Funny events in anti-woke world
- Thread starter Agema
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Man. They have more faith in her than any of us. Bless Newsmax for carrying on hope for Kamala.
There is consensus among economists that rent control reduces the quality and quantity of rental housing units.
I am open to be proven wrong but rent control seems to not work.
Keeping big business from robbing us all blind is against everything Jesus stood for. Don't you remember how he threw the poor out of the temple for bothering the moneychangers?
It's utterly baffling how a movement based on being for the people, for the silent majority, for the honest humble struggling folk, and all that, will also scaremonger on things only the richest elite hoarders of a nations wealth would have objections to.
"Look out, they want to improve your lives!"
That may be so, but there never seem to be that many poor landlords.
I get that if you constrain rent then it becomes harder to make money from it. People with money to invest will tend to invest in other things, and so the amount of property owned for rent will decline, which will increase rental costs for everyone who doesn't have rent control, and potentially even cause a problematic shortage. Likewise that low income generation from rent will likely decrease quality.
On the other hand, I wonder it rent control in some form may work as part of a wider, integrated housing policy, because there's also plenty of misery from landlords just jacking up the rents and laughing all the way to the bank.
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As a sidenote here, I was reading an article recently on the housing woes in the UK. The government has announced a house-building spree to alleviate the woes of the population who need places to both buy and rent. It did however note that this might not be the answer. Taking Cornwall as an example, it pointed out that whilst there may be only a few hundred long-term rentals for people living and working there, there were tens (hundreds?) of thousands of properties in the county available on Airbnb. The UK has lots and lots of houses, they're just not necessarily well distributed.
This merely suggests that landlords are more likely to sell and/or let properties fall into disrepair if they're not making huge enough profit from them. Which are issues to be ameliorated by 1) regulation (quality) and 2) supply (quantity). The answer isn't to just let landlords fleece tenants in the hope their better nature will then convince them to remain functional landlords.
Those consensus are from "hand of the free market" true believer economists, gleefully propped up by vast networks of think tanks funded by the very people who coincidentally profit immensely from less regulation and price capping, they also believe nothing much else should be price capped either cause that ominous "eternal growth" cancer. We have seen over and over again we cannot trust humans to not be greedy, predatory kunts when not regulated, vetted and closely checked when placed in such positions of unbridled power over others. None of this started grassroots and it sure as shit ain't held afloat today by positive pro-humanitarian results. It's just another brutally enforced religion making another small class of privileged failson absurdly wealthy, out of touch and sociopathically violent towards those without. Didn't homelessness become illegal in the US thanks to the supreme court? Landlords (mostly) are parasitic kunts, when they're not just plain rapists and sexual abusers of vulnerable people needing places to stay - speaking from many multiple people's experience just in local areas including my own also.
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No, this is a consensus in economics, period.
Economists across the board are skeptical or outright hostile to rent control, including plenty of politically left-leaning ones we might otherwise applaud. Sure, economics might not be a natural science with the same level of objective reality to test, but I have severe concerns about arguing that any intellectual discipline is spouting unconsidered dogma just because it disagrees with our political views. Or, if rent control today, why not evolution and vaccines tomorrow?
However, "rent control" can also represent potentially a degree of different measures and strengths, and will work within a wider frame of housing policy. So a more nuanced argument could be that rent control is generally bad, but could be applied carefully, in the right situation, as an effective tool to deal with some housing problems.
Generally there's a modern economic consensus that price controls broadly are bad, for reasons of distorting supply & demand. Yet market forces are already transparently inadequate for fulfilling demand in this area and keeping it attainable and equitable.
Economists since the 50s-- Friedman and Glaeser for instance-- have been arguing against them on the basis of a chilling effect on construction, or poor distribution. Yet it should be obvious these are surmountable issues without the need to abandon the protection of tenants. Besides which, in the modern world, landlords are already making absolutely exorbitant profits without even needing to fulfil their basic obligations.
Methinks a lot of economists do not prioritise quality of life or the reduction of poverty, or the consumer in general.
Overall, property rent profits are, I believe, considered roughly equivalent with other businesses, ~5%. This makes sense, economically-speaking: if they were less profitable, people would prefer other ways to make money rather than rent, and vice versa. Thus they are not necessarily outrageous in wider context, although obviously there will be a tail at the higher end of the distribution. In many cases, I wonder whether landlords might actually be making more wealth from rising property values than in profits from rent itself.
I have other issues with rent, but let's leave those aside for the moment.
An economist doesn't necessarily weight QoL or poverty - but a poorly functioning economic system is liable to deliver both poverty and low QoL anyway. (This might be a prime argument consider the differences between the capitalist West, which sucks in many ways for many people in it, and non-capitalist countries that delivered even less for more people.) There are a wide range of policies that may be available to tackle housing shortages, high rents, etc. Many might be in some way distorting a free market as price controls do, but they might also be better policy. Rent controls might look simple and obvious to deliver a seeming positive, but that doesn't necessarily make them the best and deepest answer to a problem, and economists might have some useful things to tell us about why.
I'd suggest that might be heavily weighted by business property rental. I know for a fact that the rent in my area is colossally larger than the mortgage repayments on equivalent (and even much better) properties, and I've had a string of landlords now that also make no investments in basic maintenance.
They might. But the core arguments put forward by the formative economists on this topic, like Friedman, are unconvincing and have also gone quite unchallenged for decades.
A poorly functioning economy is liable to provide poor QoL. It does not follow from this (demonstrably) that better productivity/GDP = better QoL for people across the board. A great many economists seem to prioritise the former (fine) and disregard the latter (not fine), sometimes fatuously assuming that the latter will automatically come alongside it.
A landlord also has to pay insurance, or has substantial one-off costs to replace a roof, the plumbing, or a tenant causes thousands of pounds worth of damage and skips out on the utility bills, and all the landlord gets as recompense is to keep the £500 deposit. Undoubtedly there are plenty of cheating scumbags, just like any industry. At the other end, there are also landlords getting screwed by bad luck or bad tenants.
In the UK, admittedly it probably tends more to the former because landlords have been heavily favoured and empowered by successive (mostly Tory) governments over the last 40 years. It doesn't mean that the immediate answer is necessarily rent control.
The core arguments on price controls look pretty sensible to me. What's the basis to challenge them? Or, what is being proposed to mitigate the risks / problems that the core arguments say will occur?
Sure, that's why we constrain free markets in all sorts of exciting and interesting ways with taxes, redistribution, regulations, etc. How to arrange the distribution of wealth in society is a neverendingly interesting matter. It's plain that many economists are also concerned with QoL, fairness and equality, and yet they are not necessarily in favour of rent control. They might have better ideas about how to deal with housing problems.
Maybe they'll have significant one-off costs, though complete replacements for such things are exceedingly rare and once-a-decade even if they do crop up. But I've had multiple landlords now who've been legally obliged to make essential repairs and... just haven't. They've dragged it out, on and on, through changing property managers and unanswered emails and scheduled inspections, for years on end until the tenancy ends. Multiple times. One such instance is ongoing right now.
I've also had a landlord try to bill me for complete replacements of such things, threatening to withhold the full security deposit if I didn't acquiesce. I won against that attempt, after much stress and effort. How many people wouldn't know how to fight it, or wouldn't for fear of eviction? And the estate agents exist for their enforcement, not my protection.
As I mentioned above, the core arguments for Friedman and Glaeser rested on low/poorly distributed construction as a side-effect. It short, not even a direct impact, but an indirect motivational shift, of the sort that could be addressed through proper planning/regulation or public works.
Some of 'em. They don't seem to be setting the agenda much, even for bodies that get treated as unimpeachably authoritative, like the IFS-- and I say that as someone who's worked with them (briefly).
Maybe I'm just cranky and feeling a bit guillotiney because of the aforementioned currently ongoing fuckery with the landlord. Tis possible. I've met good ones too-- though they haven't been mine.
I haven't rented since 2009, thankfully: benefits of living in a relatively modest part of the country. Even then I don't think I had any particularly bad landlords - one probably screwed me out of a chunk of the deposit but not too seriously - and a couple were positively lovely.
I am aware that things appear to have got much worse since I used to rent, especially in areas with high demand. I don't think there's much disagreement that landlord power has got out of hand in the UK, is too easily abused, and needs to be seriously curtailed. I'd like to move away from rent anyway. The ability to own one's home and build assets rather than constantly piss money into a landlord's pockets offers forms of economic stability and development for many. And for those where ownership is not affordable, I can't help but wonder that going back to social housing would be preferable.
You know what also hasn't worked? Not having rent control
I would add that it is likely better for the houses as well, having those immediately impacted by disrepair be responsible for maintenance.
Apparently Vance fucking couches is a meme
www.snopes.com
Nonsense, of course. Vance does put the love in loveseat. More cushion for the pushin. Now and forever.
No, JD Vance Did Not Say He Had Sex with Couch Cushions
A false online rumor about former U.S. President Donald Trump's running mate, a latex glove and couch cushions spawned a number of jokes and memes.
www.snopes.com
After formerly supporting Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, Elon Musk is apparently turning over a new political leaf -
Meanwhile JP can’t stop being an insufferable stooge with these dramatic titles and that loud attire.
Meanwhile JP can’t stop being an insufferable stooge with these dramatic titles and that loud attire.