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Utopia Talk / Politics / Reminder: socialism is bad
Rugian
Member
Thu Feb 28 06:27:48
Thank God we don't have to deal with this shit in America.

----

Berlin set to hold referendum on banning big landlords and nationalising private rented housing

City's residents respond to affordability crisis with sweeping plan to socialise housing stock

Jon Stone Europe Correspondent @joncstone
21 hours ago

Berlin looks set to hold a referendum on banning big landlords and expropriating their homes into social housing, as part of a response to growing complaints in the German capital about the cost of living.

The proposed law would bar landlords with more than 3,000 homes in their portfolio from operating in the city – including the city’s biggest property company, Deutsche Wohnen AG.

That real estate behemoth has become a favoured target of activists, who claim its business is an example of the kind of speculation which they blame for driving up rents and property values.

The expropriated homes – an estimated 200,000 would be covered – would effectively become the German equivalent of council housing, let out at social rents – in a bid to reduce the cost of living.

The city, which is its own state under Germany’s federal system, has a local constitution that provides for a system of binding ballot initiatives or Volksentscheid, which allow framework for holding referenda.

Though the initiative must first collect 20,000 signatures to make it into the ballot paper, it is likely to find them quickly, as opinion polls show a majority of voters back the plan.

The activists’ proposal has sparked extensive coverage in the German press, including legal debates about whether expropriation would be constitutional or not.

One of the activists behind the initiative told German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel that they had consulted with lawyers and constitutional experts and that the compensation for expropriations could be paid “well below the market value”.

They cite a legal precedent set by the expropriation of land in Hamburg after a 1962 flood – after which the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the common good sometimes required property rights to be interfered with.

http://www...-referendum-vote-a8796471.html
jergul
large member
Thu Feb 28 06:39:50
What part of eminent domain don't you have in the US?
Rugian
Member
Thu Feb 28 06:47:40
jergul,

"compensation for expropriations could be paid “well below the market value”"
CrownRoyal
Member
Thu Feb 28 06:54:04
I don’t know if Donald emergency appropriation for the wall will be upheld in courts, but if it is, he next step is eminent domaining the poor suckers who own the borderlands. That should be fun, and I suspect some might complain about what is fair price, and is it on par with market price
hood
Member
Thu Feb 28 07:15:59
Yes, just let landlords rape your wallet with insane rent hikes born of their monopolistic dominance of the apartment market. Great idea!
jergul
large member
Thu Feb 28 07:20:54
Ruggy
I take it the activist misunderstood the lawyers and constitutional experts.

But I have no doubt compensation for expropriation of that scale will be tested in courts of law.

I am always happy to help you with your paranoia.

CR
Technically expropriation - or were you think Trump would authorize private companies to invoke eminent domain?
jergul
large member
Thu Feb 28 07:21:18
thinking*
Rugian
Member
Thu Feb 28 07:55:14
Hood,

Where on the Christian God's Earth did you get the idea that landlords are to blame here?

Landlords are not at fault for Berlin's supply crunch. They are not the ones who are notoriously reluctant to issue new building permits. They're also not the ones who one day up and decided to let 1.4 million rapefugees into their country. Nor all they going to be the ones who caused capital flight from Berlin's real estate market if this arbitrary expropriation law comes through.

Landlords only charge what the market can support. If the local rental inventory can be entirely taken up by yuppie douchebags willing to pay $4,000 a month for a studio, well so be it.

Typical socialist mentality though. Enact big government policies that predictably fail, then blame the private sector for the failure. Classic.
Rugian
Member
Thu Feb 28 07:58:13
Jergul,

You should probably talk to the activists then. I saw another article where they were mentioned paying 50% of FMV for seized properties. It's very much a part of the proposal.

And seeing as you're not an expert on German law, you'll forgive my paranoia if it's not eased by your unsupported declaration of "nah, they'll pay FMV. Trust me!"
hood
Member
Thu Feb 28 07:59:36
Bitch some more, whiny peasant.
Rugian
Member
Thu Feb 28 07:59:55
Okay, you're ignored.
CrownRoyal
Member
Thu Feb 28 08:09:46
"CR
Technically expropriation - or were you think Trump would authorize private companies to invoke eminent domain"

I don't think private companies can use ED, but any expropriation of private land by govt is based an ED
CrownRoyal
Member
Thu Feb 28 08:11:41
should be "fun"


As Trump visits border, Texas landowners prepare wall fight

By NOMAAN MERCHANT
January 10, 2019


HIDALGO, Texas (AP) — As President Donald Trump traveled to the border in Texas to make the case for his $5.7 billion wall , landowner Eloisa Cavazos says she knows firsthand how the project will play out if the White House gets its way.

The federal government has started surveying land along the border in Texas and announced plans to start construction next month. Rather than surrender their land, some property owners are digging in, vowing to reject buyout offers and preparing to fight the administration in court.

“You could give me a trillion dollars and I wouldn’t take it,” said Cavazos, whose land sits along the Rio Grande, the river separating the U.S. and Mexico in Texas. “It’s not about money.”
cont
http://www.apnews.com/0b3d63c524214bbdbfb58ce8f61589f0
Rugian
Member
Thu Feb 28 08:27:53
CR,

We are talking about nationalization, not eminent domain.


CrownRoyal
Member
Thu Feb 28 08:32:09
Thats what Donald should tell the angry Texans, "We are going to expropriate your land, but at least this is not nationalization. So, be thankful for that". BIG DIFFERENCE as late Rod would say
Rugian
Member
Thu Feb 28 08:34:00
CR,

I would think they would be thankful for the Just Compensation guarantee, yes.
CrownRoyal
Member
Thu Feb 28 08:34:44
And yet they are not, not all of them.
Rugian
Member
Thu Feb 28 08:36:26
But yes, ED usage on the border will likely create a good deal of bad will and send a message that properties on the border aren't great investments. Which is what makes the Berlin proposal all the more insane.
CrownRoyal
Member
Thu Feb 28 08:38:51
"But yes, ED usage on the border will likely create a good deal of bad will and send a message that properties on the border aren't great investments. "

Are you actually concerned with things like inestements, when the nation is faced with military emergency at the border? Fuck the investors
Rugian
Member
Thu Feb 28 08:43:56
CR,

That was kind of my point. Usage of ED is considered acceptable in terms of things like national security or public safety. Rights to property are still fundamentally valued, but as with everything in life there are exceptions.

That's very much different from an arbitrary seizure of hundreds of thousands of apartments made purely on economic and redistribution grounds. Never mind one made in exchange for less than just compensation.
CrownRoyal
Member
Thu Feb 28 08:51:06
"That was kind of my point. Usage of ED is considered acceptable in terms of things like national security or public safety. "

Apparently not by the landowners, they don't find it acceptable.


"That's very much different from an arbitrary seizure of hundreds of thousands of apartments made purely on economic and redistribution grounds."

It says the people of Berlin are going to have a referendum on it. Which is > chief executive declaring emergency and attempting to take the land, I would think.

" Never mind one made in exchange for less than just compensation."

Just is the eye of the beholder, some Texas farmers consider terms unjust, regardless of the amount
hood
Member
Thu Feb 28 09:04:03
It's not my fault that you're whining in defense of people abusing a non-free market and treating a basic necessity of life (shelter) as if it bears any resemblance to a free market.

"What the market will bear" when the other option is inhumane suffering is fucking preposterous.

My response was as adequate as your argument.
jergul
large member
Thu Feb 28 10:56:47
Ruggy
It ultimately does not matter what the activists think. Just compensation will if nowhere else be set in a court of law.

ED is considered ok to build football stadiums. See the history of your hero.
McKobb
Member
Thu Feb 28 11:23:47
People can move to the burbs.
kargen
Member
Thu Feb 28 11:35:55
"I don't think private companies can use ED, but any expropriation of private land by govt is based an ED"

It has happened. I forget the case but it went to the Supreme Court. A city used eminent domain to force people that owned beach front property (some for generations) to sell so a luxury hotel and condos could be built. The city claimed it was for the good of the community because of the added revenue that would be brought in.

The Supreme Court upheld the cities right to take the land saying it was a state issue and they couldn't change state law. One of the justices in the written opinion urged the state to change the law so cities couldn't take land for private use but affirmed the position that it was a state and not federal issue.

I am for states rights so I'm happy with the Supreme Court decision but I do not like eminent domain being used for private (and most public) development so I would like if the states to change their own laws.

President Trump by the way has been a big fan of eminent domain even for private businesses for a very long time. That is one of many issues I disagree with him on.

For public works they should have to pay a percentage (not sure what the number should be) over current market value or average market value over past twenty years which ever is higher.
Sam Adams
Member
Thu Feb 28 12:34:47
Government is too big.


Socialists: lets make it bigger!!
jergul
large member
Thu Feb 28 13:41:42
We are always happy to cut where it counts. Defence for example.
jergul
large member
Thu Feb 28 13:43:23
Where should we cut the number of federal employees to make government smaller?

http://www...orkforce-numbers-by-state.html
Daemon
Member
Thu Feb 28 14:00:17
That's Berlin.

Berlin is the state that gets most money from other states in Germany and does shit with it:

http://en....ualization_Payments_in_Germany

"For many years the equalization payments have opened up a gap between financially strong and financially weak states that was greatly intensified by the incorporation of the new states of Germany after reunification, with their initially especially weak economic and financial power. In 2015 only four states paid into the mechanism; Bavaria €5.5bn, Baden Württemberg €2.3bn, Hesse €1.7bn and Hamburg €112m. The biggest recipient state was the capital Berlin with €3.6bn"
jergul
large member
Thu Feb 28 14:30:40
Daemon
Since when was a billion more than chump change?
swordtail
Anarchist Prime
Thu Feb 28 16:43:38
Family pug seized, sold on eBay by German town over unpaid taxes

http://www...-german-town-over-unpaid-taxes
kargen
Member
Thu Feb 28 17:10:38
"Where should we cut the number of federal employees to make government smaller?"

Much of the administration that just shuffles things back and forth before sending it where it should have gone to start with. Lots of redundancy at the administrative levels of some agencies.

Privatize as much as possible.

Lower federal taxes increase state taxes and make many of the programs state level instead of federal.
jergul
large member
Fri Mar 01 00:34:58
Kargen
Review where the employees are. You don't care about big government unless you want to slash the 5 largest government agencies.

All of which are defence.
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