Rivalarrival

This is the third time I have pointed out that "land contracts" can fulfill the purposes you are describing.

In every situation you mentioned, a "land contract" would have performed exactly the same function is "renting".

I understand you:

1. Rented when you went to university
2. Rented when you took a job
3. Rented when you took another job
4. Rented when you took a third job
5. Rented when you took a contract in another city.

The only difference you would have experienced between "renting" and "land contract" is that the top of each of those five agreements would have said "Land Contract" instead of "Rental Agreement".

Yes, a Land Contract has additional terms and conditions that only apply if you stay more than three years. You are not obligated to stay those three years. You can unilaterally end the contract before those three years.

You should be able to understand that "Renting" is more convenient for the landlord. Not the occupant. The people who knowingly want "rental agreements" are landlords not tenants. Landlords want to be able to hike rental payments every year; land contracts have the monthly payment fixed from day one. A "rent freeze" is a fundamental component built directly into a land contract.

There is nothing stopping them buying a property but there is a commitment and obligation they don't want to get into.

"Land Contracts" do not have the additional commitments and obligations you are describing. Those are components of traditional purchase agreements. They are not components of Land Contracts.

Again: You can walk away, free and clear, in the first three years. You have the option of staying longer, in which case your payments begin to generate equity in the property. But you are not obligated to say, and you can also renegotiate the contract after three years if you really don't want that equity.

(Practically speaking, you would be able to walk away entirely after those three years as well. If you did, your landlord would have to cut you a check to buy out your acquired equity before he could take on another tenant)

So rent is not going away any time soon.

No. "Short Term Housing Needs" are not going away soon. I am not suggesting they should. The need for temporary housing is perfectly reasonable, and I am preserving the means of filling that need, even as I kill "renting".

Why am I so concerned about land contracts? I'm not. I don't actually give a fuck about land contracts at all. What I want is for corporate landlords to be assessed property taxes that are so high that they are forced out of the market. The best way I know how to do that is to run up everyone's property taxes, and exempt owner-occupants from paying them. That tax hike alone is all we really need. To get that tax hike, I have to explain to you that I won't be cutting off the supply of short-term housing.

"Land Contracts" are what landlords are going to use to adapt to that tax hike. A landlord who tries to "rent" is going to have to pay a massive property tax bill. That same landlord can issue a "land contract" instead of a rental agreement. The monthly payment for that land contract will be lower, but because the property tax hike is exempted for the "owner occupant", they will actually earn more than they would renting.

Tenants will start earning equity instead of paying everything to a landlord. There will be a "rent" freeze, simply because that is an inherent component of land contracts. Corporate landlords lose their ability to hike rent year after year. Short-term housing is still available. Wins across the board.

Rent needs to die in a goddamn fire.

You can't blame the USPS for junk mail. They deliver, as fast as they can, and that's it.

They also establish postage rates. Those rates are specifically designed to maximize revenue from junk mail. So, yes, I can actually place a large part of the blame for junk mail directly on the postal service. They need the revenue from that junk mail to stay solvent. Without that junkmail, they would bankrupt themselves.

Which means their primary business is trash distribution. If uBlock functioned in the real world, the first thing it would block would be highway billboards, followed immediately by the USPS in its entirety.

One thing that should be brought back to the post, and my president, Elizabeth Warren, agrees, is payday check loans.

I fully agree with that. Basic banking services should be a core function of the post office.

Choosing the right level of income is the key for UBI to work, i

Democracy is the idea that the political authority of the people is conveyed to the government, who utilizes that investment to provide services to taxpayers. The key to making UBI to work is not the specific level of income it provides. The key is convincing the general public that it is a return on their investment.

Once we have collectively adopted the idea that we are shareholders, and individually owed for the political authority we provide, establishing an appropriate dividend will happen through routine politics.

Renting is an option and convenience for a lot of people, that's why it exists

Those people are called "landlords".

Some people don't want to be tied to a mortgage and might have reasons they only need a place for 6 or 12 months - temporary employment, contracting, studying or whatever.

I think I failed to convey the fact that land contracts provide that exact function. The occupant can unilaterally cancel the contract in the first three years, walking away free and clear. Just like ending a rental agreement. I'm not interfering with short-term housing or tying people to homes they don't want. I'm protecting short term tenants from exploitation, even if they decide to make their temporary plans into a permanent home.

Anyway renting can work as a model. Germany

I don't know about Germany, but corporate entities are rapidly buying up residential properties in the US. Many are using the same third-party algorithm to establish their rent prices. No amount of government regulation of their business model can effectively suppress the effects of such widespread collusion. They are actively working around rent controls and other tenancy protections.

The solution is to make traditional renting unfeasible for the landlord. Replace it with a system where investors are effectively forced to convey ownership interest if they want to profit from providing housing.

"Renting" will not be feasible for corporate investors once we establish an owner-occupancy exemption to residential property taxes. When we establish that exemption, we are free to peg the property tax rate to the owner-occupancy rate. Any year the rate is below 80%, the effective property tax rate for investors increases by 20%. It doesn't start dropping again until the owner occupancy rate exceeds 90%. Corporate landlords will be forced to sell outright, or get their tenants under a land contract instead of a rental agreement. Vacant properties will incur the full wrath of the tax man.

Epstein, who killed himself in jail

Uh huh.

Land contracts fulfill the role of short term housing (6-36 months) at least as well as renting, with additional benefits if short term extends to long term. In the short term, there is no significant difference in the two, with the exception of the Owner-Occupant Tax Exemption I have been proposing. That exemption ensures that land contracts will be cheaper, yet more lucrative than renting.

Rent is inherently exploitative. No amount of government oversight can overcome the intrinsic problems with renting. The entire concept needs to be actively suppressed. Government oversight can't fix the inherently exploitive problems with rent. That's just trying to polish a turd.

What we need is an economic climate that favors owner occupancy and strongly discourages commercial use of residential property. With that environment, landlords will be fighting tooth and nail to convert their tenants into buyers.

I don't agree with freezing rent.

The entire concept of rent needs to die in a goddamn fire. Legislation needs to kill the entire idea, not further legitimize it.

We need massive, punitive increases in residential property taxes, with commensurate owner-occupant exemptions: You will not see a tax increase on the property you live in, but any investment property you own is going to see you saddled with a huge tax bill. This might come as a shock, but Corporate landlords don't occupy their properties. They are not able to claim the owner occupant credit.

But, if you own a second property and lease it to me, we can convert our arrangement from a rental to a "land contract". I, the occupant, become the legal owner. I continue to make payments. You don't get to increase those payments over time; they are fixed for the duration of the agreement. If I leave in the first three years, you retain 100% equity in the property. If I stay beyond three years, our agreement converts to a mortgage, and I start gaining equity.

Basically, the only properties that will still be able to be feasibly rented are the remaining units in duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, where the landlord lives in one of the units.

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

It is a tax funded service.

It is not. Nor should it be. I'll get back to this is a second.

Capital One wants to mail you a credit offer and they spend the money to send it, I'm pretty certain that the post office is legally obligated to deliver it.

They are, indeed. The problem is not that Capital One wants to spend money mailing that offer. The problem is that Capital One is getting a deep discount on postage, to encourage them to send that offer physically, by mail, instead of through a more appropriate channel. The postal service needs Capital One to do that, because they need the postage revenue to justify the cost of sending someone to every door, every day.

Going back to your last point about taxpayer funding: should Capital One's choice to send you an offer be subsidized by the taxpayer? Should they pay less for a stamp because the federal government will be picking up the tab?

The postal service either needs to be entirely self funded, or access to that service needs to be restricted to "acceptable" senders, which opens an entirely new can of worms.

As you pointed out, the USPS can't simply reject Capital One's mail; they are legally required to deliver it. Any operational subsidies to the USPS are funding Capital One's marketing budget. With the tax-funded model you are talking about, we are paying for Capital One to send that junk mail. That's simply not feasible.

Effectively outlawing paper spam would reduce a lot of the USPS's active income, but it would also massively reduce their workload.

Not really, no. Yes, they are handling fewer pieces of mail, but their workload isn't really based on that. The principal factor affecting their workload is the number of doors they have to visit. (Even if they dont have a delivery, they might have a pickup, so they still have to visit the door and look for the outgoing mail flag.)

Eliminate all the junk mail, and your mail carrier's bag is a little lighter, but she is still taking the same number of steps on her route; he is still racking up the same number of route-miles on his truck's odometer.

The problem I am talking about is with their basic business model, and has nothing to do with how badly the Republicans are managing (bungling) their operation. The problem I am talking about is not at all related to their pension fund.

If the USPS operated on the internet the way it operates in the physical world, they would be immediately added to the blacklists on uBlock Origin and PiHole. That is the problem. They exist primarily to serve the needs of marketers rather than the general public.

The real problem with the postal system is that the telegraph and phone systems were not placed in their purview 100+ years ago. The FCC is now performing the role that the postal service fulfilled at the nation's inception, and the postal service is being squeezed out of relevance. They are no longer the primary route of public communication that they were 250 years ago.

To re-attain the original role for which they were created, the postal service should also be a universal access internet and phone service provider. Which, like universal banking access, is desperately needed in the public space.

The postal service is being forced to use same business model today as at the time of the nation's inception. The only thing it is being allowed to do is convey physical media to the public's door. It has not been allowed to explore natural extensions of that, such as banking and telecoms.

So's your face!

Conflicted here...