Aaaannnnddddd it’s cancelled.

I’ve been in contract with them for 15 years and have a pretty exact idea of how much work they put in and how much they spend, read: far less than their own house, because they care more about keeping themselves comfortable than their literal job of providing housing for others.

Let’s list the total major repairs that our landlord has had to do in 15 years:

• 1 roof replacement
• Fixing a basement wall that crumbled because they ignored it’s obvious water damage for 20 years
• Fixing water damage on the ceiling from the roof they left and didn’t replace long after it was leaking
• Replacing one washing machine.

Over 15 years that is on average 1-2 hours of work a month, and those expenses do not even come close to adding up to the difference between his property taxes and what he charges us for rent.

It’s really not complicated. If landlording was an actual job that paid appropriate hourly wages, than OP’s aunt wouldn’t be able to landlord SEVEN houses while still working a full time job. The fact that she can and makes significant money off those houses means that she is essentially giving herself houses that are paid for by her tenants.

By your logic, what happens when the roof needs to be replaced and it costs $15,000 to do that? The rent goes up by $15,000 that year? That’s ridiculous.

This is why rent is higher than a particular year’s costs – it includes capital costs over a period of time. $15,000 over 15 years is $1,000/year or about $84/mo.

I was including predictable ongoing building maintenance costs spread over time as part of operating costs.

Add that to the cost of landscaping, utilities, turnover costs, plus a wage for the owner. Why is the wage $25/hour? Why not $100/hour? It’s a skilled job.

Lmao, no it’s not. It does not require a degree or any kind of specialized training. And tell me what landlord actually spend 10 hours per month working on an individual property, every month. If you want to nitpick the example we should lower that to probably 1.

This describes any financial transaction in a capitalist system.

No it does not. If I pay you to build a water desalinating machine then suddenly we’ll have an abundance of fresh water. We’ve increased the available supply of drinking water overall.

Similarly building more housing is not as morally bankrupt as buying up existing housing and renting it back out at a profit. If you actually build more housing, you are providing a service; if you only get paid for the hours you work, you only make a reasonable amount of money, and you do a good job, you might actually be net benefit to society as a whole, as you are increasing the available supply of housing for people.

On the other hand when you live in a city where there is a limited supply of housing and you buy that up and rent it back to people at a profit so that you don’t have to work, you are simply draining the system of resources.

There is a reason that economists literally use the term ‘rent-seeking’ to describe behaviour that is personally profitable while draining the efficiency of the system as a whole, and not all types of businesses (and thus investment in them) are considered to be rent-seeking.

With streaming service password crackdowns I keep thinking that virtually bridging your family and friends networks might be the solution, but don’t understand modern networking well enough to know where the flaws might be.

Lots of perfectly nice, pleasant, and moral people do jobs that make the world a worst place because of the circumstances they find themselves in. I would separate out how you treat and judge people, from the problematic systems that they might operate in.

But unless your aunt is only charging them what it costs her to operate the buildings + a reasonable hourly wage for the actual time she spends on the house every year, then yeah it’s immoral.

If she puts in 10 hours a month and charges rent that is equal to her costs (not the property / mortgage costs, but just the ongoing operating and maintenance costs) + 120hrs of her time per year x ~$25/hr (or whatever wage is livable in your area) then it’s fair, but realistically, assuming $6000 of property taxes, that would mean she would be charging ~$800 / month for that town home, and I’m guessing she’s charging a lot more. In effect, that means that she is making renters pay for her mortgages while she’s not working, and at the end of the day she will end up a multimillionaire off of her tenants’ hard work.

On top of the fact that there are undoubtedly renters who would want to buy those townhomes but can’t afford to only because landlords have bought up a limited supply and driven up prices.

At it’s heart, if we continue with the landlord analogy, let’s say that you are renting a house from the OP’s Aunt. She’s paying the building insurance. She’s paying the maintenance, (or in some good old fashioned cases doing it themselves). She’s dealing with the paperwork involved in owning a home. Hell, in some cases you don’t even have to mow your own lawn. So of course she’s charging you rent. It’s not a charity.

Oh wow, she has to do up to 40 whole hours of work a year, she totally deserves a full time salary for that!

When landlords “invest” in the housing market, they are not making the system of providing housing for people better or more efficient. They are buying up a limited supply of properties that exist in desirable areas and then charging people for the right to use them plus a nice profit for themselves. This reduces the supply for a necessary good and drives up prices, making it profitable for landlords, and a massive, efficiency draining, example of rent-seeking for the system as a whole since the landlord’s basically don’t work and instead take a cut of what everyone else makes doing useful work.

If you invest in some predatory companies you might be investing in companies that do that, or might do some other predatory practice, but you can also just be putting money into a business so that it has more money to grow its operations, or invest in some new efficiency that makes them run better, and that then both returns a profit back to both of you and helps improve the system as a whole.

Think about it this way, when you retire, you are going to need money to sustain you for a long time after you stop being able to work, so while you’re working, you need to save that money up. That money can just sit in your bank account doing nothing for anyone, or you can invest it in a business that lets them use those resources now and lets you get your retirement money back 30 years from now when you need it (though in reality that’s spread across hundreds of companies to reduce risk). That’s how investment can be a net benefit to society and make for a better use of resources, characteristics not present with landlords and housing investments.

Meanwhile, North America is applying tariffs to Chinese Electric Vehicles, rather than subsidizing North American EVs, allowing North American car manufacturers to continue to invest in and sell Gas Vehicles.

If we actually cared about competitiveness we would be subsidizing EVs to match China (if not exceed) so that NA companies could invest in new technology and supply chains. Instead by discouraging foreign competition, we’re just defending our auto industry’s right to not innovate and to keep burning fuel.

Lmao, you honestly think any executive heard any message other than ‘i need to spend more on corporate security and body guards’?

The most important traits for doing well at work (in this order):

• clear, effective, and efficient communication
• taking ownership of problems
• having your boss and team members like you on a personal level
• competence at your tasks