Calls to mind my favorite Colbert‡ quote: "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to procure the largest quantity of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing."

Taxes were privatized under the ancien régime (a tax collector committed to handing over a fixed sum and then was welcome to use whatever means he wished to go collected it -- and was free to keep the profits). The integration of many big businesses with government in the US (not just military-industrial but telecoms, banking etc) through regulatory capture and quid pro quo really resembles this system.

‡ Jean-Baptiste Colbert, I mean, Louis XIV's finance minister after the 30 years war. Probably more popular around here for the story that "laissez-faire economics" came from a conversation he had.

No wonder everyone is offing themselves with heavy narcotics these days!

...uh, not to make light of the huge issue we have with addiction, but you gotta feel like prospects might help peoples' moods.

I absolutely agree, money solves a lot of problems. Knowing that you can afford to pay your bills, knowing you can eat out and stretch your budget without breaking the bank next paycheck removes so much stress and frees you to focus on other things.

Constantly worrying about money, bills and what you can and cannot afford to do is brutal. Watching peers enjoy life makes it easier for you to stretch your credit card a bit more to "enjoy" a temporary moment of time you will undoubtedly pay heavily for in future.

It seems to be a vicious cycle and makes it more easy to neglect long term like retirement planning and savings.

I'd guess this problem will compound itself in about 20 years when this large swath of people reaches retirement age with no equity, no retirement and perhaps still lots of debt.

I think some of this stems from income inequality and access to a lot data. so those with extra money are looking to real estate as an investment, and the data allows them to extract maximum money from people till they break.

I'm in the Boston area. Living in a place I couldn't afford if I hadn't bought it 10 years ago. I'm wondering how much of this squeezing maximum profit from renters hurts local businesses as they're profits go to rents, and the people living in the area can't afford things because of high rents.

I think a political solution is inevitable.

Probably doesn't hurt business as the new people who rent there will have more money

We damn well won't, since the jobs around Boston really don't pay salaries commensurable with Boston rents.

For positional goods where there is a fixed supply people will tend to bid up the cost until it can't go any higher. I mean, in theory we could just build giant apartment towers all over SF but nobody wants to make that legal. And the number of medical residency slots, the construction of new hospitals, etc are very restricted. But fundamentally with higher education the number of slots of prestigious institutions has to be limited or they wouldn't be prestigious any more.

A lot of people want to make that legal! But those people are not able to vote in SF, because it's not legal yet.

That's a simple take on a very complex system.

The simpler the insight, the more valuable and powerful it is -- if correct.

I think it does capture a key basic principle underlying current trends. In any economic system, there is some total amount of "welfare" or value generated, and it gets split in some way.

So maybe you have a constant value of $2,000 per month for having a place to live. 10 years ago your rent was $1,000 per month and so of the $2,000 worth of utility generated by you living there, you got half and your landlord got half.

Now your rent is $1900 and you still would rather pay it than be homeless, and by many reasonable metrics the economy is better than ever, but your landlord is capturing almost all of the value in the system and you are reaching the breaking point.

And I personally don't think it's too simplistic to be true that, as powerful companies optimize (including politically), this kind of transfer is occurring in a lot of sectors in the US this decade.

yep, awesome that they've finally figured it out.