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What is the mechanism under which houses would be more affordable if employees had more money thanks to the unions? Real estate (and by extension rents) will ta

by ein0p 2y ago

What is the mechanism under which houses would be more affordable if employees had more money thanks to the unions? Real estate (and by extension rents) will take up any available slack on income.

pera 2y ago
I think gp was referring to tenants/renters unions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenants_union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenants_union They are quite common in the UK.
komali2 2y ago
> Real estate (and by extension rents) will take up any available slack on income. Only if allowed to do so - but yes, landlord are leeches who do nothing and in return soak up every penny of income they can from their tenants. However, isn't the typical market-capitalist argument to this, "if they could be making more money now, they would?" Don't "markets" set the price of real estate? Markets don't, but it's really funny to me when people argue against good things, such as increasing minimum wage, with absurdities, like somehow a minimum wage increase is simply a subsidy for landlords.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> What is the mechanism under which houses would be more affordable if employees had more money thanks to the unions? Employees have more money thanks to unions -> those deriving income from capital have less money -> narrower distribution of wealth -> goods (including housing) which both classes pursue are more affordable to the working class. QED.
diffeomorphism 2y ago
Housing prices rose much, much faster than inflation or rises in wages. So they are obviously not driven by income. Try again.
- randomdata 2y ago
  If people normally paid cash for houses, that might be an interesting point. But most people rent money to buy a house (even while ironically trumpeting "renting is throwing money away"). Like the previous commenter pointed out, real estate-related rents will expand to take up any available slack in income. Now, save recently, the cost to rent money for real estate was in steady decline. That means even a constant income could afford to rent an increasing amount of money. As a result, the price of housing was able to rise disproportionally to income, but proportionally to rent.

by ein0p 2y ago

What is the mechanism under which houses would be more affordable if employees had more money thanks to the unions? Real estate (and by extension rents) will take up any available slack on income.

pera 2y ago

I think gp was referring to tenants/renters unions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenants_union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenants_union They are quite common in the UK.

komali2 2y ago

> Real estate (and by extension rents) will take up any available slack on income. Only if allowed to do so - but yes, landlord are leeches who do nothing and in return soak up every penny of income they can from their tenants. However, isn't the typical market-capitalist argument to this, "if they could be making more money now, they would?" Don't "markets" set the price of real estate? Markets don't, but it's really funny to me when people argue against good things, such as increasing minimum wage, with absurdities, like somehow a minimum wage increase is simply a subsidy for landlords.

dragonwriter 2y ago

> What is the mechanism under which houses would be more affordable if employees had more money thanks to the unions? Employees have more money thanks to unions -> those deriving income from capital have less money -> narrower distribution of wealth -> goods (including housing) which both classes pursue are more affordable to the working class. QED.

diffeomorphism 2y ago

Housing prices rose much, much faster than inflation or rises in wages. So they are obviously not driven by income. Try again.

randomdata 2y ago
If people normally paid cash for houses, that might be an interesting point. But most people rent money to buy a house (even while ironically trumpeting "renting is throwing money away"). Like the previous commenter pointed out, real estate-related rents will expand to take up any available slack in income. Now, save recently, the cost to rent money for real estate was in steady decline. That means even a constant income could afford to rent an increasing amount of money. As a result, the price of housing was able to rise disproportionally to income, but proportionally to rent.