New York Times complains about lack of affordable "starter homes" - Page 5 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15249904
late wrote:
This all started when Puff the Magic Fish said immigration was causing rising home prices.

What is beyond comprehension is that this silliness has dragged on for 4 pages. You are kinda adding to the silliness... This isn't market failure, it's bad governance, or to use your language, mismanagement.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure


Also, currently:



Energy transition

Aside of inflationary pressures, the 2021/22 energy crisis has also increased the use of coal in energy production worldwide. Coal use in Europe already increased by 14% in 2021, and is expected to rise another 7% in 2022. Soaring natural gas prices have made coal more competitive in many markets, and some nations have resorted to coal as a substitute for potential energy rationing in winter 2022/23. With demand for coal increasing in Asia and elsewhere, global coal consumption is forecast to rise again by 0.7% in 2022 to 8 billion tonnes. Burning coal or petroleum products emits significantly higher amounts of carbon dioxide and air pollutants compared to natural gas. The return to coal slows the transition to greener and more sustainable energy sources. Both the United States and Russia are top exporters of natural gas and coal.[26][27]

Europe has been historically leading with regard to global climate policy, pledging to cut emissions to at least 55% below 1990 levels in the next 8 years. But sanctions on Russia are crushing global supplies of fossil fuels with drastic price increases. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 risks unravelling decades of hard work to reduce emissions on the European continent. After a long period of optimistic projections on reducing Europe's carbon footprint, governments there aren't keeping anything off the table, including reopening coal-fired power plants or upping oil imports, as well as prolonging the phase-out for nuclear energy.[28]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%E2%8 ... transition



---


late wrote:
But I don't hate calling it a bubble. Money was cheap, and that fuels a number of behaviors, speculation, for example. The money guys have been buying up homes and renting them. They make crap landlords, the only good news in that is that I expect them to take a bath when property values inevitably go down. If we have a recession, the income inequality we have (along with Boomers like me dying) could make the drop precipitous (in some areas).

Anyway, this thread needs to die.



Don't you think that something's severely *wrong* with capitalism when it's situating so much of its economy on *non-productive assets*, like housing -- ?

Look at China's continuing fallout. Look at the current U.S. housing bubble.

If 'bubble' makes you nervous, it's because it's also synonymous with *capitalism*.
#15249926
All true. But in a lot of years on the planet I have concluded that things really are usually pretty simple.

There is a shit ton of money out there looking for a (metaphorical) home. So we have these piles of cash looking to find a place of security. Since people usually pay their mortgage first, this money is going to buying up housing inventory and either holding it for a high return or placing it in the rental market.

Suppose we highly taxed extreme wealth. Suppose we forced this money back into general circulation. We used to do this, you know. For the most prosperous times in US history; times when the middle classes grew to be the envy of the world, the tax rate on millionaires was nearly 90%. And these same millionaires invested their money in growing the economy. So to speak, spreading the wealth around. And if they did not? The IRS got it.

We need money for housing. Where to get it? As the famous bank robber said when asked why he robbed banks: "Because that is where the money is."

We need to disincentivize the amassing of money and re-incentivize the amassing of wealth.
#15249927
Drlee wrote:All true. But in a lot of years on the planet I have concluded that things really are usually pretty simple.

There is a shit ton of money out there looking for a (metaphorical) home. So we have these piles of cash looking to find a place of security. Since people usually pay their mortgage first, this money is going to buying up housing inventory and either holding it for a high return or placing it in the rental market.

Suppose we highly taxed extreme wealth. Suppose we forced this money back into general circulation. We used to do this, you know. For the most prosperous times in US history; times when the middle classes grew to be the envy of the world, the tax rate on millionaires was nearly 90%. And these same millionaires invested their money in growing the economy. So to speak, spreading the wealth around. And if they did not? The IRS got it.

We need money for housing. Where to get it? As the famous bank robber said when asked why he robbed banks: "Because that is where the money is."

We need to disincentivize the amassing of money and re-incentivize the amassing of wealth.




That's a myth. The 91% story is a bullshit story. FACTS:

https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the- ... -not-high/
#15249937
@BlutoSays

You are just fucking annoying. You posted evidence of exactly my point because, as usual, you do not understand what you googled but did not read. First educate yourself. Learn what "effective tax rate" means. I am not going to educate you here.

The point of my post has nothing to do with what rich people paid in taxes. Once you understand that you can begin to learn. Until then you are just a typical pseudo-conservative blow hard.

And though this add-on is not in support of my premise, it also adds to my call for MUCH higher taxes on the wealthy:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2014/03/26/why-raising-taxes-on-the-rich-is-important/

There is proof here and it is the modern Republican, Joe Tentpeg, who has actually been told that he should accept two absurdities:

The first is that the wealthy are "job creators" who, like Scrooge, are the "founders of our feast".

The second is that the reason they are not making enough money to live like their hardware store clerk father did, is not that Jeff Bezo's (net worth $142,000,000,000.00) is keeping too much of Amazons profit rather than paying a good salary to all his employees, but that he is taxed too high. Like, you know, if we cut his taxes to zero he would give all his employees a raise. You bet. He sure would.

It is on this base of abject stupidity that the modern Republican party has taken power. But you can't tell them that. Bluto will google some other bullshit meme to feed his confirmation bias.

I wish he could learn. That he and people like him could be educated. Maybe then they will realize the wisdom of real conservatives who said:

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another - until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.
Richard M. Nixon


Nothing would please the Kremlin more than to have the people of this country choose a second rate president.
Richard M. Nixon


We must never remain silent in the face of bigotry. We must condemn those who seek to divide us. In all quarters and at all times, we must teach tolerance and denounce racism, anti-Semitism and all ethnic or religious bigotry wherever they exist as unacceptable evils. We have no place for haters in America -- none, whatsoever.
Ronald Reagan


Every immigrant can be fully and equally American because we're one country. Race and color should not divide us, because America is one country.
George W. Bush


Seditious bastards. Trump would make short work of them.
#15250059
ckaihatsu wrote:Remember, real estate is done by the *private sector* mostly, and yet here we are on a thread about a *market failure* -- a *typical* one, I'd add, since it's about a *bubble*, which is fairly common in capitalism / finance.

Let me know the moment you're willing to let-go and *relinquish* capitalism as the current working political-economy.

I think you're being unrealistic. It's very well possible that the underpinnings of the "capitalist" system are never going to go away.

That being said, you need to focus on what exists, not a hypothetical alternative that is likely not going to happen.

It's very well possible that mass immigration is not compatible for general social wellbeing within a capitalist framework.
Now, can you concede that?

What you seem to be trying to do is build the house before the foundation is built, so to speak.

That seems to be a major issue common on the Left. You embark on wide-sweeping social policies that are entirely dependent on other things being implemented in the future. Except the problem is you are implementing the easiest part of those policies first, when it remains very doubtful that the whole part of the plan is ever going to be able to get done. And that can lead to disaster, if you implement your part A of the plan and part B never gets accomplished.

One example that comes to mind is trying to force people to have to buy electric cars before the renewable energy is even in place to supply the electric grid.

Another example is bringing in mass immigration before you even have everything in place to be able to address all the issues that will be caused by that mass immigration.
#15250064
ckaihatsu wrote:Property ownership is the *caste* social system in the U.S., and worldwide, and merely *re-tossing* the mixed public-sector-private-sector salad doesn't really *mean* much in the real-world context.

And what do you think is going to happen as you add more people and overcrowd cities while that caste system still exists?

Think about that.

Suppose you are successful at accomplishing getting lots more foreign immigration, but you are unsuccessful at ever getting this "system" abolished? (A very likely possibility, I might point out)
Then what?
What type of situation will you have then created?

I think you are just too ideologically stubborn to see what your policies will do.
Your number one problem is assuming you will be able to get all of your policies that you want implemented in the first place, and then considering the consequences stemming from that outcome, which will be worse than if you had done nothing.
#15250068
ckaihatsu wrote:You're blaming humanity for growing in size and migrating, basically.

I pointed out that the populations in developed Western countries have already reached their limit, and the middle class is already having fewer children to be able to conserve their personal standards of living.

It's reached an equilibrium.

However, populations in other parts of the world have much different standards of living, and so have a very different equilibrium point.

You don't think about this.

If you want to treat the entire world as being in one boat together, then the eventual result of that is that every country is going to end up having the same conditions as the worst most overpopulated country.

And the entire time, you will just continue to refuse to see it, and keep blaming "capitalism" to your grave.
Last edited by Puffer Fish on 07 Oct 2022 20:40, edited 1 time in total.
#15250070
BlutoSays wrote:
That's a myth. The 91% story is a bullshit story. FACTS:



That's the Tax Foundation, a lobbying group that thinks the rich should always get tax cuts. They are full of crap.

Taxes on the wealthy, and well off, were higher in the 1950s. "It shows that the effective tax rate for the top 1% of households (by income) was 42% in the 1950s, versus 36.4% today."

"Greenberg’s (of the Tax Foundation) mistake is a basic example of the bias that comes from mishandling a selected dataset. There aren’t any households earning $30 million, or $300 million for that matter, in the tax records of the 1950s, so they don’t enter into Greenberg’s analysis. From his selected sample, he draws erroneous conclusions about what their effective tax rate would have been had they been present in the data—that it would have been equal to the effective tax rate of the richest households he does observe. In fact, if they had been in the data, he would have observed a much higher effective tax rate than the one he inferred for them."

https://rooseveltinstitute.org/2017/08/ ... the-1950s/

The kicker is that income inequality has risen dramatically, which changed everything. That's what he's saying. The rich take the biggest slice of the pie.

Image
#15250074
Puffer Fish wrote:
I think you're being unrealistic. It's very well possible that the underpinnings of the "capitalist" system are never going to go away.

That being said, you need to focus on what exists, not a hypothetical alternative that is likely not going to happen.

It's very well possible that mass immigration is not compatible for general social wellbeing within a capitalist framework.
Now, can you concede that?

What you seem to be trying to do is build the house before the foundation is built, so to speak.

That seems to be a major issue common on the Left. You embark on wide-sweeping social policies that are entirely dependent on other things being implemented in the future. Except the problem is you are implementing the easiest part of those policies first, when it remains very doubtful that the whole part of the plan is ever going to be able to get done. And that can lead to disaster, if you implement your part A of the plan and part B never gets accomplished.

One example that comes to mind is trying to force people to have to buy electric cars before the renewable energy is even in place to supply the electric grid.

Another example is bringing in mass immigration before you even have everything in place to be able to address all the issues that will be caused by that mass immigration.



The world markets are so sclerotic and brittle that the government has had to *bail them out*, repeatedly. And the U.S. government itself is mostly tapped-out, credit-wise, arguably.

I think *you're* being unrealistic with your default 'TINA' politics.

Immigration is / should-be its own thing -- fussing with it has been nothing but disaster, like those dozens of migrants trapped and dead in the back of a truck. Also Trump's wall.

Your critique of Democrat technology administration is noted, but now it's a California-vs.-Europe footrace to see who can pull it off, preferably with less to no *warfare*. Pass the popcorn.


Puffer Fish wrote:
And what do you think is going to happen as you add more people and overcrowd cities while that caste system still exists?

Think about that.



Oh. A 'pragmatist'.

What's so wrong with the markets, as for international labor, *fluctuating* a little bit, due to migration -- can't the markets *withstand* those kinds of 'shocks' -- ?

Or are you arguing from the *politics* of 'geographic nationalism', as I call it. Like fucking God himself carved lines onto the map, and anyone else is flat-out *wrong*.


Puffer Fish wrote:
Suppose you are successful at accomplishing getting lots more foreign immigration, but you are unsuccessful at ever getting this "system" abolished?



The 'system' of flat, 2-dimensional *land*, and its surrounding 3-dimensional 'space' -- ?

I'm not particularly *for*, or *against*, any given person's particular immigration-related legal status. Immigration happens because *people themselves* want to undertake the efforts.

Turning everyday human migration into nationalist political hay is profoundly despicable and objectionable.


Puffer Fish wrote:
(A very likely possibility, I might point out)
Then what?
What type of situation will you have then created?



What do you *think* I have in mind?


Puffer Fish wrote:
I think you are just too ideologically stubborn to see what your policies will do.
Your number one problem is assuming you will be able to get all of your policies that you want implemented in the first place, and then considering the consequences stemming from that outcome, which will be worse than if you had done nothing.



I'm not a politician, far less a Stalinistic 'strongman'.

My political activity is entirely here at Pofo these days, so let's just settle on 'political commenter'.

My *politics* are not that of Stalinism, either, so I don't subscribe to statist, Stalinist 'state policies', if that's what you mean.

I'm all for the world's *working class*, as currently over *rail*, and *nursing*, among other sectors.


---


Puffer Fish wrote:
If you want to treat the entire world as being in one boat together, then the eventual result of that is that every country is going to end up having the same conditions as the worst most overpopulated country.



*Or*, we could globally *address* those trouble spots, like Somalia and Afghanistan, among others -- stopping the NATO juggernaut and its conflagrations would be a good place to start.
#15250206
Pants-of-dog wrote:The increase in housing costs is due to labour shortages in construction,

The largest component of housing cost is land, which is not a product of labor.
low mortgage rates,

Yes, interest rates directly affect land value through the Net Present Value Equation. But the other component of land value is the expected net future subsidy to the landowner, and that has also been rising as public spending on desirable services and infrastructure increases and property tax rates fall.
people leaving big cities due to Covid,

Housing costs are rising even faster in the big cities.
high material costs,

The lumber price spike is over, and material costs haven't actually increased nearly enough to account for much of the rise in housing prices.
and zoning regulations from people trying to keep non-whites out of their neighborhood.

Zoning is to force up housing prices and shovel money into the pockets of politically connected landowners. Race is barely a factor.
#15250215
Truth To Power wrote:
Zoning is to force up housing prices and shovel money into the pockets of politically connected landowners. Race is barely a factor.


    Exclusionary zoning is the use of zoning ordinances to exclude certain types of land uses from a given community, especially to regulate racial and economic diversity.[1] In the United States, exclusionary zoning ordinances are standard in almost all communities. Exclusionary zoning was introduced in the early 1900s, typically to prevent racial and ethnic minorities from moving into middle- and upper-class neighborhoods. Municipalities use zoning to limit the supply of available housing units, such as by prohibiting multi-family residential dwellings or setting minimum lot size requirements. These ordinances raise costs, making it less likely that lower-income groups will move in. Development fees for variance (land use), a building permit, a certificate of occupancy, a filing (legal) cost, special permits and planned-unit development applications for new housing also raise prices to levels inaccessible for lower income people.[2]

    Exclusionary land-use policies exacerbate social segregation by deterring any racial and economic integration, decrease the total housing supply of a region and raise housing prices. As well, regions with much economic segregation channel lower income students into lower performing schools thereby prompting educational achievement differences. A comprehensive survey in 2008 found that over 80% of United States jurisdictions imposed minimum lot size requirements of some kind on their inhabitants.[3] These ordinances continue to reinforce discriminatory housing practices throughout the United States.[4][5]: 52–53 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_zoning
#15250216
ckaihatsu wrote:Cut the boilerplate --

If I repeat myself, it is because you repeat your errors.
you acknowledge only *land* / real estate

No, you are again just refusing to know the fact that land and fixed improvements thereto are entirely different, as the land was already there anyway, while the improvements had to be created by labor. You prove that you just blankly refuse to know that fact every time you try to conflate land with real estate. Which you always do.
as being rentier capital,

The term "rentier capital" is a disingenuous attempt to pretend that property in privilege is the same as property in the fruits of one's labor.
when rentier capital *does* behave consistently as the drain you describe, but for *all* 'assets' and 'resources' that are *non-productive* of commodities, and which legally collect interest and rent payments from both labor and capital, from the *pre-existing* economy, without any new production / new values taking place.

That is merely your attempt to prevent yourself from knowing the fact that a prior contribution to relief of scarcity earns a commensurate return just as much as a current one. It could not matter in the least that the contribution was made last year or last century rather than last night.
I'll invite you to comment on the following, since it may be relevant here:
labor and capital, side-by-side

Spoiler: show
Image

It's the same old garbage.
You're simply glorifying the *manager's* executive-type role, in relation to capital,

No, I am stating the fact that the producer is the person whose decisions and initiative cause the product to exist rather than not exist. In that contractual role, the producer pays the owner of producer goods for use of their contribution, the landowner for permission to use the locational advantages that government, the community and nature contributed, and the workers for their contributions of labor. The difference, of course, which you have to somehow prevent yourself from knowing, is that the producer goods would not have been available without their owner contributing them, and the labor would not have been available without the worker putting in the effort; but the land would have been available just the same if the landowner had never existed. Everything you say, do, and believe is to prevent yourself from knowing that fact.
when what's more pertinent is that it's the *capital* (amount) that's providing the main impetus behind any given commercial activity.

No. That is just false, and you are trying to prevent yourself from knowing the fact that "commercial activity" can be production, speculation, or rent seeking. Marxists are very practiced at preventing themselves from knowing the relevant facts, to the point where they now seem able to prevent themselves from knowing anything relevant at all.
Your entire politics is simply that the choiciest real estate is already gone / scarfed-up, and that makes land costs higher for the investor class.

No, that is just another absurd and disingenuous mischaracterization of my clearly stated views on your part.
You'd like a capitalist 'equity heaven' wherein all necessary administrative overhead, for the perfectly-equitable leasing of land to the public, is perfectly servile, neutral, and without cost.

No, you simply made that up to prevent yourself from knowing the relevant facts. It has no relation to anything I have said.
You're misrepresenting basic information. Here:

No, I have identified the relevant facts, and your source does not contradict them. It is not even relevant to them.
My prior point remains, that *any* political camp would logically and logistically want the *benefits* of centralization and hierarchy -- a standing bureaucracy, for whatever the given political goals happen to be.

Another miracle of irrelevancy.
Okay, in the interests of clarity, please differentiate between the Fed, and an 'independent mint'.

The Fed tries to get private commercial banks to issue the right amount of money by lending. The independent Mint does it itself by issuing sufficient debt- and interest-free fiat money to the Treasury to be spent into circulation to keep prices stable.
Do you mean *this* -- ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Treasury

No.
Okay, you're saying that the market measures the day-by-day *fluctuations* in the value of a commodity, due to the balance between the forces of supply and demand.

It measures the value of everything that trades in the market -- and is the only thing that can.
Now -- what about the *costs of production*.

They constrain what is produced to the things a producer thinks he can sell for more than that.
If I use available funds to manufacture something, I'm going to be looking for pricing -- irrespective of subsequent supply-and-demand pricing fluctuations -- that gives me a *return* on my money.

You are welcome to try -- and everyone is welcome to laugh at you, because you can't force them to pay you more than they think your product is worth.
This is my standing critique of capitalist 'money' / exchange-values, that it's having to do *triple duty*, which is impossible -- here's recently from another thread:

It's not impossible. Use is based on utility, which equates to demand. Construction cost is a cap on supply at the margin. It all comes down to supply and demand.
Well, *yeah*, of course -- that's *capitalism*, and that's not saying much.

No, production is always inherently private: it is performed by the particular people involved, no one else.
The diagram shows that society has to pony-up, in one way or another, those fundamental social components that enable *production*, and modern society and 'civilization' (in the best possible sense of the term).

No it doesn't. Society can provide physical and social infrastructure that enables greater production; but that, too, is done privately, by paying specific individual government employees and contractors to do it.
#15250218
Pants-of-dog wrote:
    Exclusionary zoning is the use of zoning ordinances to exclude certain types of land uses from a given community, especially to regulate racial and economic diversity.[1] In the United States, exclusionary zoning ordinances are standard in almost all communities. Exclusionary zoning was introduced in the early 1900s, typically to prevent racial and ethnic minorities from moving into middle- and upper-class neighborhoods. Municipalities use zoning to limit the supply of available housing units, such as by prohibiting multi-family residential dwellings or setting minimum lot size requirements. These ordinances raise costs, making it less likely that lower-income groups will move in. Development fees for variance (land use), a building permit, a certificate of occupancy, a filing (legal) cost, special permits and planned-unit development applications for new housing also raise prices to levels inaccessible for lower income people.[2]

    Exclusionary land-use policies exacerbate social segregation by deterring any racial and economic integration, decrease the total housing supply of a region and raise housing prices. As well, regions with much economic segregation channel lower income students into lower performing schools thereby prompting educational achievement differences. A comprehensive survey in 2008 found that over 80% of United States jurisdictions imposed minimum lot size requirements of some kind on their inhabitants.[3] These ordinances continue to reinforce discriminatory housing practices throughout the United States.[4][5]: 52–53 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_zoning

Problem is, that's all nothing but absurd and irrelevant woke garbage. Vancouver is one of the most racially mixed cities in the world, and it has all the same "exclusionary" zoning laws American cities have, and sky-high housing prices. Cities in racially homogeneous countries where race is not an issue have similar zoning laws. It's not about race. It's about forcing up land prices for the unearned profit of those who already own the land, whatever their race.
#15250219
Truth To Power wrote:Problem is, that's all nothing but absurd and irrelevant woke garbage. Vancouver is one of the most racially mixed cities in the world, and it has all the same "exclusionary" zoning laws American cities have, and sky-high housing prices. Cities in racially homogeneous countries where race is not an issue have similar zoning laws. It's not about race. It's about forcing up land prices for the unearned profit of those who already own the land, whatever their race.


Prove it.
#15250229
ckaihatsu wrote:The world markets are so sclerotic and brittle that the government has had to *bail them out*, repeatedly.

No they haven't. It's been moderate Leftists and Neoliberals who have repeatedly bailed them out.

I hope you know that the most conservative free market supporters would have wanted to let them go bankrupt.

Something both the extreme conservatives and extreme Leftists can agree on: Don't bail out the big banks.
#15250232
Puffer Fish wrote:
No they haven't. It's been moderate Leftists and Neoliberals who have repeatedly bailed them out.

I hope you know that the most conservative free market supporters would have wanted to let them go bankrupt.

Something both the extreme conservatives and extreme Leftists can agree on: Don't bail out the big banks.



I *know* there are those incidental coincidences -- of empirical attention, and even of policy -- but the respective *motivations* around such similarities are vastly *different*, of course.

Just out of curiosity, what would the 'free market supporters' *do* on the first day after the world-market-ending-crash, without functioning markets -- ?


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