Reason I’m asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say “city” think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn’t seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I’m not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don’t overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.
I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don’t see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.
Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the “landlords are bad” sentinment?
No raindrop thinks itself responsible for the flood.
I’ve never heard this phrase before and I love it.
Quit exhaling! We have a climate crisis!
But this is my regulated breathing minute!
Don’t take it personally, but landlordism is fundamentally parasitism. It’s a matter of fact that private property, whether it’s a townhouse or a factory, enables its owners to extract value from working people. If people personally resent landlords like your aunt, it’s probably not so much because that’s where the theory guides them as it is that almost everyone has had a bad experience with a landlord or knows someone who did. Landlords have earned a bad reputation.
For most of my life I was not interested in owning a home. Owning meant I couldn’t pick up and move or travel when I got the urge, which I did several times. One time while in a foreign country for a stay of undetermined length, I was able to contact an old landlord and secure a place to stay when I learned my return date. How would I have had a place to stay if landlords did not exist?
“Land contract”.
A land contract starts out similar to a rental agreement. You make fixed monthly payments. If you stay in the home for 3 years, it automatically converts to a private mortgage, and the first three years of “rent” becomes your down payment. If you leave before a year, you forfeit your “security deposit”, just like renting. If you leave before 3 years, you gain no equity; again, just like renting.
If you ever do decide to settle down in one spot, you’re already well on your way to ownership.
I would solve the rental problem by creating a massive, punitively high tax rate on all residential properties, and issuing an equivalent tax exemption to owner-occupants. A land contract is recorded with the county, much like a deed or a lien, and the buyer/tenant would be considered the “owner” for tax purposes.
Is this actually a thing or are you saying it should be?
Land contracts are an actual “thing”. They are legal agreements, recorded in the county register like a deed or a lien. You can buy or sell a home through a land contract right now, if you want. Currently, they aren’t particularly common, but they aren’t unknown either.
I mentioned how I would like to eliminate rent entirely, by establishing exorbitant tax penalties for people who own multiple residential properties. Land Contracts are how I would meet the needs of people who need the flexibility of a rental arrangement, rather than just buying with a private mortgage.
There is an interesting method of “rent” in use in South Korea that is far less parasitical. I don’t know of it being used in the US, but we could adopt it if we wanted. "Jeonse or “Key Money” is where the tenant makes zero monthly payments. Instead, they put down a large deposit. The landlord invests their deposit (there are limitations on what they can invest in), and keeps any interest. At the end of the rental period (usually 2 years) the landlord returns the entire deposit to the tenant. The tenant is protected by taking out a lien against the property. If the landlord cannot or will not return the deposit, the tenant takes ownership of the property.
The Jeonse deposit is typically 50% to 80% of the purchase price of the house, but it can be externally financed if necessary.
That’s nice that you found a place to stay after traveling the world, that you found some personal benefit from a system that leaves more than half a million people without proper housing (at least in the US). What does that have to do with anything that I wrote?
Presumably because he/she is a person who wants to live somewhere without the hassle of having to own a house and that is impossible without landlords. And they are not the only one like that.
So your idea that all of it is parasitism has met someone, arguably you mean to help, who likes landlords. Because despite what some people think, a lot don’t want to sign on the immense debt for a house nor maintain it. Landlords provide a service in that case and why is it your right to deny renters and landlords that service?
That doesn’t mean there aren’t parasitic landlords because there very much are. But a blanket statement that it’s all bad seems foolish. Perhaps nuance is very much lost on people nowadays.
Landlordism is parasitism. That doesn’t mean that the only alternative is a system in which people can only acquire housing by way of long term mortgages.
and that is impossible without landlords
I reject this premise. It certainly is possible to establish a system that allows for what you describe, without undue burden on people who choose to “settle down”.
“Land Contracts” could replace “rental agreements”. In the short term (<1 year) they function identically to a typical, annual rental agreement: you agree to a fixed, monthly payment. If you break the contract and leave early, you pay a penalty.
In the medium term (1-3 years), the only difference is that your payment doesn’t change (or changes only per the terms established in the initial agreement). You don’t face a sudden, unexpected increase in your monthly payment. You do not owe a penalty if you break the agreement before three years.
The real difference between rent and a land contract is that after three years, the land contract converts to a private mortgage, in which your first three years of payments are considered the down payment. You continue to make monthly payments, but now, you have equity in the home: you are the owner; you are free to sell the home on your terms, you merely owe the outstanding balance on the loan.
Because equity (eventually) transfers to the tenant/buyer/borrower, this agreement is fundamentally less parasitical.
How do we switch to this model? Well, first you need to understand that the tenant/buyer/borrower is the “owner” of the home; the landlord/seller/lender is not the owner; they are a “lienholder”. The “owner” - not the lienholder - is responsible for the property taxes.
So, what we do is massively increase the property taxes on all residential properties, while allowing exemptions to owner-occupants. If you reside in the property, you qualify for the exemption. If you do not reside in the property, you owe the whole tax.
With that change, “rent” basically stops existing. Typical landlords will switch over to land contracts instead of rental agreements to avoid being hit with the exorbitant property tax. The only properties that will continue as actual rentals are those where the landlord lives on-site, (duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes) making them eligible for the owner-occupant credit.
This owner-occupancy exemption also affects commercial lenders: if they attempt to foreclose on a traditional borrower, they owe the higher tax from the time they evict, until they re-sell the property. This gives them an incentive to negotiate with the borrower, and greatly reduce foreclosure rates.
I don’t disagree that landlords are for the most part acting parasitically. However I would argue that in order for society to function “parasitism” is a requirement. I want to be clear and state that THIS form isn’t required, but some form is.
Let me explain my thinking. Nearly half of the population doesn’t work. The population of non workers can almost entirely fall within these categories: children, attending school, disabled (mentally or physically), or retired.
These populations need money even though they are not producing any. I would guess that most of the extracted profit that comes out of “mom and pop” rentals goes to providing for non-worker expenses.
Now I believe these expenses should be covered by taxations and redistribution of the factor income, but since we have a pathetic system of this in the US it’s hard for me to fault someone for using investment property to hedge against child care and/or retirement
I am not as well read as I would like, but I don’t think Marxist theory really faults anyone for acting in their apparent self-interest. The point is to become aware that you belong to a class with common interests, likely the working class, and that you can team up with your fellow workers and tenants to build leverage and get a better deal. Eventually, you can stop surrendering the wealth you and your class create to the minority bourgeoisie class.
To your point, a landlord who also has to hold down a regular job is still part of the working class. However, they might fall into the subcategories of labor aristocracy or petit bourgeoisie. Because they have it a little better, they’re less reliable or even traitorous in the class struggle compared to regular workers, even though they rarely have the juice to make it into the bourgeoisie.
What you’re talking about, I wouldn’t call parasitism.
The owner of a home has “freedom”. When you buy a home, you are free to do with it what you want. What makes landlords parasites is that the tenant is paying for that landlord’s “freedom”, but they are not receiving it themselves.
But my point is that there are certain categories of people who need access to income that they themselves do not produce. An able bodied capitalist is not one of these people, but a worker who is using real estate as a retirement vehicle is.
You can only say that landlords extract value from working people if they take money without giving anything in return. But landlords provide housing, which is certainly of great value.
Emotional reasoning tells us this is parasitism in the following ways:
-
we believe housing is a human right therefore no one can claim they provide it as a value - it’s something we are all entitled to.
-
once a house exists it seems like the landlord doesn’t “do” anything in order to provide the housing, except sit there and own it. So this must be theft because they are getting something for nothing.
#1 I understand and if you feel this then work to have it enacted as law in your homeland, because until it is enshrined in the system, you can’t expect anyone to just give away housing.
#2 is somewhat naive, because owning a house has costs including (minimally) taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Owning housing always carries a large risk too - you could incur major damage from a flood, hurricane, earthquake. And those are incredibly expensive to recover from. Not for renters, though - they just move.
The most important question of all is: how does housing come into being? If we make housing something that cannot be offered as a value, who will build? The up front cost to build housing is enormous and it may take decades of “sitting there doing nothing” to collect enough rent to recoup that.
People make all the same arguments about lending money. It’s predatory and extracts value from the people. But without the ability to borrow money, no one could build or buy a home, or start a business.
Much could be done to improve how lending and landlording work, to make them more fair and less exploitative, but when people say that in their very essence they are evil I think they are just naive children seeing mustache twirling villains everywhere.
It’s not emotional reasoning. The rental income that a landlord collects is not a wage based on any labor that they do. It is a dividend on a real estate investment. The crucial mechanism to a rental property investment is the license to withhold or take away housing from people. That’s what makes landlordism extractive and parasitic. Landlords simply do not provide housing. They capture it and extort people for temporary permission to live in it.
If you want some emotional reasoning as to why people resent landlords, here’s a short list I wrote from a similar thread:
- Almost everyone has had or knows someone who’s had to deal with an especially neglectful or difficult landlord;
- landlords have been engaging in notoriously greedy and abusive behavior since the industrial revolution;
- landlords aren’t doing themselves any favors they way some of them publicly brag and whine about being landlords;
- and there’s just something that isn’t right about owning someone else’s home and probably everyone has some faint sense of that.
You skipped the most important question, as all anti-landlord idealists do.
“How is house made?” You think landlords are necessary or helpful to housing production? How can that be if they are fundamentally parasitic?
Now you’re making faces and trying to discredit the most important question so you can avoid answering it. It won’t work.
The answer, which should be obvious, is that workers produce housing. How do you insert landlords into that process in a way that isn’t parasitic?
Who pays the workers and buys the materials? Whose land does this happen on?
how does housing come into being?
Well one “simple” way is for all the builders to be rolled up into the civil service: the government pays them to do their job, i.e. build houses, which the government then owns and allows people to live in. This must necessarily be rent-free, otherwise the government becomes one massive landlord therefore not solving the problem, and also takes the bottom out of the mortgage market because why would anyone buy when they can just move into government-provided housing without a 25-year millstone tied round their necks. It also creates a ton of job security because it means you can just walk away from a shitty employer without fear of becoming homeless.
It also drops anyone with a mortgage into the worst possible negative equity problem, which will be a massive problem for a massive number of people, therefore has zero chance of ever being voted in. So for this to work there has to be a solution to the mortgage problem, e.g. the government buys all that housing stock for the current outstanding mortgage amount, but that’s a massive investment into something that now necessarily has zero value, which would likely crash the economy. IANAE so it’d be interesting to get a real economist’s view on how this might all work in practice.
Yeah as your air quotes indicate, it’s simple to say but extremely problematic to do. Still, there are incremental approaches to this. Public housing does exist, it’s just extremely small so it doesn’t have any of those systemic effects. We should dial it up. But until it’s universal, it will always face the good old American problem of “my taxes shouldn’t but you free stuff.” It’s things to like this that make UBI look simple.
-
“Landlords provide housing like scalpers provide concert tickets.”
https://lifehacker.com/why-everyone-hates-landlords-now-1849100799
That said, I do think there need to be ways to rent housing rather than buy it, since many people need that flexibility. Looks like the answer to that might be community land trusts?
Or public housing
What a magnificent comparison!
The answer you receive will vary based on which political ideology you ask.
I will answer from the perspective of an anarchist.
Your Aunt and her Husband are not committing the greatest of evils, but in the grand scheme of things, they’re a part of a bigger problem, one that they themselves would not even perceive, and in fact would have strong personal incentives not to grant legitimacy were it explained to them.
Anarchists, or libertarian socialists, are generally against the concept of private property in all forms. This is not to be confused with personal property, which are things you personally own and use, such as the house you live in, your car, your tools.
Private property is something you own to extract profit from simply by the act of owning it, and necessarily at the deprivation and exploitation of someone else.
By owning those townhomes that they themselves do not live in, they are able to exploit the absolute basic human requirement for shelter in an artificially restricted market, and thus acquire surplus value in a deal of unequal leverage.
You could argue they are justified due to offering below market rates, taking on the financial risk of owning and maintaining the property, and fronting the capital to own the investment.
But the issue is: their choice to become landlords is what in fact creates the conditions for which they can then offer solutions in order to claim moral justification.
For if we consider if landlordism were completely abolished, and people were only allowed to own homes they personally use, it would result in an insane amount of housing stock to flood the market, causing housing prices to plummet. This would in turn allow millions of lower income people to be able to afford a home and pay it off quickly, allowing them to actually build wealth for the first time instead of most of it going to pay off rent (remember, your aunt charging below market is the exception, not the norm).
Most humans would much rather pay off a small mortgage on a non-inflated home themselves, instead of paying off someone else’s artifically inflated mortgage and then some.
But that’s all assuming we have a housing market still. In an ideal Anarchist society, housing would be a human right, and every human would have access to basic shelter and necessities of life, like was enacted for a short time in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.
So anarchists want Basic from the Expanse pretty much?
Basic in the world of the Expanse provided people with a very basic apartment with a bed, table and a TV along with three nutritionally complete (not delicious) meals per day for free.
If you wanted anything more, you had to work or enlist.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I only read the first few chapters of the expanse, but I believe the world is still capitalist overall, yes? if so, that would make it more in line with perhaps the end goal of a social democrat, where there’s a super strong welfare and social safety net, but still capital and big businesses.
The assumption from Anarchists is achieving that Social Democrat ideal is impossible under capitalism, as it would remove almost all of the leverage corporations have to exploit their workers, leaving little profit left for them, and thus inciting them to revolt, like they almost did during The Business Plot in response to FDR’s new deal finally giving the working class some room to breathe.
I think the backstory is so that there aren’t enough jobs for everyone due to automation, so they offer people who don’t want much the option of Basic (income), with the option to get more if they get a job or start a business.
I only watched the TV show so I don’t know the backstory, but if that’s the case it isn’t very true to life. Such strong social safety nets in a capitalist society could only ever be instated as a result of intense pressure from a mass social movement, and even then is unlikely to last. Automation will only increase productivity - which the capitalists will simply absorb in their pursuit of infinite growth - and never make it so that people can work less.
For those unable or unwilling to find employment, there is Basic Assistance, the United Nations’ global welfare program. Over half of the Earth’s populace relies on it for survival. Without jobs, these people have no money, so Basic provides shared accommodations in government housing complexes, meagre food in the form of Gray-tasting textured protein and enriched rice, minimal medical care in government clinics, and even recycled paper clothing, dispensed from automated kiosks with a thumbprint. All of these services are provided free of charge, but those on Basic are subject to mandatory contraception and cannot legally have children, apart from the regular “baby lottery” allowing for a small number of births each year
From the Expanse wiki.
Earth has a population of over 30 Billion with a B when the series starts.
(remember, your aunt charging below market is the exception, not the norm)
Isn’t this definitionally true? The norm, by definition, is the market rate.
Yes, and charging below that would be a deviation from the norm.
Yes. You shouldn’t be allowed to have a second house to rent out. The problem is limited supply in a given area, and if everyone buys a second, third, fourth house (or townhouse) then there is no supply left for people that want to actually buy to live in that house. Frankly I think it’s unethical. There are plenty of other ways to invest your money.
I also don’t think this position is limited to leftists, although yes the leftists here have a very dramatic take. I think anyone that thinks about this should see the problem.
Who is allowed to rent to the people who don’t want to buy?
Should the city own property just for that and run it as a non-profit?
The community should have ownership of whatever rentals are necessary and it should be not for profit.
How is “the community” defined and how is this ownership managed?
Public housing is not a novel concept.
No sheet.
Ok, so you want all housing to be publicly owned? That would be interesting…
If you’re aware of public and social housing then why are you asking how community ownership and management works?
In any case, yes, of course all rental housing should be publicly owned. Vienna’s Gemeindebauten and Singapore’s HDB, among others, have proven that pretty definitively.
I’m not certain that all housing should be public, though. Privately owned primary residences are probably fine, in the grand scheme of things. But rental housing for profit should obviously be abolished.
First up, so it’s clear, I actually agree with you. But I also don’t think this is an easy thing.
If you’re aware of public and social housing then why are you asking how community ownership and management works?
Because there is a hiccup in your logic as far as I can discern it.
On the one hand you say: “of course all rental housing should be publicly owned.”
And on the other, “I’m not certain that all housing should be public”
So how does that work?
- How does the housing become public? That’s trillions of dollars worth of property. I actually got the figure of US$7 quadrillion but I don’t believe it. What’s more, 70% of the 19.3 million rental properties in the US are owned by individual investors, meaning you’d have to either confiscate or buy from millions of individuals. I mean, it wouldn’t make sense to just build all this housing if it’s already there. Maybe a combination? But where on earth does that money come from? And how do you convince people invested in a $1.4 trillion market to give up that income?
- So let’s say somehow #1 happens over some period of time. How then do you meet ongoing demand? I get what your saying - there are examples of this working (for some values of “work”) on a small scale but over the entire rental market?
- If the public via governments has paid for all this housing at current prices, how do we then ensure rents are low? Over time yes, we can forgo all but the bare minimum rent increases to match inflation, but initially we have to foot the bill somehow. Because presumably that money has to be borrowed and we have to pay interest on it on top of ongoing maintenance, etc - there are real costs involved.
Yes. The ability to have a place to live should be a basic human right and therefore be affordable.
If that means the government* subsidises it for the low income families (as in owns them and rents them at below market value), so be it.
We used to have “council houses” in the UK for exactly this purpose, but in the 70s, Thatcher came up with a “right to buy” (at a decent discount) and then made two mistakes - there were no restrictions after buying to stop you selling to anyone else, and there was no building of replacement stock after they were sold. So the result 50 years later is that there are nowhere near enough council houses any more, and a lot of the old ones are privately owned and being rented out at market rates, which are (depending on the area) very expensive.
*local or national, I don’t really care which
Those definitely weren’t mistakes.
Hah. I meant socially, not that it happened by accident!
I know, lol
If that means the government* subsidises it for the low income families (as in owns them and rents them at below market value), so be it.
Not everybody who doesn’t want to buy is low income. I’m too lazy / risk averse to maintain everything myself, so I happily pay my landlord a reasonable premium to bear the risk of shit burning down (or breaking in less dramatic ways) for me. I also like that I would be able to pack up and move without worrying about selling my old place. I might change my mind later on, but right now I’m good.
Why should governments subsidize the lifestyle choice I’m consciously making?
To be clear, I wasn’t trying to say ALL rental housing should be subsidised, just that there should be a healthy supply available for local councils to make available to people who need it based on whatever criteria they set for that.
Even when I was renting, I’d earn too much to qualify. People with young children would take priory over single people. That sort of thing.
It’s not a perfect system, but it’s better than companies gaming the system to maximise profits at the expense of the most vulnerable.
Yes, that’s ideal. In Germany (where there is a culture much more oriented towards renting than owning) there are a lot of state run landlords and they are great to rent from, reasonable rents, reasonable to deal with (in the local context), etc. And of course they have good laws to protect tenants to back it up. Not necessarily a perfect system but definitely one the rest of the world can learn from. Unfortunately things are still heading in the wrong direction there too right now.
That’s not true in any big city. While the laws keep the landlord madness limited, real estate and rent prices are out of control because of speculation, and there are tons of horror stories to go around - and by experience, I would say they are even more common with individual landlords than with large companies, at least large companies don’t usually do anything obviously illegal and have less venues to make their tenants homeless.
Yes, I’m talking about the state owned companies versus both private companies and individual landlords, rents with the state owned ones are like 20% or more lower than the others and they are usually more responsive to fixing problems, don’t play too many games
But I totally agree rents are way out of control the last few years
Yes.
For houses? Essentially no one, houses should not be for rent. Apartments in my mind are fine to rent because you can build a fuckton of apartments on a small amount of land. But there can still be a problem if there aren’t enough apartments available to buy.
Every house that is owned for an investment contributes to the high price of housing. People shouldn’t own homes if they’re not going to make them a home. It’s unethical in my view to hoard real estate.
It’s shades of gray. A company that rents out millions of houses is millions times worse than your aunt. Your aunt is still contributing to unaffordable housing and keeping 2-3 families from permanent housing. How bad she is is up for debate and I for one don’t care to debate that. Being upset about people like your aunt is pointless when we should be insanely angry about corporate mass homeownership.
Owning property isn’t a job
No, but it requires work and time and money for maintenance, insurance, and taxes.
It’s almost like… it’s… a… job. How strange.
It’s all.
Buying a house as an “investment” is what we call “scalping” in other businesses. Not to mention the fact that this type of buying worsens housing prices and increases homelessness for personal gain, even on a small scale.
The only exception I can give is people who rent out part of their own home, as this situation actually creates available housing.
Unless your aunt is transferring equity in those homes to the tenants based on the amount they pay in rent, then yes, she’s a leech. “Providing shelter” isn’t the service your aunt is providing; she’s just preventing someone else from owning a home.
And before anyone says “but renting is all some people can afford, they can’t save up enough to make a down payment” - yes, sure, that’s true. But that’s a symptom of the shitty housing market (really the shitty state of the middle class in general*), and landlords aren’t making it any better by hoarding property, even if it’s “just” 3 to 5 townhomes.
it is not possible to have a property as an investment, without screwing someone else over. So yeah, her too.
The landlord charges enough in monthly rent to cover mortgage, house maintenance, and provide profit. So the argument about it being a service to tenants is BS as the tenant could afford this on their own.
Landlords rely on the credit system for denial and cost of entry into property ownership to exploit tenants.
Landlordism is parasitic. The point of Leftism isn’t to attack individuals, but structures, and replace them with better ones. Trying to morally justify singular landlords ignores the key of the Leftist critique and simplifies it to sloganeering.
I would argue that nobody should own a home they don’t actually live in. All renting out does is increase the housing cost overall because nobody would ever operate at a loss or to break even. This is the issue people have with say, Blackrock who buys hundreds of homes at a time and rents them out.
Your family aren’t bad people but the business they decided to take up is inherently bad by design. If the law changed tomorrow saying all multi homes must sell to non homeowners, everyone would watch prices drop and be able to afford it.
Using homes as an investment is at its basics, exploiting a need by interpreting it as a want or practical goods. Homes are for living in. The housing industry views homes like commodities as if people have a wide choice and selection when it’s really “Omg we can afford this one that popped up randomly, we have 12 hours to decide if we want to pay 50k more to beat others away” and then lose anyway after bidding to Blackrock who pays 100k over asking.
Homeowners also treat their home as an investment. Which also makes housing more expensive and inaccessible. Moving away from renting is not the solution, we need a more comprehensive change in the system.
The context here is quite different; in other words, you got an apples vs oranges issue here. A single home owner does not expect to profit from that investment; the increase in value is more of an insurance than anything (mortgages are taken out to cover emergencies, or the increase in value provides the means to move to a new home, etc). So, again, the context is extremely different.
Besides, if the expected inflation in value were the issue, shouldn’t I expect increased wages to make up the difference? I.e. no, that would not contribute to making the housing market too expensive for the average person to find accessible.
A single home owner does not expect to profit from that investment
What are you talking about? People definitely buy homes as an investment so that they can sell it and retire.
increase in value provides the means to move to a new home
What is this, if not profiting off an investment?
What are you talking about? People definitely buy homes as an investment so that they can sell it and retire.
That’s insurance. The “profit” goal is not to rent seek or enrich themselves. And in this market it’s a risky gamble, anyways.
If the so called profit is intended to be entirely consumed to take care of moving or retiring, it’s insurance to allow you to move or retire; it’s not profit you add to your income. It’s not even properly described as “profit” since it’s, by definition, unrealized gains.
These are not circumstances where you “cash out” and buy something fancy, or even pay your day to day bills. Context matters.
Houses aren’t investments, so yes.
Ideologies tend to sort people into a limited number of overly simplistic categories. This makes theorising easier but applying it to reality much harder.
Very few people could live in a capitalist system and remain pure. e.g. My pension fund is invested in the stock market so I very partially own thousands of companies. I’ve also purchased a small amount of shares in selected companies, a situation I had more agency in creating. Sometimes I subcontract work to other contractors who function as my temporary employees. And so on.
Is there an ethical way to try and ensure that I will have food, shelter and medical care as I age? In the US we can’t depend on the government safety net. Everyone isn’t as able in their 60’s and 70’s as they were in their 30’s and 40’s, so assuming that I’ll be able to work and make a reasonable income the rest of my life is wildly optimistic. Anyone working at a job for 30+ years shouldn’t be stressed about survival but that’s not reality. Putting money in a savings account at a credit union is good but I don’t think that will move the needle. Any decent pension or retirement plan is gonna put money in the stock market. Even with passive investing in index funds, you’re on of the stock holders that fucks like that UHC CEO was trying to appease. Given the state of the economy in the US today, buying and renting a duplex, triplex or small apartment building might be less evil than owning random stocks.
