US standard of living is decreasing and will never come back. Many economic anomalies can be observed to prove this: inflation is just one. But I think the most dangerous anomaly has been real estate.
In, what is ostensibly the most progressive, most prosperous state in the union, you can build a "mini house" (accessory dwelling unit) on your property and rent it out. The ideal target market would be my generation (millennials) and the next (Gen Z), bc we can't afford homes in CA.
And now, you can even "monetize" your ADU...sometimes the free market does bizarre things.
Question - how long will this last before the young say "enough" and vote for politicians that just redistribute assets? Bc that historically has not worked well.
Well, they also support property rights, not just freedom.
"Selling" your ADU would either require dividing up the parcel (which I am guessing is nontrivial in most places) or somehow itemizing improvements on the parcel so that the ADU owner can pay taxes for their unit separately from the main home on the property.
No reason to figure out a solution to any of this when housing isn't much of a problem there.
> Question - how long will this last before the young say "enough" and vote for politicians that just redistribute assets? Bc that historically has not worked well.
The NIMBYs: they don't pay their fair share of property taxes (because prop 13). They oppose building new housing to drive up their property values, but this doesn't increase their property taxes because prop 13
A start would be this: repealing prop 13 and forcing the NIMBYs to pay their fair share of property taxes. Make them sleep in the bed that they've made for themselves
What's the problem with being able to sell your ADU? Wouldn't this possibly incentivize more ADU building thus supplying more housing units to the market?
> What's the problem with being able to sell your ADU?
There is nothin "wrong" or "right" about free market economics bc there is no concept of morality in free market economics. It is what it is.
But it is the clearest of signals of what is going - US standard of living has peaked and is going down.
> Wouldn't this possibly incentivize more ADU building thus supplying more housing units to the market?
Is that trend that benefits me? I do not think so, I do not want to live in a ADU nor do I want one on my property, nor do I want to live in a community that has ADUs.
Its not the only way to grow. You can grow through productivity too. Problem is that corporate shareholders "hoarded" the productivity value that was created with stock buy-backs instead of raising wages.
Since 2008, corporation buy back stock over investing in capex or raising wages. From my intuition, it is bc they were so scarred by the 2008-2010 GFC, that they have been anticipating another crash since, even though it was over 10 years ago.
Here are some instances of what CEOs do when they are flush with cash:
- A top Trump adviser’s startling response to CEOs not doing what he’d expect [1]
> "As Cohn sat comfortably onstage, a Journal editor asked the crowd to raise their hands if their company plans to invest more if the tax reform bill passes. Very few hands went up. Cohn looked surprised. “Why aren't the other hands up?” he said." [1]
> Make no mistake: The proportion of net income distributed to the shareholders of S&P 500 corporations is indeed high. From 2007 to 2016, the S&P 500 firms paid out $7 trillion to shareholders—$4.2 trillion through repurchases and $2.8 trillion through dividends—representing 96% of net income. Microsoft was one of the top cash distributors, paying out a total of $188 billion to shareholders. [2]
> In 2011, Senate Democrats, arguing against another repatriation tax holiday, issued a report asserting that the previous effort had actually cost the United States Treasury $3.3 billion, and that companies receiving the tax breaks had thereafter cut over 20,000 jobs." [3]
All of this signals pessimism in the upper ranks of corporate america.
If people can't own a home do they cease to exist? Weird how "overpopulating" comes up when discussing homes for people that are here already, but not other issues like jobs or office construction.
In, what is ostensibly the most progressive, most prosperous state in the union, you can build a "mini house" (accessory dwelling unit) on your property and rent it out. The ideal target market would be my generation (millennials) and the next (Gen Z), bc we can't afford homes in CA.
And now, you can even "monetize" your ADU...sometimes the free market does bizarre things.
Question - how long will this last before the young say "enough" and vote for politicians that just redistribute assets? Bc that historically has not worked well.
Anyway, see you in Texas. Or Florida.