4 ms·

i often wonder how much rent people indirectly pay anytime they buy anything.

• bearjaws 4y ago
  At my last job we had ~$10,000,000 in ARR, so $360k a year works out to 3% of our gross revenue went to rent. I bet that is a lower number than many businesses given we were in a 'cheaper' office park. This does exclude the expense of expanding / renovating the office, which you typically do every 5-10 years, and costs more because you have to go with their contractors. However the delta is hard to calculate on this specific item.
• reducesuffering 4y ago
  It bleeds into absolutely everything. You pay a huge amount to a hospital, requiring rent, paying doctors requiring rent and a huge education cost, which is inflated because of paying employees' rent and inflated healthcare costs because of... The land speculation, education, healthcare trifecta cost spiral in the US has to be like half of peoples' wages.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    I would be interested in someone doing the research, it would be nice to know the companies/etc that "own their own land" instead of paying landlords. There's a reason it's called "rent seeking".
    • rootusrootus 4y ago
      > There's a reason it's called "rent seeking". Because it's convenient terminology, not because it's exactly on point. When a company (or individual) leases/rents, they are definitely getting some value in return. Owning has both upsides and downsides.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        Of course - that's the "rent" part, the seeking is when the rents increase to consume all available headroom (and this is very noticeable when it begins to occur). The simplistic "all landlords are of the devil and must burn" is about as useful as "nobody should own property" - perhaps a nice dream but they don't really help advance the discussion or solve the very real problems that exist.