Here in Japan, a chain has a cheese burger with beef from Kobe, caramelized onions, and gravy made from the drippings for 7.50USD Half that if you want it with regular beef.
I investigated why things are so cheap and businesses can have the weirdest hours (there’s a bar in Tokyo that’s only open for 5 hours a week on fridays), they tax unused commercial property (for certain definitions of unused, like in rural areas just throwing some gravel down and letting your neighbor park there for a few bucks can be enough to dodge the tax), so companies offer extremely competitive rates to get businesses in. The .4% interest rate and very cheap remodeling costs (except plumbers for some reason) serve to keep startup more accessible, so places don’t have to be super profitable to exist. The taxes work in conjunction with the interest rates to keep banks and capital firms from just buying everything up with the free money to establish a local monopoly and drive up prices. There’s probably other things driving down home and commercial property costs, it’s mindboggling to see a 3 floor+attic, 800sqft/floor building in the center of a city with 10 million people and have the business owner say he’s renting it because the owner wanted 2.5m to buy the whole thing, and that was too much.
I know China manages to keep commercial property somewhat cheap by having 5 year plans and SoEs/universities guarantee the commercial sectors have the inputs such as steel, concrete, and skilled labor they’ll need at a specific price point, but I’ve never managed to talk to someone about tax policies and the like.
Uhg. All of the commercial real estate in the US is mortgaged and the owners just roll it over continuously - allowing the banks to set policy in contract to not reduce the $/sqft of commercial real estate. So everything here is just empty and the owners can write off the empty stores as losses on their taxes to offset the taxes from their profits.
There are so many things that can be done to fix the US but they chose to triple-down on the approaches that broke everything. Sigh. I’m really happy to hear Japan figured out the right balance. It’d be amazing if those best practices could be imported but I’m sure they’ll start tarriffing ideas soon too.
Here in Japan, a chain has a cheese burger with beef from Kobe, caramelized onions, and gravy made from the drippings for 7.50USD Half that if you want it with regular beef.
I investigated why things are so cheap and businesses can have the weirdest hours (there’s a bar in Tokyo that’s only open for 5 hours a week on fridays), they tax unused commercial property (for certain definitions of unused, like in rural areas just throwing some gravel down and letting your neighbor park there for a few bucks can be enough to dodge the tax), so companies offer extremely competitive rates to get businesses in. The .4% interest rate and very cheap remodeling costs (except plumbers for some reason) serve to keep startup more accessible, so places don’t have to be super profitable to exist. The taxes work in conjunction with the interest rates to keep banks and capital firms from just buying everything up with the free money to establish a local monopoly and drive up prices. There’s probably other things driving down home and commercial property costs, it’s mindboggling to see a 3 floor+attic, 800sqft/floor building in the center of a city with 10 million people and have the business owner say he’s renting it because the owner wanted 2.5m to buy the whole thing, and that was too much.
I know China manages to keep commercial property somewhat cheap by having 5 year plans and SoEs/universities guarantee the commercial sectors have the inputs such as steel, concrete, and skilled labor they’ll need at a specific price point, but I’ve never managed to talk to someone about tax policies and the like.
Uhg. All of the commercial real estate in the US is mortgaged and the owners just roll it over continuously - allowing the banks to set policy in contract to not reduce the $/sqft of commercial real estate. So everything here is just empty and the owners can write off the empty stores as losses on their taxes to offset the taxes from their profits.
There are so many things that can be done to fix the US but they chose to triple-down on the approaches that broke everything. Sigh. I’m really happy to hear Japan figured out the right balance. It’d be amazing if those best practices could be imported but I’m sure they’ll start tarriffing ideas soon too.