Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Truly Capitalist Things

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Oct 18, 2015, at 10:48 PM, Elizabeth Magill <pastorlizm [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> And anyone shunning personal ownership of a home, and yet living in one, 
> means that someone else owns the home and is making money simply by "letting" 
> you use their capital investment and taking your money. How is that outside 
> of capitalism?

I haven’t been following this thread but Liz has pointed out the bottom line. 
Someone is making money off your home. 

That is you or someone else. No one works for free. And home ownership, I own 
or I own and rent to you, is work. 

Imagine owning an apartment building and renting to 30 households. It’s a lot  
of work.

Even if I am a non-profit organization, I control your living space.

If your home is in a trust, it is subject to the stipulations of the trust. You 
don’t have the freedom that you have if you own your own home. “Freedom of 
ownership” still requires the money to purchase and maintain the home 
(including mortgage fees, etc.).

Someone somewhere is paying the costs. 

Subsidized housing is paid for by all those who pay taxes.

A nice opinion piece by Paul Krugman today in the NYTimes on the Danish 
economy. (I prefer to speak of economic security rather than “welfare state” or 
as another author put it “reducing economic risk.”)

> Denmark maintains a welfare state — a set of government programs designed to 
> provide economic security — that is beyond the wildest dreams of American 
> liberals. Denmark provides universal health care; college education is free, 
> and students receive a stipend; day care is heavily subsidized. Overall, 
> working-age families receive more than three times as much aid, as a share of 
> G.D.P., as their U.S. counterparts.
> 
> To pay for these programs, Denmark collects a lot of taxes. The top income 
> tax rate is 60.3 percent; there’s also a 25 percent national sales tax. 
> Overall, Denmark’s tax take is almost half of national income, compared with 
> 25 percent in the United States.

https://hec.su/bPLf

The only other scheme I can think of to reduce housing costs is to reduce 
stuff. Wooden furniture is easier to maintain in the long run than padded 
furniture. How many electronic devices do you really need? Each device adds to 
the electric bill. Things require storage space. Space has to be heated and 
cooled and cleaned. What alternative building materials could be used?

Thinking from that direction I think would reduce costs in a better way than 
looking for non-ownership models or restricted sales prices. Denmark might be 
better but I don’t see it in our future. Denmark has a very homogeneous 
population which produces more trust. They share values and history and 
language. 

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Sociocracy: A Deeper Democracy
http://www.sociocracy.info