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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19930828
Back in 2019 I needed to move across the country on very short notice. It didn't leave me any time to sell my house. A friend of mine was getting absolutely screwed on rental payments, so I did some math, and offered to rent it to them at a rate that just barely covered the mortgage and taxes. It was SIGNIFICANTLY below market rate, and significantly less than he was currently paying.
I guess that makes me a parasite.
you're surely aware that your situation is the exception rather than the rule
If illegal immigrants are taking all the jobs, why don’t we blame the people giving them jobs instead of the immigrants who are desperate?
because they just want cheap labor, and laborer want to maximize wages
You forgot we also want cheap goods. It's a race to the bottom.
"[the landlord leaves the worker] with the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more." - Adam Smith
Ah yes, let's attack our neighbors who try to save their money, and let's ignore the bankers and politicians who created the system that incentivizes this behavior.
This whole argument of peoples pension funds being the largest shareholders in a company is bizarre. https://www.blackrock.com/institutions/en-us/insights/public-pensions-survey pensions are owning less and less of the stock markets every year, become less and less relevant. Institutions like blackrock however are growing. Consistently.
Like mate your neighbour Barry isn't calling into the shareholders meeting to criticise the CEO for paying $0.05 an hour over minimum wage the the receptionist.
Exactly. Stockholders are not the problem - corporate concentration of wealth and power is the problem. Attacking me for having a 401k is just crabs-in-a-bucket mentality.
I had a friend that voted for Brexit. When I asked him why, he said that his grandfather was able to buy a house and take care of his family on his salary. His father was able to do the same. He said, these immigrants come in and live two families to a house and are willing to work for far less. He said, I don't want that type of future for myself.
No amount of telling him that -- the people that caused this issue are also benefitting from Brexit -- could convince him.
Was weird because I wasn't an immigrant but my family was and he was cool with me.
They come so close. I understand the anger, broken promises from society at large, but then they do that little twist at the end. It's like they're about to win the race, then decide to just veer off into the stands right before getting to the finish line.
It's because their pain is very real, their struggles are very real, their feelings are very often valid, and they understand the concrete impact that it has had on them and their way of life.
They can't abstract that out and critically think about why that is the case, so they just repeat what an authority told them and is easy for them to understand.
I don't know though if it is simply a lack of education or an inherent human solipsism that is hard to break through.
It is the same the world over, even before TVs when newspapers brought the news, and before that anything written down was true because "priests and scholars definitely wouldn't lie." That is why extremely strict factual news laws have to be brought into effect with anyone caught lying bearing fines based on a percentage of their revenue to combat fascism that is based wholly on fear fabrication. The problem is, of course, policing that correctly as for example an American Trump regime would simply use those laws to say that anything they don't like is not true (they they do anyway now).
I think the last step of understanding the issue is difficult because it requires admitting that their current belief and way of life is not optimal for themselves.
Everyone or almost everyone thinks highly of their own decision skills or at least that they do their best. They believe they can make good choices and that they can either outsmart or work harder than others. The truth is that, maybe they can, but there's very little choice in how it's rewarded. The believable lie is that work is compensated fairly, and once someone has put half a life into this lie, it's difficult and soul crushing to admit that it's plain wrong. It may cause frustration and anger, which doesn't solve it. A solution isn't evident or maybe it seems out of reach, causing more frustration, causing more anger. It's a lot easier to take out anger on people than fighting a system. And especially in groups, it's easier to point at smaller minority groups, because their own group is stronger or have more votes, so it's actually doable. They get a relief for the frustration by believing that they're doing something about their issue. It won't work though. It's similar to being bullied in school and then thinking it will help to take it out on the younger kids, instead of confronting the older bully.
It takes courage to fight upwards. Having been through unionisation efforts I can assure you that people living from one paycheck to the next are absolutely not courageous.
In regards to news, it's also a lot easier to simply choose the news that keeps presenting their existing belief.
Tie housing costs to wages.
You wanna raise the rent? Go talk to the bosses and convince them to raise wages.
You wanna cut wages? Go talk to the landlords and get our rent down.
Yes! I've been saying that forever. They say rent/mortgage shouldn't be more than 30% of your income. OK, make it so if you're working full-time, you can afford to live. Doesn't seem like a complicated, or controversial, take.
I don't know a single person who is only spending 30% on housing. It's more like 50% where I live. A lot of landlords have that dumb "rule" where you must make triple the cost of the lease per month after taxes but will look the other way when 4 people split the cost evenly for a 2 bedroom apartment so they can each make ends meet. Not a single one of them comes close to making 3x the rent each month but an over occupied apartment is more likely to remove a squeaky wheel who won't pay their share of the rent on their own without management having to get involved. Saves them the trouble of having to fight a long legal battle to evict a troublesome tenant.
Housing is so beyond fucked right now.
It really is... Me and my gf are two software developers living together, AKA income definitely isn't an issue. And yet almost half of our collective income goes to rent. To be fair we are renting a 3 room flat, and it was our choice to splurge a bit for now. But when I think about the future, starting a family, suddenly a flat like this doesn't seem as outrageous of a desire. To actually meet the 30%, we'd need a much smaller flat, each on our own would only afford a single room. But our incomes are comfortably above average, SO HOW THE FUCK DOES ANYBODY ELSE AFFORD ANYTHING AT ALL?!?
That is true, in many other countries. But the USA loves it's exceptionalism, and this is one of those fucked up examples of it.
(Of course other countries have their own issues.)
I am more in favor of tying wages to inflation.
It's a day broader metric.... That way, slave wage companies can't screw their workers by charging out the ass for the services they're providing for next-to-nothing. Then the business owners can fight with everyone about keeping the inflation rates low so they can enjoy paying their workers less.
Let these two asshole groups duke it out amongst themselves.
Inflation however is a load of bollocks. It's inaccurate to measure and can be oh so easily manipulated.
House prices have been rising at a stupid rate for decades yet we had in the UK a typical inflation rate of... 0.1% for a decade whilst house prices out performed everything else because they just ignore it.
Like how if your favourite brand of cereal goes up 700%, that won't be included in inflation data they make the assumption you'd eat a generic brand instead that only went up 0.5%
It's all bollocks the lot of it, remove money it's not worth anything anyway
Remember if your yearly raise isn’t more than inflation, you’ve lost money.
Consider the incestuous circle of ownership of the big 3 asset managers (BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard) and despair.
Yeah but my problems are all because I have to see a brown person at work sometimes!
A quote often posted, but still works:
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
One of my best friends is an illegal immigrant and I've realized that he is here doing what I'm doing. Trying to get by and provide for his family. If the tables were turned I'd do the same and if all these people against them say they wouldn't, they are full of shit. Actually, there's such shitty people that they probably wouldn't anyway.
In some countries (including the USA), immigration is mostly a civil issue, and most "illegal immigration" is actually not illegal!
You all are fundamentally missing something with real estate pricing increasing, and that's how it's used for money laundering.
You know how you can sell a piece of art to someone for any price and how that gets used for money laundering? Well, the rich do that with houses and property too. Hint: a lot of real estate agents aren't really working as real estate agents. They are someone's escort or drug dealer etc who gets payment in the form of a cut of the property they "sold," but in reality was a pre-planned transaction that didn't really need real estate agents to facilitate.
So basically they are subsidizing illegal activity with our properties.
Ummm... What? Proof of this? Would be pretty wild if true.
Oh, they talk about it in the documentary Active Measures (2018) when discussing Donald Trump doing it with commercial real estate and iirc, the mob/mafia. McCain and Hillary Clinton are in that doc. I'm looking for a link to the full documentary and will update this comment if I find it.
Those dern im'gints controlin' the means'o production.
To be fair, the canadian minister of immigration recently admitted that they should have slowed down on immigration sooner.
Landlords and shareholders do have incentives to drive rent up and wages down, and immigration is one way to do it. The housing and job market crisis aren't there for no reason, and it's partly due to immigration.
I don't have an opinion on housing, but that's not how job market works. The final decision to employ an immigrant ultimately comes down the HR & company. Saying that "immigrants took our job" is like loosing an auction and saying "they took your painting"
They tried that over here with Brexit. Those darned immigrants stealing our jobs (while also just living off benefits, of course). EU citizens were like, screw this. They left, suddenly farmers were faced with their produce rotting in the fields, because guess what? The Brits don't actually want to do those jobs.
So what do you think happened next? They had to allow special visas to lure immigrants back in.
Meanwhile, the gammons were still raging that immigrants lower wages because they'll work for less pay than UK citizens.
Yup, I have read about that situation, pretty funny looking at it from outside
Usually you have a choice in participating in an auction, even get to set your bid.
the canadian minister of immigration recently admitted that they should have slowed down on immigration sooner.
A politician pandering to the Right doesn't make it true.
housing and job market crisis aren't there for no reason, and it's partly due to immigration.
Nope. Nobody's forcing employers to exploit immigrants desperate enough to work for less due to fewer opportunities and less support.
Likewise, housing is much more expensive than simple demand would dictate. Landlords aren't charging as much as is fair all things considered, or even as much as people can generally afford. They're charging the absolute maximum that they can get away with, which is usually more than people can afford.
They’re charging the absolute maximum that they can get away with
That's how all economics works. If you found a job where, in your opinion, you were really overpaid for the work burden - would you go to your boss and ask them to pay you less?
The root of the housing problem is undersupply, which imo is due to a nationwide patchwork of NIMBY policies driven by Boomer landlords, especially in big cities. Younger people and renters just don't fucking vote, especially in the local elections where housing policies are decided. So Boomer retirees ensure that 95% of the city is zoned for single family housing, and no apartments can get built.
If that's how economics works, just giving us the perfect argument for why economics is a bullshit field. Human beings need shelter to survive. It's a human right. It's one of those super important things, up there with water and food.
If you're buying into an economic system that doesn't make sure that right is filled, then you have a problem with morality, and perhaps also mortality.
If that’s how economics works, just giving us the perfect argument for why economics is a bullshit field. Human beings need shelter to survive. It’s a human right. It’s one of those super important things, up there with water and food.
Economics is a soft science. Economics is not about describing how things should work, economics is about describing how things do work. Whether you want to support the system or tear it down, understanding it is extremely helpful to either cause.