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There’s no reasonable way to have property rights and not have rents. Over time, property rights have proven to be one of the most beneficial elements of system

There’s no reasonable way to have property rights and not have rents. Over time, property rights have proven to be one of the most beneficial elements of systems that efficiently allocate resources and produce wealth for all, so eliminating them is a bad idea. What we need is to fix corrupt local governments that prohibit the supply of new real estate via redevelopment and densification. Having lived in Houston for a while, I saw first-hand how different things are when there’s a robust competitive market with new supply constantly added to (mostly) keep up with demand. If you do a poor job as a landlord you’ll go out of business fast. Anti-trust, anti-monopoly reform is what we need most, and no more regulatory capture. Perhaps compared with more efficient redistributive measures like the negative income tax or land value tax.

tomnipotent 5y ago
Rent, as a percentage of income spent, has increased more for American's than almost all other expenses in the past sixty years. By 2015, more 38% of renter households were spending 50% or more of their income on rent. That sounds horribly unproductive to me.
clairity 5y ago
property rights and economic rents have no such entanglements. you may be conflating the common definition of rent with the economic definition. economic rent is that which is above and beyond reasonable maintenance and service costs. providing well-kept housing does deserve (common) rent to landlords, but only for that productive part, not the act of holdng an asset while it inflates in value due to artifical constraints rather than value-producing activities. home values, for instance, can appreciate in value without (economic) rents, they'd just need to become more desirable in other ways, like making improvements (we need to drastically reduce code and zoning restrictions, and review, permitting, and legal delays to allow this in economically efficient ways). i'm absolutely in agreement about anti-trust/anti-monopoly enforcement/reform though.

tomnipotent 5y ago

Rent, as a percentage of income spent, has increased more for American's than almost all other expenses in the past sixty years. By 2015, more 38% of renter households were spending 50% or more of their income on rent. That sounds horribly unproductive to me.

clairity 5y ago

property rights and economic rents have no such entanglements. you may be conflating the common definition of rent with the economic definition. economic rent is that which is above and beyond reasonable maintenance and service costs. providing well-kept housing does deserve (common) rent to landlords, but only for that productive part, not the act of holdng an asset while it inflates in value due to artifical constraints rather than value-producing activities. home values, for instance, can appreciate in value without (economic) rents, they'd just need to become more desirable in other ways, like making improvements (we need to drastically reduce code and zoning restrictions, and review, permitting, and legal delays to allow this in economically efficient ways). i'm absolutely in agreement about anti-trust/anti-monopoly enforcement/reform though.