Wow. How about you define "unearned capital" for the rest of us,
Lol. I'm renting my house out to a friend right now while house-sitting long-term for family and I'm basically getting paid above cost to pay for something. Capital extraction may be gained, but it certainly isn't "earned". You're not providing necessary labor or a vital service, you're manipulating a situation where you have power and the other has less power.
Note: throwing out a strawman about the estate tax does not assist your argument.
Lol, I suppose housing isn't a "vital service" now? And exercising your legal right to property is not "manipulating the system." You might as well say that people who exercise their right over a legal copyright are "manipulating the less powerful," or that someone who builds a house and then sells it has "taken advantage of their property rights to extort others." Ownership isn't theft.
My point about the estate tax followed logically from the complaints made in his post about "unearned" capital.
You aren't doing anything to "provide housing". A developer or a homebuilder actually engages on the labor and service level, therefore "earning" their capital. I understand the desire to morally justify something that benefits you at the expense of others, but crowing about how ungrateful the serfs are ain't it, man. You're using your wealth to purchase something you don't need in hopes of extracting more wealth from people who do have that need. It may not be legal theft, but I think you can do better than promoting predatory capitalism at the expense of more meritocratic variants. In fact, as a rather intelligent Berkeley man, I'd venture that you would benefit even more from a more meritocratic society than an extractory variant.
Your estate tax strawman has nothing to do with logic. People have the right to share their earnings how they please; whether it's passed along to offspring, used to generously tip above the market cost of an item, or given to schools or charity to help out others. Focus on one thing at a time and you'll get a healthier debate.
And the homeowner did their own labor/job to earn money to buy the house. The only part that one could describe as unearned or without labor is the empty land plot which obviously never had any labor being required to create as land has always been there.
