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And the thing that destroys the drive to work hard to learn is the part that you allude to in your second paragraph: rentier activity. > the cost of living in
by branchless 10y ago
And the thing that destroys the drive to work hard to learn is the part that you allude to in your second paragraph: rentier activity.
> the cost of living in desirable American locations has gone up astronomically
They financialised housing. It's killing the west. It's creating nothing, it's appropriating wealth.
Sad to see that other thread on what people would do if they could afford it. So many cited their mortgage as the blocker. In the same thread some guy cited his 400k annual bonus for high frequency trading.
- Hondor 10y agoWithout high prices, how would you keep people out of the most desirable cities? Birthrights? Lottery? Application essays? Immigration restrictions at the city level? Or not keep people out but let them become shanty towns? Rent is a way to select residents according to how much value they can produce by living there. Even though it's wasted money, it's also as very good selection filter.
- merpnderp 10y agoHow is it wasted money? The exact thing you're speaking of is the good being bought with that money. It is worth X amount of money to stay in a residence for a month. That is a good which is being sold to the highest bidder. And people buying it are freely trading their money for that good. If we were as a society to take those goods and just give them away, that'd work about as well as toilet paper nationalization in Venezuela.
- branchless 10y agoI agree rent is not "wasted", however a large chunk of the cost of providing the service is the rent of fiat money from private banks to pay for the land. We should try to suppress the % of economic rent.
- rak00n 10y agoOnly if government did adjustments for living expenses for school teachers, police and firemen NIMBYs would get less sympathy.