• flashgnash@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    I feel like at the point you phrase what you’re going to do as “mass” anything you’re doing something wrong.

    Can’t think of a single sentence that starts with mass that ends well

    • NudistWardrobe@lemmynsfw.com
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      3 months ago

      Mass spectrometry is an analytical tool useful for measuring the mass-to-charge ratio of one or more molecules present in a sample.

      Different definition of mass though.

      • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        Lol fair point. I thought of “mass adoption” since making the comment but that’s it

  • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    “Kill 3 kids and bulldoze the neighboring nature reserve (it won’t give us more chairs, but it’ll feel good)”

    • affiliate@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      its called a nature reserve because its a piece of nature thats reserved to be used as a golf course in the future

  • basmatii@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    “destroy nature and ruins lives” vs “destroy nature, increase stock value, build three luxury chairs that no one is allowed to live in.”

    • Glitterbomb@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Is this more projection from the right? The idea of ‘luxury chairs that no one is allowed to live in’ very comfortably includes golf courses and expensive hotels. I haven’t seen either of these things with Kamalas name plastered on the side. Trump makes this a part of his core identity. Figure it out.

      • basmatii@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        Nice straw man, I was talking about dem nimbys refusing to tear down pointless low density housing, remove sfh zoning, and refuse to introduce regulations preventing mcmansions developers from receiving the funds like the ones being proposed as they always seem to be the ones to actually get federal funding.

        California’s housing crisis is exclusively because of dem plans like Harris’ that refuse to address the elephant of old white nimbys refusing to give up their wastes of space.

  • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Of course there’s the best option which is an non-occupancy tax that goes up exponentially for each additional property you’re sitting on for speculation.

    That right there would be a hard counter to wallstreet hoovering in the housing market.

    • Mog_fanatic@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It’s like you’re not even considering the feelings of the millionaires and billionaires with 72 houses each and I for one just won’t stand for it.

      • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I can’t wait for the “rational” peoples argument against taxing the rich. Will it be something like a slippery slope fallacy? Maybe it will be “it’s unfair to thoses that only just recently got rich.” I’m thinking though they will go with, “it’s not going to make a meaningful difference” then try and sell us trickle down in some new way.

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        I was thinking more non-occupancy just meaning “that you don’t live in yourself”, so that would mean filling your rentals with tenants doesn’t save you from the tax.

        • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
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          3 months ago

          Ah, then we are on the same page. I thought you were referring to:

          According to the Census Bureau, there were approximately 15.1 million vacant homes nationwide in 2022. These vacant homes, which include rentals, represent 10.5% of the country’s total housing inventory. -source

          which is just another fucking gut punch.

      • Lyrl@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        If a landlord who actually takes their job as servant to their tenants seriously gets some efficiency of scale - say enough units to justify a full time maintenance person who is available on call to support tenant issues - I don’t want to punish them for that. Surely we can develop metrics to identify predatory landlords that are more accurate than number of properties.

        • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Nah, number of properties is a pretty fucking good metric.

          Being a “bad” landlord isn’t the issue, the issue is taking properties off the housing market for rent collection, and driving up prices for everyone else in the process.

          There are more empty units in this country than unhoused people to fill them, this housing crisis is one built entirely out of artificial scarcity created by letting speculators buy up supply basically for the purpose of scalping them to poor people who can’t say no to the product.

          It’s the same kind of “market efficiency” that has ballooned medical costs, who can afford to compare costs on a kidney transplant? Nobody. Who can afford to shop around and wait on houses? Unless you’re very lucky in today’s economy, also nobody.

          Housing does not abide the same market rules as designer T-shirts. Necessity goods will inherently have a hostage effect on the customers where you could in theory charge any price and just make the disinfortuned eat shit for it.

  • DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    This meme is extremely naive. For many American voters, the primary residence is their one major investment – and will severely punish any elected official that reduces housing prices. The result is neither party will do much on this issue.

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      I hope that you’re right, because in 20 years that will no longer be true, and maybe we’ll be able to make real progress on housing at that point.

      • Alenalda@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        It’s only going to get worse in the coming years as weather gets more extreme and entire towns and city’s get swallowed up by the ocean.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      My assessed house value being high only max my property tax burden higher.

      I’m not particularly eager to use my residence as a financial instrument, I use it to live in, not just some asset.

      Meanwhile, I’m worried about the next generation of my extended family finding somewhere to live without getting stuck on the rental treadmill. If my house value tanked 60% but now the folks currently struggling to own a house can find them, I’d be ecstatic.

  • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The worst idea is ever giving down payment assistance to property owners. Government subsidizing actual builders, sure, but free money to property owners just increases the price to meet supply and demand and goes right into their pocket. It actually increases home prices. Extremely stupid.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Don’t know that it would be sufficient, but it’s not free money to all property owners, just those that haven’t yet been able to get to home ownership, but have been renting consistently for a couple of years.

      So if in a normal market, a new homebuyer has a budget that’s about $15k less than some speculative asshat looking for an investment rather than a home, then this tips the scales in favor of that would-be new homebuyer.

      There needs to be some sort of tipping the scale in favor of people seeking to own their own primary residence versus those that already have their primary residence and ideally disincentivize those looking to acquire property they have no interest in using themselves.

      • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        When I say free money to the owners, I mean the primary effect on the market is only to increase the price, giving more money to sellers and more equity to owners. Without a significant increase in supply, it won’t help much and giving 25k for single family homes would be counterproductive​ in general in my opinion. You want to fuck speculators and parasitic landlords, you do it by increasing supply. That can include a focused effort on high density and mixed use housing that the 25k doesn’t help with.

    • buzz86us@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’m all for it of they include vacant land… I wouldn’t mind having acreage, and getting one of them unfinished Amazon houses.

      • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Nah, using tax dollars to increase property values in a housing crisis is counterproductive as fuck. It increases rents for everyone else as well. Better off attacking it from the supply side with a massive subsidized housing effort and just tanking the market. But that’s politically toxic.

        • DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Federal housing policy has always been about inflating housing asset values. The Harris “plan” is just more of the same. Anyone who thinks either party actually wants to lower housing prices is delusional.

  • Commiunism@lemmy.wtf
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    3 months ago

    I’m curious how many houses/apartments are unused in the US, acting as a speculative asset and if building more is even necessary.

    • Lyrl@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      If enough more houses are built that prices stop increasing faster than inflation, housing will no longer be valuable as a speculative asset. Building more houses BOTH makes housing immediately available, and changes the market forces in a way that pushes out investors squatting on un-lived-in units.

    • Transient Punk@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Building more is necessary if the available housing is not located where appropriate employment is located. Thus, the gross number of available homes isn’t a good metric to use for determining the actual need for new construction.

  • Farid@startrek.website
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    3 months ago

    As usual, the blue choice is obviously much better than the red choice, but only in comparison to this bat shit crazy red choice. On it’s own, the blue choice is still rather bad.

    I’m starting to think that Republicans just exist to make the bad Democrat options look always better in comparison.

      • Zombie@feddit.uk
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        3 months ago

        Your comment made me think of this spoken piece at the end of Anti-Police Aggro by Oi Polloi.

        “Revolution isn’t a thing that happens overnight. It’s not a thing that - the orgasmic storming of Buckingham Palace and everything’s all right in the morning, we’ve got a revolutionary society. We’ve got to realize that as things get harder - when we have a revolution, when we’re headed towards a revolution things’ll be harder still - and when we’ve obtained our revolution it doesn’t stop - it continues on and on and on and on - It continues on until WE are the moderates. Right? When we are the moderates that’s when we have a revolution. When ordinary people say “Anarchists? Ah, fuck - they’re a load of fuckin liberals - they don’t believe in revolution at all, ah, fuckin hell they’re useless, like, you know” - Yeah, that’s what I wanna see. That’s what I’m fuckin’ fighting for.”

        • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 months ago

          Well said. Yes, this is what self-identified-“leftists” miss out on. Their dismissal of Democrats is based in a child’s fantasy of politics. In the real world, you have to win the election, move everybody up one, win another election, move everybody up one, win another election, etc. In the meantime, republiQans kick everybody back at-least-two either way, and the cycle repeats.

          Magical leftist thinking says we all vote for gay space communism and tomorrow BAM it’s replicators and free energy. Alas. There exists a timeline where that is at least sort-of-possible - but we ain’t in it right now.

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Leftism, at least the version currently prevalent on Lemmy, is literally religious thinking. There’s in-groups and saints and prophets and holy scripture and a Rapture everyone keeps waiting for.

  • Marthirial@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    So the mass deportation would be of lawful alien residents, because undocumented residents cannot buy houses unless it is straight up cash, and even then would have a hard time getting insurance or utilities, you know, without a SSN, credit history or IDs. Unless they use a stolen SSN, which is very difficult and rare.

    • microphone900@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Nope! Everyone knows undocumented immigrants are buying ALL the houses, they’re taking ALL the jobs, and getting ALL the public benefits (except for the benefits welfare queens get), they’re bringing in and doing ALL the drugs, they’re committing ALL the crime, and they’re voting in ALL elections. It’s true, I saw it on the TV. They’re busy, I don’t know how they have the time to do all of that.

      You know, it seems kind of ridiculous when typing it all out like that. Were the TV people lying to me? Can’t be; now excuse me, I’m going to tell my employees to keep working after clocking out and use the savings to buy several blocks of housing and rent them out at high rates. Their poor time management is not my problem.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    3 months ago

    Neither choice is great. One is evil.

    That 25k quickly becomes “oh, everyone had 25k more so we can charge 25k more”.

    Don’t give rich house builders tax breaks, they’re the ones causing the problem by deliberately not building enough. You’re the fucking government. Build houses yourselves. Rent them through social housing programs.

    • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It’s not that they aren’t building enough. It’s that they are building big luxury homes because there is a bigger profit margin than making affordable homes.

    • MrMcGasion@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’ve started to come around on the 25k down payment assistance. It definitely has it’s problems, and there will absolutely be those who gouge because of it. But because it’s specifically down-payment assistance it will still help first time buyers get mortgages on houses they can afford the regular payments on, but don’t have the extra to set aside for a 10% down payment because rent is taking everything they could be setting aside for a down payment. And it’s limited to first time home buyers, with 2 years of on-time rent payments, and says “up to” 25k. Wouldn’t surprise me if it ends up being limited to 10% of the purchase price (which gets you more favorable loan terms).

      • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 months ago

        My wife and I only own our home because her wealthy dad was willing to front about half of the down payment with an interest-free repayment to him alongside the mortgage. With 25k from the government we’d not have needed that, and we got an acre in California. 25k is huge.

        We’ve only ever had trouble with this mortgage once, and it was trouble we could have managed without help had we just tightened our belts for a while (just don’t go to the ER. Even if you have insurance. Even if you’re dying on the floor and an ex first responder demands you to for your safety: die instead. I am not joking, had it not been for familial help we’d be paying it off for the next 5 years and it would eat almost all of the little savings we’ve finally started managing to build up, so one more bump and we’d lose fucking everything), so it looks like all those “well sure you can afford rent that’s 1.5x the cost of the potential mortgage, but how do we know you can afford it on the job you’ve had for 8 years?” Pricks were wrooooooooooong

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        3 months ago

        Yeah, that too.

        The precious “free markets” have had their crack at it, and have shown that they’re not to be trusted to either own or build them. Prices have soared and that’s 100% intentional on their part.

        • Shard@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          It was never a free market because of antiquated zoning laws. At very least free market would have driven more dense residential construction because they would have made more return on their buck. We need to allow and even promote medium rise residential zoning in more home scarcity is an issue.

          Land owners be damned, the needs of the many outweigh the greed of the few.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Most builders are already fully booked for work. The one’s that could work faster generally aren’t the ones you want building your house.

    • HasturInYellow@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The builders have made the 16 million empty homes in this country because they were just selling them to corporations. It’s not that they are not hiding enough, it’s that the rich have engulfed the entire pipe with their gluttonous mouths and there is nothing left for the rest of us.

      When will we finally slay the beasts that are killing us?

    • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      25k is for first time home buyers, not everyone. You can’t have separate prices for first time buyers and the rest of the public, and a seller won’t know how you are financed until after the house is listed anyways.

      This absolutely will help, because if you’d just ask anyone trying to get a home, the down payment is the hardest part to satisfy.

      The only way a house cartel can form like this is for those that own the homes. The builders don’t own the homes, corporations do. Those corporations collude and price fix to create a cartel. Focus on that.

      • ECB@feddit.org
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        3 months ago

        The UK had a similar scheme for first time buyers and it’s often cited by economists as one of the biggest things fueling their housing crisis.

        • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          Its hard to take that at face value. The UK and the US have a lot of anti consumer perspectives.

          Do you have anything that describes the mechanism?

          Its sort of a similar arguement to food stamps raising food prices right?

          In either case its on the groups abusing a rule that are the problem, not the rule. There can be well worded regulations that minimize abuse, and we can also audit things.

          • ECB@feddit.org
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            3 months ago

            Sure, here’s a paper which explores the effects.

            Essentially, housing prices have hugely inflated (in much of the developed world) because demand is much higher than supply. Prices in the real-estate market are generally really reactive to changes in supply or demand because each ‘product’ is unique and limited, as well as being worth a lot of money so there is more pressure to maximize the potential gains.

            This sort of plan increases the resources available to the demand side without increasing the supply side. This drives up prices since there are more potential buyers.

            Anyone who couldn’t buy a house without such a program is being added the the pool of people competing for a limited supply of houses. It won’t increase supply because supply is heavily limited by other factors, most notably zoning.

            It’s unfortunate, because the thought behind such a policy is admirable. It’s trying to make buying a house more fair and more easily achievable for a broad segment of the population that currently is effectively shut out from owning a home.

  • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    thinking that homeless illegal immigrants are the root cause of home shortage where a single corporation or a billionaire buys thousands of flats to rent them to people for exorbitant prices.

    in one way it works because if you kick out many homeless people out of the country, you can say that in one year you cut homelessness by half.

    • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Thats currently already done with jail. The main problem is homeless people don’t pay their jail bills. In my state 15 years ago it was 30$ per day you had to pay to be incarcerated in jail, not prison.

      • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 months ago

        Okay america is sounding more and more like a joke. You have to pay to be in a processing facility? When you have no choice. And you’ll be incarcerated there during trial so before you are proven guilty of anything.

        • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 months ago

          Fun fact! The Constitutional amendment that outlawed slavery also legalized slavery!

          Yeah! And until right now, this very minute, as you’re reading this, some Americans didn’t know that.