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Confiscate properties from rogue landlords, says senior Labour MP
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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If you own a shop and sell goods or services are you leeching off workers? 🤔
Shop owners provide a service and work, they physically work and labor. Landlords do NOTHING. they sit on their ass and collect a paycheck. They're leeches.
I mean, the shop owner isn't necessarily the shop manager, though they can be the same. And landlords can manage buildings.
But more-broadly, if you own a building, then you're foregoing whatever benefit you would have derived from your capital that is put into the building if you hadn't done so. That's what you're being paid for -- you reduce your standard of living from where it would have otherwise been so that there's capital to pay for the building. Someone has to build that building, and they won't do it for free. For a shop, someone's got to pay for inventory, etc.
Then they own things, not do things - not a job.
And landlords can manage buildings.
Owning things isn't a job. Managing things is. Are you getting it yet?
But more-broadly, if you own a building, then you're foregoing whatever benefit you would have derived from your capital that is put into the building if you hadn't done so.
Are you going to front the argument that the majority of building owners brought those buildings for a reason other than renting them out? What country do you live in, because this isn't the norm.
Being a landlord is profitable because your tenants pay more than you do. You're not reducing your standard of living, you're increasing it. That's why people do it.
What's the relevance of this to the argument that landlords are lazy leeches?
No. I'm saying that the capital that is in the building would be used for something other than the building.
The manager has done a similar trade, just with their time that they'd otherwise be doing something else with.
In the long term, that's what the landlord hopes for, that reducing their standard of living in the now will make them better off in the long run. Same as the person expending their time managing the hing.
You asserted that landlords don't do anything. I'm pointing out what they do -- they're the reason that the building is there. If nobody's going to pay the construction company to build the building, there isn't going to be a building.
None of this us a rebuttal to the argument that owning things isn't a job.
If the landlords don't exist, they don't have capital to invest, yes. That's not to say building won't happen without them taking their cut. Either the would be occupants could build, or (better yet) we decommodify these essentials and have them publicly held. We know how well comodifying the essentials goes and how that's working out for peoples' ability to keep a roof over their heads.
Management is work, so I'll not muddy the waters - the business owner isn't working, and is taking the value of the workers' labour. The fact that they have amassed the capital to be able to do this whole the workers can't isn't an argument for simply owning things to be profitable - it's an argument for workers to get a fairer slice of their contributions. They should own the business, but the capital hurdles prevent that.
You'll have to forgive me for not losing any sleep over the fact that non-productive owners assume a trivial level of risk to extract near guaranteed profit for no work.
Workers built the building, workers will occupy it and give it reason to exist - the owner just owns it - this isn't a necessary part of the equation for any reason other than the fact that you can amass unlimited wealth by simply owning things, inflating prices, and draining resources from the productive members of the economy, pushing them out of being able to buy the property they'll use so that they can buy the property, extract more wealth and perpetuate the predatory cycle.
Landlords provide a service. One of a home to rent. It's no different to renting a car in that sense. They certainly don't do nothing. They're responsible for the maintenance of the property (well they are in the UK, I am assuming you're from the US by your use of the words ass and paycheck). Were cars as scarce as homes and people still needed them as much as they do now you'd see the same thing in the car rental market with extortionate fees for a "service" that people demand. But that's a condition of the market, blame your government for not providing proper social housing to drive down the cost of private accommodation.
But landlords are leeches because I don't like them is such a simplistic answer to a nuanced question.
do scalpers provide a service of letting you go see a concert?
cars depreciate, houses do the opposite
also, nobody has ever had any issues with the car rental industry
golly i wonder why homes are so scarce
good thing "i don't like them" hasn't been given as the justification for anything then, isn't it?
Do you pay those workers significantly less than the value they contribute to the business? What would you call that?
Independent of that, you may work in the shop, or managing it - that's a job.
Surely that depends on the individual business? Like it depends on the individual landlord? Some might be good, some might be bad. Pay is often linked to the risk you have invested in your business. A worker in a shop hasn't taken on thousands of pounds of business loans for example have they? They don't have to do accounting admin generally. A renter hasn't taken on hundreds of thousands of pounds of a mortgage have they? They're not liable for upkeep of the rental property.
All I'm saying is that they're good examples of landlords and bad ones. Good examples of shop owners and bad ones. Skewing the perspective to claim there are only bad is deliberately misleading.
This line is routinely trotted out by people who do not understand the very basic facts of limited liability.
It is trivally simple to establish your business as limited by guarantee, and when done so the risk is literally £1.
If anyone establishes a business where they are personally liable for any debts, or losses acrued, by that business then they need to seriously reconsider if business management is for them.
Now, people may well choose to invest personal savings to start a business, rather than take out a loan, but again, rule number 1 of investing is not to invest more than you can afford to lose, so, again, the actual risk is £1.
Not how it works everywhere. Also - bullshit on the actual risk being so low after investing all you can afford to lose - you just lost all you could afford to lose which could be thousands.
The reality of it is - you rent out an apartment and need to keep it up. I had landlords come in with powerbanks and extension cords in the middle of the night when the breakers failed. I had them loaning me an AC units. They would renovate regularly.
And I could've been a shitty tennant that messed their modern flat, didn't pay them rent and refused to move out. They would lose a place they lived in for years to some rando off the street.
You're clearly American, why are you commenting on a thread about UK landlords, and UK company law, using examples not from the UK?
I'm European. Stop assuming shit about people.
My apologies, but same question.
Because hating landlords is present on lemmy everywhere with people using completely irrellevant arguments. You also voiced an opinion that's completely bullcrap - where losing "all the money you can spare" is somehow equal to losing nothing, when one could have worked for that for years.
this seems like a circular argument
most of the value you seem to be proposing could be lost comes from the fact you can rent out a house for profit
I never said it was the same as losing nothing. It's clearly not the same. I said the cost of losing is £1, if you have structured your business properly. If you then choose to put extra money in, well, you should only invest money you can afford to lose.
If you can't afford to lose it, you shouldn't be spending the money in that way. Money you can afford to lose has considerably less risk than money you cannot afford to lose. By definition, if you can afford to lose it, then harm to you is insignificant.
So the financial cost is £1, and the risk to you is tiny.
For example, I don't go to the pub and complain about the risk of buying liquid commodities I intend to drink and make no return on. I can afford to lose my money in that way, if you can't, then don't go out drinking. The same thing applies here.
If you can't own a property without someone else paying the mortgage for you, then don't.
The risk of losing is thousands - it's absolutely not "nothing", as I said, it could be years of someone's life.
You have a really weird way of looking at business. It's not free to have someone renting property from you and "paying the mortgage". It's not risk free.
The risk is losing something you can afford to lose.
It may be undesirable, sure, but if you can't afford to lose it then you shouldn't be investing it.
Landlords provide no service, they simply increase the cost of housing. A landlord does not fix your boiler, a plumber does. A landlord does not pay for furniture, you do through your rent. A landlord does not provide housing, they take existing housing off the market and lease it at a premium above the equilvent mortgage rate.
Ah, you should have started with "landlord bad landlord not work", would've saved me a lot of wasted time in replying to you.
And let me guess - no landlords means no homelessness and no housing crisis anywhere
Landlords are one of the many factors which restrict access to housing. The sheer complexity of purchase is another major factor.
But again, if you can afford to lose the money then you're probably not the problem. The main problem, in the UK, is landlords on buy-to-let mortgages who cannot afford to lose.
If the bank is already willing to loan money on the property, and rent must be higher than the mortgage payment as a condition on that loan, then all that happens is housing becomes more expensive.
Not necessarily but you can be.