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> depicted as mostly working class. What "working class" person owns investment property in NYC? They amount of capital required to do that is so enormous that

> depicted as mostly working class. What "working class" person owns investment property in NYC? They amount of capital required to do that is so enormous that the article calling them "working class" is deeply misleading. They certainly aren't working class in the way that most NYC tenants are.

refurb 6y ago
I love it. Too poor to invest in property? Working class. Have enough money to invest in property? No longer working class. It’s attitudes like this that prevent the working class from participating in the generation of wealth through capital. As soon as they dip their toe in, they’re now “rich” and get the rug pulled from under them.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  I mean, the ownership of property - particularly land - and the use of that property to derive one's income is exactly what differentiates the working class from the ownership class. Landlords are pretty unambiguously in the latter; rent-seeking is not work.
  - bigmattystyles 6y ago
    Having known someone who owned and personally maintained a small apartment complex, you are wrong. My FIL is the hardest working person I know.
    - door100 6y ago
      Property management is work. Owning property is not. For small scale landlords, this is often the same person, and they may do a lot of property management.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      > My FIL is the hardest working person I know. A landlord's wealth derives from being a middleman between the tenants and the property, not from the landlord's own labor. That wealth is quite literally the whole point of being a landlord in the first place; if the income from rent didn't significantly exceed the value of the labor your FIL performs as "maintenance", then why would he bother with dealing with all the headaches of property ownership if he could instead just be an employee of the tenants themselves (said tenants forming e.g. a housing cooperative)? That is: there's nothing a landlord does that the tenants couldn't do themselves (whether directly or by hiring someone to do it on their behalf). It is therefore not labor alone that defines the relationship between a landlord and one's tenants. Your FIL may be "the hardest working person [you] know", but he's still a middleman in the ownership class.
      - refurb 6y ago
        Sure the landlord is doing something I can’t, as a tenant, can’t do myself - if all I have is an income of a few thousand a month and I need housing, the landlord is providing me housing I couldn’t otherwise afford.
        door100 6y ago
        What kind of housing someone can afford is a political question. Our current answer to it is that this should be resolved through market mechanisms, which creates high prices alongside scarcity
        yellowapple 6y ago
        Ain't even the market mechanisms themselves that drive the high prices; rather, it's what those market mechanisms track. Transitioning from land prices to land rental values - i.e. gradually moving toward a 100% land value tax - would address both high prices and scarcity by taxing land consumption - and, accordingly, encouraging urban density in order to amortize that tax, thus alleviating scarcity and reducing residential expenses. Same market at play (a land value tax definitionally taxes the market value of land); vastly improved outcome.
  - refurb 6y ago
    This seems like a great theoretical internet take and not applicable to the real world in the least. So some 50 year old blue collar dude who saves just enough to buy a duplex and live in half of it, but can’t stop working or he’ll starve, has suddenly been propelled from the working class into the lazy, cigar-smoking, top hat twirling capital class?
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      Yes. If he wants to not be in that "lazy, cigar-smoking, top hat twirling capital class" (as you put it - because apparently hyperbole and gross misrepresentation of an argument counts as "discussion" on Hacker News nowadays), he is welcome to transition his ownership of that duplex into, say, a housing cooperative consisting of himself and the other half of that duplex (or - more likely - a cooperative for the land and the duplex's exterior, and retain ownership of his own unit while putting the other unit up for sale - effectively forming a COA, but cooperatively owned).
      - refurb 6y ago
        Don't put the hyperbole on me. I'm just repeating what I hear from the far left. They love to pain landlords as some evil 1%ers when in fact many are middle income people trying to get by. And great, start a cooperative. But for everyone else who wants to rent a place, there are landlords.

refurb 6y ago

I love it. Too poor to invest in property? Working class. Have enough money to invest in property? No longer working class. It’s attitudes like this that prevent the working class from participating in the generation of wealth through capital. As soon as they dip their toe in, they’re now “rich” and get the rug pulled from under them.

yellowapple 6y ago
I mean, the ownership of property - particularly land - and the use of that property to derive one's income is exactly what differentiates the working class from the ownership class. Landlords are pretty unambiguously in the latter; rent-seeking is not work.
- bigmattystyles 6y ago
  Having known someone who owned and personally maintained a small apartment complex, you are wrong. My FIL is the hardest working person I know.
  - door100 6y ago
    Property management is work. Owning property is not. For small scale landlords, this is often the same person, and they may do a lot of property management.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    > My FIL is the hardest working person I know. A landlord's wealth derives from being a middleman between the tenants and the property, not from the landlord's own labor. That wealth is quite literally the whole point of being a landlord in the first place; if the income from rent didn't significantly exceed the value of the labor your FIL performs as "maintenance", then why would he bother with dealing with all the headaches of property ownership if he could instead just be an employee of the tenants themselves (said tenants forming e.g. a housing cooperative)? That is: there's nothing a landlord does that the tenants couldn't do themselves (whether directly or by hiring someone to do it on their behalf). It is therefore not labor alone that defines the relationship between a landlord and one's tenants. Your FIL may be "the hardest working person [you] know", but he's still a middleman in the ownership class.
    - refurb 6y ago
      Sure the landlord is doing something I can’t, as a tenant, can’t do myself - if all I have is an income of a few thousand a month and I need housing, the landlord is providing me housing I couldn’t otherwise afford.
      - door100 6y ago
        What kind of housing someone can afford is a political question. Our current answer to it is that this should be resolved through market mechanisms, which creates high prices alongside scarcity
        yellowapple 6y ago
        Ain't even the market mechanisms themselves that drive the high prices; rather, it's what those market mechanisms track. Transitioning from land prices to land rental values - i.e. gradually moving toward a 100% land value tax - would address both high prices and scarcity by taxing land consumption - and, accordingly, encouraging urban density in order to amortize that tax, thus alleviating scarcity and reducing residential expenses. Same market at play (a land value tax definitionally taxes the market value of land); vastly improved outcome.
- refurb 6y ago
  This seems like a great theoretical internet take and not applicable to the real world in the least. So some 50 year old blue collar dude who saves just enough to buy a duplex and live in half of it, but can’t stop working or he’ll starve, has suddenly been propelled from the working class into the lazy, cigar-smoking, top hat twirling capital class?
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    Yes. If he wants to not be in that "lazy, cigar-smoking, top hat twirling capital class" (as you put it - because apparently hyperbole and gross misrepresentation of an argument counts as "discussion" on Hacker News nowadays), he is welcome to transition his ownership of that duplex into, say, a housing cooperative consisting of himself and the other half of that duplex (or - more likely - a cooperative for the land and the duplex's exterior, and retain ownership of his own unit while putting the other unit up for sale - effectively forming a COA, but cooperatively owned).
    - refurb 6y ago
      Don't put the hyperbole on me. I'm just repeating what I hear from the far left. They love to pain landlords as some evil 1%ers when in fact many are middle income people trying to get by. And great, start a cooperative. But for everyone else who wants to rent a place, there are landlords.