I guess getting that initial capital required no work at all either.
Why don't they just get that initial capital if it's so easy.
Unless someone was born with money, the argument against non-corporate landlords (97.5% of single family homes are owned by non-institutional investors) is nonsensical, because those owners had to work for the initial capital.
For us, it's because work required that we temporarily relocate. But we plan to move back in a couple years and we really like our house.
For others it usually has to do with the fact that selling a home costs 10% of the home's value after all fees are accounted for.
Then there is the other set of people who genuinely think the equity in a property is more lucrative than money in the stock market (depending on the market and timing, it could be, but it's ultimately a bet).
But I could ask the same question of every single person bemoaning the existence of landlords. If it's oh so easy to be a landlord, why don't they just become a landlord?
Surely you must ignorant of the economic realities and risk of owning a home and how renting can actually be more lucrative depending on your circumstances.
That was very nice your landlord!
I agree, there are people who try to exploit the system, and those people deserve 100% of the hate. And I appreciate the nuance you bring to the discussion.
There are those that will villify small-time landlords for the gall to try to make an extra cent. Ultimately, small-time landlords provide a very valuable service, with extremely tight margins. Frankly, it is just barely worth it for us to keep that home. Because additional risks that go into it includes a tenant trashing the place, skipping out on rent, the property being vacant between renters, rental listing fees (which amounts to a month's rent typically), and so on.
In return a tenant is able to enjoy a home that would otherwise be unaffordable to them, zero risk, and the flexibility to move without being stuck in one location. If someone is only going to live somewhere for less than 3 years, it will always be better to rent than to buy, and take the money saved renting and invest that into the market. The renter is this case will always make more money in return. Some markets around the country would require someone to live in that home for over 10 years before they break even over the advantage of renting.
You are looking at two different tax systems. The effective US tax rate (the rate you actually pay is much much less). Our household makes $300k per year, and we have a $650k net worth. Our income taxes every year? Less than 7% of that, which is absurdly low. The ultra wealthy are taxed even less than that. The US is propped up by taxes from the middle-class because the more you makes, the easier it becomes to optimize and lower your effective tax rate. We need to tax the rich more.
The actual study claims that top 10% is $41k and accounts for 50% of carbon emissions. No where does it normalize incomes for those from Kenya as the article claims. So these incomes are viewed globally. If you are in the US and make more than $20/hr hours a week, you are top 10%.
$67/hr makes you top 1%.
Others are calling to eat the rich without realizing that the global rich includes low wage earners flipping burgers at McDonald's (I'm in Boston and minimum wage is $15/hr and an assistant manager can be hired for $22/hr).
https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/10546/621551/2/cr-climate-equality-201123-en.pdf
I’m an AI researcher at one of the world’s top universities on the topic. While you are correct that no AI has demonstrated self-agency, it doesn’t mean that it won’t imitate such actions.
These days, when people think AI, they mostly are referring to Language Models as these are what most people will interact with. A language model is trained on a corpus of documents. In the event of Large Language Models like ChatGPT, they are trained on just about any written document in existence. This includes Hollywood scripts and short stories concerning sentient AI.
If put in the right starting conditions by a user, any language model will start to behave as if it were sentient, imitating the training data from its corpus. This could have serious consequences if not protected against.
You would think so, but there is one river that happens to flow and split over the continental divide called North Two Ocean Creek. It’s the tiniest technicality that makes this map technically true.
They just buy one out of thin air? Or is it with the wealth they've created through their own skills?
If it's so easy to own a house, go buy one.