Why don't you try being a landlord if it so easy? Not only do you have to capitalize to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars (or get leveraged to that level), between costs and taxes, your profit rate is going to be pretty tepid. It's not easy money, trust me.
>We've been trying these approaches for centuries now, and they always end the same way. There has never been a "free" market which hasn't vastly increased inequality of opportunity across the population as a whole. Why is it so hard for proponents of "free" markets to accept this fact?
Because that's not true. The free market has been the primary and pretty much the only driver of prosperity. And you cannot legislate prosperity. There is no magic combination of minimum wage, rent control and welfare that will increase jobs, income and wealth of the individuals.
> limits to advertising that promotes selfish greed and consumption, regulation of the press to eliminate the deliberate dissemination of obvious fake news, good public healthcare, higher taxation for giant monopolies and their owners, improved regulation to end the financialisation of everything, much improved public infrastructure, stronger unionisation and other forms of collaborative politics, and easier and cheaper access to capital for small business of all kinds.
Every communist nation thought it could 'educate away' human nature and brainwash to population into good communist automatons, and every time they tried it led to a humanitarian crisis. It's seems to be a core property of communist thought that human nature is completely flexible and can be shaped in anyway to make communism actually possible.
It IS easy to be the landlord. You can borrow the money for the property and charge more than the mortgage and then outsource the actual day to day collection of rent and finding tenants. Compare this with your actual job then compare this to people who have to work multiple physical job instead of your sole intellectual one.
>You can borrow the money for the property and charge more than the mortgage and then outsource the actual day to day collection of rent and finding tenants.
TRY IT and see how the math shakes out for you. I bet all those leveraged landlords are really having a ball with this pandemic. Or how about 10 years earlier when the housing market collapsed and debts were called in. Or tenants that destroy their property requiring thousands in repair. Or delinquent tenants that cannot be evicted for months due to municipal policies. Or property that sits empty because cannot find tenants. There is no free lunch and no easy money.
Your perspective is based on ignorance and a comically naive view of real estate.
The economic stress of being a landlord, and the bank potentially repossessing your extra houses you don't even live in, doesn't compare to stress of BEING HOMELESS. Sorry to yell, but there's a difference being forced to live on the street, starving from not having eaten in days, and being stressed about next quarter's financials being off, while inside of an air-conditioned house, and having food delivered.
They say money doesn't buy happiness but personally, I highly recommend being rich over being poor. If, as a rich person, you chose to invest in real estate (risky, as pointed out why) instead of the stock market (also risky, see Q1 2020 volatility), then sure let's discuss ROI for REIT vs SPY over a 15 year period that includes 2008 and 2020. However, let's not pretend being in the highly privileged position of throwing money you have but don't want to spend at a problem (Eg selling shares of stock, in order to cover the cost to restore property after a bad tenant) is remotely the same thing as being too poor to afford food.
There are risks involved with investing money, but the number of hours it takes to make $50,000/year from a $10,000,000 investment, is approximately 0. For those hustling 60 hour weeks to make $43,440/year, that's obscene.
If you were a landlord and couldn't save enough in the 12 years between 2008 and 2020, to weather a few months of not having the rental income, maybe you should have taken fewer trips to the Caribbean, or Europe. For those that are just getting in during 2020, I'm sorry.
>The economic stress of being a landlord, and the bank potentially repossessing your extra houses you don't even live in, doesn't compare to stress of BEING HOMELESS.
That's not true as a universal. Tenants have flexibility of moving to another locations, moving in with friends or family, or making alternate arrangements. On the other hand, foreclosure and repossession would mean the erasure of a family's life savings.
So yes, it does compare, and in many cases it is worse.
By the way, chronic homelessness is not an economic problem. It is equal parts mental illness/drug addiction and polices pushed by activists to prevent providing institutional care to those individuals. Economic homelessness, on the other hand, though it is terrible and happens, it is a transitional state and existing government welfare programs mitigate.
>If you were a landlord and couldn't save enough in the 12 years between 2008 and 2020 ...
This is obscene statement. You have no qualms creating hypothetical fiction in order to extend irrational levels of empathy towards your fictional situations, but you have zero left towards a real group who could be really struggling. And no, landlords are not your Dickensian style villains. They could be working class people who saved their entire lives to purchase another property, or they may be renting out their own house ... and you look at them with disdain. Ugly, through and through.
Foreclosure takes a long time during which you could sell the house and extract any gains in equity made during years of fast growth and use this to support your family and keep your home where your family lives.
In a bad scenario you keep most of your wealth and the home you live in.
Your bad scenario is still literally better than half the nations good scenario.
Why don't you try being a landlord if it so easy? Not only do you have to capitalize to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars (or get leveraged to that level), between costs and taxes, your profit rate is going to be pretty tepid. It's not easy money, trust me.
>We've been trying these approaches for centuries now, and they always end the same way. There has never been a "free" market which hasn't vastly increased inequality of opportunity across the population as a whole. Why is it so hard for proponents of "free" markets to accept this fact?
Because that's not true. The free market has been the primary and pretty much the only driver of prosperity. And you cannot legislate prosperity. There is no magic combination of minimum wage, rent control and welfare that will increase jobs, income and wealth of the individuals.
> limits to advertising that promotes selfish greed and consumption, regulation of the press to eliminate the deliberate dissemination of obvious fake news, good public healthcare, higher taxation for giant monopolies and their owners, improved regulation to end the financialisation of everything, much improved public infrastructure, stronger unionisation and other forms of collaborative politics, and easier and cheaper access to capital for small business of all kinds.
Every communist nation thought it could 'educate away' human nature and brainwash to population into good communist automatons, and every time they tried it led to a humanitarian crisis. It's seems to be a core property of communist thought that human nature is completely flexible and can be shaped in anyway to make communism actually possible.