Economics

PARIS, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Governments should open a new front in the international clampdown on tax evasion with a global minimum tax on billionaires, which could raise $250 billion annually, the EU Tax Observatory said on Monday.

If levied, the sum would be equivalent to only 2% of the nearly $13 trillion in wealth owned by the 2,700 billionaires globally, the research group hosted at the Paris School of Economics said.

The FAO Food Price Index* (FFPI) averaged 121.5 points in September 2023, 14.6 points (10.7 percent) below its corresponding level a year ago and 38.3 points (24.0 percent) from the all-time high reached in March 2022.

I recently read an article about OPEC, and how oil prices will likely rise for the next year or two. The article said this will cause a significant uptick in inflation indicators, so the Fed will likely raise rates.

I can understand raising rates in response to monetary inflation, but it doesn't make much sense to me to raise rates in response to supply-side shocks. It also seems cruel since the goal seems to be to raise rates so more people become unemployed or underemployed so that can't afford to buy gas.

It seems obvious that buying a house is financially better then renting. The monthly cost is usually similar (this is because the market adjusts to keep them similar. If renting were more expensive, everyone renting could afford to buy. They would do that which would push up house prices and push down rents. Buying can theoretically be more expensive than renting (imagine a society made up only of poor workers and rich landlords, where house prices are set by what landlords can afford) but usually housing pressure pushes up rental prices first, to match the most people can afford, then housing prices rise slower, because of the bottleneck of the difficulty in getting mortgages. When rents are much higher than mortgages that means the government and banks are severely hindering people who have the means to get mortgages from getting them, probably to the advantage of investment funds and other cash buyers) and one results in eventually owning an asset while the other does not.

But to verify this, a thought experiment is required.

1. you are already renting a house
2. you buy a house
3. instead of living in the new house, you rent it out to someone else.

So here you have a situation which is financially identical to buying and living in a house, but you are still renting. The rent you receive offsets the rent you pay. (please, all the people who like nitpicking, ignore the different tax implications etc for now.) This house is a financial investment that can be compared against others, like savings accounts and stocks. It's possible to study if the return in investment would have been better had you chosen a different investment.

The capital investment is the deposit. If you invested the deposit amount in whatever, then added to it the mortgage amount every month, you would accumulate some wealth. I'd the wealth you accumulate from the house is greater, accounting for the profit the bank extracts from your investment through interest, then you should buy the house. That is the test.

(of course there are other benefits to owning your own house but they are out of scope. this is a purely financial argument)

The bank takes a huge cut of your profit. You might pay the bank in interest double what you pay the seller. So you pay for the house three times. That is worse than the cut taken by a broker of any other investment.

Cash buyers (investment funds) do not pay 3x the price of the house. So maybe you're better off investing in housing through an investment fund!

I don't actually know if it is usually better to buy than to rent. I have never done this calculation. I only know that most people assume so, without ever doing the calculation.

One possibility is that the market self-adjusts so the buying and renting (taking your deposits for the house and investing it in something else) are equally profitable.

I suspect that the market is set by what investment funds (not people) are willing to pay. So house prices are set so that they are equally profitable for them as other investments. This means houses are less profitable than other investments for non cash buyers. It means most people should continue to rent, instead of buying, and just invest their money better.

This article feels a but unfinished, like there is something missing it overlooked. Maybe someone else can spot it. I think more thought or research, or putting more minds together, is needed.

Most people believe that as house prices rise, this is good for home-owners. It seems obvious, that if you own something, and the price of that this rises, you become richer. You have made a profit.

But it is not true.

I cover the case where all houses increase uniformly. For example x → px where p>1 or x → x+Δx where Δx>0. Conversely if the price of your house is increasing while the prices of other houses are decreasing, you can indeed make a profit, and benefit from the price change.

When you buy something, then sell it for a higher price, you make a profit. But when you sell a house, you normally selling it to buy a most expensive house. So the profit is sunk into another asset. You can never obtain your profit in cash.

If the price of your house rises while you are living in it, then you sell it to buy a more expensive house (the usual case), then the price of the new house has also risen by at least as much. You would have been as well (or better) off if house prices has remained stable.

The people who can make money from housing inflation are people owning multiple houses, people who downsize, people who become homeless, the estates of people who die and have no children. Investment funds are the big beneficiary of housing inflation, because they are free to buy and sell all of their assets.

In fact if house prices were kept stable by progressive government policy (for example continuous adjustment of to mortgage term limits, loan-to-value limits, or property taxes, similar to what central banks do with interest rates) then investment funds would sell their housing stock in favour of more profitable assets. This would be an even greater benefit to society (including home owners) from stable house prices.

The biggest loser is of course first time buyers.

There are other effects. You could argue that governments benefit from increased taxes. Estate agents and solicitors benefit from higher fees.

The other winner is banks. The profit a bank makes from a mortgage is directly proportional to the price of the house. So banks benefit not from price changes but from maximising prices. (Banks benefit even more from high interest rates and long mortgage terms, at the expense of home-owners. But these factors also influence house-prices. So the above generally true but not a simple relationship).

The above is not a unique feature of the housing market. It is an example of inflation. As assets increase uniformly in value through inflation, it seems like asset holders are making profit. When you sell the asset you make more money, but money is useless unless you use it to buy another asset. The price of the new asset has also increased by the same amount. So the holder reaps no benefit from the increase. That's why economists say that the value of the asset remained the same but the value of money decreased.

So this result for the case of housing is not surprising. It is an example of inflation at work.

The main effect of housing inflation is a transfer of purchasing power (and in the long run, of money) from people buying and selling houses to banks and investment funds.

Why? Because apparently they need some more incentive to keep units occupied. Also, even though a property might be vacant, there's still imputed rental income there. Its owner is just receiving it in the form of enjoying the unit for himself instead of receiving an actual rent check from a tenant. That imputed rent ought to be taxed like any other income.

If banks would not be allowed to lend out more than what they have in terms of deposits, or if they would only be allowed to lend out twice that amount, what would be the most significant difference with the current fractional reserve system (in which the cash-reserve ratio can be as high as 1:9)?

I'm reading that the current system increases the availability of credit, which in turn helps the economy to grow. But if banks would only be allowed to lend out half of what they are currently lending out, wouldn't the supply of money simply go down, and thus the value of money up, effectively leaving banks with the same lending power?

Current system:

• Total amount of money in circulation: central bank money x money multiplier. Most money is created by commercial banks.

Alternative system:

• Total amount of money in circulation: central bank money. All money is created by central banks.

I'm not asking what would happen if this would change over night (e.g. sudden decrease of money, monster deflation etc.). I'm asking what is the benefit (and to whom) of doing it the way it is currently done.

I asked the question on Twitter, but I don't know if I'm going to get any real answers or any answers at all over there. Here it is:

What's the appeal to taxing inheritance differently than other types of income? Aren't flat taxes bad and regressive?

I've occasionally encountered emphatic support for a 100% inheritance tax, but I'm never sure if that's not really a joke coming out of people's frustrations with nepotism and generational wealth accumulation. It seems like there are better ways to address those things than making exceptions to the progressive income tax.