There is something wrong with "workers mentality"

Post Reply New Topic

I think it's unhealthy that mature capitalist markets are so volatile - after all, natural catastrophes, epidemies, etc. can have the same effect - but it's a valid point to take into account.

After the first 5 years, the majority of start up businesses fail. If I were to spend a 100k of my life savings starting a business and survive the first 5 years, the last thing I or any business owner would want is to the have to deal with huge sums of money being taken from the business by state legislation.

Investors and share holders also know this. Robust laws on company ownership and personal wealth is essential for a country to be trusted with money. Any laws removing company ownership is the equivalent of handing your money over to a compulsive gambler with no self control. This is basically what socialism is. It's about the feckless and reckless who were unable to get well paying jobs or much personal wealth just stealing it off the more intelligent and trustworthy.

There is volatility in any market too. It's just the way they work. It's all about confidence, trust and reading the market. What people want vary wildly from decade to decade.

Progressive taxes aim at companies that already have succeeded, not at startups.

I saw the difference between how covid affected Poland and USA. We didn't have shortages here at all. Lots of small-to-medium companies reacted to changing reality almost seamlessly. Similarily, the 2008 crisis was something you could read in media but not see in your everyday life here.

Economies can be more volatile or more robust. It is an often overlooked factor.

I mostly agree. I don't know the details behind the Danish government's reforms, but I'd be surprised to hear any government saying that the people who are already working should be working more. I can't imagine that would be very popular. As far as I'm concerned, with advancements in modern technology, people should be working less now. And any government who came out and said that would probably gain a fair few new supporters.

The anthropologist David Graeber released a book a few years ago called Bulls*** Jobs, where he claimed that a large number of jobs (from high-paying, high-status jobs to low-paying, low-status ones) in modern economies were basically pointless. And several people who worked in the types of jobs he described wrote to him to say they agreed!

Douglas Adams touched on this concept in his "Hitch-Hiker's Guide" series.I wonder if he also intended for telemarketers and survey-takers to be onboard.

I would argue that money sort of does come out of thin air, since most money in circulation is just created as numbers on ledgers in the banking system, but care needs to be taken so that the amount that is created is roughly related to the "real wealth" of society.

I think some sort of universal basic income would work in theory in a country with tight immigration controls. It would guarantee people a safety net if they lose their jobs, and would cut down on the bureaucracy involved in administering unemployment benefits. With a small-ish universal basic income, lots of people would probably continue working anyway. Perhaps $2,000 per month is too much though.

That sounds good, actually. Of course, people with lots of investments should be taxed far more heavily than people with, say, one or two rental properties. It's not all that rare that if two people who own their homes move in together they'll keep the other place as an investment.

Unfortunately, while heavy earning people who work a lot can be taxed more than 50 %, investment taxing tends to be only around 30-35 %. Flipping that over might be a good idea.



Definitely too much. That's around what a basic nurse, which is an extremely important job, makes (here) after the taxes. It's also very taxing both mentally and physically, so if one could get more money doing nothing, why on earth would they not? Though of course, if that 2000 was heavily taxed first...

One system that could work is that everyone would get the 2000 when ending up unemployed, but they'd lose it if they didn't take any offered jobs from their field. And in order to keep people getting educated to those jobs, some kind of carrot should be added, like the difference between the wage and the basic income plus some extra covered by the state. Or just higher salaries, but could businesses (and state) afford that when the basic income would raise taxes for the businesses and expenses for the stae? I don't think there are enough high paying jobs to keep up such a system.

I have more than two properties but they didn't come easily. I managed to buy them from 8 years of 55 hour weeks on average and relentless saving (cutting back on almost everything, no new gadgets, hand me downs, cheap second hand car, cheap clothes).

I wouldn't want to be heavily taxed. They way I see it, if I can manage an average of a house every two years on a pretty basic job then that's probably a reflection something is wrong with everyone else around me. I don't need to look very far to see people on less than me with new iPhones and cars on finance thinking they're getting screwed over by people like me. We live in a impulsive and materialistic society that prioritizes immediate gratification over long term planning. If it means someone of modest means can still outcompete these people with more boring purchases (like houses) then that's not a problem that needs to be addressed. A billionaire on the other hands buying all the houses does...but not me.

That's indeed strange. If real estate is so affordable, why do people rent instead of buying?
Most of the people I know prefer to mortgage and buy, unless they mean to stay in the place only temporarily.

The houses in my area were very cheap and still are. My second house was for sale for 3.5 years yt I was the one to eventually buy it for just £55k with minimal work needing to be tone to it. After 24 hours of going up for rent some people were interested in it and those tenants are still in the house today. This was in 2017.

I think buying is possibly more complex for a first time buyer than many anticipate too. Good credit is a must (many young people don't have it in the age of consumerism) the modest amount of money for a cheap house (many young people don't have it in the age of consumerism) and I guess a bit of courage to buy a first house (probably a lot more daunting when your young) leads to a preference to rent. Renting also suits the impulsive lifestyles of the young today. No longer do people stay in one spot for a long time. This is why I'm against any UBI. I know it'll just be abused.

The whole process of buying a house alone is off putting I think and there is a lot that can go wrong if someone is blinkered. The numbers of first time buyers getting stuck in the leasehold scandal for example. Renting is luckily devoid of the heat stopping moments compared to buying. Making an offer on a house you only have 15 mins to view is a heart stopping moment, getting it accepted wondering if you're buying a money pit is a heart stopping moment, waiting for searches to be done and hoping they all go OK is a heart stopping moment and parting with the cash on the day the keys change hands is a pants pooping moment knowing there is no going back. They saying buying a house is one of the most stressful things you can ever do and my most recent one was probably the most stressful. I was buying of a no nonsense property mogul from London who liked to apply a lot of pressure. After two months I had a call from the estate agent saying he wanted an exact date for the purchase in the next couple of hours or they would pull out of the sale. It was a frantic couple of hours and a moment I never want to repeat again. If a first time buyer put their heart into that house it would be traumatic.

What is leasehold scandal?
Do you really buy houses after just 15 minutes view? We paid several long visits to the apartment before buying it.
In Poland, people often network within families to go through the process, relying on experience and knowledge of relatives.

It's probably the worst property scandal to hit the UK in a generation. A leasehold is basically buying permission to occupy a house for a very long time, often 99 years or more without actually buying the house. A lot of new builders sell their houses as leaseholds instead of freeholds.

Freehold = true full ownership of a house and the land it's on but more expensive.
Leasehold = partial ownership of a house but often cheaper. I would think of buying a leasehold as paying years of rent upfront.

If you're buying a house you should aim for freehold but many new buyers don't know this and just how much trouble it could get them into from unscrupulous people. If you buy a leasehold house you simply buy permission to reside at that house for a long time while someone else owns the freehold and land it's built on. The person who owns the freehold can charge "ground rent" where the person who owns the lease has to pay the freeholder a fee for "maintaining" that land that the house is on. These leases and fees can get widely out of control with horrific clauses and sometimes being sold on to other companies who rip them off. A leasehold with terrible terms can make a house unsellable. Leaseholds are not always dire though. Many leaseholds on older houses where I live are called peppercorn rents (rents referencing the ground rent cost as much as a single peppercorn) and these can also be bought out for the full freehold very cheap.

Link to the scandal here. https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/corruption-and-money-laundering/anonymous-company-owners/legalised-extortion/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw4eaJBhDMARIsANhrQACYyo5Nap4ynMZoadayXPRR6OJ0wEv3Vs0rGxil2IUoF4irYPQ6mWcaAgMQEALw_wcB

I buy houses after 15 mins of viewing too often on my own depending on the mood. If a house is good you can bet that people viewing before or after you will make an offer very quickly. I make an offer extremely fast to prevent that as much as possible while actually inside the house during the viewing. No time for phone calls later, just there and then. I always look at the same type of houses so I know what I'm dealing with and have a bit of a routine. I ask if it's freehold first and then during the viewing I check if it's concrete (a whole other can of worms) roof, boiler, windows, walls, damp and knotweed along with the overall appearance. I think of a good price at the end of the viewing and if it's good enough I just blurt out I'll have it for so and so price. If you view enough houses you get a sense of what the average house is and ones above average stand out like a sore thumb the moment you see them.

I guess I do a DIY survey and legal check on it first that isn't hard to learn and so far I've not done badly. A first time buyer on the other hand will not and they get caught out all the time and sometimes very badly. 90% of the risks in buying a house is addressed in the 15 minute viewing for me and everyone buying should adopt the same mind-set. The property solicitors and surveyor should just confirm what you already know if you done everything properly yourself.

Leasehold (I guess the Polish counterpart is dzierżawa) is not very popular here, unless full ownership is unavailable for serious reasons.
Partial ownership within a cooperative is relatively common in urban areas.

Looks like you do the job typically done by real estate agents, only you buy and let, not sell.

In blocks of flats leaseholds are very common and actually good sense. For a flat bit of land however they never are.

The job of an estate agent appears straightforward enough too but I don't know exactly what it entails. I just look at s house and wonder how much it's gonna cost me in the long run.

Real estate agent job requires quite a lot of human interaction so I guess your niche is the better choice for you

Some of the biggest advocates for Universal Basic Income are actually tech billionaires. It's because they are well aware that their work is leading us to a future where there will be very few jobs left for human beings. Which means hardly anyone will be able to afford the products and services of the tech companies. Hence, UBI is a way of making sure they still have customers in the future. Of course, the only realistic way to fund this would be massive taxes on said tech companies. They're keeping a bit quiet about that part of the equation....