"The rent's too high"

[ish mailian]

So rent so you don't need to pay property taxes? Of course the
landlord will pay them with the rents she collects. Taxes and Death
are inescapable. Even Houdini paid. Someone must pay. The question is,
who pays and how much, and what are the taxes collect for and spent
on. On average American pay $3000/year in property taxes. Property
taxes are often based on a complex calculation that takes as its
largest factor the value of the property so in some US states, like
NY, the average is much higher. As with all other taxes, a simple
measures shows that the rich pay most of the taxes. Of course, a
simple measure doesn't tell us much of anything. Most Americans spend
an unsustainable figure on "rent" (the cost of owning a home is made
equivalent to rent).

Real Estate, people in American have been conditioned to believe, is
an investment. It is not unless you rent it or lease it or generate
cash flows from it. The housing markets in the US have provided plenty
of anecdotal evidence for investing in real estate, but owning a home
is not an investment and, although we can all name hundreds of people
who made a fortune owning a home in the US, even after tax incentive,
federal subsidies, appreciation...etc., home ownership doesn't keep
pace with inflation. In other words, it's not an investment. That
said, owning a home is not a rational or economic idea anyway and the
market itself is completely irrational. The Big Short film is
astounding nonsense because you can't really short the  real estate
market. That you can't short, for example, the high end NYC bubble
right now, or the bubble in Miami or San Francisco is one reason why
the real estate market is not a market at all.

On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 8:53 AM, Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't see this mentioned here so I'll insert it.
>
> Property taxes are another form of rent. Even when the property is owned
> 'free and clear' and the landlord or banker is vanquished, property taxes
> come due regularly with an unsentimental threat to pay or face confiscation.
>
> I digress...
>
> I used to spend a lot of time  checking out "homesteader" holdings when I
> was younger. I was always impressed by how thoroughly they were reducing the
> actual cash needed for survival. Most back-to-the-landers (better
> description) were well aware that they had to pull together enough cash each
> year to pay their taxes or they'd lose their holdings. Usually this meant
> some sort of  off-the-land seasonal employment (fruit picking or Christmas
> retail) but often it meant planting fine lumber trees which would  be sold
> off to lumber companies a tree at a time to make ends meet when the land
> holder got too old or too crotchety to bring in the cash. The new plagues of
> boring beetles in the US must be upsetting a lot of best-laid-plans
> coast-to-coast nowadays.(Didja know that when I started non-toxic farming 30
> years ago that there were locust fence posts in some fence lines that had
> been standing for nearly a hundred years?Traditionally, locust was so
> innately rot-proof that it outlasted other hardwood fence posts at a ratio
> of about 4 to 1 (If your posts were oak you'd replace them 4 times before
> you would have had to replace a locust post.) Now, thanks to chaos in the
> natural order (here in WV most likely caused by precipitation of toxic
> discharges of smoke stacks somewhere in the mid-West acidifying the soils
> enough to disrupt the primordial soil foodweb even on 'virgin soils' enough
> that entropy of a system that had maintained itself through millennia
> ensued) In the past dozen years more and more locusts are infected with a
> 'heartwood fungus' that causes the locust to produce a wood that is
> essentially not rot resistant at all and certainly doesn't hold in the soil
> any longer than a good oak post.
>
> -Allan in WV
>
> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 8:18 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> :-)
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:47 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Except for yours which is being raised.
>> >
>> > On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:33 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Every time I see this goddamn discussion thread re-appear in my inbox,
>> >> I get nervous all over again.
>> >>
>> >> Jeez with the RENT crap already!
>> >>
>> >> ;-)
>> >>
>> >> YOPJ
>> >>
>> >> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 6:35 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >> > Or even, thinking of the lifelong power/ domination theme, all about
>> >> > "
>> >> > structured subjugation", a phrase I like learned in an essay on
>> >> > globalization, which is not, or not just, " everything solid melting
>> >> > into
>> >> > air" these days, something Pynchon also knew in his (only)
>> >> > pre-modernity
>> >> > novel, Mason& Dixon.
>> >> >
>> >> > Sent from my iPad
>> >> >
>> >> >> On Jan 7, 2017, at 1:33 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Isn’t the relationship of landlord to renter a rather obvious mirror
>> >> >> of
>> >> >> the more universal Pyncon theme of colonizer and colonized?
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> Can the relationship between renters and landlords be extrapolated
>> >> >>> into a broader existential dynamic? It's worth a thought.
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>>> On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 2:25 PM, Chase Carnot
>> >> >>>> <chase.carnot at gmail.com>
>> >> >>>> wrote:
>> >> >>>> "[...] Crocker Fenway chuckled without mirth. ‘A bit late for
>> >> >>>> that,
>> >> >>>> Mr.
>> >> >>>> Sportello. People like you lose all claim to respect the first
>> >> >>>> time
>> >> >>>> they pay
>> >> >>>> anybody rent.’"
>> >> >>>>
>> >> >>>> When I saw PT Anderson's IV, this line jumped at me for the first
>> >> >>>> time. In
>> >> >>>> the novel, it must have just washed over me. Anyway, I've been
>> >> >>>> thinking
>> >> >>>> about diving back into the novel sometime soon with an eye toward
>> >> >>>> rent as a
>> >> >>>> central theme. I felt vindicated when a reading app I use cropped
>> >> >>>> the
>> >> >>>> IV
>> >> >>>> 'Last Supper' poster... it left the center...
>> >> >>>>
>> >> >>>> https://goo.gl/photos/zaJops8hNHUrju2u6
>> >> >>> -
>> >> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>> >> >>
>> >> >> -
>> >> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> >> > -
>> >> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> >
>> >
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l