5 ms·

This reminds me of when my great grandfather would talk about socialism. I believe in the 1950s the terminology got corrupted, or maybe he was always using som

This reminds me of when my great grandfather would talk about socialism. I believe in the 1950s the terminology got corrupted, or maybe he was always using some off shoot version of the terminology. What the socialism he and many protested for back in the day was for unions. The idea was to give control to the workers, so that living standards could increase. And you know what? It worked. From this the US saw its best years. When workers get paid more, they buy more. It boosts the economy, strengthens it, and from that we all end up with a better life. Today 44% of US workers are low wage ($18,000 or less). Of this group the majority can not afford more than food, shelter, transportation, and clothing. This is not what a healthy economy looks like. Part of the challenge of paying people a living wage is land lords can and do up rent to match their income slowly over time. The free market is great when there is competition, but time and time again we see in markets where there is limited competition or limited resources, the market starts to fall down. So while socialism (ie unions and social services) at first seems to benefits us all, it does not benefit low income workers. Without some sort of regulation on the housing market, blindly upping minimum wage will lead to a slow increase in living expenses. Unionizing has shown to work and work well for middle class jobs, but if the job is a near minimum wage job, while unions do help, it's unfortunately a complex problem. Without some sort of regulation there will always be some group of people struggling to make ends meet.

goodcanadian 6y ago
Rent control is almost always counter-productive. Real estate is subject to the same laws of supply and demand as everything else. The only way to make housing more affordable is to increase the supply. In certain highly desirable areas, it is always going to be difficult to increase the supply enough. Generally speaking, however, more housing = cheaper housing. (Expanding rapid public transportation can also help by giving workers quick access to larger regions, and more housing options.) EDIT: Thanks to all for the good comments. I want to stress that I understand "just build more" (by which I really mean increase supply however you accomplish it) is often not a simple answer, but it is the ONLY strategy that has a hope of working to make housing more affordable.
- kjakm 6y ago
  Supply and demand is too simplistic an approach for a lot of places when so many properties in major cities are purchased by foreign investors and left empty.
  - goodcanadian 6y ago
    Supply and demand still works. That is a confounding factor artificially increasing demand (or decreasing supply). There are lots of approaches to fight this, including banning foreign ownership, or just building so much housing that it doesn't matter (the foreign ownership problem may also go away in the latter case if it turns into a poor investment).
    - Jochim 6y ago
      Building housing isn't enough. People need to be able to get to work in a reasonable length of time, they generally need to be able to maintain prior relationships, have access to hobbies, shopping etc. that all tend to be further away from undeveloped land. That's also ignoring the problem of landlords using the excess capital extracted from rents to drive the price of housing further from the reach of the people actually interested in using it as a house. The higher prices are then used by landlords as a justification for raising rent, and this cycle then repeats.
  - twic 6y ago
    > so many properties in major cities are purchased by foreign investors and left empty This is a bit of a popular myth. Vancouver is the only city i know of where it even approaches being significant. Try to dig up some statistics on empty properties for some cities that matter to you and you'll see.
    - kjakm 6y ago
      There are about 25,000 unoccupied properties in London, UK worth about £11 billion.
pjc50 6y ago
> I believe in the 1950s the terminology got corrupted Well, yes, in the McCarthyite era rightwingers learned that you could discredit any idea by calling it "communism" regardless of content or origin, and the discussion went downhill from there. The cold war produced a strange politics where Western governments often had to offer real economic concessions to their workers out of fear that actual communism might become popular, while at the same time being very wary of the unions as power centers, culminating in the Thatcher/Reagan era of explicitly dismantling unionised industries in order to disrupt that power. They had a certain amount of support from the non-unionized public who were fed up with the level of strike action and disruption as a result. That was also the era of significantly higher interest and inflation rates, which is a whole other sector of politics.
krzyk 6y ago
> This reminds me of when my great grandfather would talk about socialism. I believe in the 1950s the terminology got corrupted Well, it got corrupted when USSR was created (and also Chinese People's Repulic), and people suffered under its boot.
- proverbialbunny 6y ago
  Hitler called his party socialist too. I'm not sure if anyone fell for it in the US then and it's really a more 1940s type corruption. I'm probably saying the obvious but fun fact: These communist and fascist countries called themselves socialist and advertised themselves as such because it was socialists that fought against them the most. Socialists were the opposite to their authoritarian ways, so they lied to the people saying they were the same as their competitor.
refurb 6y ago
Where did you get 44% make less than $18,000? The median hourly wage was $19.33/hr in 2019.[1] And the lowest quintile of household income was $21,300 before taxes and transfers[2] [1]https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/ https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/ [2]https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-10/56575-Household-Income.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-10/56575-Household-Inc...
- proverbialbunny 6y ago
  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-2019-almost-half-of-all-americans-work-in-low-wage-jobs/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-2019-almost-half-o...

goodcanadian 6y ago

Rent control is almost always counter-productive. Real estate is subject to the same laws of supply and demand as everything else. The only way to make housing more affordable is to increase the supply. In certain highly desirable areas, it is always going to be difficult to increase the supply enough. Generally speaking, however, more housing = cheaper housing. (Expanding rapid public transportation can also help by giving workers quick access to larger regions, and more housing options.) EDIT: Thanks to all for the good comments. I want to stress that I understand "just build more" (by which I really mean increase supply however you accomplish it) is often not a simple answer, but it is the ONLY strategy that has a hope of working to make housing more affordable.

kjakm 6y ago
Supply and demand is too simplistic an approach for a lot of places when so many properties in major cities are purchased by foreign investors and left empty.
- goodcanadian 6y ago
  Supply and demand still works. That is a confounding factor artificially increasing demand (or decreasing supply). There are lots of approaches to fight this, including banning foreign ownership, or just building so much housing that it doesn't matter (the foreign ownership problem may also go away in the latter case if it turns into a poor investment).
  - Jochim 6y ago
    Building housing isn't enough. People need to be able to get to work in a reasonable length of time, they generally need to be able to maintain prior relationships, have access to hobbies, shopping etc. that all tend to be further away from undeveloped land. That's also ignoring the problem of landlords using the excess capital extracted from rents to drive the price of housing further from the reach of the people actually interested in using it as a house. The higher prices are then used by landlords as a justification for raising rent, and this cycle then repeats.
- twic 6y ago
  > so many properties in major cities are purchased by foreign investors and left empty This is a bit of a popular myth. Vancouver is the only city i know of where it even approaches being significant. Try to dig up some statistics on empty properties for some cities that matter to you and you'll see.
  - kjakm 6y ago
    There are about 25,000 unoccupied properties in London, UK worth about £11 billion.

pjc50 6y ago

> I believe in the 1950s the terminology got corrupted Well, yes, in the McCarthyite era rightwingers learned that you could discredit any idea by calling it "communism" regardless of content or origin, and the discussion went downhill from there. The cold war produced a strange politics where Western governments often had to offer real economic concessions to their workers out of fear that actual communism might become popular, while at the same time being very wary of the unions as power centers, culminating in the Thatcher/Reagan era of explicitly dismantling unionised industries in order to disrupt that power. They had a certain amount of support from the non-unionized public who were fed up with the level of strike action and disruption as a result. That was also the era of significantly higher interest and inflation rates, which is a whole other sector of politics.

krzyk 6y ago

> This reminds me of when my great grandfather would talk about socialism. I believe in the 1950s the terminology got corrupted Well, it got corrupted when USSR was created (and also Chinese People's Repulic), and people suffered under its boot.

proverbialbunny 6y ago
Hitler called his party socialist too. I'm not sure if anyone fell for it in the US then and it's really a more 1940s type corruption. I'm probably saying the obvious but fun fact: These communist and fascist countries called themselves socialist and advertised themselves as such because it was socialists that fought against them the most. Socialists were the opposite to their authoritarian ways, so they lied to the people saying they were the same as their competitor.

refurb 6y ago

Where did you get 44% make less than $18,000? The median hourly wage was $19.33/hr in 2019.[1] And the lowest quintile of household income was $21,300 before taxes and transfers[2] [1]https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/ https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/ [2]https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-10/56575-Household-Income.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-10/56575-Household-Inc...

proverbialbunny 6y ago
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-2019-almost-half-of-all-americans-work-in-low-wage-jobs/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-2019-almost-half-o...