Summary
A 24-hour general strike in Greece on Wednesday shut down transport, schools, and government offices as workers protested high living costs.
Unions are demanding a 10% pay raise and the return of holiday bonuses cut during Greece’s financial crisis.
They accuse Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of not doing enough to tackle inflation, despite recent minimum wage increases.
Hospitals operated on emergency staff, while protests and marches were planned.
Many say wages have not kept up with the rising costs of energy, food, and rent.
Europe is facing population decline. Houses should get cheaper, not more expensive, and the fact that prices keep rising means that they are artificially inflated.
the second anyone was allowed to use houses as an “investment” to gain wealth we basically guaranteed this. obviously anyone with a lot of money tied up in housees is going to try and make their value go up. once we got multinational billion dollar conglomerates involved it became child’s play for them to make that number go up through infinite methods of varrying complexity carried out by thousands of people working together with billions of dollars behind them.
this problem is inherent to a housing market that people are allowed to speculate on. we just need to make that stop entirely. limit house ownership. no one needs 100 houses. especially not companies. if that results in less rental houses than desired, we need to build more apartments. apartments are different beast, but if the cost of houses are lower then it will be harder to inflate rent if they can afford a house instead. this may result in some people who want to rent a house, but not an apartment, unable to find that. that’s not a big problem. they might just need to rent an apartment instead. certainly it’s much less of a problem then the current state of no one being able to afford housing.
the rich don’t need this vector for growing their wealth. they have enough others and are doing quite alright at it. the world will function just fine without mult billion dollar corporations investing in buying properties for the sole reason that they think they can extract wealth without contributing anything. houses should be for living in, not for extracting wealth.
Hear hear.
We need tax on every home owned beyond the first, getting progressively higher with each one owned. For individuals and especially for corporations.
Ehh…I’d rather a progressive tax system. I.e. tax rate increases with number of units.
Both of my landlords have been small private operators. First one owned a multi-family right behind his house and rented out the whole thing below market rate to friends and family.
Second one was closer to market rate but was the only property he had and landlording was supplementing fixed income.
I’ve got friends planning a long-distance move and renting when they arrive and for the foreseeable future. They own a home here (in a much higher COL area), and know eventually they will probably have to move back (aging relatives).
They recognize that if they sell now, they’ll never be able to buy another house when that time comes, but also think market rate for rent is insane compared to what they pay for mortgage now or rent in their new location.
I don’t think people in either situation should be excessively taxed. There will always be a need for people to rent a home. As such there will always be a need for someone to rent them. But it shouldn’t be a high-profit enterprise.
People who gobble up property and treat landlording as an enterprise or even as a primary source of income, are garbage, and should be punished. People who are trying to keep their house ‘in the family’ but don’t need it for an indefinite period shouldn’t be published.
“Facing” sounds like its a bad thing
"Europe is responsibly decreasing their population "
It is a bad thing, it’s not like they planned it ahead of time and prepared for the consequences of population decline. The entire system is designed around a growing population and if that growth turns negative, so does the government’s budget.
Oh no, the economy!
It doesn’t matter. You have more of everything you need. That’s all that matters.
The total wealth is not an issue, but the distribution of it.
My uncle in France had his retirement lowered to 90€/month. You can buy maybe two weeks of groceries for one person with that.
Thats a social issue. There’s plenty of food. Just need a government to not intentionally starve people.
Less population means even more food for everyone
Where do you think food comes from that having fewer workers means more food for everyone?
Do you really think food harvest is a highly specialized job requiring years of training?
You just need apercent of the population to do food. Again, this isn’t a problem. And if it ever was a problem, its a social problem.
Alas, it’s not trivial to move houses from deserted villages into booming cities. Plenty of European cities already have anti-speculation and rent controls in place, it’s not really helping.
Quickest and cheapest option would be to expand public transport actually, I think, spread out the pressure, combined with more remote work. Once you’ve got a steady, if overall tiny, de-urbanisation trickle going on urban prices are going to tank.