Comment by titanomachy
5 days ago
You’re not just paying the landlord, you’re paying to outbid all the other people who want to live in that space. Even if you could somehow remove the landlord from the equation, there’s no way you’d get your place for $50/month.
But with LVT the rent money would go to the government instead of the landlord
Why are we bidding at all? Should be first come first serve like most other goods.
What does that even mean? You would arrive at a city and enter your name at the end of a list of tens of thousands of people who want homes. Where do you live for the ten years it takes for enough people to die or leave so that your name comes up?
Or if you want someone to build a new house for you, who pays for it? $50/month certainly won’t cover it.
Anyway, most goods aren’t “first come first serve”, they’re priced at a market clearing rate. You don’t just walk out of the grocery store with as many steaks as you feel like. And you can bet that if they slashed the prices in half there would be no steaks left for you.