Submitted by nacorom t3_z3qmp2 in technology
ibond_007 t1_ixnssai wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in Amazon Faces Black Friday Protests, Strikes in 40 Countries by nacorom
Amazon is not the richest company. Amazon retail doesn’t make any money infact it is losing money. In fact Amazon was the first company ( don’t bring Costco in this conversation ) to raise the hourly rate. Now Amazon pays around $18+ per hour. Amazon still pays way better than Walmart in terms of pay and benefits.
Folks who complain how can some one live with a livable wage with $36K gross the answer is not to keep raising the salary but bring the housing costs down as it costs up more 50% of the income for these earners.
How to fix housing? Rent control doesn’t work. Intead shift the incentives for builders and home owners and charge a premium for rental owners.
EasterBunnyArt t1_ixnunx9 wrote
Or have the government actually build rent controlled buildings instead of expecting for profits to solve issues through altruism.
bikesexually t1_ixoz7jj wrote
The easier and better solution is to have a progressive property tax rate. 1-2 house you pay normal rates. 3-5 houses you pay 5% more. 6-10 houses you pay 10% more. Etc. Those will reduce the number of massive holdings/hoardings and slum lords while increasing available funds for the locality.
demmian t1_ixpaidy wrote
Won't that be avoided through nested companies, that each hold just 1 property?
EasterBunnyArt t1_ixpwzm6 wrote
Exactly, which is what is happening already. You need to remove tax breaks from nested companies and apply them to all if they are under an umbrella. I recall last year or so Germany had a report on one company having like 50 nested companies.
UniversalEthos53 t1_ixoibvd wrote
This exist. It’s called government housing.
ibond_007 t1_ixox5y7 wrote
Govt housing is for namesake. There should ramp this up more.
UniversalEthos53 t1_ixpujj3 wrote
Actually it’s pretty common. We have a few really nice (way nicer than a lot of the apartments) in TN. Thought they were for rent but couldn’t make more than 30K jointly or single and couldn’t be in school. 1500sq ft for 600$ a month utilities included. It was at this point the lady let me know it was government housing. Place was nice as shit.
NeverInept t1_ixpxfka wrote
I’m pretty confident that government project housing has been a disaster in the US. Did you grow up in the projects? Would you like to?
EasterBunnyArt t1_ixpygyy wrote
There is a difference between intentionally failing and the overall idea being useless. Just because Republicans have been gutting public investments for decades does not mean other nations haven’t made it work. Hell, a preliminary search in my corner and it seems most government housing is just financing private housing these days. We even have the discussions on NPR here and it will be private building going forward with mandatory fixed affordability. So all in all the public access will still be private but with some expected to be available for cheap. At least for a few years and then we tend to forget about it.
kmsc84 t1_ixo7y4c wrote
Rent controlled buildings that end up being sewers.
[deleted] t1_ixo8zgq wrote
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_unfortuN8 t1_ixomfbu wrote
> charge a premium for rental owners.
Would this cost not be passed down to renters?
ibond_007 t1_ixon5d4 wrote
Yes and no. Depending on how you do it. Make the second home or rental home taxes 2-3X of the primary home. This will de incentivize to rent or have second homes. Similarly being a tax code to tax rental property incomes with a higher percentage.
With low interest rate all the corporations and rich guys can afford to buy more homes and rent them. First home buyers don’t have a opportunity to get into the game.
fire_cdn t1_ixpa69e wrote
As someone at the earlier stages of building a real estate investment portfolio, I suspect that raising property taxes will in some ways just get passed onto renters (I assume that's what you mean by the first portion of your moment), but maybe not
I do agree that adjustments to the tax code are needed. I suspect most of the public would want sudden drastic changes unlikely to actually come into law. Instead I think that the changes need to be gradual. Most real estate investors (especially small to medium sized investors) build their wealth over decades through tax advantages. Sure some quickly flip homes but there's also a lot of risk in that.
Depending on the market, some get lucky with property appreciation but it often make very little cash month to month or even "loses" money. Others focus on markets that cash flow very well but don't appreciate much. Then of course there's the quality of neighborhood where the cash flow is inversely proportional to the quality of the area, quality (aka risks) of the tenants.
Anyways, most properties these days cash flow $150-300 per door per month after all expenses (and appropriate budgeting for repairs etc). It's not much. The power comes from limiting or not paying any income tax on that $150-300 per door per month. For example, you can sometimes write off property taxes. Other common write-offs include mortgage interest, property depreciation (that can be spread out over 27.5 years or accelerated for more write off in a short period), repairs, etc.
If the property appreciates and you want to sell it, in theory you should pay capital gains tax. Although the rate is fairly low, you also get hit with "repaying" the property depreciation that I mentioned above.
The loop hole is that you can do a 1031 exchange. Essentially you have a small window of time to sell the property, turn around, and reinvest that same amount of money into another property (or multiple properties adding up to that same amount). When you do this, you do not pay capital gains tax nor repay the property depreciation. These owed taxes get passed forward until the property is sold not using a 1031 exchange. However, you can apparently do this until you die and pass it onto your children who can indefinitely repeat this, deferring taxes. The owed taxes may even disappear when you die? Although that's so far ahead I haven't consulted an estate attorney yet.
I think that the tax code needs to slowly go after the 1031 exchange. There's been some talk about this for years but no government wants to truly commit since let's face it, they likely directly or indirectly benefit from this through their network.
Oh another fun loophole. If you have a full time W2 job but your spouse stays at home/works part time, you can potentially claim that the spouse runs your real estate portfolio. They can get this special status where they can pass up to 100% of the extra unused tax write offs from the properties onto the working spouses W2 to offset that income tax. Versus above where you still pay income tax from your W2 job but likely owe nothing on your real estate income.
li_314 t1_ixpilvt wrote
It doesn't affect the demand for rental housing, so I don't see why it would.
RebornPastafarian t1_ixolwva wrote
Amazon pays slightly better garbage than other places. It’s still garbage, and they should still be paying more.
ibond_007 t1_ixomiyo wrote
I agree but Amazon takes way more blame. Walmart employees were permanent recipients of food stamps! But no one talks about it.
Again my point is we can’t keep raising the wage as inflation goes up along with it. We have to bring the costs down especially housing costs.
Nationally we need a goal to build X amount of low cost homes to house all the people. US population is growing healthy compared to other western countries and we have to make the lives better.
Bad mouthing the billionaires is not helping. These billionaires switch side to Republicans and want to fuck us even more. Elon is the recent example who switched sides purely because of unionization efforts!
RebornPastafarian t1_ixosu99 wrote
…no. Walmart being shitty does not excuse Amazon being shitty.
“We can’t keep raising wages” is a moronic thing to say because we have not been raising wages. The paltry increases of the last few years is still significantly less than they should be and monumentally less than the wealthy have given themselves.
Costs are not rising. Corporate profits are rising more than inflation.
The billionaires are the problem and need to be badmouthed. And by badmouthed I mean we need to fucking eat them.
Stop fucking trying to excuse this behavior with “but Walmart is even worse!!!!!!!! Stop being so mean to amazon!!!!!!”
Not_Scechy t1_ixp7176 wrote
They lose money because they can afford to in order to increase market share. Not of the kindness of their heart.
[deleted] t1_ixow5wx wrote
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Frooonti t1_ixoxxw2 wrote
>Amazon still pays way better than Walmart in terms of pay and benefits.
Yeah because they literally run out of desperate people they can exploit.
[deleted] t1_ixoqagl wrote
Amazon IS the most profitable company. It has its dominance in many sectors, for example Amazon web services. Retail may not be as profitable but its intangible as it brings customers to other services.
kweer t1_ixpam9o wrote
>Amazon IS the most profitable company.
It is not even in the top 5 most profitable companies.
The most profitable is Apple, but all of their blue collar work is done by wage slaves in Asia.
[deleted] t1_ixpg4vp wrote
True technically, I meant that i find arguments of not increasing wages because a company is not the “top” somewhat glib. It certainly has the means.
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