‘It’s wrong on all possible levels’: Critics slam development group buying $1-billion in single-family houses for rentals, June 14
John Pasalis’ commentary on the “Financialization’ of housing” was important, but it does not address the key issue — that we need to control land costs to make housing more affordable and plentiful.
The obstacle is what the greatest economists from Adam Smith to Keynes call economic rent — windfall profits or unearned income. Four Nobel Prize winners wrote a letter to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warning him about it. John Stuart Mill asked, “If some of us grow rich in our sleep, where do we think this wealth is coming from? It doesn’t materialize out of thin air. It doesn’t come without costing someone, another human being. It comes from the fruits of others’ labours, which they don’t receive.”
A $100,000 serviced house lot should not sell for a million. Smith’s answer is still valid: taxing the windfall would discourage investors from bidding up land prices. Rotman academic Richard Florida says tax land not buildings. A BMO report by Robert Kavcic lists several strategies which could control land costs; one is a speculation tax as used in the 1970s. Another is to include a higher percentage of capital gains on non-primary residences.
Lower tax rates were designed to encourage investment in productive machines, equipment, buildings, and technology, not to make housing more costly.
1. The iconic conservative Milton Friedman Agreed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJIUXV4fzGA
b) and it worked in Milbourne Pennsylvania
2. The logic of why the windfall profits should go back to the community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTxyNQ0ea-k&t=13s
3. A High School teacher’s published explanation
4. An explanation by Rotman academic Richard Florida
5. Bmo report
6. Nobel Prize winners agreed
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Earthsharing Canada" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to earthsharing-ca...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/earthsharing-canada/CA%2BM9nn8e9jjq98KutDVS9L%2BcLyi0pvfBnxBW4BqsRHbzcn1XOw%40mail.gmail.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/earthsharing-canada/CAAoo3GwZ1Gn6bNBdjiy0a3oLqc-pKQ4V-ZHXhYWejPVt13rh2A%40mail.gmail.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/earthsharing-canada/43402664-5BFC-4B63-9135-2C2BF64722C0%40sympatico.ca.