Research Finds That Renting Ages You Faster Than Smoking, Obesity 267
schwit1 shares a report from the New York Post: A landmark study out of the University of Adelaide and University of Essex has found that living in a private rental property accelerates the biological aging process by more than two weeks every year. The research found renting had worse effects on biological age than being unemployed (adding 1.4 weeks per year), obesity (adding 1 week per year), or being a former smoker (adding about 1.1 weeks). University of Adelaide Professor of Housing Research Emma Baker said private renting added "about two-and-a-half weeks of aging" per year to a person's biological clock, compared to those who own their homes.
"In fact, private rental is the really interesting thing here, because social renters, for some reason, don't seem to have that effect," Professor Baker told the ABC News Daily podcast. She said the security of social renting -- aka public housing -- and homeownership has compared to people living with an end-of-lease date on their calendars. "When you look at big studies of the Australian population, you see that the average rental lease is between six and 12 months," she said. "So even if you have your lease extended, you still are living in that slight state of kind of unknowingness, really not quite secure if your lease is actually going to be extended or not." "We think that that is one of the things that's contributing to loss of years, effectively."
"In fact, private rental is the really interesting thing here, because social renters, for some reason, don't seem to have that effect," Professor Baker told the ABC News Daily podcast. She said the security of social renting -- aka public housing -- and homeownership has compared to people living with an end-of-lease date on their calendars. "When you look at big studies of the Australian population, you see that the average rental lease is between six and 12 months," she said. "So even if you have your lease extended, you still are living in that slight state of kind of unknowingness, really not quite secure if your lease is actually going to be extended or not." "We think that that is one of the things that's contributing to loss of years, effectively."
Yup. Serfdom kills. (Score:5, Insightful)
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You mean capitalism is bad?
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Oh, please, "good" and "bad" are things from the so-called "normative economics", a branch of the field that is more philosophical than scientific.
Rent-seeking isn't "bad", as there are no universal objective definitions of "bad" and "good".
But it is universally the major reason for inefficient allocation of resources, which prevents participants in the economy from making the choices that are best for them and for the economy as a whole.
So it has to be avoided.
However, rent-seeking isn't the same as "rent"
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What's your, better one?
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No, capitalism is a great system.
Whatever the crap we're doing is called, that is bad.
Re:Yup. Serfdom kills. (Score:4, Informative)
Capitalism is exactly what we are doing now. There used to be a healthy dose of Socialism included in the mix, which helped the Markets work more efficiently and lead to better outcomes. But since Reagan and Thatcher the amount of Socialism included has been decreased, and the outcome of that is precisely what we are seeing now. Markets distorted so that they suck money toward the Capitalists rather than working efficiently.
Before Reagan and Thatcther things weren't perfect. There was too much Capitalism in the system already. Any Capitalism is too much because it distorts markets. Market Economies are good, but Capitalism is a parasite added on to Market Economies thsat sucks the lifeblood out of them. Too many people think Capitalism and Market Economy are synonyms. This is completely false.
Re:Yup. Serfdom kills. (Score:5, Informative)
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Which is why I don't advocate that. I advocate a mixture of Socialism and Co-operatives, which is indeed a change of ownership, getting rid of Capitalists and blocking their involvement in the Market. I advocate having Companies owned either entirely by their workers, or a combination of workers and Government through central banks. What Reagan and Thatcher did was sell off all the Companies owned by Government, which turned these from Socialist to Capitalist. This decreased the Socialism in the economy and
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Do you remember the UK before Thatcher? Everything everywhere in the UK is better now. The 1970s were an economic and social catastrophe.
Do you remember the USA before Regan? The fastest postwar year of USA growth since 1951 occurred under President Ronald Reagan. The economy grew by 7.2% in 1984 due to the end of the 1981–1982 recession. Every measure of social welfare increased under Regan's policies that continued into Bush and Clinton administrations. Consult "real median household income" at http [wikipedia.org]
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Cherry picking data I see. 1970s weren't great because it was a period of cyclical depression. 1960s were much better, 1980s would have been better without Thatcher or Reagan because the cyclical downpoint was over. Thatcher and Reagan used the downturn to increase Capitalist involvement in the economy, which is basically adding more Feudalism into the mix. For this reason more and more of the output goes to fewer hands, which is where inequalitty comes from. The current stagnation is a product of that ineq
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The trick is not to be distracted by GDP but to look at the distribution of wealth, & poverty rates in particular. That tells you the real state of the economy for most ordinary, working people.
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According to capitalism, the banks should have gone *poof* in 2008. Bailouts should not exist in capitalism.
What we have today is a system that needs a new name. It's basically "privatize profits - socialize costs".
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Again, you are equating Capitalism with Market Economies. They are not the same thing. It is the distortion of a Market Economy through Capitalism that causes such Market distortions as banks getting bailed out.
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Care to show how the shitshow of a system we have right now has anything to do with capitalism? No later than "if you produce something that the demand side doesn't demand you perish" our system breaks apart.
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Care to show how the shitshow of a system we have right now has anything to do with capitalism?
Bro it only means money is in charge of production, that is literally the only thing capitalism means, don't be confused about this as it's very very simple. What we are seeing in the world is precisely what you would expect when money is in charge. It accretes more money and the system goes out of balance and fails catastrophically through self-reinforcing effects. Anything else you think is part of capitalism isn't, it's part of some capitalism-based system.
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Capitalism is not a system. It's a condition of capital controlling the means of production. How specifically it does that is the system, we are using corporatism whose entire purpose is to separate investors from responsibility. Any time you separate rights (in this case profit) from responsibility (in this case, for the various misdeeds of the corporation's executives and other employees) you create opportunity for malfeasance. The system is literally designed from the bottom up to hurt people for profit.
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Only for the little guy. If you're rich enough the government bails you out.
Re:Yup. Serfdom kills. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yup. Serfdom kills. (Score:5, Insightful)
Government meddling is only needed to fix the distortion Capitalism causes. If investment were entirely provided by banks acting independently of Government, without themselves being distorted by having to provide income to shareholders, then further meddling would not be needed. Even the need for standards regulation would be decreased, as properly functioning Markets would correct themselves with those selling shoddy goods going out of business.
It is precisely the distortion caused by Shareholder Capitalism, causing Companies to satisfy shareholders first and foremost, that causes the problems Government then has to correct for. Companies should be owned by their workers, with investment funds coming from Central Banks out of taxation. Only then can a Free Market work properly.
Governments could then concentrate on their real job. Providing security and defence, and looking after those of their Citizens who can't for whatever reason look after themselves. Less taxation would be needed, as most tax currently goes into fixing the market distortions Capitalism causes. This would be a win-win all round, except for those parasite Capitalists who gain from the current system.
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ahem
Post-capitalism
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What kind of capitalism doesn't have shareholders? I'll wait.
Privately held companies such as Mars candy.
Family owned businesses. Almost 2/3 of businesses in the USA are small business, and almost all are privately held.
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Now let me help you out here. There are some people who would be considered shareholders in those privately held businesses. I can help you along further if you need it.
We're posting in the context of Malefrant's post on Shareholder Capitalism. It should be obvious he's talking about the shareholders of publicy held corporations.
And yes, we're aware that even a single owner/employee business can have a shareholder. Most of my family are, or have been, small business owners and hold 100% of the stock. They're immune to the short-term decision-making distortions caused by the publicy held corporations' shareholders, their lawyers, and the Fortune 500 Executive class raiding
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What kind of capitalism doesn't have shareholders? I'll wait.
Cooperatives are a hybrid where the shareholders are all employees or, in the case of housing, owners. Instead of shareholder agreements which are a top down authoritarian structure, you have a bottom up collective ownership functioning through democratic representation. This stops the government from unilaterally deciding who gets what and puts those decisions to a vote by stakeholders who only get a vote proportional to people (to a large extent), not to capital.
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What you are saying makes zero sense. Less than zero sense. It parses as syntactically correct English, but becomes gibberish when interpreted.
Private ownership of the means of production is the very essence of Captialism. It's not, in any meaningful sense of the word, a "distortion." People can own businesses, can freely trade businesses, and can even break up a business into tiny logical pieces and freely trade those. That is what "private ownership" means! "Shareholders" are the private owners. Pr
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This would be a win-win all round, except for those parasite Capitalists who gain from the current system.
Small time and single property renters get lumped into multinational conglomerates and they couldn’t be more dissimilar.
Companies should be owned by their workers, with investment funds coming from Central Banks out of taxation. Only then can a Free Market work properly.
Many people have a need to rent, college students, temporary jobs, etc who don’t want to be on the line for tens or hundreds of thousands when the market takes a dip. Conversely, many people are forced into single unit rentals because of the same thing, they may need to move but are so underwater that they can’t just bring a briefcase of tens or hundreds
Re:Yup. Serfdom kills. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Government meddling" is the only reason free markets can exist.
People use the term "free market" to mean two things:
1. A market free of regulation
2. A market free of barriers to competition
These are two very different things and are often opposites.
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"Government meddling" is the only reason free markets can exist.
People use the term "free market" to mean two things:
1. A market free of regulation
2. A market free of barriers to competition
These are two very different things and are often opposites.
The former is "lassiez-faire". Most people understand that "free market" is an economic system based on supply and demand, this does not mean it's free of regulation or interference (governmental or otherwise).
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That is correct.
Unfortunately, historically speaking, government is a major source of rent-seeking. The monarchy in France fell for a number of reasons, but a big one was that the government had become essentially an auction house for rent-seekers, with an immense array of positions, titles, deeds, gifts and so on, all with their own little yearly income attached.
We see a lot of that in our governments. It's not the family members anymore, but party members, friends, campaign donors, etc. who are showered w
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Free Markets are incompatible with Capitalism. Capitalism is a corruption of real Market Economies, with elements of Feudalism mixed into it. Instead of Land Owners milking the Peasants, we now have Capitalists (holders of Capital rather than land) milking the Workers. For Free Markets to work it must be the Governing bodies, mostly actual Governments through central banks, who supply investment money rather than private individuals, otherwise the incentives are skewed toward providing income for these Capi
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Re:Yup. Serfdom kills. (Score:5, Interesting)
Also important on the topic is that Adam Smith's hairy invisible hand of the market was dependent on things like honesty, morality, sympathy and justice, in every person and also in the society as a whole. Without these, it was clear to Smith that the market was going to go sideways fast, and if you look at what is going on in the world, it is clear that he called it.
I mean everyone with two functioning brain cells should be able to call it.
Funny thing is that no economist actually reads Smith. The Wealth of Nations is a brick of a book, a lot of work, and in any case brings about an argument not welcome in our current economy scene. So it is best avoided. Instead they have kept the image of the hand, but taken it out of context and turned it into a sales pitch for uncontrolled capital and a society built on greed. And no wonder either, because economists get awards, and their departments get grants from, that's right, capital.
Basically the whole of our economy scene is on the payroll of capital, and they procude the kind of thinking they are paid for. And this thinking gets made into politics, and into policy, because there really is no other thinking that has any meaningful penetration into the society.
It's going to get much worse before it is going to get better. In the mean time I guess we can better spend our time by unraveling the Gordian knot...
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So to actually have a Free Market, as the Right demand, we need to drastically change the Economy to a more Socialist form, where private wealth above a reasonably low level is taxed heavily, and the income from this then used for investment in Companies.
The private wealth above a certain level taxed heavily would more resemble the America of the 50s, which the right claims to want to go back to. But taxing wealth now is seen as the ultimate sin by these same individuals, so you're stopped at move number one.
Back to the drawing board.
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All you are doing is showing how little you understand of Economics. Communism is different from Market Economies. It completely takes the Market out of the equation bymaking the Government the only shareholder of any Company. That system assumes that Government will always be competent at managing the economy, which I think is extremely unlikely. Hence I do not support Communism. Instead I support a proper Market Economy, closer to Adam Smith than our current form is. Although Adam Smith was still blinded
Re:Yup. Serfdom kills. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is never no law. Anarchy never existed in the history of mankind, anything we call "anarchy" is just the rule of the strongest.
And the strongest in a market is whoever has the most money. Hint: That won't be you.
Personally, I'd prefer government meddling to having to conform to the whims of some corporations. In a government, I at least nominally have a say.
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Re:Yup. Serfdom kills. (Score:5, Insightful)
Communes can actually work. But not because of laws but because of human nature. You can care, as a human, for your "pack". A group of about 10, maybe an extended group of even 20, individuals. You don't need laws for that. You have each other's back because you know each other, you like each other, you will not steal from them and you sure wouldn't want to harm them. Because they're part of your group, they are people that you will consider "yours".
That changes quickly when the group size increases. And this is why communism as a national system failed. People don't give a fuck about people they don't know.
If you now have a commune that "works", you usually have a distinct lack of the kind of people that would make it break apart, i.e. the person who thinks that they should rule them all and that everyone should be subject to their whims.
Now that I think about it, getting rid of these bastards would generally be a pretty good idea.
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> Now that I think about it, getting rid of these bastards would generally be a pretty good idea.
Then suddenly it takes a group of assholes to prevent another group of assholes from taking over.
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Yes, communes are great. In fact, they can go much larger in size - up to Dunbar's number (150, may be 148). So one can have the back of 148 people.
Some vague arguments in its favour are the average tribe size in last few tribes remaining in the world - was about 148. Of course it is not a settled science - but there surely is a number of members above which a society needs stricter laws, and their enforcement. It is also possible that it depends on the person - and it is higher for "leftists" than the "rig
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Somewhere in any group of 15-30 people there is one true psychopath and the material for 3 enablers to keep the majority.
Re:Yup. Serfdom kills. (Score:5, Informative)
Private living space rental more than likely correlates strongly with poverty. If you want to look towards causal relationships, I'd say look at the causes of poverty, e.g. economic systems skewed towards making the rich richer.
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It has nothing at all to do with house builders. When prices are high due to insufficient supply, more and more builders enter the market (if they can) until there is equilibrium between supply and demand.
More housing cannot be built because people who already have housing control the local government, and the local government prohibits more building. Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY)!
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One thing is that local governments perversely have erected a legal briarpatch that discourages housing construction. It's not an exaggeration to say that they banned housing...it is common and universal for the local government to have completely banned new construction. In my neighborhood, it's impossible to build another house unless you tear one down and replace it, and you can't subdivide land, you can't convert to a duplex, you can't put in an ADU, you can't do shit. And/or when they
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Nope. Naive, simplistic, textbook "free market economics" doesn't describe anything in any useful way in the world of housing. M
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There is no "free market" in economic theory.
In economic theory there are competitive, less competitive and non-competitive markets.
In fact, according to economic theory, a "free", as in unregulated market will always become a variant of a non-competitive market, harming most participants.
False. (Score:5, Insightful)
A completely free market lends itself to monopoly and cartel dominance. Once that happens, all the benefits of the free market evaporate.
There must be government intervention to prevent anticompetitive behavior. Government intervention is literally the only way to prevent anticompetitive behavior. So a blanket statement like "Government meddling in the free market is bad" is patently false, and has been refuted by professional economists time and time again. Including Adam Smith.
SOME government meddling is bad. It depends on the specifics. Government meddling that protects consumer health, for example, is good and necessary. It simply should not be legal for businesses to sell parasite eggs as weight loss pills, even if they work! But government price controls, on the other hand, are outrageously bad. Government-enforced break-ups of huge companies are usually good. So, the specifics matter, a lot.
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I wonder what will happen in the next 50 odd years. Right now gen Z can't afford to buy a home, so they have to rent forever. Renting into retirement is not a good idea unless you have a very good pension or "savings" (i.e. sold your very valuable property).
It might end up that we see massive amounts of pensioner poverty and homelessness. It may also end up that gen Z eventually inherits property from their parents and decides to screw the next generation in the same way by raising prices again, or becoming
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Even in good inheritance tax systems, it's difficult to tax inherited property because often descendants are living in it. That's going to get more common as renters move into their parent's old place.
Re:Yup. Serfdom kills. (Score:5, Interesting)
Preventing accumulation of natural monopolies such as land will only slightly help. The world needs to recognize that urban planning requires limiting industry concentration.
The agricultural society gave a relatively evenly spread out population, which grew industry similarly spread out. With industry however there are economic advantages of concentration. To fight the push towards megacities the west has turned to urban containment, but industry cares very little if their workers get forced to live in their car.
The least invasive method of containing both urban sprawl and housing prices is to add industry containment policies on top of the urban containment policies. After that if real estate accumulation is a problem, you can add real estate taxes with exemption for primary residence.
Aussie housing market is a totally shitshow (Score:5, Interesting)
It was done in the UK (Score:2)
The research was in the UK, so it's UK-focused, not Australia-focused.
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Adelaide is in South Australia.
One would assume it was a joint study of both countries.
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The research was in the UK, so it's UK-focused, not Australia-focused.
The UK is in a very similar situation, especially here in the south. House prices have risen so much and so much faster than earnings that the only way most people in their 20's or 30's can afford a house is with a huge loan from the bank of Mum and Dad. It got even worse in the pandemic.
I suspect it's a similar story in the parts of the US and Canada where people want to live. Sure you can get cheap housing in Bumfuck, Nebroma but what about a place that has good employment prospects, nightlife and a da
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You'd be surprised, but this situation is the same everywhere where the opportunities for finding a well-paying job are geographically concentrated. Tokyo, Japan, Taipei, Taiwan, hell even Sofia, Bulgaria. The amounts may differ, but the price/income ratio is similar.
I don't know how to break this to you (Score:3)
Time to spend some Karma. Look around and right wing, pro-corporate media around the globe. You'll see the same talking points over and over and over again. This is not by accident. The think tanks that fund that stuff are run by billionaires, and those billionaires operate globally. Lines on a map mean next to nothing to them.
The same thing happens with bad econ
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A quick Google finds that there are 166,000 AirBnbs listed in Australia, against a housing stock of 10,900,000 dwellings. That's comparable to the number of homes targeted to be built each year for the next five years.
It's not great to have 1.5% of your housing stock allocated to short term rentals in the middle of a shortage, but you aren't going to solve the crisis by putting 150k homes on the market.
Re:Aussie housing market is a totally shitshow (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's not mention rampant immigration into Australia which is one of the primary drivers.
House builders are going gang busters after COVID just to beat the backlog. On the current population growth statistics Australia cannot build houses fast enough in the next 5 years to get even close to the immigration numbers as we don't have the trades, supplier base or even anywhere for imported tradespeople to even stay. Concrete and brick suppliers would require massive investment NOW to meet future demand but in the current economic climate are very wary.
Even the left's wet dream of the fall of capitalism would not solve the housing problem right now or even in the next 10 years unless they go down the Stalinist approach of liquidating large chunks of the population [which in Australia at the moment according to the left would be the Jews]
As always, the people who created this mess have shifted the blame to immigrants. It's never the fault of capitalists or corporations buying up huge numbers of houses, it's those damn immigrants. Definitely not the fault of corporations announcing record profits every quarter at the same time boasting how their costs have not changed.
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How much impact does the requirement that non-residents can only purchase new-built homes impact things in Australia? AFAIK an immigrant can only rent a place until they have residency. It seems like the whole market is really distorted on several levels.
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Re:Aussie housing market is a totally shitshow (Score:5, Informative)
I just looked and immigration in Australia has fallen for nearly a decade. It’s had a slight uptick in the past year but still down for 10 years straight.
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On the other hand (Score:4, Funny)
Being a landlord ages you 3x as fast as renting does...
Re:On the other hand (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah but don't tell that to the crop of neo-communists who think housing should be a "basic human right" and landlords are evil should be bashed at every turn.
I had one property that I'd been renting for 20 years. The law prevented me from raising the rent to reasonable levels, and half of my tenants left me bills so bad I lost money.
And so after 20 years, I gave up and I sold it. That's one property that isn't on the rental market no more, driving the rents up everywhere else. I'm not an evil landlord anymore, and the "basic right" people got exactly the reverse of what they wanted: more unaffordable rents.
I worked my ass off in the 90s to pay for my property. I've never been a bad landlord. I've never jacked up the price of rent to unreasonable levels. I've always maintained the property to the highest standard, always done all the repairs. And I've put up with tenants that didn't pay on time more often than I should've. And all I got for it was disrespect and neglect.
And to top it all off, now a bunch of ungrateful me-me-me generation cheapskates who think housing should be free or at-cost by right insult me, call me a exploiter and have the guts to tell me I didn't really have to do anything to deserve what I have because getting a loan in the 90s only required a handshake and a signature on a paper towel.
Well fuck the whole baley lot of you. You'll have to find another sucker to provide affordable housing for you, cuz I ain't one of them no more.
I'm really salty about this.
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And so after 20 years, I gave up and I sold it. That's one property that isn't on the rental market no more, driving the rents up everywhere else.
Unless it was demolished it wasn't removed from the housing stock, was it? So either the new owners rented it out, or they lived in it (thus removing themselves from the renter population.) I bet you had decent capital gain over the period, and the rent helped pay it off, stop complaining.
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I never wanted to rent the fucking place. Having tenants is more trouble than it's worth.
The reason why I didn't get out of this stupid deal sooner is because I wanted to leave something to my children. Well, I'm a nice dad, I won't leave them a headache.
"Real capitalist"... Jesus. I'm not fucking Bezos. I'm a guy trying to do his best for his family. Have you no shame?
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"Real capitalist"... Jesus. I'm not fucking Bezos. I'm a guy trying to do his best for his family. Have you no shame?
Says the guy who was trying to profit from other people's basic needs.
Rent seeking is a drain on the economy.
You are upset because it wasn't convenient for you to be a drain on the economy.
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Agree. I am not a landlord but my mother-in-law is. And one of her tenants have been living there for 40 years. FFS I am 55, so she lived there when I was in middle school. As soon as that woman dies I am going to be saddled with... no I am going to sell the bloody place and get rid of the problem ASAP. Jesus, no.
The other floor that she rented out was occupied by a crazy nutjob who could not hold a job that had a fastass hubbie who stayed there forever and she carted beer up for him. When she finally got t
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Truly spoken as someone who obviously owns nothing of value and blames others for his misfortune.
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Yes, one property off of the rental market and one former renter also off of the rental market now, so that's a wash.
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Well fuck the whole baley lot of you. You'll have to find another sucker to provide affordable housing for you, cuz I ain't one of them no more.
We don't want you to.
I can't speak for others, but what I want is for renting properties to be illegal, and for empty homes to be taxed heavily and the proceeds spent on buying housing back from people who don't need it. You sell for what the market will bear and if you don't like it, fuck you for rent seeking on people's basic needs anyway. The government then loans out housing to anyone who can't afford it. If you have a record of not caring for properties they loan you something shitty. If there are enou
Chronic stress. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's what's aging people faster. Renting and not being perfectly stable with your homestead is a baseline of stress. That that ages people faster than not having that problem is just about basic common sense IMHO.
Correlation vs Causation (Score:4, Insightful)
This study seems to mix up correlation with causation.
People renting their home tend to be less wealthy than people owning their home, especially in dense urban areas. Being poorer is definitely something that ages you faster...
Or we could also have a study finding out that wearing cheaper clothes ages you faster...
Re:Correlation vs Causation (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, I'm sure these experts in the field never even considered a point that was so obvious to some random slashdot dude.
Re: Correlation vs Causation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Correlation vs Causation (Score:5, Informative)
That is decidedly a possibility. These studies are conducted by "social science" departments who rely heavily on meta studies and surveys which are often poorly controlled or are extremely specific and should not be projected onto wider populations. If you read the linked article, this paper is based on a survey of 1400 people who live in the UK (pop. 67M). They used this dataset to bring forward these conclusions as they apply to Australians, as the universities in question are located in Australia and therefore is where their funding comes from. They collected exactly zero data on anyone in Australia for this study.
This isn't science.
If it's one thing right leaning people hate (Score:2)
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In "we need the grant money" world, I wouldn't necessarily ascribe thoroughly careful and guarded conclusions to a popularly covered research result.
Even if it occurs to them that the obvious result is likely, it's not as exciting to get coverage and continued grant money.
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But let's not ever dare have a study that would reflect poor personal choices that keep people poor. Like FOMO/YOLO feeding a lifestyle well beyond income, massive credit card debt, etc.
I'd love to see how this study extends to leasing cars as well. Or even owning smart phones. Both rich and poor people toss those in the garbage every 3-5 years and are forced to buy a brand-new one. Repeat until you're dead. I'd imagine one could add a damn decade onto their life expectancy by not succumbing to smartph
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I'd imagine one could add a damn decade onto their life expectancy by not succumbing to smartphone addiction.
What's the life expectancy cost of not having access to easy and flexible communications? With one device I can look up my medical information on a portal and also make an appointment. Or I can call up the physician I was referred to and be told don't call us, we'll call you. Er, whoops, wait
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You don't need a cell phone to receive a call-back, you probably have a house number.
Great, so I can get a call back about my appointment being rescheduled after I miss it.
Life existed and operated just fine before the era of cellular telephones
No, it didn't. It was shit then and it's shit now. But it's more convenient shit. I was able to take a call pertaining to my retaliatory dismissal complaint at lunch in my car when I couldn't have taken it any other time, I'd have had to stay home at least half the day and lost income. Why do you want me to lose income?
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"People renting their home tend to be less wealthy than people owning their home, especially in dense urban areas. Being poorer is definitely something that ages you faster..."
And yet rents are often far higher than mortgages.
Renting/mortgage is as much luck as anything. I earn good money but have rented/owned/rented/owned/rented/owned as life events happened. Given a choice I would have always owned. But getting a mortgage is FAR MORE DIFFICULT than getting a rental, even with the exact same income and
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Your experience no longer reflects the current reality. The mortgage vs. rental market has turned upside down (in the US, at least).
According to this analysis by The Economist [economist.com], "for 89% of Americans renting a two-bedroom dwelling is now cheaper than buying a comparable property. Three years ago the figure was 16%."
Um... yeah, no shit (Score:2)
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it's a study on the effects of poverty you silly-billy.
No, it is a study on the impact of renting vs owning on life expectancy (aging faster or not). Did you actually read the study? The link is in the article, you should start by doing that.
The study is still interesting though. However, instead on blaming it on renting only, it would be interesting to look at the impact of the conditions of rent (i.e.: quality of the property being rented, the actual rent level, etc...). The problem I have with the study is that it seems to imply that renting is bad. They don
Re:Correlation vs Causation (Score:5, Interesting)
Do a search for 'rental house mould' and see what you would have to deal with.
I agree with all you say. What I am saying is that in the example you gave, it is not "renting" that ages you faster thans moking. It is living in a house with mould.
Fixing that may require better housing laws (like forcing the owners to actually maintain their houses properly). An example of that: in France, before renting a property, you have to make an Energy Performance Diagnostic of your property. This is done by qualified professionals, not something you can do yourself and lie about. As of 2023, if your property performs too low (as in: if its isolation is so bad that renters will be expected to spend too much on heating, or accept to live in too cold conditions), you can't rent or sell your property.
Some may argue that their government is removing some freedom, that it is communism. First, people saying that have no idea what communism is. Second, what kind of freedom are we talking about? Freedom to be a shitty landlord? Good.
For most people who take care of their property correctly, this law does not impact them. For people who can't be trusted to behave like adults, this forces them to do so.
Not in the study (Score:2)
Renting OUT apartments, ages you faster than Crystal Meth.
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Renting OUT apartments, ages you faster than Crystal Meth.
Yes, this right here. I had a house I rented out for 6 years, the last two of which the renters paid in an off-and-on fashion as they had financial troubles. When I could no longer afford to be kind myself and needed them to pay regularly, they left and destroyed the house on the way out, intentionally. Blew something up in the microwave, let the water overrun the sinks onto the floor, they turned off the electric at the breaker on the pole and cut the buried lines that went from the pole to the house, they
The problem isn't simple (Score:3)
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Garbage in, garbage out (Score:2)
This is a rather obvious example of correlation vs causation. Stress and medical care seem more likely to be the issue here. Particularly medical care. People who can afford to pay rent don't qualify for social benefit programs but are often broke or even sinking financially. This is the hell stage toward the end of the welfare treadmill. I know, I've been there. They can't afford to go to the doctor.
The smart ones consider themselves to not be able to afford anything. They aren't leasing a pretty car or pa
"Not knowing if your lease will be extended" (Score:2)
Wow, that's pretty messed up. In Ontario, Canada, if the landlord doesn't extend your lease, it doesn't matter. You have the right to stay on a month-to-month basis indefinitely. Only the tenant can decide to leave, except for a very few reasons: Landlord needing the premises for his or her own use, or major repairs, for example.
Admittedly, some landlords abuse the allowable reasons to terminate a lease, but overall tenants have decently strong protection here.
Now, rental prices on the other hand are c
Re: (Score:2)