As oligarch fortunes soar: The case for expropriating the billionaires
It is impossible to defend democratic rights or any of the social interests of working people without seizing the unearned wealth of the billionaire parasites.
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The billionaire fortunes pale in comparison to the trillions of dollars of unearned appreciation owned by regular home owners.
It's the unearned part that matters most, at least capital investment has some benefit to the economy. Real estate appreciation adds literally zero value to the economy.
Yes, let's be mad at each other instead of the people creating the extractive markets
By Purchasing up and holding the supply empty, artificially creating the housing crisis by lobbying against affordable housing construction and exploiting the rent economy of our cities. The rich are outcompeting us for resources.
What do regular home owners have to do with it? Most regular home owners only own one home.
I've made a million dollars in appreciation on my home in the last 15 years.
Are you telling me just because I own one home, that I'm not part of the problem?
No, you're not the problem there. The problem in your scenario is the landlords buying up all available real estate and leasing it back. Not you.
That million dollar gain has no actual value to you. You can't get that money out of the house, because you'll need to spend it to acquire new housing.
And in the meantime, your tax payments are going to increase: you're a victim of corporate investment in the housing market, not a perpetrator.
Why do people keep saying that I can't get that money out of the house?
And, to top off your stupid assumptions, you say my tax payments will increase. That's not how property tax is calculated at all. People see "Taxes per 100k" and assume that if your house price goes up, so do the taxes. Instead, municipalities set a total budget, and just divide it by the total value of all the homes in the area to come up with something called the "Mill rate." If the municipal budget doesn't change year to year, and all the house prices go up evenly, the mill rate simply goes down.
Why do people keep saying that I can't get that money out of the house?
I can use the equity as an asset to borrow money at low interest rates compared to unsecured loans.
In which case, you owe more than you borrowed. The net result of your borrowing is handing money to oligarchs. That makes them the problem, not you.
I can sell the property and move to a lower cost of living location, or even just a smaller home if I wanted.
Proportionally, you are not making any gains when you do that. That smaller home's value increased at the same time your own home did.
I can rent part of the property out at a rate commensurate with it's current value.
In which case, you would then be leveraging your wealth to strip others of wealth generated through labor. You would become part of the problem class with this approach.
Your ownership of an appreciating asset is not the problem.
You really don't understand finances at all.
Rich people borrow money at low rates all the time, in order to make larger returns on other investments. If I borrow 500,000 at 4%, and then invest it, I can make a lot of money. For example, If I had borrowed against my property in 2024 and invested it in the S&P 500, I would have made a 22.3% return, minus the 4%, so 18% profit on the value I pulled out of my house. There's obviously risk involved, but this is not an uncommon practice. You can even re-invest it in real estate itself by borrowing the money to buy more properties.
Proportion doesn't matter at all, If I had bought a million dollar house, and sell it for 1.7 million (70% increase) and downsize to a $600k house that went up to $1020k (also 70%) in that same time, I've made 700-420=$280k more than if I had just bought the smaller house to begin with, minus a bit of interest difference (much less than the $280k)
You say that renting it out is the problem, but both of the options above are also generating money by stripping wealth from other people (whoever buys the house, or whoever is buying houses that cause my house to appreciate in value)
Housing appreciation IS the problem, without housing appreciation, housing wouldn't have become unaffordable in the first place and we wouldn't be complaining about the current cost of living issues.
In order for us to have affordable housing, property cannot appreciate faster than wages. Otherwise over time, it will ALWAYS become unaffordable.
In order for us to have affordable housing, property cannot appreciate faster than wages
Finally, you're approaching the actual issue. Appreciating assets are not the problem. Wage stagnation is. The working class is having too large a share of its productivity diverted to the Problem Class.
I mean, wages have been increasing at a fairly reasonable rate related to inflation, the cost of most things have gone down relative to incomes with the big exception being housing.
https://cepr.net/publications/in-the-good-old-days-one-fourth-of-income-went-to-food/ https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/home-price-income-ratio-reaches-record-high-0
Based on that, I'd say you're wrong that it's wage appreciation that's the issue, it's definitely housing costs that are the problem.
Housing appreciation IS the problem, without housing appreciation, housing wouldn't have become unaffordable in the first place and we wouldn't be complaining about the current cost of living issues. In order for us to have affordable housing, property cannot appreciate faster than wages. Otherwise over time, it will ALWAYS become unaffordable.
I don't think you're wrong here, but I need to let this sink in after a nap.
It's a very fundamental concept that almost everyone is missing.
If houses increase faster than wages, the price of them relative to incomes will slowly go up forever making them less and less affordable.
If housing prices go up less than wages (or even go down) then the people owning the houses are losing money each month, but the housing costs will stabilize at a price level that is balanced by how much money people are willing to lose each month just to have a home.
The second option isn't as bad as most people think, it's how cars work right now. You're willing to buy a car and spend money each month because it benefits your life, not because it gives you money back.
How do we achieve prices going up less than wages? There are about a dozen different possible ways for the government to do it. Options include the Government owning all land and just renting/leasing it to people instead of selling it, putting a 100% capital gains tax on the land (not the buildings), or my personal favorite which is a yearly land value tax (not a property or building tax) and using that revenue to pay for a basic income leaving a net zero tax change for a person who uses an appropriate amount of land for a given area.
People see "Taxes per 100k" and assume that if your house price goes up, so do the taxes
Because they do. Not immediately, but they are periodically reassessed, based on prevailing market value.
Instead, municipalities set a total budget,
They set their total budget largely based on what they can collect in taxes.
If the municipal budget doesn't change year to year
That possibility doesn't merit consideration.
You clearly don't understand this, so I'll make it even simpler for you.
Here's the City of Victoria tax rates for the last 7 years https://wowa.ca/taxes/victoria-property-tax
The property tax rate for Victoria was higher in 2018 than it was in 2025
Meanwhile, property values are up about 25-30% in that same time period.
You can even see the rate drop significantly in 2022 when housing prices spiked during COVID, despite the City of Victoria budget not going down.
You're simply wrong that house value appreciation leads to higher property taxes, it's increases in the municipal budget that leads to increases in property taxes.
You're not really even in the same category as the idle rich. Like sure, you can sell your house and get a profit but you have to live somewhere. If you bought again a similar house in the same area you'd break even.
I've got a quarter million dollars in appreciated wealth from my home in five years, but that's only useful to me if I want to take out a HELOC (with shitty ass rates) or move to someplace that sucks a lot worse.
Every other option would require me to become a landlord, in which case I would be part of the problem.
I'm looking to buy a better place and sure my place went up in value, but unless I want to also change locales I'm gonna have to fork over another wad of bills to get one.
It's definitely not as bad as being a new market entrant with no capital and no existing investment, but it certainly isn't the lighting up cigars with hundreds type of wealth you're pretending it is.
Correct. I'm telling you that individuals owning a single home aren't part of the problem.
Individuals voting to keep the value of their home from dropping down to reasonable levels ARE the problem. That's almost all home owners.
Alright, I'm done indulging your stupidity.
No one mentioned regular home owners. Why are you making devisive comments not related to any point that were made?
The billionaire fortunes pale in comparison to the trillions of dollars of unearned appreciation owned by regular home owners.
Yes they did.
You'll notice it wasn't me though, so why am I being asked what somebody I'm actively disagreeing with means by "regular homeowners"?
Bollocks, billionaire propaganda. Less that 3,000 people collectively control more than 90% of the World's wealth. It doesn't pale in comparison to anything. You're just a bootlicker, or contrarian, makes no difference. You're still wrong.
What the actual fuck are you talking about?
Reading comprehension is not your strong suit. Practice more.
What am I wrong about? You think the equity held by private honeowners is worth more than an infinite line of credit from JP Morgan and Chase Bank? You're a moron.
You responded to what they quoted, not why they quoted it. The quoter does not agree with the quote; they presented it as evidence of the original commentor's malfeasance.
Your response is appropriate against the person who made the original comment, not the person who quoted it.
There's that pesky reading comprehension again.
No one but the TLC was supporting corporate ownership of residential property.
WE ARE THE PEOPLE CREATING THE EXTRACTIVE MARKETS
Can you explain how? I fail to see how families owning a single home to live in is more extractive than megacorps and banks leveraging leviathan assets to create an artificial shortage and rent market
Because when you look at the total ownership, individual home owners are making the vast majority of the profit from keeping prices high. Around 65% of homes are owned by the family that lives in them, and the second largest chunk of the market is dedicated rental apartments which need to be owned by corps or they would never get built in the first place and are a needed part of the economy, then a smaller chunk is the landlord who own their home plus one rental.
Corporate ownership of non-dedicated rental buildings (houses, townhouses, etc) is still a very small percentage of the overall market.
Should it be happening at all? Probably not, but at the end of the day most of the profits of housing and land appreciation are being reaped by single home owners.
There was a news article a few days ago about a new development land purchase that just went through in Vancouver, BC. 25ish lots were purchased from individual home owners, for a total of $100 million or about 4 million dollars per lot. That cost gets passed onto the people buying the new condos going in, and the profit is going to individual home owners who probably bought those lots for hundreds of thousands over the last twenty or thirty years.
So it sounds like a rock and a hard place. Homeowners don't want to lose money (and for many doing so would destroy their financial well-being), but they're also incentivized by banks and realtors to ask higher and higher prices. This also affects voting patterns (i.e. "I bought at an astronomical cost and if it loses value I'm fucked"). But it all sounds like the homeowner is caught between market forces that propel prices higher. The relatively recent introduction of blackrock to corporate homeownership has an outsized impact, like your example, where they spend a ridiculous amount for a property they intend to never sell which will also inflate the property value in a region. I'd be curious to see how that difference could be quantified and understood. Honestly it all feels like 2008 again
This is just anecdotal experience, but when I bought my house I was the only bidder who needed a place to live. The seller and the people I bid against were all looking for rental properties. I honestly only got the place through a fluke
You're right that this is a rock and a hard place. Which is why I don't expect it to change anytime soon. What needs to happen is that home ownership rates need to drop, meaning more voters will be renters, then they will have the political clout to push through policies that make things more affordable for them by destroying home values for the now minority of owners.
I give it about 30 years or so before we see that.
I disagree here. Rent is a siphon for your money to go to the wealthy landowners, just like these rising housing prices siphon more of your money to banks.
Unless you're saying that renters have more political leverage? Which I'm also not sure I agree with. It's easier to evict a renter than an owner. I think we need more affordable housing, which depends on building accessible homes, controlling outrageous rent, and addressing zoning laws, but all of this depends on a strong economy for those goods and a surplus of jobs that pay enough. Systemic reform of zoning laws and lobbying is where change is
I do mean renters will have more leverage once home ownership rates drop.
We will never build enough homes to drop housing prices to affordable levels. Prices can't just stop growing, they have to actually drop, and developers will run away from projects the moment prices start declining. We've already seen a slowdown in construction in the last year as home prices stagnated.
You got me. My being in debt to a bank for rest of my life is worse than anything Bill Gates has ever done on Epstein's plane. I'm doubly guilty because I have kids, can you imagine how much unrealized wealth they represent?
Today, on lists of things NOBODY said ITT
Capital investment strips wealth out of the worker/consumer economy (where it is traded for goods and services, and becomes someone's paycheck) and transfers it to the securities market (where it is used to convert worker productivity into more capital)
Capital investment is only beneficial to the economy when the working class holds the capital.
Are you 13 years old?
Two kinds of people on the internet are interested in knowing whether someone is 13-years-old. Are you an FBI agent, or the other kind?
13 years old it is!
So, the other kind. Got it.
That's observablt false. Capitalism has lead to a massive improvement in living conditions for countries that have implemented it
Yes it also has downsides, but pretending it doesn't do anything good is rediculous.
Your observation is only true where the working class controls the capital. Your point would be well taken if we all had significant shares providing passive income. Buy not even the wealthiest of the working class controls a share of capital proportionate to their productive output.
The worst injustices injustices in history have been perpetrated by oligarchs of some shape or another. We are in the middle of such an era now.
And the word is "ridiculous".
You sound like Marx just before he recommends transitioning to socialism as the next logical stage of human development.
I still think that regulated capitalism works best for certain industries, and socialism works best for others.
It doesn't have to be an all or nothing choice.
And how do we know which industries would benefit most from capitalism or socialism? All industries experience diminishing returns of capital investment after a certain point, and that is how Marx made the distinction about which mode of production is "best" for which industry. It isn't inherent that one industry should be socialist and another capitalist, it is relative to how big the industry is and whether there is room for continued expansion.
One of the easiest ways is to determine which industries are most prone to the failures of the market.
Things that are inherently monopolies like roads, or power lines or things that don't allow reasonable consumer information/choice like healthcare, etc.
Marx was a genocidal maniac. You shouldn't read much into his lunacy.
If purity is your jam, Jesus said some radical things about rich people.
Jesus is a myth.
Reading fiction has helped me be a better person, I wish the same for you.
That's dangerously close to Reaganomics friend and we live in a post-capitalism world.
Real estate appreciation adds literally zero value to the economy.
It's actually a huge net negative. The housing crisis is the everything crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxzBcxB7Zc
