing to let peaceful people live their own lives, which the state never does. |
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;-) Riminds me of when a woman, horrified, said to me "Are you - are you a racist!?" I made the mistake of trying to have a rational discussion with her; next time I plan on saying "Of course I'm not racist. I kill niggers _and_ gooks." |
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By the way, the projection is rather disturbing; it's as if they're saying "Well, _I_ can't imagine not running over babies unless someone wrote down on a piece of paper that I wan't allowed to, so I don't see why _you_ wouldn't." |
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I think the ultimate blasphemy is to imply that someone, somewhere might be able to do the right thing on their own, without the threat that the one true God - Government - will strike them down if they don't. |
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//groups occupy a home range rather than any individual// |
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That's quite an important distinction. |
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There's another important distinction too, between a small group
of individuals, connected by familiar grunts and smells, and a
larger group connected by laws and institutions. As a physically
weak and ineffectual individual, I rely heavily on the latter to
protect me (and my property) from the former. |
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I don't. Not any more. I've come across too many examples of innocent people being beaten and raped, and subject to armed home invasions, and lied about in court, and falsely imprisoned, and searched without any justification, by cops. And I'm only talking about what I've seen first-hand, or been told about face-to-face. |
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Maybe we hang out with different sorts, or maybe I'm just willing to talk about unpleasant topics. But I know I'm far from alone. It still surprise me a little, though, when I ask a question such as "What would you say is the most dangerous criminal gang around?" and get the unhesitating answer "The police". |
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I was once taken in for questioning on suspicion of being a drug-
crazed knife murderer. It was a frightening experience, but the
police did not do to me any of the things you describe. And, if
they had, then there were institutions through which I, or my
surviving relatives, could have complained, which is not usually
the case in relation to other armed gangs. |
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Government must mostly deal with the mundane
addition to the protection of citizens from other
citizens. It's not all about preventing violence and
rights. |
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