> landlord
If you think these two things are compatible you need to talk to more people outside of your bubble.
being born into money is not a requirement to own several houses before 30.
Buying a fixer-upper outside of town with high-school and early 20s grinding, renting out 3+ rooms to cover the mortgage for painful years, working 80 hour weeks, refinancing against that first house into another under-maintained property where you live in half while upgrading the other, ending up with a rental duplex and drastically reduced living cost, is viable by 30. Maximizing youth savings, first house programs, and primary residence rules create less punitive economics.
It sucks and will let one learn why landlord is a pain in the ass job, and relies on sweat equity and modest lifestyle, wanting to commit to real estate, and non-ideal properties. Trade school or skipping college for early income and low debt make the numbers crunch easier.
Investing consistently into the market in your 20s probably out performs it by 65, and a young bankers lifestyle is a joy of its own, but: owning property young is achievable for electricians, security guards, and janitors.
owning property young is achievable for electricians, security guards, and janitors.
A non-landlord janitor saddled with student loans losing 30%+ of income to housing versus a landlord whose housing is covered that works as a janitor from the get-go have wildly different leverage opportunities and savings potential at 20 and 5 years down the road. Committing to property ownership instead of school and maximally exploiting living at home gets the down payment, committing to property improvement instead of lifestyle is what gears the investment.
That massive monthly rental savings snowballs into a down payment in the 5 year picture, the first assets improvements and cash flow support lending for the subsequent property purchase, upgrades to which support refinancing and correcting cash flow in the original property. Backed by those assets and cash flow: multi-tenant properties, incorporation, or more aggressive flipping are straight shots backed by the appreciating assets and ongoing work income.
Janitors can clean on the side, work in corporate chains, work in secure facilities, make overtime, juggle multiple jobs, or snowball their hustle into a cleaning company. A landlord-janitor can be creating a crew of live-together like-minded grinders and be building business wealth in parallel to their rental business in a synergistic loop.
It is very possible, I know several people who done it, and know of numerous successful businesses structured around the same. A group of immigrants in a house with a cleaning van out front can be a respectable business. Five such houses could be an early retirement.
The conceptual breakdown tends to be in willingness to sacrifice, and do hard unglamorous work.
“Janitors of all things” can be smart entrepreneurs who grow wealth, just like how programmers, of all things, can misunderstand basic financial calculus.
These gains might be realized at any point if they're willing to pay taxes for them.
Having lots of money but choosing not to spend it doesn't make you any less wealthy.
My bubble of... not-ultra-wealthy people? Are you saying I need to talk to more ultra-wealthy people? This makes no sense.
anything you can do thats useful to society counts as labor (but not vice versa, you can work as a robber or corporate lobbyist). from line cooks to wall street ceos to open source volunteers and stay at home moms who dont get paid but still work. landlords and executives count because management is labor too.
if your income comes from a trust fund or owning properties that you dont manage thats a passive reward for doing nothing. you are not productive. you are a parasite living on the back of everyone else and expecting indefinite rewards for a fixed amount of work you or your parents did years ago.
And we all "profit off of others' labor" when we buy things.
I was responding to the person who said "anything you can do thats useful to society counts as labor". According to them only retired people are allowed to live off investment income. But what if the thing someone labors at doesn't make them income, and they support themselves with investment income? They've satisfied OP's "be useful to society" dictum, so why is it so immoral for them to be a landlord.
If someone buys housing primarily because they have access to capital and credit that renters do not, then charges more than the carrying cost while minimizing maintenance and labor, they are extracting value from ownership of a scarce necessity. The value they capture comes less from producing something new and more from controlling access to housing. This is rent-seeking.
It doesn't mean all landlords are rent seeking, but it's not accurate to say the two have nothing to do two each other, and that it isn't the net effect or intention in almost all cases.
"And we all "profit off of others' labor" when we buy things."
How exactly do I generate a profit when I buy a hairbrush? That's not how profit works. That hairbrush would presumably cost the same to me whether the profits of the company that made it to the owner or the laborer. Between me and the retailer there is a fair exchange of value. Between the laborer and factory owner who made the hairbrush there isn't when he sells the hairbrush at a profit and that profit doesn't return to the laborer. He is extracting the full value of that labor for himself while having done no work in making that hairbrush.
Also let's say buying a hairbrush was unethical - that's why the adage goes that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism. But we don't deserve to die or suffer because we're forced into it.
"According to them only retired people are allowed to live off investment income."
That's not what they're saying. They said "no one should have anything other than labor as their main income until they retire" - which could have probably been better worded as "the income you make in your life should come from your labor, not the labor of others".
No one should start a business and pay salaries to their employees instead of themselves?
What if I see that a biotech startup is working on mRNA cancer vaccines, and I want to invest in that? And then it pays off and I make money off of it?
Investing as people think about it only exists because people who invest expect value from the thing they invest in. That value only exists because of a mixture of current and future expected income from the business. If the business itself doesn't generate income for people who aren't doing the actual labor, there's no reason to invest unless you have a personal interest in the continuation of the business, i.e. you're an employee whose income depends on that job. In this scenario you'd have employee-owned businesses.
Obviously this raises the question of where funding comes for new innovation and growth (public investment banks, worker cooperative financing, government grants), but then it goes down a rabbit hole about alternatives to capitalism.
What if it's a robot lawnmower instead of a push mower?
Small-time landlords are an example, as would be anyone who owns a small business and draws cash from profits rather than taking a salary.