A new poll finds the vast majority of U.S. adults are feeling some stress about the cost of groceries, as prices continue to rise and concerns about the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs remain widespread.
You’re talking about taxing grandma and grandpa out of their house and probably destroying their net worth
You’re oh so close to understanding the real problem happening.
It is literally impossible for us to both preserve grandma and grandpa’s current home value AND have affordable housing at the same time.
Anything we do to lower prices will destroy their net worth, and without lower prices we can’t have affordable housing.
Grandma and Grandpa own at least 65% of ALL residential properties, it could be more because that statistic only includes primary residences so it’s quite possible that after including cottages and lake houses, second homes that they rent out, and with their investments in real estate trusts through Blackrock, Grandma and Grandpa actually own 75-85% of all residential properties.
The last estimate for Corporation owned homes in the US was on the order of 2-3% by the way.
It is literally impossible for us to both preserve grandma and grandpa’s current home value AND have affordable housing at the same time.
It literally isn’t. You rezone areas for multifamily units, you build newer, denser structures in populated areas, you setup public transit so that commute distances can allow for more sprawl, etc etc etc. I’m also not talking about preserving their home value either. I’m talking about allowing them to continue to live there rather than taxing them into the old folks home.
You just want to self-flaggelate because you’re an owner occupant, and this exchange is extremely boring and not even very related to the original topic. You just like to argue and be contrarian, and looking at your name again I feel like we’ve already done this before and this is just the line of bullshit you always want to pull out regardless of actual topic.
Edit: I mean what in the name of fuck does any of this have to do with grocery prices?
I literally quoted you saying “probably destroying their net worth” as an argument against it, so yes you are talking about preserving their home value.
We cannot build our way out of this situation. It’s literally impossible, builders will not build while prices are actively dropping. They don’t even like doing it when prices are flat like we’re seeing in some places now.
And why the fuck should grandma and grandpa be allowed to stay in a 5 bedroom home that they bought to raise children in 50 years ago but has been empty other than 2 occupants for the last 30? That is the worst kind of greed and waste. Fuck them, they should downsize and free up that place for a family.
The fact that you don’t understand how housing prices affect grocery prices is part of the reason why you aren’t qualified to be discussing this. Housing prices affect everything very directly.
Grocery prices are made up of 3 primary components, real estate cost for the store, labour costs for the workers, and the cost of the underlying goods from wholesalers. The cost of labour is made up of real estate cost for the worker, food costs, and transportation costs (the three biggest factors anyways). The cost of the underlying goods from wholesalers is made up of the real estate cost for the warehouses, labour, transportation, and the underlying costs for the grocery items. The cost of the grocery items (lets just say it’s from a farm for now to make it simply) is made up of… real estate costs for the property, labour, and the farming inputs (tractors, fertilizer, seeds, fuel, etc)
Do you see how many times “real estate costs” show up in that breakdown? When housing prices go up, the price of everything goes up quite significantly.
Think of it this way, how much money would someone need to make to keep the same quality of life if their rent cost went down 80%? For a lot of workers, earning say $60,000 and spending $3000 a month on rent, if their rent went down to $600, they would only need to earn $31,200 a year to keep the same quality of life, that’s a 48% reduction in potential labour costs.
So now your grocery store is saving 80% on their property rent, 48% on labour, and the same things are happening downstream as well so their goods cost goes down too.
Except now we’ve created a loop. The same quality of life isn’t accurate, because now that housing is cheaper, your groceries got cheaper too, so you either have a better quality of life, or you could take even less money.
All value created goes somewhere. Right now, a large majority of it is accruing to landowners. Until that changes, these problems will continue.
I ain’t reading all of that, especially not when the first thing you did in this reply is take a phrase out of a sentence and tried to pretend that was the entire thought when it clearly wasn’t.
How are you going to get grocery prices down? Through georgism and ubi? Lord knows we cannot tax rich people who have all of the money nor look at any systemic factors because we’re 🙈🙉🙊 when it comes to them.
You’re just a crank. Go crank it on someone else’s finite time.
It is literally impossible for us to both preserve grandma and grandpa’s current home value AND have affordable housing at the same time.
Anything we do to lower prices will destroy their net worth, and without lower prices we can’t have affordable housing.
Grandma and Grandpa own at least 65% of ALL residential properties, it could be more because that statistic only includes primary residences so it’s quite possible that after including cottages and lake houses, second homes that they rent out, and with their investments in real estate trusts through Blackrock, Grandma and Grandpa actually own 75-85% of all residential properties.
The last estimate for Corporation owned homes in the US was on the order of 2-3% by the way.
Which number is bigger? 65% or 3%?
It literally isn’t. You rezone areas for multifamily units, you build newer, denser structures in populated areas, you setup public transit so that commute distances can allow for more sprawl, etc etc etc. I’m also not talking about preserving their home value either. I’m talking about allowing them to continue to live there rather than taxing them into the old folks home.
You just want to self-flaggelate because you’re an owner occupant, and this exchange is extremely boring and not even very related to the original topic. You just like to argue and be contrarian, and looking at your name again I feel like we’ve already done this before and this is just the line of bullshit you always want to pull out regardless of actual topic.
Edit: I mean what in the name of fuck does any of this have to do with grocery prices?
I literally quoted you saying “probably destroying their net worth” as an argument against it, so yes you are talking about preserving their home value.
We cannot build our way out of this situation. It’s literally impossible, builders will not build while prices are actively dropping. They don’t even like doing it when prices are flat like we’re seeing in some places now.
And why the fuck should grandma and grandpa be allowed to stay in a 5 bedroom home that they bought to raise children in 50 years ago but has been empty other than 2 occupants for the last 30? That is the worst kind of greed and waste. Fuck them, they should downsize and free up that place for a family.
The fact that you don’t understand how housing prices affect grocery prices is part of the reason why you aren’t qualified to be discussing this. Housing prices affect everything very directly.
Grocery prices are made up of 3 primary components, real estate cost for the store, labour costs for the workers, and the cost of the underlying goods from wholesalers. The cost of labour is made up of real estate cost for the worker, food costs, and transportation costs (the three biggest factors anyways). The cost of the underlying goods from wholesalers is made up of the real estate cost for the warehouses, labour, transportation, and the underlying costs for the grocery items. The cost of the grocery items (lets just say it’s from a farm for now to make it simply) is made up of… real estate costs for the property, labour, and the farming inputs (tractors, fertilizer, seeds, fuel, etc)
Do you see how many times “real estate costs” show up in that breakdown? When housing prices go up, the price of everything goes up quite significantly.
Think of it this way, how much money would someone need to make to keep the same quality of life if their rent cost went down 80%? For a lot of workers, earning say $60,000 and spending $3000 a month on rent, if their rent went down to $600, they would only need to earn $31,200 a year to keep the same quality of life, that’s a 48% reduction in potential labour costs.
So now your grocery store is saving 80% on their property rent, 48% on labour, and the same things are happening downstream as well so their goods cost goes down too.
Except now we’ve created a loop. The same quality of life isn’t accurate, because now that housing is cheaper, your groceries got cheaper too, so you either have a better quality of life, or you could take even less money.
All value created goes somewhere. Right now, a large majority of it is accruing to landowners. Until that changes, these problems will continue.
I ain’t reading all of that, especially not when the first thing you did in this reply is take a phrase out of a sentence and tried to pretend that was the entire thought when it clearly wasn’t.
How are you going to get grocery prices down? Through georgism and ubi? Lord knows we cannot tax rich people who have all of the money nor look at any systemic factors because we’re 🙈🙉🙊 when it comes to them.
You’re just a crank. Go crank it on someone else’s finite time.