How housing became the world’s biggest asset class

Re:How housing became the world’s biggest asset class by svantana on Thursday January 23, 2020 @06:38AM (#22126715)

> Nobody creates land but somebody gets to "tax" it.

Well put. If I suggested privatising air and that you needed to pay the owner to breathe it, that would be seen as ridiculous, and rightly so. Meanwhile, land is an equally natural resource and equally essential to human life, but private land is just accepted as "the way it is".

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How housing became the world’s biggest asset class by esotericn on Thursday January 23, 2020 @12:58PM (#22129905)

This isn't a reasonable comparison because air is almost completely fungible; it's automatically redistributed throughout Earth by the magic of physics. Not only that, it's not scarce.

People in fact do pay for 'special' air in the form of air purifiers, air conditioning, heating, etc.

Land is both scarce and unsubstitutable.

[ Parent | on HN ]