My spouse and I both work for a living, and we’d be in a hard spot if either of us lost our jobs. We also own 3 rental properties, and I have a military pension. We also own a farm where we raise 6 cows and enough chickens to have some eggs to sell.
So, we get most of our money from our labor, the rental properties pay for themselves most of the time but we don’t pool that with our personal money…it’s for the mortgages, taxes, maintenance and to cover for when we don’t have renters (which is almost never…weird how that happens when you aren’tcharging exploitative rents).
We sell eggs and make a small profit on those, but not enough to support ourselves…same with the beef…it’s mostly for us and family to eat (because fuck factory farming) but if we don’t have the freezer space we’ll sell the extra as well. That makes us both labor and capital… and my pension and military retirement benefits are basically as close to socialism as we’ll get in the US anytime soon, the biggest difference being I had to earn it.
The landlord side of it is the murkiest imo. You having a military pension doesn’t mean you’re in the bourgeoisie, it just means you’re getting paid for having given time from your life. Similarly, selling the surplus from your own agriculture doesn’t place you in the class of controlling capital because you aren’t using others’ labor; you’re creating something through your labor and when faced with having a surplus, are distributing your goods. Yes you sell them, but it’s not fair to criticize you for trying to offset your costs while living under a capitalist system so long as the price isn’t exorbitant.
Imo being a landlord is usually the scummiest, but if you’re charging rent at a price set to maintain the buildings and ensure that your tenants still have housing, then I don’t think you’re exploiting anyone. Imo the more profit you take from your rental properties, the more it moves out of the grey area. It sounds however like you don’t take profit or take a very minimal amount, and that you price your property so that it’s self sufficient but not much more. In that case then you aren’t really exploiting your tenants. Are they still being exploited? Yes, by the system that forces them to pay for housing. Do you have a hand in that exploitation purely by being their landlord? Yes, however if you aren’t trying to extort them for money so they have housing, then I wouldn’t say you’re exploiting them more than just owning their housing. Theres a reason that leftists tout that theres no ethical consumption under capitalism; even in trying to help people or do the right thing, you are still feeding into a system of exploitation and extortion. That doesn’t mean you still aren’t trying to do the right thing or be genuinely helpful, it just means that unless we find an alternative system then we will all continue to exploit each other and be exploited. This is why the proletariat must be unified as otherwise, we will never shake the binds of our collective oppression.
Oh, believe me…I am well aware of my privilege and spend a lot of time trying to question my own motivations… especially around the rental properties. I do feel like rental homes are generally exploitative towards the renters, but the 1st property kinda fell into our laps, and the other 2 were situations where we we were using our credit to help the rentersbgetninto a house they wanted but couldn’t finance due to their credit. Basically, they picked the house, we bought it, and they rent it from us while we report their on-time payments to rebuild their credit.
I definitely wasn’t born with a silver spoon…was homeless myself several times as a kid and for a while immediately after moving out on my own. Joined the military as it seemed the best way out for me at the time. Wrecked my knees and fucked my brain but at least they’re paying me for the trouble. Now we’re in the privileged, if often uncomfortable, role of being better off than most of our friends and peers. We still struggle some months, and it feels like we’re barely making ends meet for the last year or so, so I KNOW everyone else is hurting. Even aside from our current financial state, I’m a cishet white veteran living in a very red state. About the only privileges I don’t have here are being a lefty and an athiest, and even with all that, it still feels like I’m hanging on by a thread. When I imagine dealing with the state of the world today in the socioeconomic conditions I was experiencing when I was younger, I’m not sure I’d have endured.
Even being better off than most is pretty fucking hard these days.
Based on my definitions. Owning the 3 rental properties makes you owner class as that is private property, also when you pay off the mortgages you are going to be in a great spot right?
Farms are weird, if you only had the farm and have hired nobody else to help you run it then working class. If you hire people, well then you are owner class.
You both also have jobs on top of running a farm? Out of curiosity how do you have the time to manage your farm and work at the same time?
My BIL lives on the farm and takes care of feeding the livestock and keeping the pasture cleaned up. Otherwise, it’s just family helping family. We’re in the middle rebuilding part of the chicken coop now on the weekends. I say farm, but it’s more a ranch… we only grow hay and its only about 10 acres, so it’s not a huge burden with all of us working together.
It’s not quite so black and white, though.
My spouse and I both work for a living, and we’d be in a hard spot if either of us lost our jobs. We also own 3 rental properties, and I have a military pension. We also own a farm where we raise 6 cows and enough chickens to have some eggs to sell.
So, we get most of our money from our labor, the rental properties pay for themselves most of the time but we don’t pool that with our personal money…it’s for the mortgages, taxes, maintenance and to cover for when we don’t have renters (which is almost never…weird how that happens when you aren’tcharging exploitative rents).
We sell eggs and make a small profit on those, but not enough to support ourselves…same with the beef…it’s mostly for us and family to eat (because fuck factory farming) but if we don’t have the freezer space we’ll sell the extra as well. That makes us both labor and capital… and my pension and military retirement benefits are basically as close to socialism as we’ll get in the US anytime soon, the biggest difference being I had to earn it.
The landlord side of it is the murkiest imo. You having a military pension doesn’t mean you’re in the bourgeoisie, it just means you’re getting paid for having given time from your life. Similarly, selling the surplus from your own agriculture doesn’t place you in the class of controlling capital because you aren’t using others’ labor; you’re creating something through your labor and when faced with having a surplus, are distributing your goods. Yes you sell them, but it’s not fair to criticize you for trying to offset your costs while living under a capitalist system so long as the price isn’t exorbitant.
Imo being a landlord is usually the scummiest, but if you’re charging rent at a price set to maintain the buildings and ensure that your tenants still have housing, then I don’t think you’re exploiting anyone. Imo the more profit you take from your rental properties, the more it moves out of the grey area. It sounds however like you don’t take profit or take a very minimal amount, and that you price your property so that it’s self sufficient but not much more. In that case then you aren’t really exploiting your tenants. Are they still being exploited? Yes, by the system that forces them to pay for housing. Do you have a hand in that exploitation purely by being their landlord? Yes, however if you aren’t trying to extort them for money so they have housing, then I wouldn’t say you’re exploiting them more than just owning their housing. Theres a reason that leftists tout that theres no ethical consumption under capitalism; even in trying to help people or do the right thing, you are still feeding into a system of exploitation and extortion. That doesn’t mean you still aren’t trying to do the right thing or be genuinely helpful, it just means that unless we find an alternative system then we will all continue to exploit each other and be exploited. This is why the proletariat must be unified as otherwise, we will never shake the binds of our collective oppression.
Congratulations, you’re one of an extreme few still living in the middle class.
Now realize how minority your experience is.
Oh, believe me…I am well aware of my privilege and spend a lot of time trying to question my own motivations… especially around the rental properties. I do feel like rental homes are generally exploitative towards the renters, but the 1st property kinda fell into our laps, and the other 2 were situations where we we were using our credit to help the rentersbgetninto a house they wanted but couldn’t finance due to their credit. Basically, they picked the house, we bought it, and they rent it from us while we report their on-time payments to rebuild their credit.
I definitely wasn’t born with a silver spoon…was homeless myself several times as a kid and for a while immediately after moving out on my own. Joined the military as it seemed the best way out for me at the time. Wrecked my knees and fucked my brain but at least they’re paying me for the trouble. Now we’re in the privileged, if often uncomfortable, role of being better off than most of our friends and peers. We still struggle some months, and it feels like we’re barely making ends meet for the last year or so, so I KNOW everyone else is hurting. Even aside from our current financial state, I’m a cishet white veteran living in a very red state. About the only privileges I don’t have here are being a lefty and an athiest, and even with all that, it still feels like I’m hanging on by a thread. When I imagine dealing with the state of the world today in the socioeconomic conditions I was experiencing when I was younger, I’m not sure I’d have endured.
Even being better off than most is pretty fucking hard these days.
Based on my definitions. Owning the 3 rental properties makes you owner class as that is private property, also when you pay off the mortgages you are going to be in a great spot right?
Farms are weird, if you only had the farm and have hired nobody else to help you run it then working class. If you hire people, well then you are owner class.
You both also have jobs on top of running a farm? Out of curiosity how do you have the time to manage your farm and work at the same time?
My BIL lives on the farm and takes care of feeding the livestock and keeping the pasture cleaned up. Otherwise, it’s just family helping family. We’re in the middle rebuilding part of the chicken coop now on the weekends. I say farm, but it’s more a ranch… we only grow hay and its only about 10 acres, so it’s not a huge burden with all of us working together.