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The megalandords are potentially a serious threat to democracy. Property rights are, to many theorists, the foundation of liberty. The widespread ownership of

The megalandords are potentially a serious threat to democracy. Property rights are, to many theorists, the foundation of liberty. The widespread ownership of property is arguably the foundation of democracy. Owning your home gives you rights and independence; your home is your castle. The landlord's home is their castle. Now we are concentrating wealth and property back into the hands of a few, a corporate aristocracy. You can use property at their pleasure. What happens if you want to do something politically unpopular? Put a sign in your yard? Work someplace or say something on social media? What if you have a dispute with this landlord - can you compete in court with their lawyers? where else will you live? Will other megalandlords accept you? They also will have enormous influence in local communities. Property owners, not renters, are the influential people in any community. These new megalandlords will concentrate that power in a large corporation which has enormous resources. Local government will not be able to compete. How does this arrangement differ from feudalism, with the wealthy controlling the land and the rest reduced to renting it. Well past feudalism, the concentration of property ownership has been a serious obstacle to democracy in many countries trying to make that transition. Now we are going backward. Do you think these wealthy, powerful people, who pride themselves on their naked aggression and disregard of others' welfare, who have a long history of buying government, will not use this power? A crucial question is, is this part of the deliberate attack on democracy by the (unnamed) coalition of wealthy and corporations, or truly just an investment? Regardless, the power will be there for that coalition to utilize.

geocon 4y ago
Behold the rise of neofeudalism: you can already see it in California, thanks to Prop 13. Land value tax would fix this.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  > Land value tax would fix this. The banks decide what your house is worth and the gov then tax you based on that. Seems like a way to force people into a never ending grind and kicking out seniors. No thanks.
  - geocon 4y ago
    Er, an LVT doesn't tax the house at all, that's precisely the point. It only taxes the land... It's literally just a property tax that doesn't tax the house.
    - tzs 4y ago
      So if I've got 10 acres that I'm keeping as an undeveloped wilderness to provide habitat for migratory birds to use during migrations and you've got 10 acres next to mine with a 200 unit apartment building on it we pay the same amount of tax? That doesn't seem fair since your 10 acres is using way more of nearly every government service property taxes fund and requires more of nearly every government infrastructure that property taxes pay for.
      - unusualmonkey 4y ago
        In that case, I'd imagine the solution would be to ask for a zoning change to the land (changing it's value), or put it in a non-profit which could have special tax treatment - or transfer ownership back to give under specific conditions.
  - janalsncm 4y ago
    A LVT is a fixed tax per square foot of land. It incentivizes maximizing the property value on the land and building high density housing there.
    - geocon 4y ago
      To clarify, it's not a flat dollar amount per square foot, it's a flat percentage of value. An acre of land in Wyoming is not taxed the same $/sqft as an acre of land in NYC.
      - daveguy 4y ago
        Why couldn't ther be a tax per sqft? LAT rather than LVT. Would it change incentives in the way gp hypothesizes? Seems like it would.
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
  Prop 13 was a direct result of a California court decision. I forget the 1960s case, but the gist of it was it instituted equalization in school budgets out from property taxes in the name of equity. In other words, high property taxes in 1 town were forced to be transfered to the neighboring town with a lower budget, so much so that the transfer had to be make payments by pupil within a $100 band. That was instituted blind to school performance of course. This actually took hold in many states not just California, however CA was the o ly one that forced transfer payments within a $100 band. There are different flavors of this all accross the country Of course, homeowners are not idiots. They dont want their tax dollars wasted. So soon after this case forced these transfer payments, there was a swell of home owners pushing for prop 13. Makes sense. Local taxes to local benefit. If my taxes are going elsewhere, why should i pay more? And so here we are. Almost 50 years later. Prop 13 is here to stay and is the only restraint that communities have against out of control state spending.
  - treeman79 4y ago
    There was also the whole issue of older people being forced out of their homes due to the rising property taxes. Turns out they vote in high numbers.
    - rcpt 4y ago
      Lies. Since 1977 (before Prop 13) we've had the California Tax Postponement Program. Low income seniors, the disabled and the blind can defer taxes indefinitely. They have zero pressure from the state to move.
      - seanp2k2 4y ago
        Also, the biggest winners from prop 13 are businesses like Disney: https://www.curbed.com/2020/10/prop-15-california-property-tax-prop-13.html https://www.curbed.com/2020/10/prop-15-california-property-t... Meanwhile, anyone who didn’t buy a house or property for a business 20+ years ago is priced out of the market, so we have tons of low-quality stores and businesses that are insulated from competition. It’s interesting how many free market advocates will throw their values out the window when it benefits them to do so.
- poulsbohemian 4y ago
  As I don't live in CA, explain to me how this would work? As an outsider, it sounds on the surface a lot like those people who advocate for a flat income tax, IE: you and I both own a half-acre, but I have a single-wide trailer and you have the Hearst Mansion, but we are both taxed the same amount.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    That’s the point. If you own a valuable piece of land, the government needs to incentivize you to density so that the community has cheap housing. Putting a single wide on a in demand spot is wasteful and should be punished. More generally, land value tax returns land to its rightful owner, the people in the community. No one created land so it doesn’t make sense to allow people to profit off it.
    - chii 4y ago
      > returns land to its rightful owner, the people in the community. if that was the case, why does somebody currently own it, and who did this current owner buy it from (ala, go up the purchase chain back to the first buyer).
      - HDThoreaun 4y ago
        Mistakes were made. They obtained it from someone who had no right to give it to them in my opinion, although of course rights are a tricky subject and many believe “might makes right” Eventually going up the chain brings us to the government, which again, had no right to give that land away when it belongs to the people. Whether they did it because of corruption or ineptitude is irrelevant.
  - geocon 4y ago
    The idea is to tax land as a percentage of its value (notably, not its size). This is because land is a necessary good which is exclusionary: because there is a fixed supply of land, it can only be owned at the expense of someone else. So, let's take the scenario you gave: it depends very much where the mansion and the trailer are. Generally, people build mansions on high-value land and trailers are on low-value land, so the mansion will be taxed more than the trailer (a half acre in LA has a much higher value than a half-acre in rural Nevada where I live). If they are on the exact same lot, though, then yes they would pay the same tax. The idea is that taxing this way incentivizes the best use of land. Imagine that you have identical plots in New York, one is a big apartment complex, and the other a parking lot. With a property tax, you take a huge tax penalty for building, and so the housing complex pays a lot of taxes and the parking lot almost nothing. With a land value tax, however, the parking lot and the housing complex pay the same amount in tax, so it incentivizes the owner of the lot to build a more profitable housing complex there as well, and they take no tax penalty. Prop 13 in CA is a law that freezes property tax assessments at sale, so you have people who are paying taxes on a home currently worth $2 million as if it were only worth the $150k they bought it for in 1980. This means it is always better just to rent the house out than sell it, since you have a huge tax benefit, making housing almost impossible to buy. Worse, you can pass the frozen assessment on in your will. So it is almost literally creating a quasi-landed gentry class.
kaashif 4y ago
> Local government will not be able to compete. Local government is, by and large, NIMBY and thus on the side of the megalandlords. Local government does not compete with property investors, it is already controlled by them.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  That's not my experience; that is, it happens, but certainly not always. Look at major cities with rent control, for example.
  - geocon 4y ago
    Rent control is, I regret to inform you, also NIMBY; it benefits current residents at the expense of future ones.
    - whatshisface 4y ago
      I don't think there is any way to get a voting system to stop favoring people who vote in the current election over people who can't or don't, but the OP was talking about something different: local governments favoring a slight minority of voters (landlords, some of whom are nonresidents and can't vote at all) over the larger number of tennants. I say "slight minority" because quite a few "landlords" are not the Victorian aristocrats our cultural legacies from Marx's time make them out to be but rather individual people who saved up and now let one property.
      - rcpt 4y ago
        The "problem of faction" is theoretically solved via representative democracy. That was the idea in the Federalist Papers. It's not perfect but absolutely works better than direct democracy which has led to things like Prop 13 and it's endless extensions
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        > any way to get a voting system to stop favoring people who vote in the current election over people who can't or don't Would that even be desirable? I feel that serving the desires of the voters is an essential (and desirable) property of democracy.
stephenhuey 4y ago
Reminds me of this 10 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34073880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34073880
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  Sounds about right.. we're seeing the first steps toward a return of Madame Guillotine already. Reddit is flooded with populist rage subs like AntiWork. Angry populist candidates (Trump and Bernie) dominated the 2016 election cycle
- bumby 4y ago
  The less positive view is that when boomers begin to leave the housing market, it won't release housing pressure by putting more homes on the market, but rather create a wealth transfer to their children who may just rent out the homes for more than the equivalent sale.
skybrian 4y ago
That argument is way too theoretical. Some people want to own their home and others want to rent. The optimal amount of rental housing is not zero. Whether there is too much or not enough rental housing is an empirical question that depends on local conditions.
- naasking 4y ago
  The cost of housing rising above median livable wage is not theoretical. We're well past that in some parts of the country.
  - skybrian 4y ago
    But does that mean there is too much rental housing available or not enough, versus owner-occupied housing? If you want rents to be lower, it’s strange to argue against an increase in rentable housing.
    - naasking 4y ago
      Rent has also skyrocketed, so your framing as some trade-off between availability of rent or buy does not seem correct.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        All else being equal, do you think JPMC building $1B of new rental property to raise or lower rents?
        naasking 4y ago
        Depends entirely in the property they use to create those units doesn't it? If they demolish 10,000 low end rental properties to build 1,000 high end properties, the answer seems obvious. Equally obvious, if they could create property out of thin air then more supply lowers prices, but property is finite.
bumby 4y ago
Americans, by and large, don't own their homes. If you disagree, stop paying your property taxes and see what happens to your ownership. There's a reason "real" estate derives from the term for "royalty".
- blululu 4y ago
  No, home ownership in America is ~65%. You need to pay taxes to support the infrastructure and you need to pay the bank to service your mortgage, but both are proscribed by a clear and largely static legal framework that does not infringe upon your legal ownership of the property.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    A steel man interpretation of GPs argument would be that payment mechanics of property tax and subscriber services are more alike than people want to admit. You own your Netflix movies and land alike as long as you pay the subscription cost. Both eventually will be revoked if payment is withheld. Why should we call one subscribing and one owning when the results are the same?
    - Mechanical9 4y ago
      The results do not seem equal if you take account for the actual costs and privileges. Owning property has more rights and renting has more costs. Rights: If you do not pay your property taxes, you will probably have 6 months to several years before your home is taken. If you do not pay your rent, the eviction process will likely start immediately and the landlord will probably make your life more difficult until you leave, even if you live in a state with stronger tenant rights. Costs: Taxes are somewhere between $500-$5000 per year for an average home, while rent is more like $500-$5000 per month. Rent is on par or greater than the mortgage cost for an equivalent space, I have only seen lower rents when the home was not still mortgaged. So while owning and renting may both theoretically be a subscription or a service with regular costs, the costs and benefits are not the same.
      - deleted 4y ago
skfingngihg 4y ago
[flagged]
- olddustytrail 4y ago
  It's both. I'm not sure what your understanding of these terms is that you don't realise they're orthogonal, but I'm afraid it's wrong.
  - CottonMcKnight 4y ago
    There should be a Godwin's Law for "we're a republic, not a democracy."
    - MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
      I've been on the internet a long time and this meme feels like it's appeared out of nowhere in the last couple years, it's really off-putting. We're talking about the USA. America! Democracy is their brand in every speech and bit of media. They've been been showboating how awesome democracy is and how the free world would prevail the entire cold war. And now suddenly it's "yeah no we aren't actually a democracy"? This meme is the biggest narrative retcon I've ever seen.
ThrustVectoring 4y ago
> What if you have a dispute with this landlord - can you compete in court with their lawyers? Bold of you to assume that they wouldn't just cancel your lease, share your do-not-rent status with the other mega-landlords, and hope that homelessness makes you go away.
- treeman79 4y ago
  I moved into a house from From a mega rental. All the windows were open when we did The inspection. Had a massive chemical smell after we closed it up. Company kept making excuses about smell. Well in 3 months family suffered a whole series of strokes and other issues. Eventually found a gas leak. It didn’t have the rotten egg smell so took awhile to figure out. Plus we just were gone mentally. Doctors wouldn’t fill paperwork saying that high levels of toxic gas caused medical issues, so lawyers wouldn’t take the case.
  - baby 4y ago
    Why didn’t you just leave and stop paying rent?
    - actionfromafar 4y ago
      Maybe it was in winter, alleyways are kind of cold to sleep in that time of year.
      - baby 4y ago
        You can find another rent
    - treeman79 4y ago
      We eventually did.
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      This is often hard. Even if you find a new place and move, your landlord will come after you for the remaining rent on the lease. If you don't succeed, you'll have a ding on your credit report that makes it harder to get a home loan and may make it nearly impossible to find places to rent.
naveen99 4y ago
It’s turtles. JPMorgan is publicly traded. The renter can just buy as many shares of it as he wants and pretend it’s his home equity.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  This is nonsense. 99.99% of renters can’t buy enough JPMorgan to make a difference. They don’t have the money and that’s why they’re renting.
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  But if tomorrow JPM decides to invest like Kathy Wood and lose all the money, the renters will be without home equity and the JPM equity.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  > It’s turtles. JPMorgan is publicly traded. The renter can just buy as many shares of it as he wants and pretend it’s his home equity. Try asking your brokerage for $400,000 of margin at 5% on a $20,000 account and see what they say. There's no financial instrument even remotely close to what a 30 year mortgage is for the average individual.
  - naveen99 4y ago
    I believe you can get higher leverage on treasury bonds at your broker. My 1 year treasury bonds use less than 2% margin.
    - roflyear 4y ago
      What's the rate? You're not getting free money.
      - naveen99 4y ago
        It’s 1% above what you make on the treasury. Less than mortgage rates for sure, and if interest rates drop it might become free money, of course if interest rates go up you are swimming naked.
highwaylights 4y ago
I would imagine democracy is what makes this a precarious business decision for JPMorgan. Currently, most people do not rent. If they did, then it would be much less lucrative for the landlord - especially if people are struggling. “Vote for me and I’ll cap rents at (amount below cost)!” is a fairly easy solution to that problem in a democracy.
codingrightnow 4y ago
Yes. This should be illegal. Where are our politicians to step in and stop this?
- CommanderData 4y ago
  The article said JPMorgan. No politician is stepping in anytime soon. They are all complicit. At least in the UK, our politicians have a rich relationships with companies like these (ex - exployees, advisors, donors) and no one bat's eye.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vagrantJin 4y ago
The title has a made up word because it would never pass editorial to call it "fuedalism" as you rightly stated. There is no discussion to be had here. It's the return of Europes peasant/aristocrat economy back in full swing. Only took a century to come back. Oh well...
yunwal 4y ago
> A crucial question is, is this part of the deliberate attack on democracy by the (unnamed) coalition of wealthy and corporations, or truly just an investment These things are one and the same. There is nothing to do with billions of dollars outside of buying influence.
europeanguy 4y ago
$1bn on rental homes That's 10,000 $100,000 homes, or 5,000 $200,000 homes, or 2,500 $400,000 homes. Is it just me, or when put like this it doesn't seem so many? The high rise where I live has, I estimate, 200 units. So at $400,000 per, they're buying roughly 12 high rises. Doesnt seem like a "threat to democracy". What am I missing? I would imagine that right now most of these high rises are owned by a few firms already.
- Valakas_ 4y ago
  When you're going to cook a frog, the water doesn't immediately start boiling does it? Extreme situations, often don't start extreme.
gloryjulio 4y ago
We need the Japan model to ease up the supply. That's the only direction to solve housing problem
Atlas22 4y ago
Just got a bit closer to WEF's "prediction" for 2030. "You'll own nothing. And you'll be happy" Doesn't seem very... Democratic or even republic to me... Source: https://twitter.com/wef/status/983378870819794945 https://twitter.com/wef/status/983378870819794945
kmlx 4y ago
> The megalandords are potentially a serious threat to democracy. everything in today’s america seems to be “a serious threat to democracy”. as such it looks like american democracy is too fragile.
- Valakas_ 4y ago
  "Blaming the victim" - commonly used abusive manipulation tactic used to reverse victim and offender. And you just did it. The other option to why "everything in today's america seems to be a serious threat to democracy" is, obviously, that maybe that's because America's democracy is under attack.
refurb 4y ago
$1B in real estate is less than one one-hundreth of a percent of all residential real estate in the US (estimated at $43,400 billion). You really think that's a threat to democracy?
aapl88889 4y ago
Shouldn't homeowners be able to sell to whoever they want?

geocon 4y ago

Behold the rise of neofeudalism: you can already see it in California, thanks to Prop 13. Land value tax would fix this.

rightbyte 4y ago
> Land value tax would fix this. The banks decide what your house is worth and the gov then tax you based on that. Seems like a way to force people into a never ending grind and kicking out seniors. No thanks.
- geocon 4y ago
  Er, an LVT doesn't tax the house at all, that's precisely the point. It only taxes the land... It's literally just a property tax that doesn't tax the house.
  - tzs 4y ago
    So if I've got 10 acres that I'm keeping as an undeveloped wilderness to provide habitat for migratory birds to use during migrations and you've got 10 acres next to mine with a 200 unit apartment building on it we pay the same amount of tax? That doesn't seem fair since your 10 acres is using way more of nearly every government service property taxes fund and requires more of nearly every government infrastructure that property taxes pay for.
    - unusualmonkey 4y ago
      In that case, I'd imagine the solution would be to ask for a zoning change to the land (changing it's value), or put it in a non-profit which could have special tax treatment - or transfer ownership back to give under specific conditions.
- janalsncm 4y ago
  A LVT is a fixed tax per square foot of land. It incentivizes maximizing the property value on the land and building high density housing there.
  - geocon 4y ago
    To clarify, it's not a flat dollar amount per square foot, it's a flat percentage of value. An acre of land in Wyoming is not taxed the same $/sqft as an acre of land in NYC.
    - daveguy 4y ago
      Why couldn't ther be a tax per sqft? LAT rather than LVT. Would it change incentives in the way gp hypothesizes? Seems like it would.
IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
Prop 13 was a direct result of a California court decision. I forget the 1960s case, but the gist of it was it instituted equalization in school budgets out from property taxes in the name of equity. In other words, high property taxes in 1 town were forced to be transfered to the neighboring town with a lower budget, so much so that the transfer had to be make payments by pupil within a $100 band. That was instituted blind to school performance of course. This actually took hold in many states not just California, however CA was the o ly one that forced transfer payments within a $100 band. There are different flavors of this all accross the country Of course, homeowners are not idiots. They dont want their tax dollars wasted. So soon after this case forced these transfer payments, there was a swell of home owners pushing for prop 13. Makes sense. Local taxes to local benefit. If my taxes are going elsewhere, why should i pay more? And so here we are. Almost 50 years later. Prop 13 is here to stay and is the only restraint that communities have against out of control state spending.
- treeman79 4y ago
  There was also the whole issue of older people being forced out of their homes due to the rising property taxes. Turns out they vote in high numbers.
  - rcpt 4y ago
    Lies. Since 1977 (before Prop 13) we've had the California Tax Postponement Program. Low income seniors, the disabled and the blind can defer taxes indefinitely. They have zero pressure from the state to move.
    - seanp2k2 4y ago
      Also, the biggest winners from prop 13 are businesses like Disney: https://www.curbed.com/2020/10/prop-15-california-property-tax-prop-13.html https://www.curbed.com/2020/10/prop-15-california-property-t... Meanwhile, anyone who didn’t buy a house or property for a business 20+ years ago is priced out of the market, so we have tons of low-quality stores and businesses that are insulated from competition. It’s interesting how many free market advocates will throw their values out the window when it benefits them to do so.
poulsbohemian 4y ago
As I don't live in CA, explain to me how this would work? As an outsider, it sounds on the surface a lot like those people who advocate for a flat income tax, IE: you and I both own a half-acre, but I have a single-wide trailer and you have the Hearst Mansion, but we are both taxed the same amount.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  That’s the point. If you own a valuable piece of land, the government needs to incentivize you to density so that the community has cheap housing. Putting a single wide on a in demand spot is wasteful and should be punished. More generally, land value tax returns land to its rightful owner, the people in the community. No one created land so it doesn’t make sense to allow people to profit off it.
  - chii 4y ago
    > returns land to its rightful owner, the people in the community. if that was the case, why does somebody currently own it, and who did this current owner buy it from (ala, go up the purchase chain back to the first buyer).
    - HDThoreaun 4y ago
      Mistakes were made. They obtained it from someone who had no right to give it to them in my opinion, although of course rights are a tricky subject and many believe “might makes right” Eventually going up the chain brings us to the government, which again, had no right to give that land away when it belongs to the people. Whether they did it because of corruption or ineptitude is irrelevant.
- geocon 4y ago
  The idea is to tax land as a percentage of its value (notably, not its size). This is because land is a necessary good which is exclusionary: because there is a fixed supply of land, it can only be owned at the expense of someone else. So, let's take the scenario you gave: it depends very much where the mansion and the trailer are. Generally, people build mansions on high-value land and trailers are on low-value land, so the mansion will be taxed more than the trailer (a half acre in LA has a much higher value than a half-acre in rural Nevada where I live). If they are on the exact same lot, though, then yes they would pay the same tax. The idea is that taxing this way incentivizes the best use of land. Imagine that you have identical plots in New York, one is a big apartment complex, and the other a parking lot. With a property tax, you take a huge tax penalty for building, and so the housing complex pays a lot of taxes and the parking lot almost nothing. With a land value tax, however, the parking lot and the housing complex pay the same amount in tax, so it incentivizes the owner of the lot to build a more profitable housing complex there as well, and they take no tax penalty. Prop 13 in CA is a law that freezes property tax assessments at sale, so you have people who are paying taxes on a home currently worth $2 million as if it were only worth the $150k they bought it for in 1980. This means it is always better just to rent the house out than sell it, since you have a huge tax benefit, making housing almost impossible to buy. Worse, you can pass the frozen assessment on in your will. So it is almost literally creating a quasi-landed gentry class.

kaashif 4y ago

> Local government will not be able to compete. Local government is, by and large, NIMBY and thus on the side of the megalandlords. Local government does not compete with property investors, it is already controlled by them.

wolverine876 4y ago
That's not my experience; that is, it happens, but certainly not always. Look at major cities with rent control, for example.
- geocon 4y ago
  Rent control is, I regret to inform you, also NIMBY; it benefits current residents at the expense of future ones.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    I don't think there is any way to get a voting system to stop favoring people who vote in the current election over people who can't or don't, but the OP was talking about something different: local governments favoring a slight minority of voters (landlords, some of whom are nonresidents and can't vote at all) over the larger number of tennants. I say "slight minority" because quite a few "landlords" are not the Victorian aristocrats our cultural legacies from Marx's time make them out to be but rather individual people who saved up and now let one property.
    - rcpt 4y ago
      The "problem of faction" is theoretically solved via representative democracy. That was the idea in the Federalist Papers. It's not perfect but absolutely works better than direct democracy which has led to things like Prop 13 and it's endless extensions
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      > any way to get a voting system to stop favoring people who vote in the current election over people who can't or don't Would that even be desirable? I feel that serving the desires of the voters is an essential (and desirable) property of democracy.

stephenhuey 4y ago

Reminds me of this 10 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34073880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34073880

Firmwarrior 4y ago
Sounds about right.. we're seeing the first steps toward a return of Madame Guillotine already. Reddit is flooded with populist rage subs like AntiWork. Angry populist candidates (Trump and Bernie) dominated the 2016 election cycle
bumby 4y ago
The less positive view is that when boomers begin to leave the housing market, it won't release housing pressure by putting more homes on the market, but rather create a wealth transfer to their children who may just rent out the homes for more than the equivalent sale.

skybrian 4y ago

That argument is way too theoretical. Some people want to own their home and others want to rent. The optimal amount of rental housing is not zero. Whether there is too much or not enough rental housing is an empirical question that depends on local conditions.

naasking 4y ago
The cost of housing rising above median livable wage is not theoretical. We're well past that in some parts of the country.
- skybrian 4y ago
  But does that mean there is too much rental housing available or not enough, versus owner-occupied housing? If you want rents to be lower, it’s strange to argue against an increase in rentable housing.
  - naasking 4y ago
    Rent has also skyrocketed, so your framing as some trade-off between availability of rent or buy does not seem correct.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      All else being equal, do you think JPMC building $1B of new rental property to raise or lower rents?
      - naasking 4y ago
        Depends entirely in the property they use to create those units doesn't it? If they demolish 10,000 low end rental properties to build 1,000 high end properties, the answer seems obvious. Equally obvious, if they could create property out of thin air then more supply lowers prices, but property is finite.

bumby 4y ago

Americans, by and large, don't own their homes. If you disagree, stop paying your property taxes and see what happens to your ownership. There's a reason "real" estate derives from the term for "royalty".

blululu 4y ago
No, home ownership in America is ~65%. You need to pay taxes to support the infrastructure and you need to pay the bank to service your mortgage, but both are proscribed by a clear and largely static legal framework that does not infringe upon your legal ownership of the property.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  A steel man interpretation of GPs argument would be that payment mechanics of property tax and subscriber services are more alike than people want to admit. You own your Netflix movies and land alike as long as you pay the subscription cost. Both eventually will be revoked if payment is withheld. Why should we call one subscribing and one owning when the results are the same?
  - Mechanical9 4y ago
    The results do not seem equal if you take account for the actual costs and privileges. Owning property has more rights and renting has more costs. Rights: If you do not pay your property taxes, you will probably have 6 months to several years before your home is taken. If you do not pay your rent, the eviction process will likely start immediately and the landlord will probably make your life more difficult until you leave, even if you live in a state with stronger tenant rights. Costs: Taxes are somewhere between $500-$5000 per year for an average home, while rent is more like $500-$5000 per month. Rent is on par or greater than the mortgage cost for an equivalent space, I have only seen lower rents when the home was not still mortgaged. So while owning and renting may both theoretically be a subscription or a service with regular costs, the costs and benefits are not the same.
    - deleted 4y ago

skfingngihg 4y ago

[flagged]

olddustytrail 4y ago
It's both. I'm not sure what your understanding of these terms is that you don't realise they're orthogonal, but I'm afraid it's wrong.
- CottonMcKnight 4y ago
  There should be a Godwin's Law for "we're a republic, not a democracy."
  - MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
    I've been on the internet a long time and this meme feels like it's appeared out of nowhere in the last couple years, it's really off-putting. We're talking about the USA. America! Democracy is their brand in every speech and bit of media. They've been been showboating how awesome democracy is and how the free world would prevail the entire cold war. And now suddenly it's "yeah no we aren't actually a democracy"? This meme is the biggest narrative retcon I've ever seen.

ThrustVectoring 4y ago

> What if you have a dispute with this landlord - can you compete in court with their lawyers? Bold of you to assume that they wouldn't just cancel your lease, share your do-not-rent status with the other mega-landlords, and hope that homelessness makes you go away.

treeman79 4y ago
I moved into a house from From a mega rental. All the windows were open when we did The inspection. Had a massive chemical smell after we closed it up. Company kept making excuses about smell. Well in 3 months family suffered a whole series of strokes and other issues. Eventually found a gas leak. It didn’t have the rotten egg smell so took awhile to figure out. Plus we just were gone mentally. Doctors wouldn’t fill paperwork saying that high levels of toxic gas caused medical issues, so lawyers wouldn’t take the case.
- baby 4y ago
  Why didn’t you just leave and stop paying rent?
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    Maybe it was in winter, alleyways are kind of cold to sleep in that time of year.
    - baby 4y ago
      You can find another rent
  - treeman79 4y ago
    We eventually did.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    This is often hard. Even if you find a new place and move, your landlord will come after you for the remaining rent on the lease. If you don't succeed, you'll have a ding on your credit report that makes it harder to get a home loan and may make it nearly impossible to find places to rent.

naveen99 4y ago

It’s turtles. JPMorgan is publicly traded. The renter can just buy as many shares of it as he wants and pretend it’s his home equity.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
This is nonsense. 99.99% of renters can’t buy enough JPMorgan to make a difference. They don’t have the money and that’s why they’re renting.
darth_avocado 4y ago
But if tomorrow JPM decides to invest like Kathy Wood and lose all the money, the renters will be without home equity and the JPM equity.
ramesh31 4y ago
> It’s turtles. JPMorgan is publicly traded. The renter can just buy as many shares of it as he wants and pretend it’s his home equity. Try asking your brokerage for $400,000 of margin at 5% on a $20,000 account and see what they say. There's no financial instrument even remotely close to what a 30 year mortgage is for the average individual.
- naveen99 4y ago
  I believe you can get higher leverage on treasury bonds at your broker. My 1 year treasury bonds use less than 2% margin.
  - roflyear 4y ago
    What's the rate? You're not getting free money.
    - naveen99 4y ago
      It’s 1% above what you make on the treasury. Less than mortgage rates for sure, and if interest rates drop it might become free money, of course if interest rates go up you are swimming naked.

highwaylights 4y ago

I would imagine democracy is what makes this a precarious business decision for JPMorgan. Currently, most people do not rent. If they did, then it would be much less lucrative for the landlord - especially if people are struggling. “Vote for me and I’ll cap rents at (amount below cost)!” is a fairly easy solution to that problem in a democracy.

codingrightnow 4y ago

Yes. This should be illegal. Where are our politicians to step in and stop this?

CommanderData 4y ago
The article said JPMorgan. No politician is stepping in anytime soon. They are all complicit. At least in the UK, our politicians have a rich relationships with companies like these (ex - exployees, advisors, donors) and no one bat's eye.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

vagrantJin 4y ago

The title has a made up word because it would never pass editorial to call it "fuedalism" as you rightly stated. There is no discussion to be had here. It's the return of Europes peasant/aristocrat economy back in full swing. Only took a century to come back. Oh well...

yunwal 4y ago

> A crucial question is, is this part of the deliberate attack on democracy by the (unnamed) coalition of wealthy and corporations, or truly just an investment These things are one and the same. There is nothing to do with billions of dollars outside of buying influence.

europeanguy 4y ago

$1bn on rental homes That's 10,000 $100,000 homes, or 5,000 $200,000 homes, or 2,500 $400,000 homes. Is it just me, or when put like this it doesn't seem so many? The high rise where I live has, I estimate, 200 units. So at $400,000 per, they're buying roughly 12 high rises. Doesnt seem like a "threat to democracy". What am I missing? I would imagine that right now most of these high rises are owned by a few firms already.

Valakas_ 4y ago
When you're going to cook a frog, the water doesn't immediately start boiling does it? Extreme situations, often don't start extreme.

gloryjulio 4y ago

We need the Japan model to ease up the supply. That's the only direction to solve housing problem

Atlas22 4y ago

Just got a bit closer to WEF's "prediction" for 2030. "You'll own nothing. And you'll be happy" Doesn't seem very... Democratic or even republic to me... Source: https://twitter.com/wef/status/983378870819794945 https://twitter.com/wef/status/983378870819794945

kmlx 4y ago

> The megalandords are potentially a serious threat to democracy. everything in today’s america seems to be “a serious threat to democracy”. as such it looks like american democracy is too fragile.

Valakas_ 4y ago
"Blaming the victim" - commonly used abusive manipulation tactic used to reverse victim and offender. And you just did it. The other option to why "everything in today's america seems to be a serious threat to democracy" is, obviously, that maybe that's because America's democracy is under attack.

refurb 4y ago

$1B in real estate is less than one one-hundreth of a percent of all residential real estate in the US (estimated at $43,400 billion). You really think that's a threat to democracy?

aapl88889 4y ago

Shouldn't homeowners be able to sell to whoever they want?