Why should we care where money comes from so long as it is legal and so long as there is not a national security concern? Should there be any preference for a private french citizen's money as compared to a private chinese citizen's? Isn't that one of the things that makes this country better than places like China which place all sorts of arbitrary restrictions on who can buy certain things there? I agree that the opaqueness of LLCs can be a problem but the fact we have such hysteria about a random student just because he's chinese smacks of racism. Those who are truly concerned about the malign influence that comes along with chinese money would do well to vote with their wallets and not support businesses that end up sending work to china in exchange for money (That and holding accountable the politicians who allowed china to exploit the system of world trade while not playing by the rules). That is your prerogative but the general fungibility of money in a ostensibly free-market system is a virtue that should be preserved.
THat's an easy answer as I've seen first hand why.
It comes down to how transparent a country is and how much rule of law there is there for poeple who are outside of that country.
To use your example, there isn't a lot someone in North American can do to track down and get a debt paid by someone in China as the banking system will not cooperate, and the legal system will not cooperate.
France on the other hand tends to use the same banks and has very close legal ties so the legal system and the banking system will both cooperate in a way that you could never get from the Chinese legal or banking system if someone from that country owes you money and has assets in France and a North American court has a judgement against them.
If a North American court has a judgement against a Chinese citizen residing in China, how cooperative do you think their legal system or banking system will be?
So yes, which foreigners that own property can matter a great deal if there is ever a dispute with them.
You can, but you can't get environmental damages corrected, liabilities and damages covered (if say, they caused a fire or disaster in a community), or debts re-paid (if greater than the value of the property). Lots of issues with this. Chinese firms have bought a significant amount of US infrastructure, so it's also a national security issue.
This is a good point, but extends beyond individuals to companies as well, and seems to justify a pretty clear decoupling between China and the rest of the world until China is willing to play by the rules. Should we also then extend the guidelines that constrain foreign students from studying certain subjects in university (historically by not letting certain US government funds for research grants etc pay for those foreign students). It is obvious that China exploits the US educational and research system in a way that doesn't benefit us in the same way, apart from hoping that some students would stay and become productive members of society here who have no interest in funneling IP back to China.
I am assuming that GP was not specific about Chinese investors' money due to national security concerns or sinophobia. More pressing, especially to anyone hoping to live anywhere near Vancouver, is the fact that Chinese investors account for 1/3 of the total sales volume of property (2016 figures). [1]
> Routledge compiled the data by extrapolating from a Financial Times survey of 77 high- end buyers and data from the U.S. National Association of Realtors
First, not exactly a large sample size. Second, how did this analyst know if the buyer was a Chinese citizen or just somebody with a Chinese surname?
For most industries and investments, sure. Shouldn't matter who owns what.
Property and real estate have a different utility, in that it provides one of the most foundational needs a person requires. It's not the same as a chinese investment firm buying up various asset classes, non-native investors buying up real estate that could provide shelter to native citizens is a problem.
It's an obvious national security issue and avenue for potential economic coercion. It also has significant negative externalities for the local economy. For example, good luck convincing a software dev to relocate to Vancouver when a basic detached house costs a couple million dollars. It makes industries that actually produce things uncompetitive compared to services facilitating rich foreigners' asset flight.
Or, there's always been more than enough housing in many localities for the local demand, but those people are not buying houses because they've been priced out by sophisticated investors who are not local, are not especially interested in the long-term development of the locality where they are buying, and who will almost certainly not ever be a resident.
OK, but most of those “sophisticated investors” rent out their property to generate a return on their investment, so no net housing is lost. In addition, these investors who you claim are not residents are paying property taxes that fund local services like firefighters and schools while not themselves consuming those services. So why is this necessarily bad?
Call me prejudiced, but I went from renter to home-owner in the last half-decade and I don't see the rentier class as really contributing in excess like you do.
I live in a Midwestern city where many of the rentals are owned by one singular corporation, and there are several such corporations, and I don't know what all the properties are like. I have a myopic view because I've only ever rented one house in this city, and only ever owned one house.
So I'll give you my one anecdote, because it's all I got. Tl;dr: we're paying those taxes, even though we should be saving a boatload because of our primary residence exception, we're still paying more taxes than a comparably priced house that we used to rent. It's a much nicer house, but by the numbers I do not get the sense that property renters are paying more taxes like "they're supposed to be." (But if I became a rentier and bought a second home to improve, rent out, and maintain, then I would pay those boku taxes; sure!)
We paid almost $200k for our house, a steal because we bought it in 2020. It has appreciated by almost 20% in two years. (We're not selling, so that doesn't help us any.)
We rented a house before we bought this house. They don't maintain the property, they did re-rent it; I'm not sure if it's empty today, but they definitely kept the house full for the past three or so years mostly since we left.
It's in poor condition because they count on renters to maintain it, and the renters rarely have any interest in maintaining their rented property. So it looks like garbage and the assessed value is not likely to increase, based on there being no improvements.
But the property is valued somehow at $275k in spite of nothing having changed. The house I lived in when I was renting, has been listed for sale for the last month at almost 4x its tax-assessed value. That house was assessed at less than $40,000 when we moved in, the tax assessment is up to $75k, listed for $269k – they do not get any primary residence exemption, but their assessed value is less than half mine so they pay 14% less than I do in taxes. Do you think it will sell?
The rental house is paying less in taxes, but that house has been listed at 20% more than our new house is worth. It probably will sell for more than we paid, based on the potential for rental income; it has a marginally better location and 30% less sqft than our house, so there's no basis for that price. But I bet you that it will sell, for at least 80% of the asking price, and that assessment won't be updated for years "because that's how long it takes."
It isn't worth what they're paying/asking, unless they jack up the price and re-rent it again! (They will...) And they will never pay property taxes on a sale price or on a lease price, property taxes are based on an assessment value. An inflated sale price with no improvements does nothing for assessed value, nothing for tax revenue, it's wholly based on the rental price bubble that can stay inflated and keep going as long as we're a college town, (as long as college prices keep going up!)
I have one anecdote and to me it shows the bad pretty clearly. I'm not sure how clearly I explained what I perceive is wrong, but what I'm saying is they are really taking money out of our collective pockets and it's not going towards taxes.
I should probably just put the clown makeup on, I am not going to convince you of anything; if you're starting with the belief that sophisticated investors from outside of the community buying up houses and renting them back out to people in the community aren't creating a net loss while they generate a return on their investment, then you haven't interrogated the situation honestly.
Their (outside investors) return is axiomatically the net loss to the community.
If we (residents) weren't paying it out to these investors, then we'd still have that money here in the community, going into savings of people that live in the community, or getting spent in the community. You think they're going to pay taxes, and well, as I see it we just aren't set up to operate like that! Not at all. The law notionally taxes non-primary rentals or non-residences at a higher rate than residences, but for reasons I can't fully convey and don't truly understand, it typically, seemingly, doesn't work out like that.
I don’t have time for a detailed response but I just wanted to make one point.
> Their (outside investors) return is axiomatically the net loss to the community.
This is false, it is not a zero-sum game. Just because an investor makes a return doesn’t mean that somebody else loses. The same as investing in the stock market isn’t a zero-sum game. You shouldn’t have such a myopic view of how the world works.
Well, I told you I knew it was a myopic view. I understand that investor can come back, and I know they might try their luck again.
I appreciate your frank response, and I'd be willing to read if you find the time to tell me what else I should understand! (If we got our tax policy in order... no, that's not where you were going is it!)
You only feel that resources are constrained because local governments and NIMBYs work to set the policies that make them constrained. Instead of blaming foreigners, you should blame them.
I'm an experienced musician and this really resonates with me. It's possible to see a scale written out in the score and know exactly what that means in terms of how it's supposed to sound, what fingering I should use, and whether there are any "aberrant" notes in there that I should watch out for. The same goes for many other common note patterns. Trying to decode something like this into something that makes sense to me musically is a huge additional burden that doesn't exist. That said, having been through the journey of being able to sight read music myself and then trying to teach it to a number of people, I agree that reading a score in real time is one of the greatest hurdles to beginner and intermediate players alike, and probably a huge impediment to many people learning to play a variety of instruments.
There is one particular instance in which getting away from traditional notation can help. I have absolute pitch, and I've played transposing (woodwind) instruments before. The mental link between specific finger positions and specific tones / notes on the score, is one that causes me untold issues with transposing instruments. If I could just focus on the finger positions without the distraction of the score, that would help me. I don't think this is a common problem though.
I think there might be two different basic strategies that could help you out of this:
1) just work on actually transposing whatever you're reading by a fixed interval. If you get fluent in doing this, you'll get past your "page says f but it sounds d" discomfort.
2) practice reading C clefs (+ octave transposition). You play a C on a clarinet in B-flat, it sounds a B-flat. So, imagine instead of a treble clef, it were a tenor clef (but 8va higher) instead. That third-space treble-clef C is now a tenor-clef B (you have to add the accidentals).
In either case, it is probably matter of just getting used to it, and that means spending time with it, so no truly "easy" answer for you.
I'm actually quite good at transposing by any arbitrary interval (by ear), and can also play music both from sight reading and from ear. The problem is I have both an instinctive link between sounds and fingerings (or keys on a piano when I play that) and between the notes in the score and the keys they map to on the instrument. Alas I didn't encounter c clefs until rather late in my musical training (they weren't relevant for any of the instruments I played) and by that time I didn't have a compelling reason to practice reading scores. I'm adulthood I more or less only play solo piano so transposition is a moot point.
Classical and jazz guitar are written in traditional notation. Classical notation has implied positions on the fretboard - first, fifth, seventh, etc. Tablature is useful, but it is not musical notation. Its expressiveness is so limited that many tablature sites add various symbols borrowed from standard. Indeed, go on almost any guitar forum on the net and you'll find a beginner asking about some notation found on a tablature. There's a great deal more to performing on the guitar than knowing where to put the fingers of the fretting hand.
hammer-on & pull-off: slur, notation is a curved line, sometimes dashed connecting notes.
slide: notated as legato, glissando, portamento, all different, in subtle ways, to "slide"
harmonic: notated in classical guitar with a diamond-shaped head.
percussive is tambor
bend: notated using an angled line between the noteheads at the start and end.
All those tab notations are borrowed from traditional notation. And yes, there are classical guitar pieces that use all these techniques. see e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbc2yDvt8RM
> The mental link between specific finger positions and specific tones / notes on the score, is one that causes me untold issues with transposing instruments.
Yes! I quit tenor and alto sax in favor of C melody. And I learned euphonium before trumpet so I just can’t see a Bb but call it C. Not at speed anyway.
This sort of childhood trauma occurs in many societies, among people with varying backgrounds. But I think it is more prevalent in societies with more sacred cows, where eg fathers, and elders, are told they are in an elevated position by dint of who they are, and thus they must be obeyed, and must seek not to lose face. When you foster these pockets of power, one should not be surprised that power often corrupts. Until Chinese (by here I mean the ethnicity, and not the nationality) society (and other societies with similar power structures) can look at itself critically and understand the full implications of such cultural imperatives, tackling the epidemic of abuse will be an uphill battle.
When I played in a youth orchestra our music director told us that certain European orchestras use A=443Hz (he said ones in Vienna specifically but there might be others). Perhaps you have a history of listening to many recordings with such tuning.
What are you hoping to get from knowing music theory? It seems like many of the commenters are assuming a specific goal from this (etc being able to more easily understand/memorize what you are supposed to play or being easily able to transpose music). Perhaps that is not your goal. And I would offer that music theory might not be the magic bullet for being able to read music much faster (eg better sight reading).
I taught instrument playing to a number of people, and I would say that associating the written note to a logical note and then associating a logical note to finger movements to play can be done with little to no formal music theory. These two things are orthogonal, and at least for younger learners, I find that the former (going from written notes on a score to which tone it is) is the most difficult part. That is, if I were to simply call out the notes in turn, the student could play at a much faster rate than if they had to read it themselves and decide what note it was. I found that mobile apps and websites that present notes to you and ask you what they are, helps tremendously for making this process faster. That is, speeding up the whole process is nothing more than repetitive practice. Once single notes are easily and quickly decoded in the mind, multiple simultaneously notes actually come faster because you decide one note at first and then can figure out the others by looking at the relative distance. Music theory can help here by providing some heuristic shortcuts but honestly, I don't find it is necessary or that helpful.
Don't worry, the whole process takes time. I would say that if you were already a competent pianist, but one who struggles with reading scores for sight reading, it would probably take months to years to see satisfactory progress, focusing on sight reading alone. That was consistent with my personal experience as well. I would stay away from trying to transpose music, unless you have absolute pitch, in which case transposing music would be easier than reading it in the first place.
