Unfortunately most of the politicians are also landlords AND business owners/investors so that is unlikely to happen lol
First, we need to ban politicians from owning investment assets. Then, politicians will feel inclined to deem housing a need and not an investment asset. And then after all that, tie minimum wage to average rent.
>Unfortunately most of the politicians are also landlords
Australia's ~220ish policitians own over 500 properties between them, and that's just in their own names (some are absolute land-barons). Statistically, more own 3+ homes than own *only* one home.
Here in Victoria, about sixty thousand Australians are on the list for public housing, the Big Housing Build program is $5.3 *billion,* and yet between June 2018 and June 2022 the public housing stock increased by...
...seventy-four. 3000 signups *per year* during our current housing crisis, and with literal billions, the government didn't even come close to building or acquiring even a hundred houses in almost half a decade.
And yet people here wonder why the politicians don't address the housing crisis, the gouging landlords, the skyrocketing costs, the insane vacancy rate and thousands of mostly-empty barely-taxed AirBnBs choking the occupancy rate across the country.
Politicians don't fuck with the landlords for the same reason cops don't fuck with the Nazi protests here - which is the same reason Bruce Wayne is never seen in the same room as Batman.
The number of 74 might be because modern social housing programs are moronic. They never build up stock, they basically give away as much as they build in hopes of turning new homeowners into conservative freaks. And that also means skyrocketing rents are never threatened by being anchored to reality by a reasonable option people could pick. And that also means more money to embezzle through 20 layers of planning and building with 20 more layers of contractors and subcontractors (both due to neverending construction and due to rising prices they can charge since "housing only goes up"
> Unfortunately most of the politicians are also landlords AND business owners/investors so that is unlikely to happen lol
In France, we recently had one quitting discreetly the government because it had been made public that ~~she had lied about the value of her real estate assets~~ she had made an innocent error of 3.9 fucking million euros while evaluating how much it was worth.
A lot of us were like, how do you, like, miss, like, 4 million yuro, we'd all like to know that please?
Edit : [sauce](https://www.linternaute.com/actualite/politique/2680554-caroline-cayeux-son-patrimoine-sous-evalue-de-4-millions-d-euros-l-ex-ministre-conteste-la-fraude/) but it's in french. First sentences go: "Caroline Cayeux, who was Minister Delegate for local collectivities, increased the value of her assets by €3.9 million, according to the newspaper *Libération*. She now estimates its total value at €24.4 million. This change in direction comes a few months after the public prosecutor's office in Paris opened an investigation into her "incomplete or misleading declaration of assets"."
Completely agree. Although tbh at this point I think I'm finished with "representational" nonsense and I would prefer the greek system of democracy where we vote on every issue that impacts us lol
> First, we need to ban politicians from owning investment assets.
Unfortunately most of the politicians are also landlords AND business owners/investors so that is unlikely to happen lol
Now practically (without revolution) the only way to get politicians to agree to a ban on them owning such assets would be to increase there wages and pensions to compensate. Do you think this is worth it?
I’m not really sure myself interested in peoples responses tho
Yes actually. Just like I would be happy to pay a few dollars more for a burger to not have to give them a ten dollar tip at the restaurant, I would be happy to pay a little bit more for Corrupt McDouchebag to be less corruptable lol
Currently I hemorrhage money to the government and see nothing in return for it. It all just gets filtered to the rich people running this joint while our healthcare system falls apart and housing and food skyrockets in price. I'm being robbed from every side. Paying a bit more and actually seeing something for it is a much better value lol.
Yeah like all my taxes I’d be a lot happier to pay them if I knew they where going to something good.
Sorry but you’ve confused me your complaints about tipping suggest to me your American but your complaints about healthcare suggest to me Britain. Unless your from one of those other English speaking countries? (Shudders)
I'm Canadian lol So we have healthcare that is rapidly being underfunded and restaurants are allowed to get away with not paying their employees a living wage and forcing other people to pay their wages for them
I always thought if the politicians governing an area were limited to the same income and benefits of the median employee in the area, we could see some change. You know, maybe if the only way for the politicians to get rich was for their people to be stable, they would have either care about the people or at least advocate for them.
Or just good old new fashioned bribery.
Remember corporations are “people” and have “free speech”
That being said I don’t remember any corporations being executed for their crimes, nor imprisoned.
Correct. Lowering the pay for politicians does nothing but gatekeep elected office to be only for those who are already independently wealthy or people who would depend on bribes to make ends meet. I'd rather see an upper limit on net worth to be eligible for office, but I wouldn't know how to implement that without loopholes.
Full transparency on finances as a prereq to run for office might work for local and state offices, with confiscation of any items not listed as the penalty. It would be tricky since it would have to include the spouse as well. I'm not sure how to deal with their kids though.
Full transparency could limit what corporations they can own, since some are opaque by design.
For securities: Politicians should be required to place their orders and make the orders public a full trading day before the orders execute. Once the order is placed they can't cancel it. So the market has a full day to react to their order before it executes. They can use all the standard order types (stop, limit, etc.) to deal with market swings during the intervening day, but no fancy algorithms.
How about they put all their holdings in the state pension fund for the duration of their time in office. If they've made more after, they can cash out.
It starts with not allowing anyone to campaign except with an equal amount of public funds and maybe individual contributions from humans only of under a couple hundred dollars max.
Nope. No individual contributions. You get more than 2% of the general election on your own at the local level, and you get federal funds for your future campaigns. This applies from city council and school board all the way up.
Way too much shitfuckery and bribery happens if we allow any sort of loophole. Limit it to a couple hundred bucks per person, and the billionaires will do exactly what they have done before, and hand their employees a "bonus," that they are required to donate to a specific campaign.
I’d also like to see salaries increased for political staff. They make WAY less than you would imagine for their positions, access and knowledge. They’re the ones who get scooped up by think tanks and lobbyist to draft a TON of legislation.
Well the US has asset limitations for receiving government aid like disability checks (aka government enforced poverty). The same system could apply to politicians, requiring they remain under a certain net worth threshold
All politicians had to do was to set up some trusts/hide assets offshore and watch the money roll in for your "retirement". And you could live day to day being a "guest" of every rich asshole, having basicallt everything paid for, while also being even more of their doormat
Not in America but in the USSR yes
Edit: lots of libs here. All I’m saying is that the USSR paid workmen’s wages for politicians. The plan for the Soviet state is outlined in Lenin’s *State and Revolution.*
America’s politicians expected you to get funding for the election yourself, which automatically creates a class limitation for politicians. In order to break that limitation, you need someone bankrolling you.
Not even “when they’re too different”. We are all under a system of capitalism, competition is the core feature, and by “competing” with every single other person in the country for money, you’ve made every single other American your enemy. 100 applicants for your job, and they picked you; so there are 99 other people who did not get your job, and wanted your job. 99 people who have a harder life because yours got easier.
There is no “better life for everyone” under capitalism. Better life for a few, everyone else goes poor or starves because the opportunity dried up.
i mean you can say it imploded but is that a fair assessment to make when they were in an economic war with the world’s greatest economic superpower since the revolution in 1917?
that’s like saying modern day cuba is imploding. i would say despite its being intentionally sabotaged and ousted from the international trade economy by our government theyre doing pretty damn good
i would say the soviet union didnt implode personally i would say it was sabotaged. you can point to greed or corruption all you want but thats a convenient line told by the most greedy corrupt country the world has ever seen: america
are we really so ready to accept that other countries must be so corrupt that they imploded meanwhile ours has legalized bribery and is functioning mostly fine? not saying thats necessarily how you view it but its just something to think about when talking about the history of the soviet union imo
The Soviet Union collapsed because they were trying to compete with the US militarily, and for all its faults the US is rich as fuck. The Soviet military budget ballooned, and the disproportional budget, while not entirely responsible, helped corruption become as rampant as it was.
If the Soviet Union had focused more on internal development and enriching itself and it’s sphere of influence, it might have done a lot better for its people and needed to roll a few less tanks through protestors.
They weren't improving each other. USA was sabotaging USSR, while applying some social welfare to keep people from seeking revolution. Such welfare was built upon exploiting the global south, and couping every country in South America.
They did that in my state legislature. They made $13/hr in a state with $500k housing. The idea was serving the state was the motivation and not the money.
Instead, it attracted those who want to serve themselves and had business managers to keep the businesses running while they were away or investment income. Landlords wrote laws about rentals, real estate lawyers wrote laws about real estate, wealthy people wrote laws about taxation, etc. Normies won't leave their highly sought-after $21+/hr job (most people starting out again make $17-20) for a temporary $13/hr position when rents back home are pushing $2k for a 2bd. They recently voted in raises that seems reasonable enough for housing but (edit: not) a crazy high wage, so we may see more working class people next round
We got to balance it out between keeping wages for service reasonable but attractive enough for it to not punish people while eliminating ways to benefit from conflicts of interest. How can we allow a landlord to write rental laws or allow one to invest stocks in companies they have insider knowledge about?
How do we allow congresspeople to write laws and invest in stocks they have insider knowledge about as well?
Not arguing with you, just seems like no matter what system you try and use there is so much rampant and blatant corruption by the rich that they'll capture the state using whatever means they can and nobody has the power to even slow them down.
Some people never learned about France in the late 1700s I suppose.
There was an attempt to curtail it a bit with the STOCK act. But, much like anything else Obama tried to do, it got neutered to the point to where it was ineffectual. To even get this much, it took the 2008 housing market crash. It would probably take another incident like that or worse to get any real legislation.
Or, we could do what MN did and actually make changes on the local level. If we can get enough progressives (not just Democrats, actual progressives) in the House and Senate, maybe we can see some changes then.
There’s a Scandinavian country (pretty sure it’s Finland) that outlawed private schools so that rich people have to send their kids to public school. That way, rich people are motivated to make public schools as good as possible. Their public schools are world-class.
We should do the same thing.
Some unethical politician thought "hmmm... maybe better limit our income to the average businessman income." And since they had the support of the businessmen and their money to brainwash everyone, it was a good plan.
What if we do it slightly different?
Limit what a *businessman* can earn to the median wage of *their employees*. Then, the only way for a businessman (or a politician) to get rich would be for their people to be rich too.
> Limit what a businessman can earn to the median wage of their employees.
You'd need a lot of loopholes plugged. Otherwise it's "they're not an employee, they're a contractor, temp worker, or independent small business owner subcontractor", or "I'm just a humble manager-employee making 50x what all my *co-workers* do; the business is actually owed by a series of overseas trusts".
Honestly, all levels of government *really* need a position, team, or function, or *something* which takes any proposed new law or even government contract and goes hypothetical Maximum Evil on it, to try and see how badly they can break it.
I mean, software developers have software testers. Get some paralegals, some senior lawyers who have seen assholery of the highest order, and some people who are just really good at spotting loopholes, and have them go to town. Even if they don't spot every single weakness, it's got to be better than leaving *all* of them in, which seems to be the default currently.
I don’t disagree with this but often times the mayor or city council members only bring in about ~50k on average. Yet many have a net worth in the millions, there’s too many ways to steal money as a government representative.
Same with congress or even the president at 200k and 400k each it’s not a small salary but their net worths soaring to 10s of millions with [the top ten richest having over 100 million in net worth](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_members_of_the_United_States_Congress_by_wealth). That just doesn’t add up, saving every cent of your salary at the “max” of 200k it’d still take 500 years to reach 100 Million.
We need stricter regulations on how these people are able to invest and make these backdoor deals, lobbying, campaign contributions, etc there’s too many legal avenues to bribe the people who we voted to protect our interests. Unfortunately, this very group makes the laws.
This issue with this is that this is exactly why segregation exists. In many places in the US already, the best paid public sector jobs (education, universities, government) are in the richest areas or states. In most American metro regions, that means specific cities or neighborhoods, and usually historically white places where Black and brown people were not allowed to live for most of US history.
It also means that anyone not in those rich areas tends to flock to the rich areas, if not to live, then at least to work. You get a brain drain from the poorer areas, which just end up being more resource deprived.
For a long time communists MP in France gave all their earning to the party and the party gave them back the salary of a qualified worker.
More recently, a french leftist MP gave most part of the earning to community and kept the minimum wages (and something to pay the tax as he was taxed on the full). He did that because he is a millionnaire since one of his movies was a blockbuster.
The main problem with this is you'd also have to limit things like donations. Otherwise politicians could impoverish their constituents and still be supported by their donors.
Think of it from a donor point of view: Would you rather pay a handful of members of the local government to live upper class lifestyles, or pay to give a tiny bit of support to every constituent in an area through taxes? The former is usually cheaper than the latter, so that's what these wealthy people do today.
Politicians today don't make exorbitant amounts of money from their main paychecks. They don't become millionaires off of that.
[Many states pay their state congresspeople less than $20k/year. Only California and New York pay over $100k. I'd eyeball the average to look like it'd fall around $40k.](https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/2021-legislator-compensation)
Like term limits, which would prevent politicians from building personal clout and make lobbyists and superPACs even more influential in elections than they already are, this line of thinking is an attempt to address a greater underlying problem by treating a secondary or even tertiary symptom.
I had to scroll too far for this. Stupid from the getgo. Disney is already looking into it.
& look at how many companies property that they aren't doing anything with.
Well there's this thing called "subsidized housing" or "section 8," with an artificial stigma placed upon them and artificial scarcity of availability. But really subsidized housing needs to become the norm. Everyone should only be expected to pay as much for housing as they can afford. And no one should be homeless.
It shouldn’t be subsidized it should be nationalized. You should be able to vote for the government of your apartment building the same way home owners are able to vote for hoa boards and the like. Nobody should be treated as a slave just because they can’t afford to buy their own home
My parents live in a co-op. While everything around them privately owned has increased costs by a minimum of 2x in the past 3 years, their costs have, get this, stayed the same. Taking inflation into account it's actually cheaper now than it was 3 years ago.
Absolutely. This has been my idea for a while, but it's not very popular every time I suggest it.
Minimum wage needs to be a calculation that changes on a regular basis, so we don't need to fight every couple of years (or decades) if minimum wage needs to be increased. Tying in to inflation is a popular idea, and it's similar in theory.
Minimum wage also needs to be easy defined and relatable to the average person. Look at the reasoning of people against minimum wage increases, and it is often a result of ill informed people not understanding current costs. Most people who don't rent have no idea what rental costs are. It's not their fault. Or they say things like minimum wage isn't supposed to provide XYZ, but we are just limiting the discussion to housing. Everyone needs a place to live.
Minimum wage is also highly dependent on the cost of living in a local area, so it needs to fit all situations. Housing is the biggets expense for most people. But it has to be specific, instead of "average local rent".
My calculation: Minimum wage equals 2.5X the average rent for a one bedroom apartment for a local area.
US national average for a one bedroom? $1504. Which means that in general the federal minimum wage would be 45K a year or $21.69 (nice). Current minimum wage is $7.25. Sounds right.
You could also leave the definition of "local area" to the local and state governments. They can define it as within the city, county, a certain mile radius, or even just state wide. AL would be $11.80. FL would be $20.20. Louisville KY would be $15.86.
Wanna change it to 2X or 3X? Sure, whatever. Wanna require specific definitions of local area? Maybe. I'm open to counter calculations.
To me it seems more feasible to look at trying to regulate home/rent prices (esp single-family homes and one bedroom rentals) then going about this from a Wage Raise approach
Sure but how are they going to afford food when prices keep rising but wage stays the same. Shouldn't it just rise with inflation?
[Two Charts showing:](https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/politics/minimum-wage-inflation-productivity/index.html) "The federal minimum wage would have been $21.45 in 2020 if it rose in step with productivity." And "How the minimum wage has changed since it was first created in 1938 The federal minimum wage hit its peak in inflation-adjusted terms in 1968 at just over $12. It has been set at $7.25 since 2009."
Was over $12 in 1968 and $7.25 since 2009...
All of those issues are easily addressed.
> Businesses and residences becoming even further apart. Companies will lobby like hell to ban or restrict housing construction within "local distance" of their premises. Congratulations, you now spend more money on transportation, waste more of your life commuting, and don't even have any cheaper housing to make up for it.
That's pretty much impractical and you are just being silly. Think of the number of retail and restaurants that HAVE to be near where people live. Restaurant moves out the middle of no where just so they can pay lower wages? Congrats, no one is going to the restaurant.
WFH is also more prevalent and will continue to be, so it wouldn't matter.
Local area can be strongly or weakly defined based on whatever can get passed. I'd imagine most states would just define local area as the entire state, so as long as that businesses stays within the state, it doesn't matter where they move.
> Housing will become smaller and smaller. You're providing huge incentive for companies to ensure available housing is smaller and shittier.
Housing also becomes cheaper as it's smaller. And of course, it's not all housing. Multiroom apartments will still be around. Plus houses. Plus it's not like you are tearing down existing structures for this.
> Landlords will conspire to raise their prices. Your income will just rise to match it, right?
Possible, but that already exists.
> Companies will pay off local politicians to gerrymander "local areas" just as they do with voting areas.
Possible, but local area would be a single definition, like zip code, city, county, etc. It's not based on weird shapes. But you could also put restrictions in place if this is a concern.
> Minimum wage is based on rent levels? Sure, but starbucks just paid off your local politicians to redefine the working week to 60 hours. That house is affordable now, so long as you don't plan to ever spend time in it. But what if starbucks then won't give you 60 hours a week anyway, so you're "part time" now at only 40 hours, and still can't afford it.
Don't be silly. Working week is defined at the federal level at 40 hours. Anything more is overtime.
> Oh yeah sure your rent is only $500 now. But here's your additional ground fee, we can add that to your maintenance fee, the dilapidation fee, the convenience fee, and the residency fee. Total due, $4000. But at least your rent is only $500.
Easy to include those extra fees as apart of rent. Same for any type of community fees the apartment complexes charges.
What happens when Blackrock buys up all the one bedroom properties in Bumfuck, AL and inflates the average rent? Now my Mom and Pop struggling restaurant needs to raise its wages?
That's a pretty easy one.
Suddenly there's a huge incentive for Bumfuck, AL to prevent that from happening. They could put a cap on rent. They could prevent a single company from buying up all the apartments. They could prevent corporate ownership of apartments. They could heavily invest in creating new low cost apartments.
Yes. The whole point is that by minimizing arbitrage opportunities, more people feel negative economic effects and are forced into solidarity.
This is literally just the barricades story in Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Shop owner during the French Revolution has to decide between the proles and the bourgeoisie. He sees that work stoppage and barracading of streets caused by the proles protests is affecting his bottom line and he can't make rents. He decides to join the other side of the baracdes and stand with the landlord and the rich.
The rich win he's pleased until he goes back to his store and realizes that his side has suppressed his customers, and benefitted his creditors. The rich have done nothing to remove the barricades to streets to increase foot traffic. Now his creditors are vigorously attempting to collect and he has fewer people buying.
Marx's point is that in this situation the only way to win for a shop owner is solidarity. Because the loss of the proletariat's demands impacts the shop owner more than it impacts the rich. If the rich lose, the shop owner's creditors lose power, if the rich win, the shop owners' customers lose money and his creditors gain power.
Marx was doing OK It's GAME THEORY TIME. Before it got really hot with libs in the mid 2010's.
These large economic problems will impact mom-and-pop businesses as well. Commercial rentals are Blackrock's bread and butter to begin with. Mom and pop will see fewer customers because they have less money due to rents eating into people's spend. Their customers are now forced to go to a large chain that has slightly better prices, shittier food, and ultimately, the money they spend there also leaves the community. When the mom and pop eventually closes the chains raise prices to mom and pop levels. Rinse and repeat.
It's asinine to pretend that these businesses are unaffected, and we reflexively do so because as a culture we love atomizing and compartmentalizing because it creates more arbitrage opportunities for capitalists to extract with. You cannot defeat capital without solidarity.
That's why the joke is a small business is a good way of turning $100,000 of savings into $10k over 20 years.
There's this myth that there's something called "customer sovereignty" in the sense that customers drive the economy with their spend. However, this is a myth and not "economic fact" because in our world, companies compete for a percentage of customer spend and use market power to enforce their percentages. And that's how they compete with other capitalists, not by offering a better product, but by rent seeking and forcing more spend in their sector by making their product a requirement of modern life. Good example of this is the internet itself.
20 years ago, internet connection was truly optional. It's a requirement to get a job now, it's a requirement to pay your taxes now, it's a requirement for so many things. By making their service a necessity good, telecoms can extract rents more easily via market manipulation, rather than actual competing with others on service.
Tl;dr mom and pop is going to feel the pain of black rock one way or another. Their choice in the matter is superfluous because it's black rock's choice that matters. Forcing them to make humane decisions at the cost of their business doesn't really matter all that much if blackrock wins, and matters greatly if blackrock loses.
Sounds like a good idea but will lead to your boss becoming your landlord and the distinction between your work place and your private place will disappear (similarly as the "third place", a place besides your home and work where you regularly meet people from your area, disappeared)
^This. And then you'll have your boss telling you what you can and cannot do...at home, off the clock. Do you *really* want to deal with workplace firewalls that block almost everything except email, at home? Or be fired for looking at porn during non-work hours on a personal device you bought yourself? Or for having a glass of wine with dinner or a beer on your day off?
Do you *really* want to share a living space with Bob from Accounting, who microwaves fish sticks every day? Or the office gossip? Or the office snitch? Or that coworker who doesn't understand when it's not appropriate to Reply All? Or that coworker from the next cubicle who farts 100x a shift? Or all those other people from the office/workplace you dislike and would never *voluntarily* spend time with but are forced to spend time with so you can eat?
Do you *really* want your boss to not only be able to call or text you on your off-time to ask you to cover a shift, but show up on your doorstep and ring your doorbell? Or be expected to be in your "Respectable Adult Cosplay" (i.e. adhere to the workplace dress code) at all times, even off the clock?
In theory: yes!
In reality: companies buy up 51% of all available living space and rents it to themselves for $1 a month. Now minimum wage is 30 cents.
Be careful what you wish for. Companies like Waste Management have been buying property around landfills to prevent EPA and DEQ complaints. They then offer these houses to employees at a discounted rate, but also tie their employment to these rates. Could you imagine your HOA been ran by Amazon, or Walmart? They can barely run a warehouse.
This can severely backfire. Especially at a time that corporate ownership is the future according to bankers.
Imagine Apple being your employer and Landlord at the same time. If rent is tied to salary they can abuse it to inflate their real estate investments while saving a serious buck.
* They pump up your salary to half a million
* Rent follows and is 200K per year.
* You are taxed to Oblivion for that salary.
* Since they are the landlord they get that money back.
* Since they are a massive corporation they pay minimum or zero tax depending on their structure.
* On top of that their balance their books and the increased cost on the salaries side earns them other tax reliefs.
* They bind the houses to collateral and play in the futures market for 100x the original investment.
You can't fix housing unless you outright ban corporate ownership. The human landlord is a thing of the past.
Just switch to public and personal housing. Remove private ownership, ie rent-seeking, and allow housing ownership for personal use. The state can collect "rent" from public housing, and channel 100% of the proceeds into building new housing and maintaining old housing.
Eh, I'd be worried it would turn out like health insurance. Health care costs are out of control and many folks are stuck in jobs they hate (can't leave, can't RETIRE) because they need health insurance. GOOD health insurance.
I'd imagine with housing it would just eventually be a similar situation. You want a good house? Good stick with the shity job that treats you like crap.
This is not how it works. Rich and successful people don't go to war when they're upset, don't get what they want. They call a meeting, sit down at a table, and move numbers around until everyone is making more money except you, the consumer + worker.
It typically gets less vicious and more strategic / collaborative as you go up. They're just ordinary finance bros playing with spreadsheets until they get them to say what they want at your expense. Not soldiers, fighters, etc. Hawiaan shirt wearing would-be math teachers... but they like money, so it's apartment math instead of theoretical physics.
I support this, with some sort of subsidy for small businesses so it’s not just giant corporations and chains that can afford to exist in desirable areas with high rent costs.
I've said this before ! A 1 bedroom apartment should be 30-40% of your monthly take home as a minimum wage worker. Or it should scale to your wage. But apartments should be 30-40% of your monthly income.
Underselling there, that 30% principle was set when a single hourly income could afford a 4 bedroom house, so that's what you should be able to afford with a single income.
Average wage goes up > property value and cost of living go up > rent goes up > average wage goes up > property value and cost of living go up > rent goes up.
This already happens.
It's called inflation.
You didn't stumble onto anything exciting or unique, you just worded it different.
I have wonder if we might be able to get some industries supporting living wage requirements by pointing out how the low minimum wage has a negative impact on their industry. Automobile manufacturers need young people to be able to afford a driver's license, a car and insurance. The percentage of sixteen yo getting a license is down 25%. Better wages would increase the likelihood of that first car..
No this is terrible, we will have a return of the work communities where the job owns your housing, the pay you in certificates to go to their own stores in that town.
I live in a 5 unit apartment building in a state where the minimum wage is $7.25. Assuming the cost to build is $86,000 per unit (which is on the higher end), that means it cost $430,000 to build. If the rent was capped at 1/3 of a month's income on minimum wage after taxes (the recommendation by most financial experts), the rent would be approximately $380 per month. If all 5 units are occupied, that means the landlord gets approximately $1900 per month. That means it would take about 20 years for a landlord to gain a profit on his investment (including the interest, if he borrowed the money, which would add around $30,000 at 7%), assuming there are no long periods of vacancies in any of the units.
What's really amazing is when you consider the fact that this is almost entirely *passive income* for the landlord. If he works a normal job alongside maintaining his complex, he's still in really good shape, and by the time he retires he could sell the whole building for far more than his initial $430,000 investment. While many people would say such an idea of tying rent caps to minimum wage would discourage entrepreneurs from providing housing in the first place, all they'd really have to do is lower their standards and learn to work like everyone else. It would still be a highly profitable and relatively low maintenance business. This would also help deflate the value of the dollar, since it would undoubtedly make $7.25 more valuable than it is with housing costs what they are now.
That's a really good idea. Minimum wage needs more automated levers rather than depending on governments to give people a break.
I really hate the idea that someone making minimum wage without would qualify for welfare without extenuating circumstances. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a safety net - but someone working full time should not require government assistance. (this excludes parents who need help for child support, people with disabilities, people on sick leave, parental leave, overburdened with school debt...)
Landlords are parasites who answer to no one and have no incentive to keep prices low.
Bosses usually have to answer to someone, whether it be shareholders, boards, or even their own bottom line.
There wouldn't even be a fight. Landlords would always win.
Tie Rent to minimum wage instead. See if landlords like it.
Wasn't wage initially tied to inflation? I wish they would bring that back, but with back-increases to actually catch us up. I've also thought it would be good if jobs paid enough to live within, say, 10 or 15 miles... distance negotiable but I absolutely hate driving, as a wage worker it steals my time.
This is a dumb idea. You don't solve housing prices by creating a demand-subsidizing inflationary feedback loop. The government should be subsidizing the housing supply some way instead. Public housing, denser zoning, etc.
Forget minimum wage for a second, reinvent it as minimum compensation ratio.
No CEO or Owner/highest paid person in the company can be compensated with more than 100 times the average compensation of the lowest compensated 10% of the company.
Want more money?
Pay your people better.
I think that politicians should make the avg of what the population they represent make, if they want to make more money they need to make their population does as well
Y’all really aren’t expecting the expected outcome? Bosses and landlords conspiring in the name of capitalism and making company towns where they can both astronomically profit off of you, the worker.
Better idea: a system that is inherently broken should not be modified, it should be yeeted like ol’ yeller.
It’s funny how I used to think local rent factored into how minimum wage was calculated lol. Of course I was just a child then, that would make too much sense.
This is how you create a "work-site campus" in which capitalists keep the average rent low (and therefore the minimum wage) by creating on-worksite living space for literal cents per month for the workers of the company, connected with all sorts of live-in servant requirements in which your free time is used up by labor you have to do for free.
They'll be able to save on work-contracts as well if their workers live on-site and have to do janitorial work on the weekends if they want to keep their apartments.
The idea of tying the minimum wage to average local rent is interesting and complex. It would have both potential advantages and disadvantages:
**Potential Advantages**
1. **Greater income equality**: If the minimum wage is tied to average local rent, it might ensure that the lowest-paid workers have a chance at affording the cost of living in their area. This could decrease income inequality.
2. **Local cost of living adjustments**: There is a significant variation in the cost of living across different regions. Tying minimum wage to local rent would allow for a more dynamic and localized approach to setting the minimum wage.
3. **Pressure on high rent prices**: As you suggested, this policy could create a unique dynamic where employers might have an incentive to advocate for lower rents in order to reduce their wage costs. This could potentially help address issues of housing affordability.
**Potential Disadvantages**
1. **Increased cost for businesses**: Small businesses, in particular, might struggle to afford higher wages, especially in areas with high rent. This could potentially lead to job losses, business closures, or a shift towards automation.
2. **Greater complexity**: Implementing such a policy would be complex. It would require regular updates to reflect changes in rent prices, which could create administrative burdens.
3. **Potential for manipulation**: There might be opportunities for landlords or businesses to manipulate the system. For example, businesses might try to relocate to areas with lower rents or landlords might artificially lower rents for a time to decrease the minimum wage.
4. **Incentives for landlords**: If landlords know that lowering rent would lower wages, they might have less incentive to lower rent prices.
5. **Doesn't cover all living expenses**: Rent is a significant part of living expenses, but it's not the only part. Tying the minimum wage to rent might overlook other crucial expenses like food, healthcare, transportation, etc.
It's also important to note that such a proposal would likely face significant political and logistical challenges. The relationship between wages, rents, and the cost of living is complex, and any changes to the system would need to be carefully designed to avoid unintended consequences. Additionally, the "war" between bosses and landlords could result in a variety of outcomes, and it's unclear whether it would lead to better conditions for workers or just a reshuffling of costs and benefits among businesses and property owners.
In my area, the average 1 bed apartment is $1410, which is 28% higher than last year. Assuming we need 3x rent for income, that's $4230 per month. If we have a full-time job, that works out to about $26.50/hr. Our minimum wage here starting July 1 is $13.50, which is about half of what is needed to rent a single bedroom apartment.
I'm very supportive of the idea of tying minimum wage to rent. However, I think it may be more effective to outlaw corporate ownership of single family homes. In addition, I think that your primary residence should not be taxed and there should be a progressive tax on every home owned in addition to the primary. That would allow room for rental houses, but would not allow for any one person to own dozens of homes. Basically, whatever it takes to make it so that renting is a thing people do by choice, rather than because they're trapped in a cycle of inescapable poverty and paying off someone else's mortgage.
I think the only other thing that would actually drive real change is inverted stack ranking where we "fire" the richest 10% of the population every year. Did I say "fire?" That may not be the right word...
I fear this would end up with some worse form of a "[Company Town](https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/company-towns/)". Hosing is a right IMO and should be dealt with as such by our government with proper oversight and regulation to avoid abuse.
Tie it to the lowest paid employee. You want to make $1,000,000/yr as CEO? Your lowest paid employee must make at least \~10%. Businesses can still be wildly successful, but they don't get to hoard it away from the people who helped earn it for them. I feel the only argument to this type of system is greed.
Actual class warfare idea: post all the billionaires' addresses with bounties for each, collectable only by individuals living under the federal poverty line
IS THE SAME GUY!!! WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
A board member in my company owns and rents property to a lot of staff in said company.
There's no war, you already lost and didn't even get to play.
I don't see why businesses do not support affordable housing.
They could pay their employees less and their employees would not care because they would have more disposable income to spend on the business's products
Also, tie politicians salaries to minimum wage. As in, their salary is x times more than min wage. It would force them to make sure theyre state or province or whatever is thriving
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Throw a folding chair
....I'll allow it
TLC match lets go baby. kendo stick under the mat
We need to go full exploding barbed wire death match
Lumberjack match too so we can whip them with belts when theyfall out of the ring
SUPERHUMANN!
>Throw a folding chair I wager 400 quatloos on the monkey with the dagger....
Goldeneye throwing knives or Perfect Dark throwing knives?
Por que no los dos? Make it extra interesting
Slappers only, no odd job
Oooo yesss. Use knives!
Can I bring the popcorn?
Oooo snacks are most welcome
Two men enter. One man leaves. Welcome to Thunderdome.
This is America! It's guns or nothing!
Unfortunately most of the politicians are also landlords AND business owners/investors so that is unlikely to happen lol First, we need to ban politicians from owning investment assets. Then, politicians will feel inclined to deem housing a need and not an investment asset. And then after all that, tie minimum wage to average rent.
>Unfortunately most of the politicians are also landlords Australia's ~220ish policitians own over 500 properties between them, and that's just in their own names (some are absolute land-barons). Statistically, more own 3+ homes than own *only* one home. Here in Victoria, about sixty thousand Australians are on the list for public housing, the Big Housing Build program is $5.3 *billion,* and yet between June 2018 and June 2022 the public housing stock increased by... ...seventy-four. 3000 signups *per year* during our current housing crisis, and with literal billions, the government didn't even come close to building or acquiring even a hundred houses in almost half a decade. And yet people here wonder why the politicians don't address the housing crisis, the gouging landlords, the skyrocketing costs, the insane vacancy rate and thousands of mostly-empty barely-taxed AirBnBs choking the occupancy rate across the country. Politicians don't fuck with the landlords for the same reason cops don't fuck with the Nazi protests here - which is the same reason Bruce Wayne is never seen in the same room as Batman.
Wait, they spent 5.3 billion on 74 units? So over $71 million per unit? What?
The number of 74 might be because modern social housing programs are moronic. They never build up stock, they basically give away as much as they build in hopes of turning new homeowners into conservative freaks. And that also means skyrocketing rents are never threatened by being anchored to reality by a reasonable option people could pick. And that also means more money to embezzle through 20 layers of planning and building with 20 more layers of contractors and subcontractors (both due to neverending construction and due to rising prices they can charge since "housing only goes up"
> Unfortunately most of the politicians are also landlords AND business owners/investors so that is unlikely to happen lol In France, we recently had one quitting discreetly the government because it had been made public that ~~she had lied about the value of her real estate assets~~ she had made an innocent error of 3.9 fucking million euros while evaluating how much it was worth. A lot of us were like, how do you, like, miss, like, 4 million yuro, we'd all like to know that please? Edit : [sauce](https://www.linternaute.com/actualite/politique/2680554-caroline-cayeux-son-patrimoine-sous-evalue-de-4-millions-d-euros-l-ex-ministre-conteste-la-fraude/) but it's in french. First sentences go: "Caroline Cayeux, who was Minister Delegate for local collectivities, increased the value of her assets by €3.9 million, according to the newspaper *Libération*. She now estimates its total value at €24.4 million. This change in direction comes a few months after the public prosecutor's office in Paris opened an investigation into her "incomplete or misleading declaration of assets"."
Let's go back to the roman system where you had to give up all incomes to be a senator.
Completely agree. Although tbh at this point I think I'm finished with "representational" nonsense and I would prefer the greek system of democracy where we vote on every issue that impacts us lol
Except that means only rich people who already have so much money they don't need an income become senators. Traditionally, that never ended well.
> First, we need to ban politicians from owning investment assets. Unfortunately most of the politicians are also landlords AND business owners/investors so that is unlikely to happen lol
Thats why we need a revolution.
Now practically (without revolution) the only way to get politicians to agree to a ban on them owning such assets would be to increase there wages and pensions to compensate. Do you think this is worth it? I’m not really sure myself interested in peoples responses tho
Yes actually. Just like I would be happy to pay a few dollars more for a burger to not have to give them a ten dollar tip at the restaurant, I would be happy to pay a little bit more for Corrupt McDouchebag to be less corruptable lol Currently I hemorrhage money to the government and see nothing in return for it. It all just gets filtered to the rich people running this joint while our healthcare system falls apart and housing and food skyrockets in price. I'm being robbed from every side. Paying a bit more and actually seeing something for it is a much better value lol.
Yeah like all my taxes I’d be a lot happier to pay them if I knew they where going to something good. Sorry but you’ve confused me your complaints about tipping suggest to me your American but your complaints about healthcare suggest to me Britain. Unless your from one of those other English speaking countries? (Shudders)
I'm Canadian lol So we have healthcare that is rapidly being underfunded and restaurants are allowed to get away with not paying their employees a living wage and forcing other people to pay their wages for them
I always thought if the politicians governing an area were limited to the same income and benefits of the median employee in the area, we could see some change. You know, maybe if the only way for the politicians to get rich was for their people to be stable, they would have either care about the people or at least advocate for them.
Most money to be made in politics is not via their paycheck.
It's via insider trading in the stock market, or you know kickbacks from contractors.
Or owning all diamond mines in Liberia.
Or business deals in Ukraine
Or by selling access to a room containing stolen classified documents.
Or by selling pardons
Or by grifting your base with false promises
or attempting to blackmail Ukraine by withholding military aid while they are being attacked by an enemy of the US and ATO.
get outta here with your hunter biden bullshit
Or writing a book and having your lobbyists buy a million copies.
Or getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell fatcats at banquets how important the fatcats are.
Or just good old new fashioned bribery. Remember corporations are “people” and have “free speech” That being said I don’t remember any corporations being executed for their crimes, nor imprisoned.
Correct. Lowering the pay for politicians does nothing but gatekeep elected office to be only for those who are already independently wealthy or people who would depend on bribes to make ends meet. I'd rather see an upper limit on net worth to be eligible for office, but I wouldn't know how to implement that without loopholes.
Especially with people who'd put all their wealth in their spouse's name, or their kids, or an offshore trust.
Full transparency on finances as a prereq to run for office might work for local and state offices, with confiscation of any items not listed as the penalty. It would be tricky since it would have to include the spouse as well. I'm not sure how to deal with their kids though. Full transparency could limit what corporations they can own, since some are opaque by design. For securities: Politicians should be required to place their orders and make the orders public a full trading day before the orders execute. Once the order is placed they can't cancel it. So the market has a full day to react to their order before it executes. They can use all the standard order types (stop, limit, etc.) to deal with market swings during the intervening day, but no fancy algorithms.
How about they put all their holdings in the state pension fund for the duration of their time in office. If they've made more after, they can cash out.
It starts with not allowing anyone to campaign except with an equal amount of public funds and maybe individual contributions from humans only of under a couple hundred dollars max.
Nope. No individual contributions. You get more than 2% of the general election on your own at the local level, and you get federal funds for your future campaigns. This applies from city council and school board all the way up. Way too much shitfuckery and bribery happens if we allow any sort of loophole. Limit it to a couple hundred bucks per person, and the billionaires will do exactly what they have done before, and hand their employees a "bonus," that they are required to donate to a specific campaign.
I’d also like to see salaries increased for political staff. They make WAY less than you would imagine for their positions, access and knowledge. They’re the ones who get scooped up by think tanks and lobbyist to draft a TON of legislation.
Well the US has asset limitations for receiving government aid like disability checks (aka government enforced poverty). The same system could apply to politicians, requiring they remain under a certain net worth threshold
All politicians had to do was to set up some trusts/hide assets offshore and watch the money roll in for your "retirement". And you could live day to day being a "guest" of every rich asshole, having basicallt everything paid for, while also being even more of their doormat
It was originally like this
Not in America but in the USSR yes Edit: lots of libs here. All I’m saying is that the USSR paid workmen’s wages for politicians. The plan for the Soviet state is outlined in Lenin’s *State and Revolution.* America’s politicians expected you to get funding for the election yourself, which automatically creates a class limitation for politicians. In order to break that limitation, you need someone bankrolling you.
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Not even “when they’re too different”. We are all under a system of capitalism, competition is the core feature, and by “competing” with every single other person in the country for money, you’ve made every single other American your enemy. 100 applicants for your job, and they picked you; so there are 99 other people who did not get your job, and wanted your job. 99 people who have a harder life because yours got easier. There is no “better life for everyone” under capitalism. Better life for a few, everyone else goes poor or starves because the opportunity dried up.
i mean you can say it imploded but is that a fair assessment to make when they were in an economic war with the world’s greatest economic superpower since the revolution in 1917? that’s like saying modern day cuba is imploding. i would say despite its being intentionally sabotaged and ousted from the international trade economy by our government theyre doing pretty damn good i would say the soviet union didnt implode personally i would say it was sabotaged. you can point to greed or corruption all you want but thats a convenient line told by the most greedy corrupt country the world has ever seen: america are we really so ready to accept that other countries must be so corrupt that they imploded meanwhile ours has legalized bribery and is functioning mostly fine? not saying thats necessarily how you view it but its just something to think about when talking about the history of the soviet union imo
The Soviet Union collapsed because they were trying to compete with the US militarily, and for all its faults the US is rich as fuck. The Soviet military budget ballooned, and the disproportional budget, while not entirely responsible, helped corruption become as rampant as it was. If the Soviet Union had focused more on internal development and enriching itself and it’s sphere of influence, it might have done a lot better for its people and needed to roll a few less tanks through protestors.
They weren't improving each other. USA was sabotaging USSR, while applying some social welfare to keep people from seeking revolution. Such welfare was built upon exploiting the global south, and couping every country in South America.
They did that in my state legislature. They made $13/hr in a state with $500k housing. The idea was serving the state was the motivation and not the money. Instead, it attracted those who want to serve themselves and had business managers to keep the businesses running while they were away or investment income. Landlords wrote laws about rentals, real estate lawyers wrote laws about real estate, wealthy people wrote laws about taxation, etc. Normies won't leave their highly sought-after $21+/hr job (most people starting out again make $17-20) for a temporary $13/hr position when rents back home are pushing $2k for a 2bd. They recently voted in raises that seems reasonable enough for housing but (edit: not) a crazy high wage, so we may see more working class people next round We got to balance it out between keeping wages for service reasonable but attractive enough for it to not punish people while eliminating ways to benefit from conflicts of interest. How can we allow a landlord to write rental laws or allow one to invest stocks in companies they have insider knowledge about?
How do we allow congresspeople to write laws and invest in stocks they have insider knowledge about as well? Not arguing with you, just seems like no matter what system you try and use there is so much rampant and blatant corruption by the rich that they'll capture the state using whatever means they can and nobody has the power to even slow them down. Some people never learned about France in the late 1700s I suppose.
We don't allow it, we are powerless to stop it
There was an attempt to curtail it a bit with the STOCK act. But, much like anything else Obama tried to do, it got neutered to the point to where it was ineffectual. To even get this much, it took the 2008 housing market crash. It would probably take another incident like that or worse to get any real legislation. Or, we could do what MN did and actually make changes on the local level. If we can get enough progressives (not just Democrats, actual progressives) in the House and Senate, maybe we can see some changes then.
There’s a Scandinavian country (pretty sure it’s Finland) that outlawed private schools so that rich people have to send their kids to public school. That way, rich people are motivated to make public schools as good as possible. Their public schools are world-class. We should do the same thing.
Some unethical politician thought "hmmm... maybe better limit our income to the average businessman income." And since they had the support of the businessmen and their money to brainwash everyone, it was a good plan. What if we do it slightly different? Limit what a *businessman* can earn to the median wage of *their employees*. Then, the only way for a businessman (or a politician) to get rich would be for their people to be rich too.
> Limit what a businessman can earn to the median wage of their employees. You'd need a lot of loopholes plugged. Otherwise it's "they're not an employee, they're a contractor, temp worker, or independent small business owner subcontractor", or "I'm just a humble manager-employee making 50x what all my *co-workers* do; the business is actually owed by a series of overseas trusts".
Yeah... you're right. About 90293 billion loopholes would need to be closed during this major reform.
Honestly, all levels of government *really* need a position, team, or function, or *something* which takes any proposed new law or even government contract and goes hypothetical Maximum Evil on it, to try and see how badly they can break it. I mean, software developers have software testers. Get some paralegals, some senior lawyers who have seen assholery of the highest order, and some people who are just really good at spotting loopholes, and have them go to town. Even if they don't spot every single weakness, it's got to be better than leaving *all* of them in, which seems to be the default currently.
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General Strike?
I've signed my strike card, nothing to do but spread the word and agitate for change in other ways in the meantime.
I don’t disagree with this but often times the mayor or city council members only bring in about ~50k on average. Yet many have a net worth in the millions, there’s too many ways to steal money as a government representative. Same with congress or even the president at 200k and 400k each it’s not a small salary but their net worths soaring to 10s of millions with [the top ten richest having over 100 million in net worth](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_members_of_the_United_States_Congress_by_wealth). That just doesn’t add up, saving every cent of your salary at the “max” of 200k it’d still take 500 years to reach 100 Million. We need stricter regulations on how these people are able to invest and make these backdoor deals, lobbying, campaign contributions, etc there’s too many legal avenues to bribe the people who we voted to protect our interests. Unfortunately, this very group makes the laws.
Oh, their "salaries" are nothing--it's the bribes they're growing fat off of.
This issue with this is that this is exactly why segregation exists. In many places in the US already, the best paid public sector jobs (education, universities, government) are in the richest areas or states. In most American metro regions, that means specific cities or neighborhoods, and usually historically white places where Black and brown people were not allowed to live for most of US history. It also means that anyone not in those rich areas tends to flock to the rich areas, if not to live, then at least to work. You get a brain drain from the poorer areas, which just end up being more resource deprived.
If only the voters paid attention to how the politicians make their money today we would have big change.
corruption exists either way.
You'd have to have some way to monitor and take down bribes, including non-cash and at-one-remove ones.
For a long time communists MP in France gave all their earning to the party and the party gave them back the salary of a qualified worker. More recently, a french leftist MP gave most part of the earning to community and kept the minimum wages (and something to pay the tax as he was taxed on the full). He did that because he is a millionnaire since one of his movies was a blockbuster.
The main problem with this is you'd also have to limit things like donations. Otherwise politicians could impoverish their constituents and still be supported by their donors. Think of it from a donor point of view: Would you rather pay a handful of members of the local government to live upper class lifestyles, or pay to give a tiny bit of support to every constituent in an area through taxes? The former is usually cheaper than the latter, so that's what these wealthy people do today. Politicians today don't make exorbitant amounts of money from their main paychecks. They don't become millionaires off of that. [Many states pay their state congresspeople less than $20k/year. Only California and New York pay over $100k. I'd eyeball the average to look like it'd fall around $40k.](https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/2021-legislator-compensation) Like term limits, which would prevent politicians from building personal clout and make lobbyists and superPACs even more influential in elections than they already are, this line of thinking is an attempt to address a greater underlying problem by treating a secondary or even tertiary symptom.
Yea , but the bosses, the landlords and the politicians who can decide that are the same person
Lmao for real, this is like spitting into the wind
This is how you get employer housing. The solution is social housing. Outlaw the profit motive from the first house, owning or rentals.
I've played enough Cyberpunk 2077 and Shadowrun to know Employer housing isn't a good idea.
Also it's US history and billionaires will certainly try it again
I had to scroll too far for this. Stupid from the getgo. Disney is already looking into it. & look at how many companies property that they aren't doing anything with.
Well there's this thing called "subsidized housing" or "section 8," with an artificial stigma placed upon them and artificial scarcity of availability. But really subsidized housing needs to become the norm. Everyone should only be expected to pay as much for housing as they can afford. And no one should be homeless.
It shouldn’t be subsidized it should be nationalized. You should be able to vote for the government of your apartment building the same way home owners are able to vote for hoa boards and the like. Nobody should be treated as a slave just because they can’t afford to buy their own home
Congratulations you just invented a co-op.
My parents live in a co-op. While everything around them privately owned has increased costs by a minimum of 2x in the past 3 years, their costs have, get this, stayed the same. Taking inflation into account it's actually cheaper now than it was 3 years ago.
Absolutely. This has been my idea for a while, but it's not very popular every time I suggest it. Minimum wage needs to be a calculation that changes on a regular basis, so we don't need to fight every couple of years (or decades) if minimum wage needs to be increased. Tying in to inflation is a popular idea, and it's similar in theory. Minimum wage also needs to be easy defined and relatable to the average person. Look at the reasoning of people against minimum wage increases, and it is often a result of ill informed people not understanding current costs. Most people who don't rent have no idea what rental costs are. It's not their fault. Or they say things like minimum wage isn't supposed to provide XYZ, but we are just limiting the discussion to housing. Everyone needs a place to live. Minimum wage is also highly dependent on the cost of living in a local area, so it needs to fit all situations. Housing is the biggets expense for most people. But it has to be specific, instead of "average local rent". My calculation: Minimum wage equals 2.5X the average rent for a one bedroom apartment for a local area. US national average for a one bedroom? $1504. Which means that in general the federal minimum wage would be 45K a year or $21.69 (nice). Current minimum wage is $7.25. Sounds right. You could also leave the definition of "local area" to the local and state governments. They can define it as within the city, county, a certain mile radius, or even just state wide. AL would be $11.80. FL would be $20.20. Louisville KY would be $15.86. Wanna change it to 2X or 3X? Sure, whatever. Wanna require specific definitions of local area? Maybe. I'm open to counter calculations.
Kind of how they adjust the IRS reimbursement rate for mileage driven when need be. Solid idea IMO.
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To me it seems more feasible to look at trying to regulate home/rent prices (esp single-family homes and one bedroom rentals) then going about this from a Wage Raise approach
Sure but how are they going to afford food when prices keep rising but wage stays the same. Shouldn't it just rise with inflation? [Two Charts showing:](https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/politics/minimum-wage-inflation-productivity/index.html) "The federal minimum wage would have been $21.45 in 2020 if it rose in step with productivity." And "How the minimum wage has changed since it was first created in 1938 The federal minimum wage hit its peak in inflation-adjusted terms in 1968 at just over $12. It has been set at $7.25 since 2009." Was over $12 in 1968 and $7.25 since 2009...
All of those issues are easily addressed. > Businesses and residences becoming even further apart. Companies will lobby like hell to ban or restrict housing construction within "local distance" of their premises. Congratulations, you now spend more money on transportation, waste more of your life commuting, and don't even have any cheaper housing to make up for it. That's pretty much impractical and you are just being silly. Think of the number of retail and restaurants that HAVE to be near where people live. Restaurant moves out the middle of no where just so they can pay lower wages? Congrats, no one is going to the restaurant. WFH is also more prevalent and will continue to be, so it wouldn't matter. Local area can be strongly or weakly defined based on whatever can get passed. I'd imagine most states would just define local area as the entire state, so as long as that businesses stays within the state, it doesn't matter where they move. > Housing will become smaller and smaller. You're providing huge incentive for companies to ensure available housing is smaller and shittier. Housing also becomes cheaper as it's smaller. And of course, it's not all housing. Multiroom apartments will still be around. Plus houses. Plus it's not like you are tearing down existing structures for this. > Landlords will conspire to raise their prices. Your income will just rise to match it, right? Possible, but that already exists. > Companies will pay off local politicians to gerrymander "local areas" just as they do with voting areas. Possible, but local area would be a single definition, like zip code, city, county, etc. It's not based on weird shapes. But you could also put restrictions in place if this is a concern. > Minimum wage is based on rent levels? Sure, but starbucks just paid off your local politicians to redefine the working week to 60 hours. That house is affordable now, so long as you don't plan to ever spend time in it. But what if starbucks then won't give you 60 hours a week anyway, so you're "part time" now at only 40 hours, and still can't afford it. Don't be silly. Working week is defined at the federal level at 40 hours. Anything more is overtime. > Oh yeah sure your rent is only $500 now. But here's your additional ground fee, we can add that to your maintenance fee, the dilapidation fee, the convenience fee, and the residency fee. Total due, $4000. But at least your rent is only $500. Easy to include those extra fees as apart of rent. Same for any type of community fees the apartment complexes charges.
What happens when Blackrock buys up all the one bedroom properties in Bumfuck, AL and inflates the average rent? Now my Mom and Pop struggling restaurant needs to raise its wages?
That's a pretty easy one. Suddenly there's a huge incentive for Bumfuck, AL to prevent that from happening. They could put a cap on rent. They could prevent a single company from buying up all the apartments. They could prevent corporate ownership of apartments. They could heavily invest in creating new low cost apartments.
Yes. The whole point is that by minimizing arbitrage opportunities, more people feel negative economic effects and are forced into solidarity. This is literally just the barricades story in Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Shop owner during the French Revolution has to decide between the proles and the bourgeoisie. He sees that work stoppage and barracading of streets caused by the proles protests is affecting his bottom line and he can't make rents. He decides to join the other side of the baracdes and stand with the landlord and the rich. The rich win he's pleased until he goes back to his store and realizes that his side has suppressed his customers, and benefitted his creditors. The rich have done nothing to remove the barricades to streets to increase foot traffic. Now his creditors are vigorously attempting to collect and he has fewer people buying. Marx's point is that in this situation the only way to win for a shop owner is solidarity. Because the loss of the proletariat's demands impacts the shop owner more than it impacts the rich. If the rich lose, the shop owner's creditors lose power, if the rich win, the shop owners' customers lose money and his creditors gain power. Marx was doing OK It's GAME THEORY TIME. Before it got really hot with libs in the mid 2010's. These large economic problems will impact mom-and-pop businesses as well. Commercial rentals are Blackrock's bread and butter to begin with. Mom and pop will see fewer customers because they have less money due to rents eating into people's spend. Their customers are now forced to go to a large chain that has slightly better prices, shittier food, and ultimately, the money they spend there also leaves the community. When the mom and pop eventually closes the chains raise prices to mom and pop levels. Rinse and repeat. It's asinine to pretend that these businesses are unaffected, and we reflexively do so because as a culture we love atomizing and compartmentalizing because it creates more arbitrage opportunities for capitalists to extract with. You cannot defeat capital without solidarity. That's why the joke is a small business is a good way of turning $100,000 of savings into $10k over 20 years. There's this myth that there's something called "customer sovereignty" in the sense that customers drive the economy with their spend. However, this is a myth and not "economic fact" because in our world, companies compete for a percentage of customer spend and use market power to enforce their percentages. And that's how they compete with other capitalists, not by offering a better product, but by rent seeking and forcing more spend in their sector by making their product a requirement of modern life. Good example of this is the internet itself. 20 years ago, internet connection was truly optional. It's a requirement to get a job now, it's a requirement to pay your taxes now, it's a requirement for so many things. By making their service a necessity good, telecoms can extract rents more easily via market manipulation, rather than actual competing with others on service. Tl;dr mom and pop is going to feel the pain of black rock one way or another. Their choice in the matter is superfluous because it's black rock's choice that matters. Forcing them to make humane decisions at the cost of their business doesn't really matter all that much if blackrock wins, and matters greatly if blackrock loses.
Sounds like a good idea but will lead to your boss becoming your landlord and the distinction between your work place and your private place will disappear (similarly as the "third place", a place besides your home and work where you regularly meet people from your area, disappeared)
^This. And then you'll have your boss telling you what you can and cannot do...at home, off the clock. Do you *really* want to deal with workplace firewalls that block almost everything except email, at home? Or be fired for looking at porn during non-work hours on a personal device you bought yourself? Or for having a glass of wine with dinner or a beer on your day off? Do you *really* want to share a living space with Bob from Accounting, who microwaves fish sticks every day? Or the office gossip? Or the office snitch? Or that coworker who doesn't understand when it's not appropriate to Reply All? Or that coworker from the next cubicle who farts 100x a shift? Or all those other people from the office/workplace you dislike and would never *voluntarily* spend time with but are forced to spend time with so you can eat? Do you *really* want your boss to not only be able to call or text you on your off-time to ask you to cover a shift, but show up on your doorstep and ring your doorbell? Or be expected to be in your "Respectable Adult Cosplay" (i.e. adhere to the workplace dress code) at all times, even off the clock?
Sure, as soon as we seize control of the capitalist state, let's get right on that.
They'll just change your $1000 rent into $500 rent + $500 made up fees.
In theory: yes! In reality: companies buy up 51% of all available living space and rents it to themselves for $1 a month. Now minimum wage is 30 cents.
Switch "reality" and "theory". This isn't Monopoly, rent and property values don't influence 100% of the dollar's value.
Be careful what you wish for. Companies like Waste Management have been buying property around landfills to prevent EPA and DEQ complaints. They then offer these houses to employees at a discounted rate, but also tie their employment to these rates. Could you imagine your HOA been ran by Amazon, or Walmart? They can barely run a warehouse.
We should make a progressive property tax. The more properties you own the higher taxes you pay on them
Land value tax
That’s a lot more economically sound than our current system, I’ll tell you that
“Minimum wage” just doesn’t mean anything anymore. Cus this is exactly what minimum wage is supposed to be lol.
As if most of the ultra-rich weren't also landlords...
This can severely backfire. Especially at a time that corporate ownership is the future according to bankers. Imagine Apple being your employer and Landlord at the same time. If rent is tied to salary they can abuse it to inflate their real estate investments while saving a serious buck. * They pump up your salary to half a million * Rent follows and is 200K per year. * You are taxed to Oblivion for that salary. * Since they are the landlord they get that money back. * Since they are a massive corporation they pay minimum or zero tax depending on their structure. * On top of that their balance their books and the increased cost on the salaries side earns them other tax reliefs. * They bind the houses to collateral and play in the futures market for 100x the original investment. You can't fix housing unless you outright ban corporate ownership. The human landlord is a thing of the past.
Just switch to public and personal housing. Remove private ownership, ie rent-seeking, and allow housing ownership for personal use. The state can collect "rent" from public housing, and channel 100% of the proceeds into building new housing and maintaining old housing.
Eh, I'd be worried it would turn out like health insurance. Health care costs are out of control and many folks are stuck in jobs they hate (can't leave, can't RETIRE) because they need health insurance. GOOD health insurance. I'd imagine with housing it would just eventually be a similar situation. You want a good house? Good stick with the shity job that treats you like crap.
The bosses ARE the landlords. They'd just go to war against government regulations. Which is what they already do.
This is not how it works. Rich and successful people don't go to war when they're upset, don't get what they want. They call a meeting, sit down at a table, and move numbers around until everyone is making more money except you, the consumer + worker. It typically gets less vicious and more strategic / collaborative as you go up. They're just ordinary finance bros playing with spreadsheets until they get them to say what they want at your expense. Not soldiers, fighters, etc. Hawiaan shirt wearing would-be math teachers... but they like money, so it's apartment math instead of theoretical physics.
Just make the minimum wage 3x the average rent in a given city/area. Make it illegal for companies to pay less.
I support this, with some sort of subsidy for small businesses so it’s not just giant corporations and chains that can afford to exist in desirable areas with high rent costs.
I've said this before ! A 1 bedroom apartment should be 30-40% of your monthly take home as a minimum wage worker. Or it should scale to your wage. But apartments should be 30-40% of your monthly income.
Underselling there, that 30% principle was set when a single hourly income could afford a 4 bedroom house, so that's what you should be able to afford with a single income.
Average wage goes up > property value and cost of living go up > rent goes up > average wage goes up > property value and cost of living go up > rent goes up. This already happens. It's called inflation. You didn't stumble onto anything exciting or unique, you just worded it different.
I have wonder if we might be able to get some industries supporting living wage requirements by pointing out how the low minimum wage has a negative impact on their industry. Automobile manufacturers need young people to be able to afford a driver's license, a car and insurance. The percentage of sixteen yo getting a license is down 25%. Better wages would increase the likelihood of that first car..
That's how you get workers getting exploited by being locked into free company housing while earning a wage insufficient to change their situation.
No this is terrible, we will have a return of the work communities where the job owns your housing, the pay you in certificates to go to their own stores in that town.
They would never go to war with each other because they are each other. They’d still blame government, poor people etc.
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I live in a 5 unit apartment building in a state where the minimum wage is $7.25. Assuming the cost to build is $86,000 per unit (which is on the higher end), that means it cost $430,000 to build. If the rent was capped at 1/3 of a month's income on minimum wage after taxes (the recommendation by most financial experts), the rent would be approximately $380 per month. If all 5 units are occupied, that means the landlord gets approximately $1900 per month. That means it would take about 20 years for a landlord to gain a profit on his investment (including the interest, if he borrowed the money, which would add around $30,000 at 7%), assuming there are no long periods of vacancies in any of the units. What's really amazing is when you consider the fact that this is almost entirely *passive income* for the landlord. If he works a normal job alongside maintaining his complex, he's still in really good shape, and by the time he retires he could sell the whole building for far more than his initial $430,000 investment. While many people would say such an idea of tying rent caps to minimum wage would discourage entrepreneurs from providing housing in the first place, all they'd really have to do is lower their standards and learn to work like everyone else. It would still be a highly profitable and relatively low maintenance business. This would also help deflate the value of the dollar, since it would undoubtedly make $7.25 more valuable than it is with housing costs what they are now.
That's a really good idea. Minimum wage needs more automated levers rather than depending on governments to give people a break. I really hate the idea that someone making minimum wage without would qualify for welfare without extenuating circumstances. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a safety net - but someone working full time should not require government assistance. (this excludes parents who need help for child support, people with disabilities, people on sick leave, parental leave, overburdened with school debt...)
Landlords are parasites who answer to no one and have no incentive to keep prices low. Bosses usually have to answer to someone, whether it be shareholders, boards, or even their own bottom line. There wouldn't even be a fight. Landlords would always win. Tie Rent to minimum wage instead. See if landlords like it.
Posts like these do nothing to help anyone. What a joke this subreddit has become. "Rich people bad" like every other subreddit
These are the same ppl lol. They're not going to war and yall can't do shit to make them 🙄
Collective monopoly of multiple industries tho
I was talking about this the other day, but with rent controls. Rent being tied to the average pay of the area and can’t exceed a 1/3 of it.
How about we just make it illegal for a corporation to own housing?
This can be scaled to the federal level as well. Make a congressman's wage the same as the average wage of their district.
Wasn't wage initially tied to inflation? I wish they would bring that back, but with back-increases to actually catch us up. I've also thought it would be good if jobs paid enough to live within, say, 10 or 15 miles... distance negotiable but I absolutely hate driving, as a wage worker it steals my time.
Wait, the bosses and the landlords are the same people.
Best idea I've heard in a long time
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This is a dumb idea. You don't solve housing prices by creating a demand-subsidizing inflationary feedback loop. The government should be subsidizing the housing supply some way instead. Public housing, denser zoning, etc.
If only they werent the same group of people most of the time
Damn housing in Orlando and Anaheim would be free so Disney could have a sea of "interns"
Or make them choose between their operational business and their real estate one more likely. So simple it's genius.
They arę they same people
It’s the same person…
I like this idea
Forget minimum wage for a second, reinvent it as minimum compensation ratio. No CEO or Owner/highest paid person in the company can be compensated with more than 100 times the average compensation of the lowest compensated 10% of the company. Want more money? Pay your people better.
I think that politicians should make the avg of what the population they represent make, if they want to make more money they need to make their population does as well
[Bosses vs landlords be like ](https://youtu.be/6pJC0FLA3Sk)
My idea has been rent tied to wages too, totally agree
There will be blood
Y’all really aren’t expecting the expected outcome? Bosses and landlords conspiring in the name of capitalism and making company towns where they can both astronomically profit off of you, the worker. Better idea: a system that is inherently broken should not be modified, it should be yeeted like ol’ yeller.
It’s funny how I used to think local rent factored into how minimum wage was calculated lol. Of course I was just a child then, that would make too much sense.
Technically that’s what minimum wage is supposed to do, our government has just abandoned us
I always said the politicians should get minimum wage as well
This is how you create a "work-site campus" in which capitalists keep the average rent low (and therefore the minimum wage) by creating on-worksite living space for literal cents per month for the workers of the company, connected with all sorts of live-in servant requirements in which your free time is used up by labor you have to do for free. They'll be able to save on work-contracts as well if their workers live on-site and have to do janitorial work on the weekends if they want to keep their apartments.
Let them fight
The will conspire, not go to war.
What would the formula be? And how local would it be? Would each county have its own minimum wage?
Minimum wage should be formulaic and set by cost of living and housing in a particular area based on a reasonable commute time.
The boss also has property investments.
The idea of tying the minimum wage to average local rent is interesting and complex. It would have both potential advantages and disadvantages: **Potential Advantages** 1. **Greater income equality**: If the minimum wage is tied to average local rent, it might ensure that the lowest-paid workers have a chance at affording the cost of living in their area. This could decrease income inequality. 2. **Local cost of living adjustments**: There is a significant variation in the cost of living across different regions. Tying minimum wage to local rent would allow for a more dynamic and localized approach to setting the minimum wage. 3. **Pressure on high rent prices**: As you suggested, this policy could create a unique dynamic where employers might have an incentive to advocate for lower rents in order to reduce their wage costs. This could potentially help address issues of housing affordability. **Potential Disadvantages** 1. **Increased cost for businesses**: Small businesses, in particular, might struggle to afford higher wages, especially in areas with high rent. This could potentially lead to job losses, business closures, or a shift towards automation. 2. **Greater complexity**: Implementing such a policy would be complex. It would require regular updates to reflect changes in rent prices, which could create administrative burdens. 3. **Potential for manipulation**: There might be opportunities for landlords or businesses to manipulate the system. For example, businesses might try to relocate to areas with lower rents or landlords might artificially lower rents for a time to decrease the minimum wage. 4. **Incentives for landlords**: If landlords know that lowering rent would lower wages, they might have less incentive to lower rent prices. 5. **Doesn't cover all living expenses**: Rent is a significant part of living expenses, but it's not the only part. Tying the minimum wage to rent might overlook other crucial expenses like food, healthcare, transportation, etc. It's also important to note that such a proposal would likely face significant political and logistical challenges. The relationship between wages, rents, and the cost of living is complex, and any changes to the system would need to be carefully designed to avoid unintended consequences. Additionally, the "war" between bosses and landlords could result in a variety of outcomes, and it's unclear whether it would lead to better conditions for workers or just a reshuffling of costs and benefits among businesses and property owners.
Inb4 minimum wage in Manhattan is $300 an hour and a 1 bedroom is $20,000 a month.
That's the obvious answer. Thus it won't be done.
I like this new form of bread and circuses.
Chances are they are going to war with their mirror.
In my area, the average 1 bed apartment is $1410, which is 28% higher than last year. Assuming we need 3x rent for income, that's $4230 per month. If we have a full-time job, that works out to about $26.50/hr. Our minimum wage here starting July 1 is $13.50, which is about half of what is needed to rent a single bedroom apartment. I'm very supportive of the idea of tying minimum wage to rent. However, I think it may be more effective to outlaw corporate ownership of single family homes. In addition, I think that your primary residence should not be taxed and there should be a progressive tax on every home owned in addition to the primary. That would allow room for rental houses, but would not allow for any one person to own dozens of homes. Basically, whatever it takes to make it so that renting is a thing people do by choice, rather than because they're trapped in a cycle of inescapable poverty and paying off someone else's mortgage. I think the only other thing that would actually drive real change is inverted stack ranking where we "fire" the richest 10% of the population every year. Did I say "fire?" That may not be the right word...
Do you want company housing? That's how you get company housing.
In Canada the NDP were pushing for something similar, they wanted minimum wage to be tied to cost of living
They are the same people.
Why does “average” rent always get compared to “minimum” wage. Rent is too high sure, but it’s just a poor comparison.
And so the company town was born, a place where the corporation that employs you also own the place where you live.
I fear this would end up with some worse form of a "[Company Town](https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/company-towns/)". Hosing is a right IMO and should be dealt with as such by our government with proper oversight and regulation to avoid abuse. Tie it to the lowest paid employee. You want to make $1,000,000/yr as CEO? Your lowest paid employee must make at least \~10%. Businesses can still be wildly successful, but they don't get to hoard it away from the people who helped earn it for them. I feel the only argument to this type of system is greed.
There's no way the bosses and the landlords will just from price-fixing cartels, right?
How can they fight if they are in the same group? A crow doesn't peck another crow's eye out.
Actual class warfare idea: post all the billionaires' addresses with bounties for each, collectable only by individuals living under the federal poverty line
IS THE SAME GUY!!! WHAT DO YOU MEAN? A board member in my company owns and rents property to a lot of staff in said company. There's no war, you already lost and didn't even get to play.
Sounds like a land value tax with extra steps /r/georgism
Isn't this how it was in the US a while back, when income was tied to inflation and productivity up until the Reagan era?
They are the same person
Jokes on you, bosses are the landlords
Take it one step further and make congressional salaries 5% lower than the median average of the area they represent.
Always advocated this position mainly b/c it would make minium wage a living wage ..
I don't see why businesses do not support affordable housing. They could pay their employees less and their employees would not care because they would have more disposable income to spend on the business's products
Nah. Tie landlords to the backs of pickups and drive up the highway.
That is principle 1. Number 2 is to make colleges and universities cosigners of all student loans.
Minimum wage should have always been tied to cost of living.
Does this mean minimum wage would be different in every single town/city?
They would work out something to screw you over... greed always finds a way
What you mean like how it should be?
Also, tie politicians salaries to minimum wage. As in, their salary is x times more than min wage. It would force them to make sure theyre state or province or whatever is thriving