Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by TimTheTinker 1833 days ago
There's a big difference between agencies owning buildings within which to do business (or the BLM owning vast swaths of land for environmental preservation) and the IRS maintaining a real estate asset class.

In fact there's almost no comparison to be made between the two.
1 comments
teachingassist 1833 days ago
Regarding the government's ownership of real estate, I suggest you are simply mistaken, e.g.:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bisnow/2017/04/11/solving-the-m...

link
TimTheTinker 1833 days ago
That article is talking about local governments, not the federal government.
link
teachingassist 1832 days ago
Ctrl-F "federal government" suggests otherwise.

This is now really a bad faith argument.

You've moved the goalposts (again), and declared that your new goal wasn't met (when, in fact, you just ignored that part).

It's OK to admit you were wrong <3

link
TimTheTinker 1832 days ago
I don't think I've moved goalposts -- maybe just failed to articulate my concern precisely. (And only skimmed the article you linked.)

If the government purchases real estate with its own money and later sells it--fine by me. They have business to take care of and need places to do it.

What bothers me specifically would be a growing federal or state government stake in assets owned by others by virtue of a tax law that grants them such ownership.

I imagine whole swaths of businesses, apartments, and other buildings in cities across the US that are >50% owned by the government 40 years from now.

It would push us a lot closer to a world where people don't own anything anymore besides their own houses (maybe not even that) and the government owns everything.

link
teachingassist 1832 days ago
> It would push us a lot closer to a world where people don't own anything anymore besides their own houses (maybe not even that) and the government owns everything.

I'm really struggling to understand this point of view, given the article that you couldn't be bothered to read says the US government owns 15% of all real estate already.

In my country, the reason that a lot of people own their houses is because the government sold its housing stock to residents in the 1980s and 1990s. That created a majority of homeowners, for the first time.

The fact that the government didn't replace this housing stock has been the cause of a massive generational rift, with a reduction in owner-occupancy from that peak, down to the point that a plurality of people (the vast majority of people under 45 - almost all young families) are now private renters in insecure housing situations.

While that same housing stock - originally built by the people, for the people - is increasingly dominated by exploitative for-profit landlords.

link