Biden to call for 5% cap on annual rent increases, as he tries to show plans to tame inflation
Biden to call for 5% cap on annual rent increases, as he tries to show plans to tame inflation
President Joe Biden is ready to propose a 5% cap on annual rent increases for tenants of major landlords.
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So if we can elect like, any old fuck now, can't we just go even older and elect the corpse of mao or something? cause that's kinda the only way I see rent, and rent specifically, becoming a non-issue in the near future. This is like one of the main issues which is directly symptomatic of capitalism, and which keeps capitalism as a system directly propped up. I don't really see any long term solution to it that doesn't involve a lot of no longer having capitalism. Other capitalist countries still have this problem. It's only like, china and the former soviet union and apparently barcelona with superblocks which are still gonna be subject to market demands and rates, it's only those countries which are going to be constructing such an excess of housing that a good amount of it can remain empty, which is also the case here as well but with the caveat that we still have massive amounts of homelessness and the empty housing is basically just to increase demand on top of straight up not having enough housing even were we to construct mass housing projects.
I dunno, this is a pretty good encapsulation of why we are specifically incredibly fucked and how this incrementalism isn't going to work at all to address our current issues. We're cooked, lads. Get the titanic band to start playing the song or whatever.
We had public housing projects in the 60's but we poison pilled them. So we don't need to go all the way to Mao. It is possible to have the government build housing and do a rent to own program that rolls it's funding to keep making more housing. (As you pay your monthly rent it goes back into the building fund.)
I mean yeah, but I'm not sure we won't just poison pill them again as soon as the metronome swings back around and keeps us from having anything nice.
You could use that argument with any government function or public good though. Why do anything if the GOP could poison pill it?
I mean I would just get rid of the GOP if that were a viable option. and probably also the political system in which we live, as a whole.
I do think more realistically though the only point I'm making is that it's a kind of insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome, without understanding why they're able to poison pill anything and everything and roll back any advancements as soon as they feel that the public pressure has let up enough. There's a deeper issue there beyond just the lack of public housing, an issue that causes that lack of public housing in the first place, and simply building massive amounts of public housing, even if we were able to do that, which would be quite a feat, and something I would be happy about, even that would be a temporary solution, as we've seen.
I absolutely agree but until we get the grassroots to agree then anything like a constitutional convention is just asking for a dictator.
There actually is a solution that doesn't involve destroying capitalism: mixed-use zoning, tax on the unimproved value of land, and small UBI.
yeah georgism is crap though
wdym?
I mean I'm generally skeptical of like "this one weird 19th century ideology can solve all our problems" schtick, right, and I'm also skeptical of the mythical single tax systems, as a kind of simplified and idealistic compromise between your libertarians, your anarchists, and your more standard socialists and communists.
If you were to ask me in more detail, I would basically say that I think it's a compromise solution for an extremely narrow set of problems that too often gets extrapolated into encompassing the entirety of a political system. I think that it functions well enough as an ideology within a specific set of constraints and goals, but if you seek to extrapolate it solve like, every political problem, as georgists generally tend to do, then it kind of falls apart, and doesn't tend to be broad enough.
It's basically just a less generalized version of marxism, to me, where land is equivalent in the system to capital, and rent-seeking behavior is only really banned from interference with whatever resources are seen as natural, which is primarily land. I dunno. I think as I slowly go more insane and become more cranky, I find myself increasingly wanting a horrible authoritarian state that just does exactly what I want, because everything I like is awesome, and everything everyone else thinks is bad and evil or whatever.
I think as I slowly go more insane and become more cranky, I find myself increasingly wanting a horrible authoritarian state that just does exactly what I want, because everything I like is awesome, and everything everyone else thinks is bad and evil or whatever.
Mood 😅
I get your skepticism, but I do think there is some value in specific ideologies like Georgism, namely that you can actually try them out slowly and reverse course if needed. I'm mostly against a wide scale federal land value tax at a high percentage off the bat, but I do think its probably worth trying it out locally or at a low percentage to see what happens.
Singapore has a good social housing system as far as I know but the government has to be pretty authoritarian in order to pull it off
but the government has to be pretty authoritarian in order to pull it off
I dunno if that's a super necessary element, really. I think they could probably get off better, actually, if they had a more lenient prison system, and, say, didn't execute people for minor weed possession or like, being gay. But then I also think their economy relies on a large portion of oppressed migrant labor, if I remember right? I dunno, somebody fact check me on that
Yes in a marginalist framework (the supply and demand people) the solution is to increase the housing supply to a permanent slight excess. Preferably in a way that is least damaging to the economy.
However the old commie block approach created a consecrated symbol for the forces of capital to attack, and ultimately dynamite.
The problem is the rentier class has the most resources to throw against this and they still can find other ways to rescarcify housing unless forced building programs are big enough to over power them.
The problem is the rentier class has the most resources to throw against this and they still can find other ways to rescarcify housing unless forced building programs are big enough to over power them.
Yeah, we probably just need to get rid of the rentier class. I don't like them very much, I think they might be bad.