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> Corporations are owned by pension funds. They would be insolvent if corporations stopped posting profits. Not in France, where retirement fund is a nation-wi

> Corporations are owned by pension funds. They would be insolvent if corporations stopped posting profits. Not in France, where retirement fund is a nation-wide socialized entity, which was the core of this debate. Private pension funds are close to non-existent here ; i personally cannot name a single person doing that because the public model worked so well for decades. > It's the same reason housing is so expensive (the anti-competition laws there are zoning rules). I don't entirely disagree because France has the more draconian housing regulations you can imagine: it's to my knowledge the only country in the world where it's illegal to build your own house (or lightweight housing) and produce your own electricity off-grid on land you actually own. However, the argument doesn't stand scrutiny. According to public studies there's hundreds of thousands of empty dwellings in France... not even counting secondary/vacation housing or AirBnBs. There's two faces to the housing crisis here in France. The first is the landlord mafia keeping apartments empty on purpose for speculation. Because if the entire supply was put on market, the prices would collapse, and people could actually afford housing. We could design a law to tax empty housing proportionally to the owner's wealth, and see how fast we get housing for everyone. The second is the government backed off on public housing. Low-cost housing (HLM) programs started after WWII have been mostly cut, and whatever funding is left has been diverted to "ownership accession" and higher-standing "low-cost" housing which are luxury housing below market rates but very inaccessible to minimum-wage workers. To give you an idea, a two-bedroom apartment in standard HLM usually costs 200-500€/month in Paris. The newer ones being produced from public funds are rented for ~800-1500€/month, while the minimum wage is around 1300€ after taxes. I have a hard time calling this a "crisis" when it's a massive defrauding operation orchestrated by the State and the housing mafia.

phh 3y ago
> Not in France, where retirement fund is a nation-wide socialized entity, which was the core of this debate. Private pension funds are close to non-existent here ; i personally cannot name a single person doing that because the public model worked so well for decades. It's not that extreme. There are a lot of "assurances-vie" which are quite literally meant to be private pension funds (with lots of tax incentives...). That being said no-one actually relies on it, and the core of pensions are definitely the nation-wide entities. (Yes plural, we wouldn't be french if there weren't dozens of competing institutions doing the same thing, with of course people getting sucked dry but that administrative complexity) > The first is the landlord mafia keeping apartments empty on purpose for speculation. Because if the entire supply was put on market, the prices would collapse, and people could actually afford housing. We could design a law to tax empty housing proportionally to the owner's wealth, and see how fast we get housing for everyone. I don't agree on the "proportionally to the owner's wealth", simply on the empty apartments' value. But yes, we need to tax empty housing. And we're getting there. There has been a lot of changes with regards to housing taxes that are largely going towards taxing (relatively) more empty housing, with this year being the first year you need to properly declare for every housing you own what its use. And I feel like it's just the start, and we're going to keep those taxes evolving towards taxing empty apartments while taxing less family housing.

phh 3y ago

> Not in France, where retirement fund is a nation-wide socialized entity, which was the core of this debate. Private pension funds are close to non-existent here ; i personally cannot name a single person doing that because the public model worked so well for decades. It's not that extreme. There are a lot of "assurances-vie" which are quite literally meant to be private pension funds (with lots of tax incentives...). That being said no-one actually relies on it, and the core of pensions are definitely the nation-wide entities. (Yes plural, we wouldn't be french if there weren't dozens of competing institutions doing the same thing, with of course people getting sucked dry but that administrative complexity) > The first is the landlord mafia keeping apartments empty on purpose for speculation. Because if the entire supply was put on market, the prices would collapse, and people could actually afford housing. We could design a law to tax empty housing proportionally to the owner's wealth, and see how fast we get housing for everyone. I don't agree on the "proportionally to the owner's wealth", simply on the empty apartments' value. But yes, we need to tax empty housing. And we're getting there. There has been a lot of changes with regards to housing taxes that are largely going towards taxing (relatively) more empty housing, with this year being the first year you need to properly declare for every housing you own what its use. And I feel like it's just the start, and we're going to keep those taxes evolving towards taxing empty apartments while taxing less family housing.