patrick.net

*points towards the cat*
"I can see the cat"

What cat, where?- Everybody

Bellingham Bill says

Norwegians may have ~$200,000 each set aside in their sovereign wealth pension fund:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101321953

but their current housing debt burden is 2X ours!

http://www.norges-bank.no/pages/93708/Staff_memo_2013_05_eng.pdf

If recent home buyers in Oslo lost the also recent 20% bubble increase in price/sq.meter of a $1M 100m2 flat (condo), that would more or less equal their share if the "oil fund".

Poof! There goes the wealth.

I wonder about this in regards to China as there is no private property.

Having private property is essential to this country, it is part of the DNA. John Locke's ideas are an essential part of freedom it, imo is why the Chinese are corrupt, how can you steal when no one owns anything. It was organic to how men organized and motivated themselves.

Yet in Japan they do not take out mortgages.

Pat's book is essentially this point.

With the tax deduction for interest it is a huge incentive to own a home.

This might be more of a cultural problem, think meme, than a real problem.

While we are at it should we also tackle fractional banking? That probably sounds like tin foil hat stuff to most of you but it would sure get rid of the real enslavement that you are talking about.

indigenous says

China as there is no private property.

China has a housing bubble, are you saying they don't even own those places?

indigenous says

Yet in Japan they do not take out mortgages.

What do they do with all those mortgages then, both from private banks and public programs?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-17/abenomics-mobilizes-japan-homebuyers-to-action-mortgages.html

In Japan it is customary for them to save and pay cash for the houses.

Bellingham Bill says

And by “fix”, I think we have to build so much new, quality, supply that local real estate listings look like the toothpaste aisle at the supermarket.

Why do you hate banks and boomers?

indigenous says

In Japan it is customary....

Do you have any source for that? Everything I've seen indicates a huge mortgage market, over $1 trillion outstanding, going back decades.

curious2 says

indigenous says

In Japan it is customary....

Do you have any source for that? Everything I've seen indicates a huge mortgage market, over $1 trillion outstanding, going back decades.

Anecdotal, an employee who's wife is japanese

curious2 says

indigenous says

China as there is no private property.

China has a housing bubble, are you saying they don't even own those places?

According to my understanding there is no private property in China. They do the communist thing

indigenous says

Is this free association? Do you have anything to add....

I was thinking the same of your comments. You don't link to any sources at all, only your "understanding" and some person we can't see whose opinion may have been misrecalled or lost in translation. How do you explain the real estate bubble in China, if they don't have private property?

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/chinas-real-estate-bubble-50142079/

curious2 says

indigenous says

Is this free association? Do you have anything to add....

I was thinking the same of your comments. You don't link to any sources at all, only your "understanding" and some person we can't see whose opinion may have been misrecalled or lost in translation. How do you explain the real estate bubble in China, if they don't have private property?

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/chinas-real-estate-bubble-50142079/

This:

The law does not change the system of land tenure by which the state owns all land

From this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_Law_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China#Description

This :

Buying land[edit]
A foreign investor is not allowed to buy land in China. The land in China belongs to the state and the collectives.

From this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_property_law#Real_property_rights

Ah - I found a source on Japan, the Bank of International Settlements splits the difference, with Japanese mortgage debt being around half the level of the US:

"home mortgages in Japan – the single largest component of household debt in Japan, as it is in most other countries – account for 12% of the financial balance sheet (debt plus financial surplus), about half as much as in France and Germany (28%), the United Kingdom (28%) and the United States (23%)... Japanese households did not rely much on mortgage funding in the bubble period around 1990 (Graph 1). The representative Japanese household accumulated the large down payment required for purchasing a home on credit and, unlike many homeowners in the United States, did not subsequently extract equity from the house through additional bank loans."

indigenous says

From this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_Law_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China#Description

Wikipedia is not a source, at best it is a place to find sources, and the linked article does not cite any source. Many private residences and commercial buildings in capitalist countries are constructed on leased land, for example Goldman Sachs HQ and the Commodities Exchange are both located in Battery Park City in Manhattan, on land owned by the government. Even where people "own" land in America, their ownership is a type of tenancy, whether they hold a tenancy by the entirety (limited to married couples) or joint tenancy or tenancy in common. In most states, the local government can raise property taxes at will, showing who really owns the land.

curious2 says

Wikipedia is not a source, at best it is a place to find sources, and the linked article does not cite any source. Many private residences in capitalist countries are constructed on leased land, for example Goldman Sachs HQ and the Commodities Exchange are both located in Battery Park City in Manhattan, on land owned by the government. Even where people "own" land in America, their ownership is a type of tenancy, whether they hold a tenancy by the entirety (limited to married couples) or joint tenancy or tenancy in common. In most states, the local government can raise property taxes at will, showing who really owns the land.

You do understand that one of primary tenets of communism is that the "people" own the property?

Your examples are the exception not the rule, in China it is the rule.

indigenous says

You do understand that one of primary tenets of communism is that the "people" own the property?

I think you meant to say "the means of production," not necessarily "the property" (btw "property" can be real property, personal property, tangible vs intangible, etc.).

curious2 says

real property

I'm talking about real property. If the leaders decide not to renew the lease you loose.

curious2 says

indigenous
says

China as there is no private property.

China has a housing bubble, are you saying they don't even own those
places?

Most real estate in China are structured as "70yr lease" because private land ownership is not legal in that country. . . as the communist party there 3/4 century ago embraced an agrarian version of Marxism that is rather akin to Georgism in viewing land. The result was utter stagnation of residential development in most parts of that country for half a century after the communist party take-over while the population there more than doubled in the first few decades the regime. By the 1990's, only the communist party high officials had decent housing; everyone else had to pack into multi-generational pigeon houses . . . as can be expected in any Georgist / Marxist society where market price signal has broken down. It was set again this background that the developer's usual bravado "if you build it, they will come" was given a new lease on life in China two decades ago. Up to this point, people there seem to have kept buying just because prices of "it" keep going up, even if "it" turns out to be just tulip bulbs . . . a classic bubble exacerbated by lop-sided male-female population at marriageable age, another unintended consequence of their government central planning.

It really doesn't matter whether the land lease there is 70yrs, or traded lease on the house itself is 70 years; most of those buildings and houses built there in the last decade probably won't last 70 years anyway.

indigenous says

John Locke's ideas are an essential part of freedom it,

Did Harry the Realtor or Marcus the MBA investor mix their labor with the land?

Didn't the Indians mix their labor with the land? Sure didn't give them much legal status.

Reality says

Georgist / Marxist society where market price signal has broken down.

I thought Georgism required market signals. How would a Georgist society determine your land value tax in the absence of a market?

Bellingham Bill says

And by “fix”, I think we have to build so much new, quality, supply that local real estate listings look like the toothpaste aisle at the supermarket.

@Bellingham Bill:

You might find this of particular interest:
http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/ihstory.aspx?storycode=6502790

Housing stock builds by UK Government, 1946-2006. Is the lack of government construction and rapid rental/home buying prices increases linked?

errc says

*points towards the cat*

"I can see the cat"

What cat, where?- Everybody

Obligatory:

Reality says

It really doesn't matter whether the land lease there is 70yrs, or traded lease on the house itself is 70 years; most of those buildings and houses built there in the lasts decade probably won't last 70 years anyway.

Obligatory Chinese building falling over picture:

thunderlips11 says

Did Harry the Realtor or Marcus the MBA investor mix their labor with the land?

Didn't the Indians mix their labor with the land? Sure didn't give them much legal status.

What is your point?

zzyzzx says

Obligatory Chinese building falling over picture:

How long did that building last?

Locke said ownership came from mixing the labor with the land, as the basis for private property.

"Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others."

curious2 says

Reality says

Georgist / Marxist society where market price signal has broken down.

I thought Georgism required market signals. How would a Georgist society determine your land value tax in the absence of a market?

In the same way that Detroit tax assessors determine that your $10k house really is worth $200k for tax basis. LOL.

The central planners of the soviet bloc and the wannabe central planners in this country have long theorized that a socialist society can be built by copying the prices on the last day of the formerly capitalistic market, the day before the New Age. They don't understand prices serve a function in the market: directing where resources to where they are most needed. Therefore, as needs and wants change, prices change! Prices have to be set freely by the two parties engaging each other for mutually willing exchange.

Didn't Central Planning put a Man on the Moon, Win WW2, Build the Hoover Dam?

While private enterprise has many successes, it also produced the Pinto, the Pet Rock, Lady Gaga, the Star Wars prequels, and New Coke.

thunderlips11 says

Didn't Central Planning put a Man on the Moon, Win WW2, Build the Hoover Dam?

Central planning put a man on the moon for no practical purpose whatsoever. Central planning started WW2, and most wars before and after it. Hoover Dam? That's the same big-government Hoover that brought you the Great Depression. It's debatable whether Hoover Dam is such a great thing, as after it the US stopped building big dams like that.

While private enterprise has many successes, it also produced the Pinto, the Pet Rock, Lady Gaga, the Star Wars prequels, and New Coke.

Of course people make mistakes; that's just human nature. That's why people making mistakes should be paying for those mistakes at their own expense, like Ford Pinto, Pet Rock, Lady Gaga, Star Wars Prequels, and New Coke . . . as in, get this, Privately Funded Enterprises. If you don't like Pinto, Pet Rock, Lady Gaga, Star Wars Prequels and the New Coke, there shouldn't be armed thugs in costumes threatening to throw you into the jail for not paying for those flops (as in "taxation").

Reality says

That's the same big-government Hoover that brought you the Great Depression.

You should really read some history. President Hoover was a laissez-faire capitalist, "self-made," and one of the richest men ever to hold the office. BTW, he deserves credit for the Oakland Bay Bridge, which many experts had said would be impossible to construct. But, you're right about the Great Depression.

curious2 says

Reality says

That's the same big-government Hoover that brought you the Great Depression.

You should really read some history. President Hoover was a laissez-faire capitalist, "self-made," and one of the richest men ever to hold the office. But, you're right about the Great Depression.

Hoover was a self-made rich man, and a decent humanitarian (post-WWI relief). However, as a POTUS, he was far from being laissez-faire. His policy to hold wages and prices high, instead of letting the market clear like his predecessors Harding and Coolidge did, was what brought on the Great Depression (to be made worse by FDR's continuation of his policies) and the undoing of his presidency. Ironically, FDR ran the 1932 campaign promising to get rid of the myriads of Hoover's government committees for price setting!